Best Small Laptop

[Muncher]

I need to pick up a laptop to use on the train, preferably new and must be as cheap as possible yet fulfil my needs:

~13" screen
Capable of running any flavour of windows, with Office 2007
2.5 hours battery life
Wifi
As cheap as possible

The only thing I need it for is working on some documents on the train for a few months so really want to spend as little as possible.

Any recommendations?

[The_Jackal]

Most of the current netbooks would probably suit you.
Anything between 200-300 I would have thought.

[Sparks]

double post......

Edited by Sparks on Tuesday 16th February 23:17

[Sparks]

double post......

Edited by Sparks on Tuesday 16th February 23:17

[Sparks]

I was looking for something similar, and it doesn't exist (if you want under £600).
Samsung R519 @ £348 (Amazon, ebuyer, dabs, etc) is what I came up with, but it is a 15.4" screen.
Anything else was/is over £600.

If it is short term, how about a second hand macbook/pro. You will be able to sell it on, with minimal los.

Sparks

Edited by Sparks on Tuesday 16th February 23:17

[peterh2]

Lenovo X61 off eBay with an 8 cell battery. Should be <£300.

[MilnerR]

Netbook will do the job, providing you don't need an optical drive. I've got a samsung nc10 which is currently running xp and mac OSX dual boot. It runs office 2007 (mac and windows versions) with no difficulty at all. Good keyboard, nice screen 160gb 1gb ram (mine has 2gb) all for less than 300 quid!

[stefd]

A netbook with a 13" screen?

What about an Acer 3810T?

[Muncher]

A 15" screen is too big. I have a 17" dell one but just can't be bothered to carry it into work each day and it's a but big for the train really. It just needs to be pretty small and light. In actual fact it may not need an optical drive.

[MilnerR]

stefd said:

A netbook with a 13" screen?

What about an Acer 3810T?

True, screens are a bit small on netbooks, but for the price, and what it's likely to be used for, what's the point in paying a premium for a small form-factor laptop when a couple of hundred quid will get you a machine that will be fine?

No optical drive can be a problem, you can get round it by making iso of your disk (on your desktop) and then mounting it as a virtual drive on the netbook.

[spenny_b]

MilnerR said:

Netbook will do the job, providing you don't need an optical drive. I've got a samsung nc10 which is currently running xp and mac OSX dual boot. It runs office 2007 (mac and windows versions) with no difficulty at all. Good keyboard, nice screen 160gb 1gb ram (mine has 2gb) all for less than 300 quid!

Intrigued - I've also got a Samsung netbook, although an N110 not the NC10 - not really thought about running OSX on it as a Hackintosh, never thought it'd cut the mustard? Were you able to install OSX relatively simply (ie drivers, etc) or was it a complete b***h to get it working? I've upgraded the RAM on mine, which def helped XP run pretty much all the apps I needed (incl Lotus Notes 8.5) concurrently, but now being a bit of a Mac convert, would like to be able to take the Netbook with me on the occasional train journey instead of the MBP.

[MilnerR]

spenny_b said:

MilnerR said:

Netbook will do the job, providing you don't need an optical drive. I've got a samsung nc10 which is currently running xp and mac OSX dual boot. It runs office 2007 (mac and windows versions) with no difficulty at all. Good keyboard, nice screen 160gb 1gb ram (mine has 2gb) all for less than 300 quid!

Intrigued - I've also got a Samsung netbook, although an N110 not the NC10 - not really thought about running OSX on it as a Hackintosh, never thought it'd cut the mustard? Were you able to install OSX relatively simply (ie drivers, etc) or was it a complete b***h to get it working? I've upgraded the RAM on mine, which def helped XP run pretty much all the apps I needed (incl Lotus Notes 8.5) concurrently, but now being a bit of a Mac convert, would like to be able to take the Netbook with me on the occasional train journey instead of the MBP.

It's not perfect but it works well enough. As far as speed is concerned it's perfectly usable. I installed a hacked version of OSX (Although I do own a non-hacked addition of OSX that I bought - google iDeneb 1.4). It wasn't straight-forward, but an evening following guides got it up and running. Sound works, usb works, bluetooth works and ethernet works, however in order to get the wireless to work I had to buy a Broadcom wireless card to replace the atheros (?) card already installed (£12 off ebay), which was very easy (flip the back case off unplug card, replace, screw laptop back together. I now have a great little mac netbook that works pretty well (not as well as a macbook but what do you want for 250 quid?).

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtop...

[American iv]

peterh2 said:

Lenovo X61 off eBay with an 8 cell battery. Should be <£300.

a colleague at work got a x61 for £270 - his is a nice little unit, but he 1024x768 screen is a little too small for my liking.

I got myself the x200 from Ebay, it cost me £650 with a docking station (although x200s alone are going < £500). The x200 is everything the reviews say it would be and cyberface is completely correct when he said that the Lenovo is a fantastic machine and the keyboard is a joy to type on!