Netbooks for primary use/business OS.

[plkrtn]

Hi,

I'm an ICT Manager at a Primary School. We're due to have a raft of laptops being replaced in the next 6 to 8 months, and I'm looking at netbooks as a possible alternative to cheaper laptops to replace them.

 

I'm personally looking at the Dell Inspiron Mini 12 as the replacement. The only problem being that I'd want to have Windows XP Professional / Windows Vista Business on the machine.

 

Are Dell likely to respond to any requests, or am I going to have to buy seperate Vista Business licenses to do this?

 

Does anyone have any recommendations on netbooks the kids might find handy?

[dhicks]

We're due to have a raft of laptops being replaced in the next 6 to 8 months

 

What are you going to do with the old ones?

 

--

David Hicks

[HodgeHi]

we are also currently looking into this and have loaned a couple from our local CLC both 901 EEEpc. They are very kind and have loaned us 1 linux EEEpc and 1 Windows XP EEEpc. Out of the 2 i think i prefer the Linux model. It has a smaller resource footprint and has a very user friendly GUI configuration. I think Asus have done a relatively good job. I have also used one of the Hp mini notes running Vista and i think it is a little slow to be honest. The machine sits very high at the back as well due the placement of the battery. The Asus EEEpc has a 7-8 hour battery life and is a very small forma factor machine. I like them a fair bit now actually and am thinking of getting one for every day portable use now, i.e. switch trouble-shooting and such like.

[MkII]

Looking into this myself for someone. The question is what is the intended use. The Atom CPU doesn't suit much more than basic use. Having lots of apps open at once, and any serious video editing, for example, would be painfully slow.

 

A Windows O/S also slows down the netbook spec machines a lot too. Better to live with the linux variant if at all possible.

 

The low power consumption, low noise, and small footprint all make these machines very attractive to serve a particular need.