Netbook/Web-book advice please

[trem1]

My 14 year old son has decided he wants a Netbook/Web-book off Santa this year so i'm after some advice about them.
From what ive found out there all 10.1" screen and around about the same sort of memory size.They all come with windows 7 as operating system, but no other software. Can downloaded software be installed on these without any issues, as curry's wanted about £100 for office software which seems excessive.
I understand there is no cd-drive but dont think this would cause problem's

As i said it's for my 14 yr old son to basically use on facebook, minclip and general surfing, the idea is for him to do schoolwork/homework on it as well but he's the 4th child so were not that gullible anymore.

want a good deal as he's likely to break it,drop it, spill something on it so about £200 would be nice

any advice appreciated
Neil

[Bailes1992]

Got one for my Mum for her birthday. Waste of time get a proper laptop.

If you really want to get one spend at least £250. They run just like normal PC's, nothing different really. If you want a CD drive buy a USB one.

[trem1]

Got one for my Mum for her birthday. Waste of time get a proper laptop.

If you really want to get one spend at least £250. They run just like normal PC's, nothing different really. If you want a CD drive buy a USB one.

care to enlighten me on these comments
1 why are they a waste of time???

2 why spend £250 minimum

3 dont need a cd drive, got a laptop and the desktop for that

its purely for a 14 yr old to use as a toy, i suspect hes gonna use the desktop as much as usual after a few months anyway, if it was just about the spec's i would just let him have my laptop but he's gotta have summat for xmas and he's pretty much got everything else

[Bailes1992]

Got one for my Mum for her birthday. Waste of time get a proper laptop.

If you really want to get one spend at least £250. They run just like normal PC's, nothing different really. If you want a CD drive buy a USB one.

care to enlighten me on these comments
1 why are they a waste of time???

2 why spend £250 minimum

3 dont need a cd drive, got a laptop and the desktop for that

its purely for a 14 yr old to use as a toy, i suspect hes gonna use the desktop as much as usual after a few months anyway, if it was just about the spec's i would just let him have my laptop but he's gotta have summat for xmas and he's pretty much got everything else

They seem very fragile compared to a laptop. You can get a much better spec for your money if you go with a normal sized laptop.

Anything under £250 seems to be running XP, once you hit the 250ish barrier they seem to be much nicer in terms of build quality and finish.

[sirwiggum]

Keep an eye on the likes of Argos Outlet on Ebay.

HotUKDeals usually has cheap XP netbooks from here for £150 or so.

I got an Acer Aspire one from Asda for £150 a couple of years ago, upgraded the RAM, dual booting XP and Linux on it, great wee machine. Handy for travelling.

Regarding office software, you can legally download OpenOffice.org / LibreOffice or IBM Lotus Symphony for free. These are compatible with MS Office and offer roughly the same functionality and applications.

Lack of CD drive is not an issue. If you have a desktop anyway you can drive share or I use a couple of 4GB USB pens.

[gRoberts]

As sirwiggum suggested, keep an eye on HotUKDeals, it seems like any purchases I think of making, I scower this and money saving experts for deals first.

Stay away from a "web book" or any of the laptops that only have a small solid state drive like 10gb and below. They are literally only for surfing the net.

From around £150-300 you can pick up a decent Samsung N-Series Netbook, very nice looking and when I last saw one, it was capable of running windows 7 better than my hi-spec laptop.

As someone else stated, most netbook/web-books of this size don't come with a cd/dvd drive. You would either need to use USB to load all your software on or buy an external USB drive.

Either way, i'm sure you'll find something ;)

[sirwiggum]

Some good points by gRoberts there.

Avoid too the netbooks that run Windows CE. These are usually £100 or less, but their ARM processor and low spec mean you can't run anything else on them other than what is installed (and possibly an obscure Linux build).

HotUKDeals and download OpenOffice / Lotus Symphony for the office software, and you're sorted!

