Best Netbook for £300?

[Mark]

Hola all, I'm pretty clueless when it comes to IT stuff and ting, was wondering what's the best Netbook I could get my hands on for around £300? Needs to be able to at least allow me to view some form of HD 1080i content (albeit frame rate isn't too much of an issue as it'll mostly be for pissing around with/limited editing) so an N450 Atom should do the job. Apart from that it'll have to deal with Zmod, iTunes and IRC so no issues there. Bluetooth would be nice and 802.11g is of course mandatory. Decent enough battery life and 3x USB would also be factors.

 

Due to my job I can get the new Vaio M series (http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/15/sony-vaio-m-and-its-atom-n450-heart-get-unboxed/) for about £260 so that's what it'll really be up against I feel (not to mention getting a Sony would mean I get preferential after sales support ). As the unit has not yet been reviewed anywhere in full nor have I been able to get my hands on one yet I can't fully comment on the unit but it seems like a pretty alright average netbook.

 

So guys, what do you guys recommend (from ideally personal experience)? Samsung seem to make some pretty neat looking units, as do Asus and Acer.

 

 

[Otter]

I doubt you'll be editing anything on a netbook. Please, someone, prove me wrong.

 

I have seen a nifty little hackbook made out of the MSI touchscreen netbook. What all, exactly, are you looking to do with the thing? Aside from editing, that is.

 

I've seen some great little Asus netbooks, but the limited power really is a factor in my experience. Windows is just too beefy, I think, for these little machines to really shine.

[Mark]

Just general use really. To be honest the crapbox I'm using here is only an old Athlon XP showing 1.24GHz clock speed, 512MB of RAM and a f*ck all use 64MB Gcard and it's enough to do some chopping and changing of HD content which is all I really want it for. The W11 at work coped well with Sony's PMB if a little on the slow side but I can cope with that and that's not even an Ion netbook so I'm confident on the M being adequate for what I need. 720p on YouTube seemed fine too. I'd like to pick up an Ion GPU based netbook with Win7 within budget but can't seem to find one at the mo. I guess I'm just cheap.

 

 

[Quiteso]

Have you looked at any refurbished netbooks? You might find something good there. I recently got a refurbished laptop with particularly snazzy specifications for the price . I'm not sure what notebook to recommend, specifically, though.

 

Still, if you're cheap, like myself, then refurbished might be something to look into!

 

 

[Star-Lord]

ASUS-1005HA-BLK030S -£249.99

 

Brand	ASUSScreen size  10 inchesProcessor  Intel AtomProcessor model number  N270Memory (RAM)  1 GBStorage (hard drive)  250 GBOperating system  Windows 7 Starter EditionBattery type	tbcBattery life  8.5 hoursNetbook weight (kg)  1.27 kgShared graphics	S-Video output	VGA output  Wired networking  USB 2.0 slots  3Media card slots	Built-in bluetooth	Built-in webcam  Speakers  StandardHDMI output	512MB processor cache1.6GHz processor busPremium Wireless N11/0.8watts :in use/powered-down power consumption

 

Around your price range they're all pretty much have the same specs. Although this particular brand /model seems to offer the biggest storage space.

 

OR

 

Like Quiteso mentioned and recommended refurbished.

Your Netbook