netbook, tablet, lightweight laptop?

cookiemonster

Hello

I need to get a lightweight device for work travel. A couple of years ago netbooks were the thing, and I'm still leaning that way - a £300 intel atom powered unit from carphonewarehouse or the like - but interested to hear if there are other options I should consider.

Its for work use - so documents, spreadsheets, drawings, occasional (poor quality) coding, that kind of thing rather than home media.

I currently have an old-style macbook that's great, but is slightly heavier than the original cray-1; I use my girlfriends ipad for surfing, email and the like, but its pretty hopeless for documents, spreadsheets, and fwiw, I've a droid phone (which i prefer to the iphone - i like apple but not tied to them) and we've an imac desktop which runs parallels with win7.

I need something thats:

- Light
- Cheap'ish coz it may get damaged (a large mark against the macbook air sadly)
- Decent keyboard/mouse - ipad touchy thing isnt good enough for drawings and navigating spreadsheets
- Prefer windows, just because the folk I work with or for tend to be that way inclined, and its still not a seamless interface between apple and windows

So, what's better than a £300 acer/tosh/samsung netbook?

jon

Cleat Eastwood

acer imo very reliable.

Achamore

Why not try one of these guys -
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ZT280-Zenithi ... 398wt_1304

a big Android phone but with no calls for £140 ~ delivery time about 3 weeks.

cheers Acha

shouldbeinbed

Toshiba: bombproof and reliable.

I've got a 3yo NB100 netbook which is still going strong, battery life is still bearing up and for a prehistoric bit of kit the screen, processor & keyboard are still spot on. Great for all of what you want and the newer NB versions seem to be of the same robust quality & speed

It runs XP which is coming to the end of support from Microsoft & I'm planning to linux this hardware rather than scrap it whilst it's still working so well.

pholt89

Have a look at some of the new Ultrabooks coming out they are basically a windows version of the mac book air. Light weight but still decent spec and a full size screen. or you could look at the Asus transformer prime which is a tablet that docks with a keyboard to become an ultrabook.

Mr_Cellophane

Dell Inspiron Duo
Netbook and tablet in one.
A little slow on the display, but that might be the touch screen.

proto

I was using a Compaq Netbook, thingy at teh weekend (Atom processor) and it was hopeless. Really slow and clunky. Waste of time imo.

If your budget will stretch to it get an Asus Zen Ultrabook. Super slim, super light and a proper laptop. Think Macbook Air but Windows and even more stylish. I think you can get them for about £900 or so.

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac ... 585/review

PS talking to a very knowledgeable bod in Comet, who told me they won't put the Macbook Air on display anymore as they are very fragile and have had two broken by folk 'fiddling' with them.

cookiemonster

Cheers folks -

The tablets are no good coz they dont have a keyboard/mouse. I like the Prime, but I need to be able to run excel, visio and word (god help me).

I am worried about the resilience of the £1000 ultras, whether the apple air or the newer pc competitors.

I need to have a play with a 10" netbook though, I was looking at a 12" screen thinking it was a 10" so I'm not sure if I can live with the size, and then there's the question whether the atom can drive larger spreadsheets and drawings.

I guess I want:

1.3kg max
12" screen
2-4GB RAM
proper cpu (dual/quad)
at around £300
runs windows (ouch) and hence the office suite and visio.

Cant be that hard can it?

jon

jibberjim

The small Lenovo Thinkpad X121e pretty much meets your requirements.

Giraffoto

Asus Eee netbooks - I bought one recently and it's been great. Both Asus and Samsung provide an access cover for upgrading RAM, which not all of them do. The 1011PX and 1015PX models are £250 or less.

cookiemonster

I like the look of the thinkpad!

Giraffoto - did you find the Asus powerful enough for office apps? or does it get slow and sluggish?

jon

Giraffoto

cookiemonster wrote:

Giraffoto - did you find the Asus powerful enough for office apps? or does it get slow and sluggish?

Yes - but I haven't tried MS Office. With Open Office (freeware - go to Openoffice.org) it's perfectly usable, maybe a few seconds waiting here and there

tomwardill

Ebay yourself a second hand Thinkpad X200. Should be about £250-300, with the spec that you want, and proper thinkpad build quality.

Can also get the extended 9 cell batteries for 7 hours of life, for about £30 on ebay.

keef66

We just got Thinkpad X220's at work. Probably the smallest screen I could comfortably work on. Very solidly constructed. Brilliant performance. Battery life of 10 hrs plus with the fatter battery pack.