Comment by weissguy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by weissguy | Hacker News Reader

Before I moved internationally for school, I was concerned I would need a secondary computing device that would have a lot of functionality, a lot of portability, and be cheap enough not to worry about if it, say, dropped out of my backpack while riding my bike across town.

I looked at all kinds of tablets, but then I realized I could get more functionality, roughly equal portability and battery life, for a much cheaper price.

My ASUS netbook was the best money I've ever spent.

For $250, I got:

-A 10.1 inch screen

-9-10 honest hours of battery life if you're conservative

-A 1.5GHz dual core processor fast enough to watch 360p videos while running Visual Studio and Eclipse

-2GB of DDR3 RAM

-A 250GB HD

-3 USB 2.0 ports

-Ability to dual boot Win7 Pro and Linux

-A keyboard

-A webcam

-All in a device that weighs less than 3 pounds and fits easily in any small bag.

It blows my mind that people would want to spend $300+ on a device with slightly more portability and far, far less functionality.

Really? do you want mine? I got a netbook and it was the WORST money I ever spent. Looks like very similar specs, but my experience was that it was slow. Too slow to run more than a half dozen tabs in Chrome, too slow to play flash videos smoothly, and a dinky little keyboard that my fingers would be all cramped together and I'd fat-finger everything.

Maybe if I had Linux, things would have turned out better. On the upside, it's still kicking around. The odd time I need to use IE, it's got my back.

Did you do a clean install of windows? Mine ran like crap until I did that, plus I doubled the pre-installed RAM to 2GB.

Then you were doing something very, very wrong, because I have a positively ancient laptop with 1 GB of DDR RAM and over a dozen tabs or Flash video is no issue at all.

Although I am not trying to argue against your overall position, my experience with a Core-Duo Macbook and an iPad 2 leads me to the firm conclusion that an iPad is going to feel a lot faster than the above set-up until you add an SDD.

I've used an iPad before and I am totally willing to admit that it is a sexy device. It felt fast and was able to do a lot of useful things.

What really convinced me to buy my netbook was the ability to not worry about my computing device.

Carrying around a $500 thin piece of hardware that is constantly in danger of breaking in half or getting stolen in an unfamiliar European city was just not appealing to me.

I've used an iPad 2 extensively and (like most people reading this) I've owned a clamshell-format device, and although I do not hold myself out as an expert on such things, I would have guessed that the iPad is the more durable device because there are fewer moving parts and no moving parts as complex or as prone to getting gummed up as the clamshell's hinge or a trackpad. Do not get me wrong: I am perfectly willing to believe that a netbook is better for you than a tablet; I am just finding it a little hard to believe that durability concerns tip the balance in favor of the netbook.

P.S. The iPad's back and sides are machined from a single piece of aluminum; do iPad's really break in half?

They might not actually break in half (I was exaggerating), but my point is, when something inevitably happens to any such computing device that sees so much travel tome, there goes at least $150 for a new screen, or worse, $500 + personal data when some dude in a pub sees that Apple logo and makes a grab for it when I'm concentrating on my beer.

Specs don't capture everything. An iPad is way better for browsing/reading/watching movies. Instant on is awesome. And I have to charge my iPad once every two weeks or so. Laptops don't have much for standby time. The App store is way nicer for installing software.

Of course I spend much more time on my laptop. I'm sure not going to code on the iPad.

If you run Linux on your netbook and don't turn it off (e.g. only go to sleep) then you can both have "instant-on" and an even better way to install software.

I have an older Samsung netbook and haven't looked at the market lately. Does your netbook do 1024x768 natively?

The Samsung I have will do it, but it is weird ... like bitmapped, which makes it unusable.

If yours does, can you share the model you bought? Thanks!

It's an ASUS eeePC 1015PEM. Unfortunately I don't think they sell them anymore. They've since upgraded the processor to an 1.66GHz N550 which performs better on youtube, but I've heard it gets 25% less battery life.

Display is 1024 x 600 non-glossy.

I have a similarly pleased experience with my Asus 1215N (1366×768 screen), which I got for around $300 new (good bargain).

It has basically two drawbacks for me: battery life isn't amazing (roughly 4 hours of active use), and I'm sure a dedicated reader would be better for reading high-res PDFs.

Oh well, I can write code in vim on my eeePC, and you can't say that about an iPad.

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