NETBOOKS

[Bretsky]

To preface this for Ziggy....the five year old is a bit odd; she wants to be smarter than her eight year old sister now. If we had somebody at home with her now she'd already be reading. She's up to three letter words already. She is able to boot up the pc, go to favorites, ID a few of her websites, and independantly play games.........I worry an expensive college might be down the road

[Zool]

I hear ya B. I found an old Powerbook for my 5 year old. She's on Webkins and Nick.com quite a bit. She's been reading for a couple years already. I'm hoping for scholarships.

Had a netbook for a bit. The MSI one. My friend let me use it for a couple weeks to see if I liked it. Its faster than I expected. For internet surfing portability its well worth it.

[Partial]

My wife just got a refirb Dell mini10 for work travel for about 220 after a discount code. It's small, light, and not too slow for running the basics. I hate the mousepad, and it still inexplicably fights against our home network despite a few hours of reconfiguring the netbook and the router. I chalk that up mainly to the Dell "easy to use" network connection software integrated into the thing that's almost impossible to disable. Other than that, the battery seems to last forever and it doesn't have a problem running anything on the interweb, albeit at the cost of an extra couple seconds. Overall, I would give it a 6/10 considering price and expectation.

Yeah I would say about the same with the Mini9. They're just painfully slow even with 2gb of ram and a Runcore 32gb SSD. The keyboard is miserable. The 12" might be better because they can get a full-size keyboard on them.

[Freak Out]

I would not get them a netbook if I bought TODAY......I would go to Dell or HP or Acer and get a base 15 and upgrade the CPU to the cheapest dual core and go for it. That would run about $400 a machine with Windows 7 64 bit. You have to remember the netbooks have no built in optical drive which would blow for the kids.

Wait a week or two and you might see some better deals but not that much better.

[CaptainKickass]

Get the kids involved in technology as soon as possible, and as often as possible.

I got my 9 yr old nephew involved at age 5, and now he's the tech guru of the household. My sister ain't too happy about it - but this is only because she's that old school and still believes that the internet is "evil".

There are a billion benefits to getting kids involved in tech early and often, particularly with an eye on their future - where the difference between surviving and living well will be, and perhaps already is - their ability to comprehend, use and create with technology.

[3irty1]

wait and try this

http://openpandora.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=frontpage&Itemid=1&lang=en

[Partial]

I would not get them a netbook if I bought TODAY......I would go to Dell or HP or Acer and get a base 15 and upgrade the CPU to the cheapest dual core and go for it. That would run about $400 a machine with Windows 7 64 bit. You have to remember the netbooks have no built in optical drive which would blow for the kids.

Wait a week or two and you might see some better deals but not that much better.

15" is gigantic. Go with a 12". Other than that, I completely agree with this.

wait and try this

http://openpandora.org/index.php?opt...emid=1&lang=en

Who would buy that? Hardware looks like shit.

[Freak Out]

I would not get them a netbook if I bought TODAY......I would go to Dell or HP or Acer and get a base 15 and upgrade the CPU to the cheapest dual core and go for it. That would run about $400 a machine with Windows 7 64 bit. You have to remember the netbooks have no built in optical drive which would blow for the kids.

Wait a week or two and you might see some better deals but not that much better.

15" is gigantic. Go with a 12". Other than that, I completely agree with this.

wait and try this

http://openpandora.org/index.php?opt...emid=1&lang=en

Who would buy that? Hardware looks like shit.

But the 12" - 14" inch machines tend to bump the price up to much for his budget....and when the kids are slinging juice and such all over the machine cheaper is better. Bretsky you better get them some Sippy cups for computer use.

[Partial]

I would not get them a netbook if I bought TODAY......I would go to Dell or HP or Acer and get a base 15 and upgrade the CPU to the cheapest dual core and go for it. That would run about $400 a machine with Windows 7 64 bit. You have to remember the netbooks have no built in optical drive which would blow for the kids.

Wait a week or two and you might see some better deals but not that much better.

15" is gigantic. Go with a 12". Other than that, I completely agree with this.

wait and try this

http://openpandora.org/index.php?opt...emid=1&lang=en

Who would buy that? Hardware looks like shit.

But the 12" - 14" inch machines tend to bump the price up to much for his budget....and when the kids are slinging juice and such all over the machine cheaper is better. Bretsky you better get them some Sippy cups for computer use.

That is true, the 15" will likely be cheaper, I wasn't factoring in price.

