My wife runs OSX10.5 on her Dell Mini 10v (oh, I mean, er... I do own retail, and have thought about getting a sticker of an apple...). She uses it for mail/youtube/browsing, and hasn't had any complaints except that it takes a while for Word to start. 10" 16:9 screen, and she has a real monitor she can plug in if she needs something bigger, but I've never seen her use it. The Dell usually sits on her lap, which is a good distance for the screen size. SD stuff (which is all we use anyway) is fine, but we can't do NF on OSX.
DVD would be external USB, but she's never asked me for it (it's downstairs with my computers). Dell was purchased from the refurb store in early August and is still running fine. Does have the extended battery and has made dozens if not hundreds of trips to/from school in her handbag. (As an aside, the same wife from comp.sys.laptops: http://www.techreplies.com/laptops-notebooks-17/long-lived-lap-top-76657/ ; after this we went through two ToughBooks in less than a year, and eventually got her on a desktop for a couple years. :) If I were in your shoes, I'd look hard at the netbooks with SSD drives and with an SD slot. Then you could set up the SD slot to boot first, install a backup (maybe even read-only) image on the SSD, and MIL could mail the 16GB SD back and forth. That way she wouldn't be out of the computer during shipping. I would also recommend Thinkpads or the Dell Latitude D6* or D8*s if you have to go the laptop route, but they do consume lots more power than the netbooks (advantage of the Atom). Best, -Tim On Fri, Jan 1, 2010 at 3:47 PM, OK Don <[email protected]> wrote: > I second Alex's recommendation. I have doubts that the Atom based machines > are going to be good at presenting video, plus you need the external DVD > drive if it isn't on-line media. IIRC, the Thinkpads are mostly commercial > qualtity hardware, which will stand up longer. > > Anyone of you with a netbook play video on it? I find the screen too small > (in the verticle dimension) for much other than web browsing - which is what > they are designed for, so I shouldn't complain. > > On Fri, Jan 1, 2010 at 1:52 PM, Alex Chamberlain > <[email protected]>wrote: > >> On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 7:15 PM, Mitch Haley <[email protected]> wrote: >> > >> > Are those $299 netbook things any good? >> >> I love the two netbooks in my house (Dell Vostro and Asus Eee) for web >> browsing. They are as fast as anything else with a lightweight Linux >> distro (Mint, Puppy, etc.). Forget about serious typing with those >> little keyboards, though. >> >> For the original poster (Dave W.), I'm going to take the contrarian >> view from everyone else here and suggest a refurbished IBM Thinkpad. >> Beautiful big screen, plenty fast enough, will probably come with XP >> Pro installed but they're very Linux-friendly so it shouldn't be a >> hassle at all to put Ubuntu on it if you want. Most importantly they >> are built like tanks and so are more likely than any new $300 laptop >> to survive repeated trips through the mail. >> >> Alex >> >> >> -- >> OK Don >> CONSERVATIVE, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as >> distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with >> others. >> The Devil's Dictionary >> Ambrose Bierce >> >> > _______________________________________ > http://www.okiebenz.com > For new and used parts go to www.okiebenz.com > To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ > > To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: > http://okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com > _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com For new and used parts go to www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
