Hi guys, the boys wants a hp mini note for xmas anyone got any points on these machines? i personally dont like them , we are all used to xp , vista etc ,are they any good? is it esay to load another op system into them? like xp etc all the feedback would be great! Cheers before i buy guys!
I've got an Eee 901 myself. All the specs and pictures of this are similar to the Acer Aspire One, they both have what feels like an annoying mouse to me (left and right buttons are either side of the touch pad), and both have you make a decision about battery size at the same time as choosing OS, just to muddy the waters (looks like the Linux version only has half the battery capacity, but if you want the bigger battery you get stuck with Vista!). So you need to pay for a Windows license if you want the extra ram and battery capacity. I think the Eee is a more mature device, HP, Dell and Acer are only new to the netbook category and I think still have issues to iron out that Asus have sorted out over a year ago. I also don't know about that VIA cpu in the HP... Things may have changed, but last I knew their cpu attempts were poor imitations of Intel/AMD. That, and the clock speed is 1.2GHz, vs the Atom's 1.6. The Eee 901 also has -n wireless and bluetooth built in. Long story short, on a hardware basis I'd still buy an Eee over anything else right at the moment in a snap. If I had to get the HP, I would want the extra ram and battery, but having to pay for Vista on it and the VIA cpu are probably deal breakers. As for the OS, getting Vista on anything that low end is ridiculous. You might hear good stories on some forums, if all you're doing is being a poser and not actually doing WORK on the device it might work OK for you too. Try to do anything serious and it bogs down like crazy. XP is better, and I found it runs OK for a couple of weeks, but I started having speed and responsiveness issues with using Firefox that slowly built up over time. That could have been to do with fragmentation on the SSD though, I uninstalled a lot of rubbish that came preinstalled and didn't defrag afterwards. Loading anything other than Linux on without a CD drive will be difficult, and you'll probably need to resort to buying an external drive. A real Windows install disc can be modified to boot from USB, but if you're only provided with drive images you can be in trouble if you need to restore them (though with a 120gb HDD they'll probably just tell you to use the restore partition that probably died with the rest of the MBR, lol). Linux is a piece of cake to install, you just need to get the distro of choice and move it to the usb using unetbootin. The versions of Linux that come preinstalled on most of these netbooks aren't very good either. Novell, the owner of SUSE linux is in bed with Microsoft and are filling free software with patent minefields. A lot of the other ones just have a dumbed down interface so that people don't have a kneejerk reaction when they don't see their familiar Windows rolling hills. I'd personally be getting rid of all of them and reinstall and customise something without having all the preinstalled crap that the vendors enjoy ramming down your throat so. If you're going to insist with Windows though, you're in the wrong forum. We will help you to install and run Linux, but removing it and installing Windows is a Windows problem, so belongs in that forum.
Nice generalisation.. for that bag of crap that M$ force on everybody (well all the n00bs who haven't ever seen the advantages of better secure stable operating systems that don't cost money and call you a thief all the time) through their illegal kickbacks and antitrust actions to retailers. I HATE having to install windoze on peoples machines because they are too thick and sheeple'd to try anything else.. so I like to install a couple of backdoors and rootkits while I am at it so I can get in any time I want and use their machine and connection as part of my botnet. sooo.. we "aren't all used to it".. open source OS users suffer it in silence because we KNOW our systems are far superior and will start up as we left them.. and work for months if not years without any more than basic maintenance once in a blue moon.. We use our cpu cycles for doing stuff.. not running antivirus and all the rest of the garbage needed to keep M$ pile of crap just starting.. let alone being reliable on more than a daily basis.. BTW.. what is a virus?.. I ran a dsl machine with no firewall for 3 years downloading and surfing and I never got any malware whatsoever....these days I collect nasties and keep them in a directory on my hdd.. just for fun. People who have brains see M$ software for what it is.. complete rubbish.
i dont have any experience with the netbooks, but i do have experience with laptops and xp vs linux. my wee uns lappy i use as my test bed for linux distros so i dual boot it with the xp install that came with it (i actually paid extra for xp so i didnt have to put up with that shista dross). what i have found so far is that linux (in particular ubuntu64) runs a damn sight better on the laptop hardware thatn xp does. XP seems to like to take forever to load up and also the fact that u have to wait for you antivirus to load, firewall (if u have one) and all the other shite that likes to start. *nix on the other hand boots quick, loads up quickly when u log in and apart from the wait for the wireless dhcp to sort itself out you are on the net in no time i have tried various flavours of *nix (have one more avenue to try sometime when i get the time to) but have settled on ubuntu for my sins as it is the only one so far that has got the wireless working out of the box when i got it all setup.
Agreed, the girlfriend's laptop came with Vista, this thing came as a 1.6GHz with 512mb ram... She practically begged me to install linux on there, with absolutely no past experience beyond seeing me play with my main system for a week. It was disgusting how long it took that thing to boot up, whereas with linux the moment you see the menu bar you have a responsive system. Similar story with my Eee, it takes a couple of minutes to boot into Windows, get a wireless connection and run firefox. Probably the most annoying thing is that it shows the desktop and start menu, but just sits there spinning its wheels for a good minute before the start menu opens... I'd prefer to not see anything and know that the system is still booting up. And I'm with you on the Ubuntu. For all its annoyances, it does have decent hardware support, especially for new laptops. I'm just hoping that it doesn't become completely encumbered by mono, it has made some good progress at getting linux in general some good exposure.
