[rockin_amigo14]

So are these things really worth it? I've been looking at them and from what it looks like, they can run Counterstrike 1.6 and Starcraft pretty easily, which is the most demanding things I really do on my desktop...

Anyway, is it really difficult to type on those things? Which are the best ones? Anything I should really look for?

I know I can deal with 4GB of memory and I'd prefer to use XP. Any help?

 

[labrat]

Deleted.

 

[nsx_23]

I have a 12-inch Asus laptop, and it its quiet heavy, but reasonably quick.

I'm considering getting something like an MSI wind though.

 

[Abbadon]

The newer asus pcs/msi wind/acer aspire one should all have no trouble whatsoever running cs 1.6 and starcraft. The acers are the cheapest of the bunch, and there's a 120gb verison with a gig of memory and xp coming out in the middle of the month, although I'm going to wait until Dell releases their product.

 

[padam]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rockin_amigo14 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Anyway, is it really difficult to type on those things? Which are the best ones? Anything I should really look for?

My recommendation is this site: UMPCPortal - The Ultra Mobile Computing reference site

The market is being filled now, so prices will be even lower in a few months' time.

 

[trains are bad]

regarding typing, no. I have large hands, and when I first got my eeepc I wasn't sure I was going to be able to type on it it all, due to the smallness. Now that I am used to it, I type on it at least as fast as anything else.

 

[ZephyrSapphire]

Get a VoodooPC Envy 133

 

[yuckymucky]

I have a HP 2133 Mini-Note and it is not too bad. It is very portable which is very nice but it doesn't really have a whole lot of power behind it.

I didn't have to pay for it so that is a major plus in my mind, honestly I can't see paying for one if it was my own money. I have seen some of the Asus ones with more memory hacks and they are pretty sweet.

 

[padam]

Quote:

Originally Posted by yuckymucky /img/forum/go_quote.gif I have a HP 2133 Mini-Note and it is not too bad. It is very portable which is very nice but it doesn't really have a whole lot of power behind it. I didn't have to pay for it so that is a major plus in my mind, honestly I can't see paying for one if it was my own money. I have seen some of the Asus ones with more memory hacks and they are pretty sweet.

HP definititely needs that new VIA Nano processor to shine in this segment, otherwise the upcoming Dual-core Atom will smash it by a big margin. The C7 is just painfully slow by today's standards.

 

[marvin]

The best deal right now is the eee 900 12/20 gb models. With rebate, they run $450 from Amazon. Play around with Live.com/eBay/PayPal search rebate though and it's pretty easy to pick one up for just over $300. Toss in another $50 for a 16 GB SSD and you should have enough headroom to install pretty much anything you need portable.

If you have a USB CD drive, you'll want to get the Linux version (8 GB more flash) and install an nlited copy of WinXP on it. The XP that Asus installs from the factory takes up ~ 3 GB of the 4 GB partition. With judicious pruning, you can bring it down to about half of that. A bit more extreme and it'll clock in at well under a gig.

It's really not a good only computer due to it's small size. It's much more suited to be a desktop adjunct than a primary. As trains are bad noted, the keyboard is very usable after some practice. It's also more than capable of playing older games, and Starcraft will run flawlessly while CS 1.6 will be very playable.

 

[MD1032]

Mini-laptops are not worth your time. If you want something truly portable, get a PDA like the HP iPAQ 210. If you want a laptop, I'd say the smallest size I could possibly tolerate would be a 12" 4:3 screen.

Also, keep in mind that widescreen monitors seem smaller than their 4:3 counterparts and almost always have less screen real estate.

Oh, and brand? Thinkpad, Sony Vaio, Dell Pro (Latitude) would be my preference from top to bottom. Don't bother with the consumer stuff from most brands. "Business" laptops are always better built and better designed.

 

[rockin_amigo14]

what do you think of the Dell Vostro series?

 

[TheRobbStory]

I ordered an Asus EEE 900 on Friday for funsies. More of an os/hardware experimentation platform than anything else. At the moment, I plan to implement:

*Ubuntu 8.04
*Touchscreen
*GPS
*bluetooth

I think they're rad little devices with lots of room for experimentation. I've never been the type of person to be content paying for something that worked right out of the box.

 

[Wired_Gargoyle]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rockin_amigo14 /img/forum/go_quote.gif what do you think of the Dell Vostro series?

I just got a Vostro 1310 about 3 weeks ago. It's not a pretty machine, no shiny bits or brushed aluminum anywhere just a glossy black. It's heavy compared to the mainstream subnotebooks out there, inch and a half thick and a tinny speaker.

You can put a decent processor in them, I got the 128Mb NVidia card which runs WoW pretty well and plays DVDs as well as my other 15" notebook with 256Mb ATI. If you're intending on using it to play music, I'd recommend headphones or external speakers as the internal ones aren't much good.

The Vostro line is intended for business needs so you won't get alot of the bells and whistles that their other lines have. I can't speak for what the other Vostro's can be built with as the one I built was for a specific purpose which didn't include games, quality music/video playing or multimedia presentations. I just wanted something small, with a decent engine that could do blogging, word processing, web browsing/email and be generally portable. It's got tons of USB ports, a Firewire port and a tray-less DVD/CD drive. The screen is nice (I opted for the best screen available), it runs Vista basic well and the Intel WiFi card is topnotch. The keyboard is as good as the Dell keyboards get (I think the HP and Toshiba keyboards are the best) and the trackpad works responsively.

I'm satisfied with it for the price I paid, it ended up not costing much more than the high end EEEPc (901) with the required extras I'd need would have cost.

 

[Herandu]

The best mini laptop I own is the Sony VAIO PCG=R505. It is a few years old now, and its replacement cost a small fortune. I use it for business travel since it is extremely light once you remove the CD cradle. But with just a 1G processor and 640MB of RAM to play with games are not on the card. I just got back from China with it and it survived the one month's trip as usual. Mind you, it must have done more than 100K of travelling in the last 7 years.