Laptop for School

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AllNightNerding

411 posts

Ultimate Geek

#26023 9-Sep-2008 21:45

I am looking to get a laptop for school.

I am looking at somthing relativly cheap, small and light.

what it will mainly be doing is word processing and all that kind of stuff, so doesnt need to be powerfull at all, but it does need to have a decent keyboard, one reason why I dont really want to get an eee 701.

Does anyone know of any cheap, long battery lasting or easy to get second batteries for laptops?

-- Divett Enterprises -- The Power Of Tomorrow --

PotatoZoo

22 posts

Geek

#163399 9-Sep-2008 23:03

The keyboard on the Eee 701 is absolutely fine unless you have giganto-mega-freaky hands.

I have a 900 and it's pretty damn sweet as long as you get a Linux one with the larger disk, then install a proper distro on it instead of the silly Xandros it comes with.

ACER had a laptop out recently at DSE that was of comparable price to the 701, full sized and came with Ubuntu (to keep the costs down), but from what I've heard, most of its hardware didn't work without being hacked (not toooo difficult if you're at all experienced with programming and computing, especially since DSE supplied a list of most of the things you needed to do) and the hardware was outdated by a couple of years.

Dell are coming out with a small laptop to compete with the Eee soon, but from what I've heard, its keyboard is even worse (keys are slightly larger, but overall board size is smaller, quite a few keys dropped out/rearranged oddly).

I'd highly recommend an Eee. They're super portable and fun to use. :-D

nate

6473 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#163400 9-Sep-2008 23:07

PotatoZoo: The keyboard on the Eee 701 is absolutely fine unless you have giganto-mega-freaky hands.

I must have giganto-mega-freaky hands as I really struggle to type anything faster than 1 character a minute on the eee pc

My vote is for a HP Mininote - I've got one, and it works well (much better with XP rather than Vista).

AllNightNerding

411 posts

Ultimate Geek

#163405 9-Sep-2008 23:17

Im going to have to have a decent go with the eee, my ony gripe with it is that I can find no extended or additional batteries for it, does anyone know where you can get these?

-- Divett Enterprises -- The Power Of Tomorrow --

PotatoZoo

22 posts

Geek

#163409 9-Sep-2008 23:31

The Eee battery is already pretty long-life, rated at 5800mAh, I've been getting about 3 hours of use from mine.

The charger itself is also very light weight and easily carried with you to allow for charging whenever you're near a powerpoint.

If you were to look for a second battery for the Eee 900, the part number is p22-900.

AllNightNerding

411 posts

Ultimate Geek

#163412 9-Sep-2008 23:48

with that 3 hours use, what are you doing on it?

-- Divett Enterprises -- The Power Of Tomorrow --

PotatoZoo

22 posts

Geek

#163417 10-Sep-2008 00:27

It's been quite heavy use as it's a new toy, so I've been playing with it a lot. I've had the wireless on a lot of the time, had the screen on a high brightness setting and have the system graphical settings on medium.

Mostly I've been editing text files to get the various function keys to work nicely (the current version of Ubuntu I'm using doesn't support these properly on install, though apparently it will be in the next release build) or also been browsing the internet. I've also been spending a fair bit of time with my iPod plugged into it as I've been playing with streaming music and videos from it, so I guess that's also an added drain on the battery.

foobar

186 posts

Master Geek

#163426 10-Sep-2008 06:13

The Eee PC and other mini notebooks (the new Dell Mini 9, for example) cannot be beat when it comes to the "small and light" requirement. The nice thing is: You can take them along anywhere without a fuss, so you are much more likely to have them with you when you need them. For emergencies and many other tasks, their smaller keyboards are quite acceptable.

But all of these can handle a simple USB keyboard you can pick up at DSE for $19, and which will plug in and work great, for when you are at home, do your longer writing sessions and need a bigger keyboard.

The Xandros on the Eee PC works very well. I would have prefered Ubuntu on it as well, but since you are only after word procesing and such, OpenOffice on Xandros on the Eee PC will do very nicely for you.

The Dell Mini 9 seems to be a really good choice as well, from what I heard, but of course you'd have to wait a while before the Ubuntu version of it is available here in NZ.

Sharesies

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

AllNightNerding

411 posts

Ultimate Geek

#163521 10-Sep-2008 15:57

so at the moment im looking at getting an eee pc 701, with 512mb of ram, and the 4gb ssd, and then either getting a bunch of sd cards or pendrives (one for each subject) and by what others have said, I shouldnt really need another battery for it, as the max I need it to last is about 4 or 5 hours, but I have some subjects where I can charge it in, so that should work out.

If I were to get another battery where can you get them from?

Has anyone seen anywhere that was particularly cheap to get the eee pc from?

and then there is the pivtoal question, put xp on it? or go with with linux on the eee

-- Divett Enterprises -- The Power Of Tomorrow --

pebbles

741 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#163527 10-Sep-2008 16:33

Just to let you know the 701 battery life is nowhere near as good as the newer models. I would struggle to use it for a whole lecture (50minutes) with just wireless on and a little bit of word processing when I actually wake up enough to listen.

I would highly recommend going for the newer model and not touching the older ones as the improvements on them really are fantastic. I find the screen size change is really important too as I struggle with the small screen when browsing the web or trying to look at the notes for class.

foobar

186 posts

Master Geek

#163591 10-Sep-2008 20:04

pebbles: Just to let you know the 701 battery life is nowhere near as good as the newer models. I would struggle to use it for a whole lecture (50minutes) with just wireless on and a little bit of word processing when I actually wake up enough to listen.

Can't confirm that. Our 701 lasts at least two hours, with wireless and web browsing (animated flash ads and other madness included).

PotatoZoo

22 posts

Geek

#163762 11-Sep-2008 13:10

I was also under the impression that the 701 had a longer battery life than that. The only thing to remember is that all the models of the Eee still have relatively high battery drain while in hibernate or suspend modes and so you shouldn't really rely on this as a power saving feature.

I do agree on going for the later models of the Eee over the 701 though. My girlfriend has a 701 and the low resolution screen often makes it difficult to view web-pages without scrolling horizontally, which gets to be a pain.

You might want to consider the new Acer Aspire One, which is available for less than an Eee 900 and still appears to be highly usable. We had a play with one at the IT store on campus here yesterday and it's a nice little machine that comes with a pretty good array of applications bundled. My only major gripe with it would be the small touch pad, which doesn't support multi-touch (for two finger scrolling/three finger right-click).

For buying, I'd recommend C1 Shoppingmall. While they're an online-only store, I've bought a bunch of stuff from them over the last couple years and never had any major issues with them. They're currently selling the Eee 900 for $644.94 and the Aspire One for $667.95 with a $99 cash back offer and give free shipping on all purchases over $500.

I'd also recommend that, unless you have a particular need to be able to run Windows software, that you go for the Linux model of whichever mini you go for as these tend to come with more software pre-installed, as well as having larger storage drives, better performance (due to lower requirements) and often a lower price than their XP counterparts.

knave

32 posts

Geek

#163984 12-Sep-2008 13:28

Two words: Toshiba R100.
Two more words: External battery.
Last two words I promise: 6 hours.

AllNightNerding

411 posts

Ultimate Geek

#164086 12-Sep-2008 19:21

thanks for all that, the R100 does have a nice battery, and about the right specs for what it needs. considering I have my laptop for the medium range stuff, and desktop for the high end stuff.

Will have a detailed look at what is out there, and go into some shps to have a few better trials of the eee.

-- Divett Enterprises -- The Power Of Tomorrow --