Netbook vs low-spec Notebook

[dgsmith]

Our English department are very keen for new equipment (laptops) and their only use really is internet/word processing. The management our very keen on adopting netbooks simply due to the cheap price, however we're not convinced this is the best way forward, especially when you can get low spec dual-core laptops for not much more and also not really knowing what they will want from them in years to come.

 

Just want opinions on the matter really and whether netbooks are suitable or not. We want to put an arguement forward why it would be better going for the usual laptop route than netbooks.

 

We're an RM CC4 network so there will be quite a bit going on in the background, but need a bit more than that really for arguement justification. For instance, I have seen Celeron dual-core Samsung laptops with 3yrs warranty for £330 each which compares to the price of a netbook with a single core processor.

[dwhyte85]

Hello,

 

Can they be in a separate workgroup or do you really want them on the network/domain?

 

We have netbooks (NC20s and NC10s) on the domain, it's pretty slow - I knocked up a VBS script after shamelessly editing other peoples code to copy mapping of drives, proxy settings & changing My Documents to the correct path... works far better and from XP Home as opposed to Pro so saving us on licensing but did need to buy more CALs.

 

Netbooks are a lot smaller and they seem to be more durable than the low-spec Toshibas we have, althought we've noticed issues with power buttons on the netbooks. Another consideration is battery life, unless you're planning to plug-in the Celerons might not last too long on battery and off of battery they would be at a lower CPU speed and probably perform around the same as the Atoms?

[dgsmith]

We do really want them on the network (at least we couldn't justify not having them on). The battery life on the Celeron laptops comes in just over 3hrs, and most review sites tend to agree with this in their own tests which is more than sufficient for what we need. Had it been, say, just over an hour then obviously we wouldn't be considering this particular model. I know that the dual-cores could operate in low-power mode when not in use, but at least if there is a brief moment of intensive work needed they could perform much better than the Atoms, however we're really looking for just easy to understand reasons!

[BatchFile]

For the purposes you mention, Atoms will be fine - we've got 80 of the wee beasties here now, a mixture of lenovo, Asus and Toshiba and the kids and staff alike think they're the best thing since sliced bread. as long as you've goto a gig of Ram they perform just as well as the 2 year old celerons in the Acer curriculum laptops. They'll even run SIMS more than adequately; I've had several staff requesting netbooks rather than laptops for their next teacher laptop.