Suggested Netbook

[Spekkio]

maybe i'm brain dead and can't find it, but i can't seem to find much conversation about netbooks even in the laptop discussion thread. i'm currently shopping around for a netbook, but i'm getting totally overloaded with all the options, configurations, and such from myriad suppliers. does anyone own one that they like? dislike? have any suggestions on which ones to look into? ideally, i'd like to find one that could even run ffxi at the most fundamental level (i'm not talking camping kings, just something that won't beg for death if i take it to campaign on minimum settings.) but i don't know if a little atom processor could survive that abuse. should i just give up and start looking at ultraportables instead?

if this has already been discussed recently enough to be still applicable, i'd appreciate being pointed in the direction of it and i'll go back to my moron hidey hole.

[Epical]

I picked up an Acer AOA150-1813 in September and it's been wonderful ever since. I had my reservations about Acer too, but the WinXP option with the 1GB RAM and 160GB HDD was too good to pass up for $350CAD.

[LAGUNA]

EeeUser ASUS Eee PC Forum

[Cephius]

I got the Asus from here and I love the portability. I do a lot of network testing and junk, and it's perfect for that. Great for going on the road too and being able to access the net and whatnot. I wouldn't recommend trying to run FFXI on it though, the Atom processor is nice but its power is limited, and you have no graphics card to share the load. A fullscreen video tends to max out these computers, I highly doubt any game higher than solitaire would be playable on it.

If you're primarily going to be using it for FFXI, get a full laptop.

[Chicomagiko]

MSI Wind owner here. I've upgraded the ram to 2gb and updated the bios to make it run OC'd(1.6 >>>1.9ghz). Its a neat netbook. Use it mostly to take notes in class and browse the web. If you want to game, there's the N10 series by Asus.

[Spekkio]

i had considered the N10 series as well, but the vista preload on it had me worried booting windows on it would be tough b/c of inability to find drivers. the ability to switch to onboard or discrete graphics with a switch is pretty neat though. as for my question about gaming on it, i'm not looking for crysis or anything like that. if i were to play anything on the go, the intent would be something more like being able to buy things on the AH or solo EP in an unpopulated zone, not tanking cerberus with 400 people watching or something like that. i remember someone getting ffxi running on an old eeepc surf 4g and they said it ran as well as could be expected though campaign battles were in the realm of 1-2 fps. all i'm looking for is something that would stay on par with my deceased, 6 year old laptop (1.6 ghz pentium iirc.) i'm not shooting for posh style here, just bare necessities.

[Cephius]

I guess it'd be okay for just going to the AH or something minimal like that. Remember these screens are incredibly small too.. usually 9-10" and max display is 1024x800 or smaller. Trying to play FFXI on it would likely hurt your eyes after too long... not trying to discourage you from buying a netbook or anything, just a headsup

[Skjie]

I picked up an Acer AOA150-1813 in September and it's been wonderful ever since. I had my reservations about Acer too, but the WinXP option with the 1GB RAM and 160GB HDD was too good to pass up for $350CAD.

That would be the one both my Fiancee and my mother have. Cheaper than the Eee PC, and has worked great.

[virusiidx]

I actually just ordered ASUS Eee PC Eee PC 900HA XP last night from newegg, should arrive tomorrow most likely.

Newegg.com - ASUS Eee PC Eee PC 900HA XP - Shiny Black Shiny Black Intel Atom N270(1.60GHz) 8.9" WSVGA 1GB Memory 160GB HDD Netbook - Netbooks

[orinthia]

You wouldn't have it at the screen's max resolution anyway since the cpu isn't strong enough to play that high, so the text won't be so tiny on a smaller resolution. Since I'm used to ps2-ffxi, I'd use 640x480 just full screened or stretched out a little in windower. I wouldn't even play this game over 800x600 on my main comp since the text would just be too damn small on a higher resolution for me.

The biggest thing that'll hurt is the lack of dx8+ hardware on most cheaper netbooks to keep the power use and cost down. It's a netbook afterall, you want to be able to get typical use out of it at 5+hrs between charges (though that's not while gaming heh). The eee 904ha and eee 1000ha seem like good buys for the price/time/features but their int.gfx won't be so great for games. They're about half the price of an N10 though an N10 is better equipped for some gaming.

I also wouldn't worry about vista preloaded and it not having drivers. You won't really be needing to update drivers on these since they work out of the box just fine. I'd more be worried about OS performance overall for vista on such weak hardware.

It wouldn't be terribly difficult though to just put another OS on it as long as you have an external usb bay to house a dvd-rom or are familiar with making a usb key drive bootable with an os install ready to be used on it. I have a usb bay; makes things a lot easier. Just make sure you can locate drivers for other OSs if you plan to wipe what the netbook came with. Like say going from vista to xp can sometimes be an issue on these.

[Avanarius]

http://www.bluegartr.com/forum/gener...-bought-d.html

thread I made a while back....All netbooks should perform roughly the same considering the processor; except the asus N10 which should perform better in games but as far as I've heard the processor is way too weak for the dedicated graphics card.

