Netbooks - recommendations?

I currently have an irrational urge to get a Netbook. It's primary purpose would be to allow me to offload photos from my camera. I'm looking into Netbooks because they're small and lightweight enough for me to consider carrying it around.

As I had never bothered with Netbooks before, I don't know anything about them. How do the various CPUs compare? I assume that it's a given the integrated graphics will suck, but how do they compare anyway? How is Windows Starter 7? I'm still on XP on my desktop and have no experience with using Windows 7.

Well, low power - I think they've just started into dual core chips (or some were recently announced.) Typically low RAM (1 Gb seems common, some may come with more.) Windows 7 Starter is limited (IIRC) to running up to four apps at once. (It can be given an in place upgrade to any other version, though - I'd recommend more RAM before doing so.)

Personally, I tend to find them too small to use. Mostly the keyboard - I have yet to find one I feel comfortable typing on without my fingers getting tied together trying.

Edit: Quick wikipedia rundown on win7 editions.

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The majority of netbooks use a single core with hyperthreading Atom CPU running 1.6-1.7GHz. It's about 1/3 to 1/2 the CPU power of a low cost laptop. Most only have 1GB of memory.

Windows 7 Starter has a three open app limit (with exceptions).

Most have 10", 1024x600 screens, only 1GB of memory and relatively small, slow hard drives. However there are a few that have larger 12" 1366x768 screens.

The Asus Eee 1201 has one of these larger screens, an nVidia integrated graphics (which is a lot faster than the standard Intel integrated graphics), 2GB of memory and Windows 7 Home. What you lose half your useful battery life, gain a half a pound, an inch or so around and costs $125 more than one of the smaller ones.

Just buy this.

http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Satell.../ref=de_a_smtd

Personal experience: It's terrific. Just add another 2GB of RAM and you've got a nice porta-kit for COH.

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Your choices boil down to what makes a Netbook attractive to you.

Size?

Battery Life?

Price?

As long as you accept that the average Netbook is only really good at browsing on battery power, not game play, not heavy multitasking then your only decision is which has the most battery life.

Heck if all you are going to do with it is offload photoes from your camera into it and maybe upload them somewhere then you even go with one that runs Linux. You can get most of the third party browsers for Linux and Flash. At least it would discourage you from trying to turn it into something you will only be dissatisfied with.

Yeah, that's my thinking at the moment. The more I look at the specs, the more I'm distracted by the endless chase for non-obsolescence. I may wait for the next time Woot! has another batch of refurbs to unload and just accept that I'll be buying a disposable toy fairly cheaply.

I picked up an Acer Aspire One from Target a month or so back that was 199.00 (My price point). I installed the Ubuntu netbook remix on it via USB thumbdrive and have have very few issues with it. I can run several games either through DOSBox or natively. It was purchased for trips to keep up to date with what is going on and light entertainment and it has fit that bill perfectly.

I actually had CoH running on an Aspire One netbook, the one with the 120Gb HDD (I think) xp installed. In the end I returned it for a notebook. However that tiny little device played CoH (though just a hint above safe mode), quite happily for 3 hours and still had 35% battery time remaining. I would of kept it, only at the time I needed the bigger keyboard.

That being said, any netbook that runs the nVidia ION platform is a good performing piece of equipment that would actually beat my larger sized laptop in performance

I am actually running CoH on an Asus 1201n. It's a 1.6 Atom dual core (though they process independently of each other) with the Nvidia ION chipset. I was able to play around with some modified utilities and can get the core clock speed at 2.0 stable, thought I usually keep it at 1.9. I have also been able to upgrade the ram to 4GB (the maximum the chipset will allow) and while I have to share some with the ION, for day to day browsing and YouTube videos it runs great.

In CoH, Paragon City on lowest settings I can get 25-30 FPS sustained. Sadly in the Rogue Isles or Praetoria that number drops down to a max of 25 with a more realistic number in the 13s for general running/jumping/smashing activities.

It ran reasonably well before Ultra Mode but ever since the implementation, I've noticed that despite hitting the rock bottom on the video settings I still can't quite get what I was once able to. I actually came onto this board to try and see if anyone could recommend software or .ini settings that might garner better performance.

In any event, the netbook is nice and light, easy to carry around and really great for day to day stuff, sans the battery life. Gaming, it will run games, but not very well. Especially if you have a quadcore 5850 at home waiting for you, there's just no comparison.

Netbooks have a way to go yet as far as ultra-portable gaming. It can run many titles well, but they are much older titles (GTA 3: Vice City and prior). So if that's the kind of experience you're looking for I say go for it. However, the middle of the road that this meets makes me wish I had opted out for a stronger CPU, or baring that, a collection of old ROMs/ASCII adventure games and a 12 hour battery.

Good luck with whatever you decide on.

EDIT: I think I may have posted too soon. ION has a new driver revision out. Installed and fired up CoH and at the lowest settings in Praetoria was getting a crisp 20-30 fps again. Going to play around with the settings some more when I have more time and post what I find for any one who might be interested.