I currently have a Dell Inspiron 1501 laptop, about 2 years old. It's still plenty powerful with a dual-core processor, but it is bulky and heavy at about 8 pounds. It has a DVD/RW drive that I never use, and a 15" screen... bigger than you really need for a laptop, but not big enough to watch movies on comfortably from more than a few feet away. As a result, it hardly ever leaves the house unless I'm going for more than a few days, and it's a real pain to take on the plane.
So I want to sell it and get a netbook. I have a few concerns, though.
- I have pretty big hands and do a lot of coding, so I want a keyboard that's not too ridiculous. With that in mind, I think I would prefer a 10" netbook over a 9" one, but not 100% sure.
- I'd prefer one that can take a regular 2.5" hard drive. Many of the netbooks have flash memory in a non-standard form factor. It's (a) small and slow, (b) expensive to upgrade, and (c) doesn't reduce the weight, size, or power consumption enough to offset these disadvantages.
- I don't care whether it comes with Windows or Linux. I'm going to run Linux either way.
- Built-in Bluetooth would be nice so I can use my phone for free Internet access without even taking it out of my pocket.
- MSI Wind: it's 10", has 1gb of RAM, takes 2.5" hard drives, has built-in Bluetooth, and is about $300 with a 160gb hard drive. Weighs 2.3 lbs. But how's the keyboard?
- ASUS Eee PC 1000: very similar specs to the MSI Wind, supposed to have a very nice keyboard, and a bigger 6-cell battery. Weighs about 3 lbs. Worth the extra $40 and weight?
- ASUS Eee PC 1000: very similar specs to the MSI Wind, supposed to have a very nice keyboard, and a bigger 6-cell battery. Weighs about 3 lbs. Worth the extra $40 and weight?
- ASUS Eee PC 900 or Acer Aspire One: even tinier 9" models, and cheap. About $250 with similar specs to the 10" models. Too small??
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