[virusiidx]

Thanks for that, looks pretty close to the one I ordered. Though I have no intent on installing FFXI on it lol (I don't even play anymore). Yours is 20g SSD and you have FFXI installed o_O

[Spekkio]

that's actually exactly what i was looking for. something along the lines of 800x600 that could pull maybe 10fps on a medium strain environment. window it and use the wider screen to keep AIM visible or something and you have a nice on the go toy for an affordable price.

i'm running an acer laptop myself atm and that's doing just fine so i'm not put off by the acer brand name, i just want something small, as the box i have right now is a lead weight. what i don't like about the aspire though, is the funky layout of the mouse buttons. that looks like it would get irritating fast.

how about the keyboards? are there any netbook keyboards that just feel awful? are there any that stood out to you as exceptional? i grew up on laptops for the most part (long story) so low-travel scissor keys are nothing new to me, but some laptop keyboards are just unusable due to tiny, clunky keys or bad layouts. the placement of the $ and (euro) keys on my current acer drives me insane to no end. i keep hitting the dollar sign instead of the up arrow. i'm not trying to pick out a new everyday gaming machine, just something i can use in a pinch on the go, or while sitting on the couch watching TV w/o having a laptop so weighty and hot that it's roasting and crushing my lap.

i'm currently leaning strongly towards the asus since it has a longer battery life, larger drive, and is the cheapest of the batch (though i wanted it in white! netbooks should be white! oh well.) how easy is it to tack another gig of ram inside? it's not like the original eee surf that had the ram soldered in to it, is it? i'm not afraid of opening up a computer (i've torn a laptop down to the motherboard and resoldered the broken solder joint on the power connector. not a major achievement, but it says i'm not completely stupid.) but i'm not about to pull one of those crazy hacks people did to try to bring the early models up to some reasonable par (see msi wind cooled by liquid nitrogen here: MSI Wind Netbook + LN2... huh? - XtremeSystems Forums).

edit: what did you use for a CD drive when you needed to load software from disks on it? did you just ISO them and mount them via daemon tools or something? newegg offers some external CD drives, but they're all rather pricey and the external drive enclosures seem to all be geared towards hdds and don't have an opening on the front for CD drives (plus many of them sound really dodgy.)

[Avanarius]

Thanks for that, looks pretty close to the one I ordered. Though I have no intent on installing FFXI on it lol (I don't even play anymore). Yours is 20g SSD and you have FFXI installed o_O

during that test I actually ran it off of an mp3 player quick installed via registry add. I'm sure if I installed it on the 15gb partition I'd gain an extra 1-2fps on average.

(it's a 20gb SSD but it's actually 5+15; OS is installed on 5gb)

[Avanarius]

how about the keyboards?

how easy is it to tack another gig of ram inside?

edit: what did you use for a CD drive when you needed to load software from disks on it?

the keyboards are small, it's a 8.9" laptop. If you want COMFORTABLE long term typing (even long term is a strech) I recommend a 10". If you're just using AIM or MSN 8.9" is fine, but expect to make typos. (basically anyone comfortable with a pda, cell phone, or any other microsized typing device will find this easy to type on)

*EDIT* something that you might want to take note of on the asus eee netbooks is that the "~" key is up beside the F1 key, causing all the numbers to shift to the left which is likely to cause frustration.

the memory is not soldered on but it's only one available slot, so you need a 2gb dim if you want to upgrade. Believe it or not, you can even upgrade the second 15gb SSD, but you need a special micro sized SSD and I believe patriot already sells a 32gb one.

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...acture=Patriot

To install, I used a bootable usb drive, and found the tutorial by googling just that.

[Restrat]

I got an asus 901, and it plays ffxi fine right out of the box. I got the linux one and installed windows on it for the bigger hard drive. I upgraded it to 2gb but that didn't seem to make ffxi run any better.
I have done nyzul island runs on it with no lag (low settings and whatnot of course), but haven't tried something like dynamis on it.

[The Stig]

I got an asus 901, and it plays ffxi fine right out of the box. I got the linux one and installed windows on it for the bigger hard drive. I upgraded it to 2gb but that didn't seem to make ffxi run any better.
I have done nyzul island runs on it with no lag (low settings and whatnot of course), but haven't tried something like dynamis on it.

holy shit I gotta google this one. I lost interest in these netbooks after like the 3rd one that got released since most of them are the same ... more or less. thanks

any pics of it running? (from a camera not screen print)

EDIT: I just looked up the laptop and found it to be equipped with a Intel GMA 950 graphics. I always thought/was under the impression FFXI cannot run on onboard graphics? I had someone actually asking me to fit a GFX card for them (some cheapo but will do one) on a desktop because FFXI wouldn't run on the onboard graphics supplied.

Also I can only assume you upgraded the RAM to 2gb?

[Spekkio]

i thought all the netbooks had integrated graphics till you hit the n10 series (which are more ultra-portable than netbook. they run vista after all.) what speed memory does the eee pc 900HA support? i'm guessing the answer is "slow" and any stick of 200 pin ddr2 @ 2 GB will cut the muster, but i'm having a hard time confirming that.

[orinthia]

JustNetbooks.com: Asus Eee PC 900HA

Looks like they're all 533mhz ddr2 on ram. That's probably all the current gen atom cores support at a minimum.

[Spekkio]

going to place the order today for
eee900ha:
Newegg.com - ASUS Eee PC Eee PC 900HA XP - Shiny Black Shiny Black Intel Atom N270(1.60GHz) 8.9" WSVGA 1GB Memory 160GB HDD Netbook - Netbooks
2 gig stick of ram: (i know i can get a slower stick for 50 cents less, but for 50 cents, the ability to recycle it more effectively is worth it.)
Newegg.com - Kingston 2GB 200-Pin DDR2 SO-DIMM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Laptop Memory - Laptop Memory
and an external CD drive:
Newegg.com - SAMSUNG Gray & Black 8X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 6X DVD+R DL 8X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 5X DVD-RAM 8X DVD-ROM 24X CD-R 24X CD-RW 24X CD-ROM 2MB Cache USB 2.0 Slim External 8X DVD Drive Model SE-S084B - External CD / DVD Drives

any thoughts or comments before i buy it tonight?