[gRoberts]

Windows CE, gawd I only ever see them on ATM's, Cheap (yet great) GPS devices and chinese knock off's lol

Have a look around mate as for around £300 you can find a decent laptop these days.

[sirwiggum]

Windows CE, gawd I only ever see them on ATM's, Cheap (yet great) GPS devices and chinese knock off's lol

Have a look around mate as for around £300 you can find a decent laptop these days.

always been tempted to get one of the CE netbooks if they were cheap enough just to play around with, but wouldn't recommend one for anybody!

CE on ATMs aye , Dreamcast too used CE as the OS to start some of the games, the likes of Sega Rally. Luckily the user was spared the sight, as it booted straight into the game, and straight in rallying a 306

ATMs used to use OS2, then XP, not sure what they're moving onto next. Always amusing to see a BSOD on one. Big blue screen of death at the bus station, the ulsterbus timetables on the screen must be using windows

£300 gets a great quality machine these days, a far cry from my student days 7 or 8 years ago when £180 got a 486 laptop, then £300 got me a 2nd hand machine 3 years old.

[gRoberts]

lol CE on the dreamcast? Thank god my parents didn't get me one

I've seen some ATM's running the embedded version of XP. BSOD... You see them all over the place these days, ATM's, advertising screens, what next, a cinema ;)

Mmmm sega rally. We had an arcade version complete with full force feed back steering wheel, hydraulic rams for the bumps etc and a gear box. It was great but not at £1 a go.

Sad thing was most people had aced the game about 10 years before this thing came out.

Anyway.. yes, sorry to go off topic. For a few extra reddies, you can't go wrong with Compaq and Dell these days. Unfortunately mines lasted me a fair time now, I'm dying for it to die so I can get a new one

[gumby6371]

netbooks/web-books are even more of a disposable item than laptops, very much throw away at the first sign of hardware problems. If you really think he'll lose interest pretty quickly go as cheap as you can. Alternatively talk him into a desktop machine, if you go for an AM3 machine it'll be pretty future proof at a fraction of the cost of the new Intels and when the day comes that he says 'dad, I want that new game .......' you can slap a dedicated graphics card in his pc and buy the game for 25% less than the console version. I do a bit of pc gaming myself and I've found that much of the content you pay for on consoles is free for pc gamers.
As windows 7 comes with media player you can set up a decent all in one 14 year olds bedroom package for less than the cost of a decent laptop (if you build it yourself of course, 30 mins assembly, couple of hours software installs)
If you're nervous about pc assembly don't be, if the cable matches the size/shape/colour of the connector then thats where it goes. pm for more advice on the subject

[gRoberts]

Gumby, don't assume that because the hole and colours match, that it's easy for people to understand.

My father used to own a computer business and you'd be surprised the amount of idiots that try and FORCE cables into the wrong holes and then wonder why the pins are bent etc.

That said, building your own computer is great. It's certainly less daunting than doing any work on a car.

Good advice mate ;)

[FarmerPug]

I got an email from apple showing their 'value deals' the macbook air which is a 13 inch netbook thing is a baragain at just £1300, i laughed because my macbook pro with 15 inches a cd drive and proper laptop spec didnt even cost that i got it for £1100, allbeit this is expensive but for the cad stuff i do an apple is good because theres no problems with it breaking down, getting virusses, being slow etc. But on the other end of the scale maplin electronics do good deals on netbooks, you could also try a second hand laptop on ebay avoid vista at all costs.

[sirwiggum]

Vista avoid.

XP is grand.

7 is likely "starter edition" which is so locked down it wont even allow a wallpaper change to a hi res pic of a 406

I quite like Linux on mine, Linpus built on Debian, but not everyone likes Linux.

It is possible to run Mac OSX on the likes of the Acer Aspire One. It takes a bit of hacking and hoking and poking - hence the name "Hackintosh".

[FarmerPug]

OS X really is great, but xp was the best microsoft made. Vista 'do you want to allow this action' every time you did something