What does a netbook lack? Graduation gift: netbook or laptop

[Row1]

Hi, everyone. I am abt to get either a laptop or a netbook as a grad gift. The netbook seems the best - this young lady will be doing net surfing, playing music, some word processing, but no gaming, not much more: no protein folding or anything.

We totally have our home computer for any video editing, powerpoint, etc. she might need to do. If she needs a lot of computer for college, I can slap together a desktop for a few hundred.

So, if I go netbook versus laptop, what will I lose? 1. A cd/dvd plater. I figured that out - can I use the netbook USB port to run and external DVD player, or is there not even drivers and such for this?

Besides no DVD player, what else would we not-have, versus laptop?

 

[Archean]

It will have smaller screen to start with, lot less computing power, poorer graphics, less storage to name few. Although, keeping in view the usage I think a netbook seems very reasonable, as there is no gaming or any intensive computing tasks are involved.

You can run a DVD drive via USB of a netbook.

You may have a look at Asus 1005E, i think its a decent solution.

 

[Row1]

substituting ssd?

hi thanks. does anyone know: if the netbook has sata drive, then i should be able to substitute a ssd, right?

 

[Archean]

Asus's site doesn't give any hint about getting this netbook with an SSD.

However, they have an interesting offer up their sleeves; they are offering 500GB free online space for a year.

I wouldn't be bothered about SSD frankly; not right now anyway; may be few years down the road

 

[SNGX1275]

I bought a netbook right after Christmas and I'm fairly pleased with it. Obviously I knew it was limited in what it can do before I purchased.

My thoughts are:
Lack of CD/DVD drive isn't an issue. USB sticks are fine for transporting data and you can reinstall Windows from them now. Using a virtual cd drive like VCD will work if you need something to work like a cd drive (just create an iso on another computer). That becomes an issue for some games, but netbooks aren't for those types of games anyway.
Biggest issue with not having a cd/dvd drive is that you need a way to make restore disks..

Graphics performance is pretty crap, my dad has a same spec'd netbook as mine but his has XP Home on it and mine has 7 Starter. Both have the same intel graphics and his can play 720p h.264 mkv video files in VLC. Mine can't, not sure what the deal is with that but apparently 720p is about the best you can hope for, and even at that it might be what OS/driver you are using. 1080 is out of the question, but nobody should expect that from the intel graphics in most of them right now (the more expensive ones with nvidia ion can do it).

SSD isn't worth it, I have a 250 gig sata in mine now, and with a 6 cell battery life I can realistically get 7-8 hours if I'm not browsing flash sites online. SSD would increase that, but it costs a ton of money to get anything over 16 gigs. IMO you are much better off getting a 6 cell battery than an SSD if battery life is your concern. If you aren't concerned about battery life, then a 3 cell with a regular hd will save you a lot of money.

I don't know where you live, but Wal-Mart has one for $228 here that is pretty much identical specs to my Acer Aspire One (D250-1197) except it might be listed as an eMachines... but it doesn't have a 6 cell battery. Still has a 250gig hd though, and that is a fantastic price IMO.

The trackpads on them are pretty small, and the click buttons take a bit to get used to (not just on mine, on any I've found), also on the Acer's, the trackpad is supposed to have multitouch features, but I've found they don't work well, nothing like multitouch on a Mac laptop or an iPhone.