[genieguru]

As of now the number of netbooks in the market have increased dramatically

DailyTech - Update: 10" ASUS Eee PC 1000 Officially Launched, Priced from $649

The new ASUS 1000H,1000 and 901

Then theres the MSI wind netbooks which are considerably cheaper than the Eee

So i'm really confused as to what to get
i already have a decent computer(core 2 duo E8200,radeon x1900 xt etc.....) and i need a light notebook(netbook) for college

and i've narrowed it down to 3 options

ASUS 1000H-Intel atom,1 gb DDR2,80 GB HDD,Windows XP-$650
ASUS 1000- Intel atom,2 gb ddr2,40 gb HDD,Xandros Linux-$699
MSI Wind U600-Intel atom,1 gb ddr2,80 gb HDD,Windows XP-$550

In terms of price the obvious choice seems to be the Wind,but the ASUS laptops has battery life anywhere b/w 5-7 hrs(the wind needs a batttery upgrade to 6-cell for that much)

And is there any serious learning curve(incompatability) involved with linux
(like will i be missing out on anything compared to windows)

i got time till any of those 3 hit retail(or e-tail)

So please advice(or tell me what u would buy) and thanks in advance

[MamaJam]

I ran a search and came across this thread, and it was pretty close to my question so ill Just add, First off, sense that ^ was posted there have been a number of new releases and new versions and netbooks, also some big players have entered the genre making for some exciting new features.

I am a "mac" guy, I use a Mac pro at work and a MBP at home, I feel at home in pretty much everything that is not windows by now. So I love the unix builds that the Eee PC's used at launch but now it seems that a lot of the netbooks are being released with windows builds.

My question is, that by the time 2009 comes around and assuming money was not a concern (obviously you are not going to spend 1.5k on a netbook on principle) what would the most powerful and yet still reasonable netbook that you would consider getting (or have).

TBH if the Air was made in a 12 inch or less and for say 500 dollars less I would get one in a heart beat, so if that helps explain my taste a bit better.

[Tipstaff]

The MSI Wind is actually a pretty good netbook, and I've sold more than 15 units in the last 2 weeks since it's been out. I do have 3 issues with it though: 1) It is a bit back heavy, meaning there is more weight at the back of the unit where the LED screen is, and you can cause the unit to tip very easily, 2) MSI has seen fit to rearrange the CTRL and FN (Function) keys around on the left side of the keyboard, so you tend to keep hitting the FN key when you actually meant to hit the CTRL key (terrible for those keyboard shortcut people), and 3) The wireless nic drivers that come with the unit are old crap, causing the wireless to kick in and out, so the first thing you need to do is grab the updated beta drivers off of MSIs site in order to fix this.

Speaking of the keyboard, even though they've moved the CTRL/FN keys around, the MSI Wind is actually typing friendly. The Asus Eee PC have a small right shift key tucked way over to the right side of the keyboard on the other side of the up arrow key, and a small enter key. I found I kept making one mistake after another while trying to type on the damn thing, always having to look down at the keyboard, and even then I'd still make mistakes. With the Wind, however, the right shift key is to the left of the up arrow key where it should be, and both the enter key and the right shift key are 2x larger than the Eee PC one. I found I could easily type on Wind as well as I could on any normal laptop keyboard.

For anyone looking at one of these my advice is to wait. MSI has a new unit coming out in the Fall, and LG has a unit coming out around then too called the X110 (coincidentally made by MSI for them). There are better, more robust units coming out around the corner, and the price is high on the new units right now due to their popularity, with dealers selling the units sometimes as much as $150-200 above their cost.

Oh, and I forgot, of the units mentioned: get the Wind.

[genieguru]

@tipstaff-
i'm going to take ur advice and wait
i was all set to get the 1000H when it came out,but then i realized that it and the wind had some drawbacks which were quite gaping
and i am not all that desperate for a netbook as of now(but that will probably change in the not too distant future)

And do u happen to have any specs of the LG X110?

[genieguru]

gigabyte tablet - Google Search

and this tablet is extremely tempting
it costs about the same as the HP 2133 mini note,but gives u all the goodness of a tablet PC