12" widescreen with 1440-9xx or 1680x1050 pixels is the perfect size but no one makes them. They would make a killing if they did.

[digitaldean]

My wife won two Asus eeePC's earlier this year. They are OK and handy, just use common sense with your wireless network at home or wireless surfing on the road with it. Since it uses Windows XP there are more than a few security holes with them.

All in all they are pretty decent machines, given there purpose.

[Partial]

I cannot believe this many people like them. The keyboards and trackpads are horrendous. That is the biggest complaint. That, and just about every website, including this one, requires horizontal scrolling, which is just a really bad thing from all user experience stand points.

[retailguy]

I cannot believe this many people like them. The keyboards and trackpads are horrendous. That is the biggest complaint. That, and just about every website, including this one, requires horizontal scrolling, which is just a really bad thing from all user experience stand points.

they work well for what they're designed for. My wife has an older (now) eee pc, and we travel with it. Our girls use it for email occasionally, and they do research for school.

I don't really care if the trackpad is difficult to use, and I certainly don't care about scrolling on websites. We aren't on the thing longer than 20 minutes at a time, and we're certainly not working off the thing.

My wife also has a 12.1 in HP, that she absolutely loves. Uses it all the time. Keyboard is too small for me, but it works well for her.

Partial, the things that are important to you don't even concern most of us.

[Partial]

I cannot believe this many people like them. The keyboards and trackpads are horrendous. That is the biggest complaint. That, and just about every website, including this one, requires horizontal scrolling, which is just a really bad thing from all user experience stand points.

they work well for what they're designed for. My wife has an older (now) eee pc, and we travel with it. Our girls use it for email occasionally, and they do research for school.

I don't really care if the trackpad is difficult to use, and I certainly don't care about scrolling on websites. We aren't on the thing longer than 20 minutes at a time, and we're certainly not working off the thing.

My wife also has a 12.1 in HP, that she absolutely loves. Uses it all the time. Keyboard is too small for me, but it works well for her.

Partial, the things that are important to you don't even concern most of us.

How can you say, post here for 20 minutes, for example? I cannot.

My fingers are too big so I have to hunt and peck on the keys. I have the dell mini 9 with the fricking quote key next to the right alt (of all the freaking places it could go).

You can barely surf because the track pad is just so awkward and clunky, and then when you can scroll vertically, you need to use the arrow keys to surf left and right.

I don't know, for me, it just doesn't work well enough to justify using it. I bought the mini9 to play around with hackintoshing it and have just not had the time to set it up and sell it yet, but it will be a nice day when it's gone.

12" widescreen is the perfect size for a reasonably powerful comp. The only problem is the only one that makes one anymore is Sony and they're about 2.5k minimum from what I hear.

[retailguy]

I cannot believe this many people like them. The keyboards and trackpads are horrendous. That is the biggest complaint. That, and just about every website, including this one, requires horizontal scrolling, which is just a really bad thing from all user experience stand points.

they work well for what they're designed for. My wife has an older (now) eee pc, and we travel with it. Our girls use it for email occasionally, and they do research for school.

I don't really care if the trackpad is difficult to use, and I certainly don't care about scrolling on websites. We aren't on the thing longer than 20 minutes at a time, and we're certainly not working off the thing.

My wife also has a 12.1 in HP, that she absolutely loves. Uses it all the time. Keyboard is too small for me, but it works well for her.

Partial, the things that are important to you don't even concern most of us.

How can you say, post here for 20 minutes, for example? I cannot.

My fingers are too big so I have to hunt and peck on the keys. I have the dell mini 9 with the fricking quote key next to the right alt (of all the freaking places it could go).

You can barely surf because the track pad is just so awkward and clunky, and then when you can scroll vertically, you need to use the arrow keys to surf left and right.

I don't know, for me, it just doesn't work well enough to justify using it. I bought the mini9 to play around with hackintoshing it and have just not had the time to set it up and sell it yet, but it will be a nice day when it's gone.

12" widescreen is the perfect size for a reasonably powerful comp. The only problem is the only one that makes one anymore is Sony and they're about 2.5k minimum from what I hear.

Not true. I bought the HP DV-2 in June for her. Kind of behind a bit on technology but plenty for what she needs. You can read about it here.

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4963&review=hp+pavilion+dv2

again (netbook) - we don't post here, we email, look for hotel rooms, look for school work, etc. My 11 and 13 year olds don't have large hands either.

[Partial]

That's actually not a bad notebook. I could get down with the size of that, I guess.