Netbook for travel?
 

Im thinking about picking up a Asus Eee PC 901 for lightweight travel. I currently have a 17" Powerbook G4 and feel its just too big and cumbersome to whip out in coach. Worst of all the battery lasts less then 1 hour. The Eee PC 901 claims to last 8 hours on a single charge with its 6-cell battery, and costs just $350. I know its not a powerhouse of a processor but Im not planning on playing Farcry 2 on it or anything. I'm just hoping to use it for internet and storing my photos and videos ( I already have a bunch of 2, 4, and 8GB SD cards so the small SSD hard-drive size isnt a big deal).

Does anyone have any experience with Netbooks used for frequent travel?

I have an Acer Aspire One that I've been using the last 3 months or so. I love this thing. It has a 160 gb drive, instead of an SSD, and gets 5 hours to a charge. I also have a Sony Vaio SZ440, which is a terrific, powerful notebook and I use that as my daily computer -- it's a full desktop replacement and only weighs 4 pounds. However, now I take my Acer for travel instead of the Vaio. The Acer is a bit more rugged, weighs only 2 pounds or so, and is considerably smaller. I got a small USB BlueTooth adapter that I leave in one of the USB ports all the time, letting me use the Acer with a BlueTooth mouse. The smaller keyboard doesn't bother me, and the screen size is fine.

These netbooks are a really interesting development -- a step backward in power consumption, CPU power and hard-drive size, yet more and more people are finding them to be more than enough for casual use, particularly when traveling. Buy.com has that Acer Aspire One on sale this week for $329 with free shipping -- if I had some extra money, I'd pick up a second one just as backup.

Get the Asus Eee 1000HD or the new 1000HE. I get 7 hours out of the HD, and the HE is supposed to reach 9 and a half.

Another happy 1000h owner/poster here; it replaced my regular laptop and is hard to fault.

Get a 10 screen - or at very least try a few options side by side. 10" models are worth the slight extra cost. You will notice the difference.

I'm quite happy with my Aspire One (same config as PTravel describes) and posting this from in on the bus to PHL.

The Asus 1000HE has a newer processor and 720P resolution on the chipset rather than 600px. And the keyboard is getting slightly better reviews.

The real improvements will be when the nVidia chipset comes out with 1080 resolution, but that seems to be a little ways off still. Plus, that extra graphics processing will come at a price in terms of battery life.

Anything with a 6 cell battery should get you satisfactory performance duration wise, and then it is pretty much a matter of what you prefer in terms of keyboard, screen, etc.

I've got my 1000HE on preorder; at $349 it is an amazing bargain, especially since it also comes with 802.11n and Bluetooth.

Interesting! Where are you getting it?

The best price I've been able to find is $365 from buydig.com.

I'll third the Acer. So far it's gone on two international trips and several domestic. I have a Bluetooth dongle, AT&T broadband and I'll probably get a USB GPS as well for driving. I have Boingo for US (and international, when I need it) wifi (although I'm eyeing iPass). With those, I'm not sure what else I might need.

Oh yeah- and my phone is just a phone and doesn't do any of those things :)

Cheers.

Instead of dumping money on portable DVD players, I've thought about sending Mrs. Swede and the kids off with a netbook for watching movies on the plane. I have about 30 movies on a portable USB hard drive.

Has anyone have a similar setup for watching movies? What kind of battery life do you get out of it?

Thanks everyone for your advice so far. I have to say I am kinda leaning towards the Asus 901 still because I really want to stay as small and light as possible. I also favor the 901 because of the SSD instead of standard hard-drive as I plan to really beat the crap out of it. I have already had to replace a hard-drive in my 17" powerbook (paid almost $4000 back in 2003, almost puked when i heard it hit the ground) and Im looking forward to some rough travel in Africa and the Pacific Islands.

As I was browsing through reviews on various netbooks on cnet and PC world and the like I found it humorous if not frustrating that many of the complaints were based on the small screen size. I dont get it, isnt the point of the Netbook to be small? lol As a matter of fact if I could find a 7" with all the same features and battery life as the 901 or 1000 models I would jump on that in a heart beat.

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/901053/

:)

I store movies on my Acer's 160 GB hard drive. So far, I've only watched one or two in flight, but it works fine.

Thanks. I took a look at the specs. Aside from the the newer CPU and the addition of 802.11n, it doesn't seem very different from the Aspire One. I was hoping that it was 1024 x 768 but I see that it, too, 1024 x 600 like the Acer.

I'm happy with my Aspire One. It's clear that netbooks are the Next Big Thing and, with the economy in free fall, I expect to see continued refinement of these wonderful little machines with selling price maintained or even dropped. I think I'll wait for the next iterations before buying a second one. Besides, how could I justify it to Mrs. PTravel? ;)

It's all about the battery - the 6 cell pack is flush inside the machine, instead of sticking out the back like on many other brands. The new keyboard looks great.

I had the Aspire One and while it was a nice machine at the time, the mouse just kept pissing me off. The Acer has multitouch on the trackpad, which will be handy under Windows 7.