Help! Netbook vs Laptop?

[Stark]

Noise I would recommend steering clear of Windows 7 Starter, I've had issues on my wife's netbook installing things because of the OS I have on there. If I had to do it over again, I would have gotten her a regular laptop with Home Basic at the very least.

[deathsled]

I would go with a full blown laptop if possible. You said streaming videos would be one of the requirements. I realize it will be for courses, but at some point someone is going to want to whip up some youtube or hulu videos I'm sure. This is where the netbook will start to show its weakness. The processors in netbooks (intel atoms for the most part) really aren't that great at handling media. They will play your basic low quality youtube video but start to choke the second you try to do some 720p content or something. I would go with a laptop that has a decent processor!

[Stark]

I would go with a full blown laptop if possible. You said streaming videos would be one of the requirements. I realize it will be for courses, but at some point someone is going to want to whip up some youtube or hulu videos I'm sure. This is where the netbook will start to show its weakness. The processors in netbooks (intel atoms for the most part) really aren't that great at handling media. They will play your basic low quality youtube video but start to choke the second you try to do some 720p content or something. I would go with a laptop that has a decent processor!

I second this, the wife's netbook sucks at streaming video.

[Dakinggamer87]

I would go with an ASUS Netbook great battery life and performance over a laptop. A typical laptop battery life is around 4-6 hrs. on average whiich is fine but I get around 8-10 hrs. or more on my netbook.



This is basically the model I picked up earlier this year!!

[noiseredux]

Stark and deathsled may have just solved this for me. Thanks! My wife tends to use her laptop to stream youtube and hulu a lot, and a lot of online radio as well. So that's a factor. But also what Stark said about Win7 Starter makes a big difference. The laptop I'm looking at has Win7 Home Premium, so that's cool. Plus, I'm partial to Acer considering the monitor that I recently bought (and love).

[Dakinggamer87]

If streaming video is going to be a major priority than I would agreee to go with a laptop. If budget is an issue it's easy to recommend a netbook for price.

[Anayo]

I have somewhat of a personal soapbox when it comes to Laptops vs. Netbooks.

I recommend netbooks for anyone who needs to:

1) Do word processing
2) Browse the net (email, facebook, online classes, whatever)
3) Watch Youtube

Anyone who doesn't need to:

1) Any kind of memory intense computer art stuff, like editing video or rendering 3D animations. Modern games too.
2) Use a CD/DVD drive
3) Stream movies on netflix (this might just be my acer aspire's problem, but when I tried to stream it got REALLY skippy).

My acer aspire is tiny, extremely portable, and perfect for all the things in the first list. I had Windows 7 starter on it originally then it got malware so I just installed Ubuntu Netbook edition. The only functions I lost were some video game emulators I'd play on the go with a USB controller.

Plus chicks think netbooks are cute.

[noiseredux]

OOOH Yeah, I hadn't even thought about Netflix. She loves Netflix. I went with the laptop. Glad I did.

[pakopako]

Good you went with the laptop, but were you ever considering a tablet for mobility purposes?

[noiseredux]

Good you went with the laptop, but were you ever considering a tablet for mobility purposes?

no because (A) that would have been out of my budget, and (B) she'll be doing all the work at home, so mobility isn't really a factor anyway.