Laptop or Netbook, which would you choose?

Discussion in 'Technology' started by bfun, Apr 19, 2011.

  1. Which would you choose? Cost is the same and purpose is 90% couch web surfing.

    Laptop

    AMD Phenom™ II X2 dual-core processor N660
    ATI Radeon HD 4250 graphics
    3GB DDR3 SDRAM
    320GB Serial ATA hard drive (5400 rpm)
    15.6" TFT-LCD
    Weight 5.7 lbs
    Windows 7 Home Premium

    Netbook

    AMD Athlon II Neo K125 (Benches the same as a Pentium 4 3.00Ghz)
    Integrated Graphics AMD RS880 (Benches the same as an X800XT)
    2 GB DDR3 SDRAM 1333MHz
    250 GB SATA ll Hard Drive (5400RPM)
    11.6'' WLED (1366x786)
    Weight 3.44 lbs
    Windows 7 Home Premium
     
  2. is the battery on the netbook over 6 hours? if so get it. if neither have over 6hr battery, find one that does.
     
  3. I'm going to recommend an iPad out of sheer spite.

    We use our laptop mainly for net browsing but the huge pains are the loading times and updates that windows requires. If one option has an advantage in speed of use and convenience then I'd go with that.
     
  4. If your using it for on the couch browsing does battery life really matter?
     
  5. depends.. i move around alot. when I use my laptop/netbooks at home, i NEVER have them plugged in. my tv is in the bonus room in the house and the bonus room is really huge. so im not really near a wall to have it plugged in all the time.

    it's mainly for flexibility. netbook is meant to be ultraportable. not really portable when the time comes and your battery is gonna die within 4 or less hours. my cr48 from google has around 6hrs of life. my alienware m11x has about 7+ hours. and then my acer 15.6" laptop is a pathetic 4hrs at best.
     
  6. This is for couch surfing, so it will be plugged in all the time, and the price is the same, so I would go with the real laptop. The crappy CPUs and cramped keyboards on netbooks make it hard to recommend them unless you really need something portable.
     
  7. Both have a battery life of about 4 1/2 hours. The Neo K125 is a big performance improvement over similar Atom processors but it's also a bigger power hog. The AMD CPU also come with a much better GPU. The Intel GPU sucks by comparison.
     
  8. The netbook I'm looking at is actually a Dell Inspiron M101z. Some people are putting it in a new category called "Notbooks". Basically it sits somewhere in between a netbook and a laptop. It's bigger and more powerful than a real netbook. The keyboard is almost normal and a web page can be viewed without horizontal scrolling. The CPU is still weak but the GPU is actually better than most laptops.
     
  9. I really considered it but these both cost $350 and a good tablet will probably run me $500 to $700. The Motorola Xoom looks nice.
     
  10. If you want battery life and still better performance than crappy atom look into an AMD Zacate based mini-notebook. If you don't care about battery life, just get whatever you like for the price.
     
  11. Just upgrade to a smartphone. It's the best thing for couch surfing. If you have Wifi don't even bother with a data plan.
     
  12. I have an iPad touch already. The thing about the touch and tables is that they are all great for data retrieval but not so great for data entry.
     
  13. You still haven't answered whether this will be plugged in all the time or if it will be running on battery power.
     
  14. Ummm both. Even if it has a 6 hour battery life it will still need to be plugged in sometime during the day. It's hard to escape the power cord until batter life gets to 12 hours. I think I've decided on the laptop.
     
  15. I recomend my HP DM1z 5+ hours battery, benches (80 pounds) like a 1500xt (not the gpu's fault, the cpu sucks) like 3.5 pounds. Can't see shit outside, but (what laptop can...) whenever I want to skype in the frontyard while 'watching' the dogs I have no problems :). Uses a LOT less energy than my desktop to dick around on the internet too, coarse I'm doing that in doors and could just as easily do that with a Neo based "netbook". But besides the power savings (I count my pennies... in this day and age lol) I don't mind the stronger proc I miss out on. It's not that bad I'm just dickin around!

    Get an HP DM1z for 400 bucks (factory direct and look for coupons... pretend your an innocent schoolgirl, your good at that :|) and an SSD for 100 bucks and you got a computer you can take with you to the grave.

    lol I'd also guess those things won't give you more than 2 hours of use with anything productive :) but yeah if your plugging it in and not planning on taking it on an 8 hour plane trip or anything (like I did and watched a 3 hour movie! than played some plants v zombies) than you gotta go full on laptop. In fact I'd suggest you go with the craigslist special.
     
  16. is it using a glossy screen? that's what i hate about my alienware.. can't see shite near a window unless you have your brightness up high. matte screen stuff is much better but not many laptops use that.. although my cr48 does. google does it right.
     
  17. Yep it's really just as bad as looking at my smartphone in those conditions... It's ok I just skype or last.fm in those times.
     
  18. It seems all LCDs are going glossy. That's too bad.
     
  19. I think they will start to come back to matte or semi-gloss soon. Most high end models stayed matte. Glossy is indeed retarded.
     
  20. My Asus Eee netbook LCD is matte. Now suck on that.

    It's too bad Intel didn't have the dual core Atom N550 back in '08. Sometimes my single soldier running along at an underclocked 1.2GHz struggles with multiple tabs of certain code-bloated sites. And sometimes a single tab takes a few seconds to figure shit out.