Get your Netbook - A Review

If you are looking for a light-weight, small machine mainly for using internet purposes, Netbook is for you. But if you want a machine to play games Netbook is not for you. You have to go for Laptops with good graphics card. But I am attracted to Netbook for it small size, sleek design, and light-weight and recently I bought one too. During my purchase I analyzed various products available in the market and thought of sharing my experiences with you folks.

Configuration: All of the machines I saw had same configuration consist of
i) Intel Atom 1.6 GHz N270/N280 processor
ii) Screen size of 10.1" and resolution of 1024x600
iii) RAM 1GB
iv) Hard-Disk of 160GB
v) Windows XP
vi) weight of around 1.2 Kg

It was very hard to decide the machine based on configuration as they all had same configuration.

Batter Back-up: Then I looked for battery back-up. There was a real difference. The claimed battery back-up by salesperson was as below:
i) Lenovo Ideapad S10-2 - around 5 hrs
ii) Acer (all the models) - around 7 hrs
iii) Gateway - 9 hrs
iv) Dell/HP/Samsung - around 6 hrs

Here also there was not much variation. Because for me even 5-6 hrs is good enough.

Heat: This was sort of deciding factor for me. Gateway Netbook performed the least in this. It will be hot as soon as you switch it ON. Lenovo and HP performed really very well in this.

Pricing: Last but most important the pricing of these small machines. You can get Netbooks in the range of INR 17000 to INR 22000, excluding SONY Vaio. Lenovo cost me around INR 18000, but within one week of my purchase they updated the price to Rs. 17000. Acer cost you around 19.5K. HP will take 20.5K from your pocket. Samsung was on the south side of the pricing graph. Market price was around 18K at the time of my purchase. Dell was the costliest one with the price of 21500 Rs.

So, depending on your pocket, and requirements you can go with the machine you like. Don't forget to ask for freebies while the time of purchase e.g. ear-phone etc.