I just can't resist a bargain. And sometimes this gets the better of me. A lot of students have been asking me about the best computer for our course. I've been saying that just about anything that you buy will deliver the goods as far as the practical portion is concerned.
There is now a new breed of computers available, the netbook. These are very small machines that initially used solid state disks and ran versions of Linux. Now you can get such machines with reasonable sized hard disks in them, which run Windows XP. If you are thinking of getting one of these I reckon they are a good idea. To prove this I put my money where my mouth is, and bought an Advent 4211. This is sold by PC World, and is a re-branded version of the MSI Wind machine.
It works a treat. I put Visual Studio on it and XNA and was quickly writing and running simple XNA games. A few hints if you are thinking about getting such a device:
Get one with at least 600 dots vertical resolution on the display. Early netbooks only had 480 dots on the Y axis, and this is not enough for some of the standard Windows menus or some web sites you might want to use. It is really irritating if you can't click on the OK or CANCEL button because it won't fit on the screen. Of course, for serious use you can always plug in an external monitor, just about all the devices out there have VGA sockets. There now some netbooks out there with 768 dots in the Y axis. These are the best ones to go for. Programs like Photoshop Elements really do need those extra 168 dots, so see if you can track a machine down with them.
Check out the keyboard before you buy, not all the machines have proper sized return keys, which can make text entry a bit tiresome.
Look for the Intel Atom processor. This is a new chip specially made for such devices. It has lower power consumption and really rather nice performance. Most newer machines are based on it.
If you want to run Windows, get a machine with at least 1G of memory. And check out the memory expansion options. Most machines can be opened up and you can either plug extra memory into empty slots, or replace the existing chip with a larger one. Ideally you should be aiming for 2G of ram if you can, most machines will go up to this. You should budget up to 30 pounds or so to buy more memory from someone like crucial.com who supply good quality chips.
Check out the battery life statistics. My Advent was shipped with the 3 cell battery, which means that it is only good for a couple of hours of use per charge. That suits me fine, since I'm rarely away from a mains plug for longer than that, but you may want a machine that will go all day. Some machines are now available with 6 cell batteries which last a lot longer. Treat all battery life statistics you get from the manufacturer with an enormous amout of suspicion, however magazine reviews are pretty much on the money on this one. You can get larger batteries from ebay, but check seller feedback and remember that prices that seem too good to be true often are.
Budget for an external optical drive. One reason the machines are small and light is that they don't have CD-ROM or DVD drives built in. This is only a problem when you want to install software or do things like play music cds or watch DVD movies. However, I reckon it is worth getting an external drive. They turn up on ebay at quite low (less than 30 pounds) prices or you can get one from a larger supplier for around 40 or so.
Look at some of the 3G networking deals out there. Some machines have built in 3G modems, or can be used with an external 3G dongle, so that your netbook has a reasonable network connection built in to it. One company was offering a dongle (small USB device you plug in to connect to the network) for 100 pounds, with the price including a year of network access too. If you really want to be online everywhere these are very good solutions.
If you'd rather have a laptop, remember that there are some really good value laptops out there too. Whilst you can get a good Netbook for around 250 pounds you can also get a good laptop, which will have the benefit of a bigger screen and keyboard, for under 400. However, this will be much larger and heavier and will not have very good battery life.
My little Advent has served me very well, and I've seen impressive looking machines from Toshiba and Samsung coming along too. At the price it is quite incredible value for money, I can remember when we were paying more for a monitor than this entire machine cost. It can't play 3D games, but it runs Visual Studio and Office quite happily. With a larger monitor and proper keyboard it would make a good desktop too.
Windows 7 is now coming over the horizon, and will work a treat on the netbook (or a notebook). I've been running the release candidate on my Adent (now upgraded to 2GB with a RAM stick I got from Staples) and it runs really well. Because Hull Computer Science departmetn is part of Microsoft Academic Alliance students can get free copies of Microsoft operating systems, including Windows 7 when it is formally released in October.