Fayd
Diamond Member
I have currently an acer aspire one 722 (11.6" subnotebook, C-50 processor, 4gb ram, 1280x768 screen)
i'm looking to upgrade to one that's slightly more capable. the c-50 was a tremendous upgrade over the atom netbook that i had used, but...it's not spectacular.
I'm going to be going to school in the fall (Stats masters program). while that does imply some computing will be necessary, stats programs while still using education sized data-sets are not going to be tremendously over the top. the C-50 handles what R throws at it thus far. maybe at some point down the line that'll change, i don't know. i intend to do research assistantships for the professors, so i'll eventually be working with real data-sets. in the end, i have a phenom II quadcore desktop with 16 gb of ram if i need real perfomance.
the only gripe i really have with the c-50 is in emulation. it's simply slow. starting a virtualbox of linux (xubuntu) took several minutes to just boot, and then loading the programming environment took a while longer. and then the compiler of course takes quite a bit longer than my desktop. (i can't get eclipse to work with C++ in windows, so i use it in linux where the gcc compiler works natively, rather than through cygwin. it's all rather messed up..)
oh, and the chicklet key keyboard on this thing is a piece of crap.
so here's what i want:
a 13-14" screen... a good quality screen that will do well in sunlight and at angles. that's my gripe with my current screen. hoping for 1600x900 min resolution.
enough power to run: R for the datasets i'm expected to encounter, an emulation environment like virtualbox with a linux guest OS, and play heroes of newerth and source engine based games.
a long battery life. it was so amazing going from the piece of crap atom with a 2 hour battery (claimed 5 hour, get 2 hour) to the c-50 aspire (claimed 7 hour, get 5 hour) so if i can get an even longer battery life that would be exceptional.
a good keyboard.
i guess my expected price is between $600 and $1000.
i'm looking to upgrade to one that's slightly more capable. the c-50 was a tremendous upgrade over the atom netbook that i had used, but...it's not spectacular.
I'm going to be going to school in the fall (Stats masters program). while that does imply some computing will be necessary, stats programs while still using education sized data-sets are not going to be tremendously over the top. the C-50 handles what R throws at it thus far. maybe at some point down the line that'll change, i don't know. i intend to do research assistantships for the professors, so i'll eventually be working with real data-sets. in the end, i have a phenom II quadcore desktop with 16 gb of ram if i need real perfomance.
the only gripe i really have with the c-50 is in emulation. it's simply slow. starting a virtualbox of linux (xubuntu) took several minutes to just boot, and then loading the programming environment took a while longer. and then the compiler of course takes quite a bit longer than my desktop. (i can't get eclipse to work with C++ in windows, so i use it in linux where the gcc compiler works natively, rather than through cygwin. it's all rather messed up..)
oh, and the chicklet key keyboard on this thing is a piece of crap.
so here's what i want:
a 13-14" screen... a good quality screen that will do well in sunlight and at angles. that's my gripe with my current screen. hoping for 1600x900 min resolution.
enough power to run: R for the datasets i'm expected to encounter, an emulation environment like virtualbox with a linux guest OS, and play heroes of newerth and source engine based games.
a long battery life. it was so amazing going from the piece of crap atom with a 2 hour battery (claimed 5 hour, get 2 hour) to the c-50 aspire (claimed 7 hour, get 5 hour) so if i can get an even longer battery life that would be exceptional.
a good keyboard.
i guess my expected price is between $600 and $1000.
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