Dell Mini?
 

What do you guys think of this? It's got a whopping 4 gig drive.

http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/laptop-inspiron-9?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&~oid=us~en~29~laptop-inspiron-9_anav1~~

You can always slip an SD card in it for extra storage.

Not sure, but I think the Dell Mini either does not have function keys, or uses some key combinations to do F key functions.

I found out I qualify for HP employee pricing, so I ended up with an HP Mini.

I like it.




I am thinking of ordering one the take the place of the laptop I haul to class.

Crap once you order it with a 64 gig HD and a 1.3 megapixel camera and other small stuff it comes to almost $500.

Really like my Mini 9. Bought the basic 512mb/8GB Ubuntu gloss black model for $200 (Dell corporate price) and did the upgrades myself. 2GB of ram cost $20; a wireless mouse was another $20; neoprene case $10. With the SD memory slot and all the USB 2.0 ports, I don't think a bigger solid state hard drive is necessary for a netbook, just use cheap SD or thumb drives.

What do you need a camera for? What do you need a 64GB drive for?

Check out the Asus and Acer mini models.

Acer at WallyMart for $348 with XP / 1gig ram / 120 gig hdd.

Camera for recording and sending videos? HD for storing stuff?

Take a look at www.cnet.com or www.pcmagazine.com for reviews. In my view the RAM is too small and the battery is too weak.

Get a better camera than the crappy and puny megapixel webcam on the lid, you probably have one already. As for hard drive space . . . what won't fit on a 8 or 16GB SD/USB thumb drive?

It seems like your thinking about the netbook is like a bloated 17" screen, multi core, optical drive equiped laptop. The netbook experience is the exact opposite. Are you really going to use it to work on CAD/CAM or Photoshop or full on digital video editing? Or, are you going to be like 90% of users and web surf, check e-mail, do light WP or spreadsheet work. Consider apps like Google Docs means that you don't need to have application software on the device or even store the data on the device . . . it's all on the web/cloud.

I didn't find 512mb confining running Ubuntu and 4 hours is plenty of time before finding an ac outlet.

Right. That totally makes sense.

That's what I have for work (and paid for by) -a Dell Vostro w/17"- and it's a royal pain in the @$$ to travel with! Not only that but if I'm stuck in a regular coach seat there isn't enough room to open the thing up and have the keyboard flat to use it. :o I've been toying with the idea of purchasing a netbook out of pocket just to make it easier on myself because, like you said, the vast majority of stuff I'm working on is WP and spreadsheet work.

I forego onboard storage and got a Maxtor Central Axis network drive with a ridiculous amount of space. It also acts as a print server. Then just map your laptop to the network drive and you have tons of space that you can also share with other computers and devices that are linked to your home network.

I think the only reason I would want a larger solid state hard drive would be to install OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and then use BootCamp to install Windows XP alongside. Now that would be a "packed" netbook.

The Acer Aspire has an 8gig drive (expandable easily with an SD card)....and is well built. I'd look at one of those. My sister has one and its pretty nice. I just put XP on it for her and am upgrading the ram to 1.5 gig. Its amazing how small it is.

For the HD issue, you could always network it with your desktop and save files there, or get a piggyback HD that plugs up to the USB port