So I'm looking in to a Subnotebook/Notebook/EPC...

And I'm wondering if anyone has any advice. Models, makes and reviews...

It will primarily be a writing/text machine so input (keyboard) functionality is key, as are the display parameters and so on. The standard seems to be around 160Gig HD, 1Gig Ram, Intel Atom Processor... So I have a pretty good idea what I'm looking at.

But what I'd really like is to know what you, my friends, think. So, let's have it.

Get a PC.

My main computer is a Dell Vostro laptop. I don't have the specs memorized but I bought it on ebay for about $520. It's served me well. The only annoying thing I find (it's my first laptop; and first/only computer with Vista) is the scroll pad under the keyboard that my thumb will sometimes tap when I am typing which causes the screen to suddenly begin scrolling down.

But most laptops have that touchpad under the keyboard so..


I'll play an occassional game on the laptop (Total War: Rome Barbarian Invasion, Galactic Civilizations II, Cossacks, Command & Conquer Tiberiun Sun) with no problems (other than getting them to work w/Vista). I do not play World of Warcraft so I don't know if it would hold up to that.




I just purchased my wife an Acer Aspire One mini-laptop off Amazon.com but she will not be opening the gift until this weekend so I cannot say whether or not it was a good investment.

In the reviews, the only bad thing I read was the cooling fans seemed noisier than the reviewers were used too (or was enough for them to notice) and it has a battery life of about 2-3 hours (I am being conservative in this, I don't remember exactly what they wrote but the Acer's battery life would be enough for what it was to be used for.. namely a writing notebook for school and internet surfing.

Get a PC.

Get bent.

/fail



Thanks Om.

My girlfriend just got some new tiny LG notebook from her Dad, its got crap battery life (say 2 hours). Which when you have 3 hour lectures makes no sense whatsoever. But she thinks its cute. That's my only experience with small laptops.

My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 6400, never really had much problems with it, started out with a battery life of around 5-6 hours, now 2.5 years later its down to around 4.5 hours when the screen is dimmed to its lowest setting. I have problems with the newer Command and Conquers with it (Command and Conquer 3), but Command and Conquer Generals and Tiberium Sun work just fine on it. Pretty heavy when its in my backpack though.

Any namebrand laptop (Dell, Toshiba, HP) will serve you well if it has good specs. If you're going to use Vista get at a minimum two gigs of RAM, as it will continuously freeze and crash with just one. However I'd say get two or three or four if you can even if you're using XP, because extra ram will greatly boost your performance. The last thing would be make sure you get a non-Intel integrated graphics card if you plan on gaming on it. An Nvida will work great here.

Intel integrated graphics are the devil.

I'm going to highjack this to ask a question because my laptop is still kinda new. I can't even remember what it is without going to go get it, Hewlett Packard I think, but it runs on Vista. Can someone please tell me how to stop it from shutting down every Explorer window when I close just one window? That is annoying as hell...

AND how do I stop it from asking me if I want to allow any program to run or do anything when I've just told it to open or do said actions?

The only problem we had with our laptop is that it runs really hot, especially in high performance mode. Balanced will still over heat if you open alot of programs. Power saving option is the only one it's not over heated on. And I do mean over heating to the point that the machine shuts down. We bought a cooling pad and installed an internal temperature monitor, which fixed the problem mostly. It's fun to plug the thing in to charge and watch the temp jump roughly 10 to 15 degrees, no matter what the power setting is.

I find that the overheating of the laptop varies from brand to brand because of where the mfg decides to put the fans or whatnot.

There is a way to turn off the security questions everytime you click on an executable program (I just live with it since I don't have a virus protection program on it which is, I guess, kind of like running down your neighborhood street naked but ...) but I don't remember what you do. When I get back home to my laptop, I'll pull up that info again.

As for the Explorer Windows all closing, I do not think I have that problem. That being said, I might but not really noticed it so I will go home and check it out. I am sure there is a way to stop it from doing that.


And Kach is right... Minimum of 2 gigs with Vista.

To turn off user access control go to control panel, users (not sure what the name of this option is, as I'm not on vista at the moment and cant' check), User Accounts, Change User Access control settings. Disable User access control and you will kill those annoying popups.