netbooks advice

[leegcvcc]

Hi all,

Having read a good few threads and reviews etc on netbooks, I am still confused as to whether these devices are suitable for my network. It seems to be trade-offs of quite crucial elements depending on vendor.
ie. battery life, Atom CPU, limited to 1gb RAM, intermittent wireless issues.

Settling for any of those elements makes it a short term investment for me.

My question is:

Does anyone use these successfully in lessons for students using wireless, XP/Vista for office 2003/2007, other apps (not Adobe CS3 etc or heavy resource/processing intensive apps)?

I have been looking at the Dell mini 9, Acer Aspire One, Eeepc 901 and Advent 4211/12/13 but looking at forums, they all seem to have as mentioned problems or tradeoffs.

Any help would be appreciated

[Domino]

they're not meant to do much in the way of app processing.

My last place had 32 original EEEpc 4G's running the linux xandros install, and i believe they've now bought more.

used for web browsing, presentation making and VLE access together with our Ruckus wireless network they were flawless....

[Crispin]

I personally would stay clear of these for students.
We have five eee originals which we give to cover staff and temporary staff who need to be able to access ePortal for registers etc...
They're very good for that purpose but I wouldn't know about students.

[leegcvcc]

Thanks for your reply.

I have no qualms that they seem to work better with Linux, but I specifically need windows either XP or Vista with some future proofing otherwise we could be stuck with very limited use netbooks. I know they're limited use already, but need to future proof as best as I can and get the most usage possible really.

Any more help appreciated

[Crispin]

We use one eee (cant remember exactly what model of the top of my head) for our department which we installed XP lite on. Mainly used for testing wireless points, vga and logons. Its connected to the domain, pulls group policy fine and has office xp installed which also works fine. All the networking seems to run smoothly, works well with wireless too. Not had any intermittent wireless problems as far as im aware. Only issue really is battery life. So long as the apps aren't too memory intensive it runs relatively fast.

Other apps installed on it, off the top of my head are various admin stuff like port scanners and wireshark. We have mindgenius installed on it and a few other standard apps we use on our network.
Access to network drives and everything else is pretty much what you'd expect on a normal laptop.

If you're going to dish them out to students Id be cautious. Someone here mentioned a teacher pushing the power button straight through the case so physical damage may be an issue

Other than office, is there any other specific software you would plan to deploy on the netbooks?

[k-strider]

we have the HP MiniNote 2133s used by nearly all year 7s here.. (yes thats one per pupil)

run XP they come with 2GB of Ram but a Via C-7M cpu not so good as an Atom... though the 6 cell battery does mean they last the day. with the 120GB HDD plenty of space to partition of the PC and dual boot so it can be used at home safely too...

they are fine for office net use etc... the kids haven't complained nor the staff.. they do have CS3 on though i haven't used it really. definitely no good for movie maker and the like.

[ChrisH]

If your going to get an EEE get a 901 or above over a 701 as the battery life is about 4 times longer.

[FN-GM]

My old place used them as thin clients to connect upto the terminal server. It worked a treat.

[stevenlong1985]

We have ASUS EEE PC 1000H with windows XP installed, running office 2007 no heavy duty application installed tough
I would seriously recommend one
Steve