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11.6"-13.3" replacement for a first gen netbook

G

Gigantopithecus

Diamond Member
My Samsung NC10 is almost two years old & while I'm very pleased with it, its Atom processor is simply too anemic for my current needs.

I'm looking to replace it with an 11.6"-13.3" notebook. My needs, in order of importance, are:
1. Long battery life. The longer the better.
2. Does not get hot. The cooler the better.
3. Easily replaceable 2.5" hard drive.
4. Support 4gb of RAM or more.
5. $800 or less price tag. The less expensive the better

I checked out the 11" Air at an Apple store yesterday but the 2gb RAM max & lack of an SD card reader were deal breakers. The 13" Air is more than I want to spend.

Processor power is not as important as even the slowest current single & dual cores from AMD & Intel are far more powerful than the Atom. A dual core Atom is not sufficient, I think.

Thanks for your input.
 
the timeline x series has an 11.6" with a couple of cpu options. i like mine for the most part. the build quality isnt amazing (mine was $600)

3gb, 1.2ghz i3 (you can get an i5, maybe i7 in it), 11.6, 1366x768, 3 usb 2.0, card reader, webcam, 5- 6 hours of battery life is easy. keyboard isnt anything special, i dont hate it, but its nothing special. i really dislike the alps trackpad it has, although i have gotten used to it.

had an eee 1000ha before this...the build quality on the eee was better overall, but even the slow i3 cpu beats the atom to a pulp (it will, at times, slow up for a moment but its still better than an atom)

access to the hard drive and ram are easy, you just remove one plate on the back.

playds hd video fine (full screen hd flash isnt entirely smooth, but silverlight and other video is)

ive played a couple of games, but nothing taxing. worms, plants v zombies, that sort of thing
 
The Core iX versions of the TimeLineX sound like your best bet. Be forewarned about the keyboard flex though, lots of people complain about them.

I'm eyeing some of the AMD models myself, but you wanted longer battery life. That means Intel. Not sure how an Atom N550 would work for you, its dual core, but I have an Atom 330 nettop and that thing's a dog, even with Ion.
 
Have you looked at this Gateway CULV subnotebook? It has a 1.3 GHz 'Penryn' cpu, dualcore.

If you can wait, the Core i3s should get cheaper (Black Friday? after the holidays?). Also, a future 11.6 MacBook Air with 'Arrandale' and 4 GB memory should be very nice (though that would probably mean late 2011)...
 
you can get a used mba 13" 128gb ssd with 2+ years of warranty for about that price. the 128gb ssd makes up for the older 2gb limit. the core 2 duo is quote fast (2.13ghz).

Applecare is tied to the machine not the owner. There are plenty of fools that bought last year that think the new model is an upgrade (in some ways it can be; if you want to spend $1700 again. applecare is not cheap).

also if you are doing real work the 16:9 screen is painful. really
 
It might be worth it to wait for the Bobcat netbooks to come out. Like Atom, the chip is built from the ground up for efficiency, but the basic estimate of performance is that it should be somewhere around the performance of a 1.6ghz athlon II or so. (approx. 1.8ghz Athlon, or 1.5ghz C2D) Plus, it's going to have 80SP, double that of the current ATi 4200 IGP, and the 4200 goes blow for blow with intel's best graphics in the i5 laptops, nevermind the junk the package with Atom.

As always, battery life is a big questionmark for a new platform, but, given that this platform was designed with battery life as a major concern, hopefully it will be good.

Just FYI, basically anything that doesn't have an Atom in it will fit most of your criteria, 95% of ultraportables have 2.5" HDD, virtually everything (except Atom) supports 4gb RAM, and everything else will also be dramatically faster than Atom. Just to give you an example, here's a comparison of a Hyperthreaded Atom against a venerable (Read that as 'over 7 years old') K8 at the same clockspeed. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/115?vs=79 The K8 is about 40% faster on average.
 
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Any Acer Timeline with CULV will fit the bill. By the way, Gateway is part of Acer, so they might have similar models.

I have an ACER AS1420 and I absolutely love it. Newer models with i3 CPUs will probably be even better.
 
Thanks for the recommendations. A friend has the 13.3" Acer Timeline & while it is nice, the build quality (esp. keyboard) just isn't there, I'm afraid.

I think I'm going to have to wait for some Bobcat-based systems. Then again, Newegg has older Lenovo X200s for less than $900... I hate to spend almost a large on a two year old model, but that is one hell of a laptop.
 
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