The first batch of netbooks to hit the scene was greeted with awe and surprise. That tiny laptops, which were once sold at a premium, could be had for half the price of a typical system seemed incredible. Since then, the stakes have risen and the competition grown fiercer. Netbook makers are including more features, bigger screens and keyboards, and faster parts—all while slashing prices like a Walmart special. These devices, which are popping up in more and more households, are also becoming increasingly popular among small business professionals and college students who are about to head back to school.Full-sized keyboards were few and far between, but oversized netbooks like the Lenovo S12 and the Samsung NC20 and even standard-sized netbooks like the Toshiba mini NB205 and Acer AO751h are now including them. The vast majority of netbooks still have cramped typing experiences (they usually range from 89 to 93 percent of a full-size keyboard), but expect that to change very quickly.
Standard netbook batteries start with 3-cell (less than 30 Wh) units, but many netbooks are now standardizing on 6-cell batteries. Our battery tests have shown that the smaller batteries will get you anywhere from 2 to 3 hours of battery life on a single charge, while the bigger ones range between 6 to 8 hours. If your activities include trips abroad and all-day classes, consider looking for netbooks that ship with 6-cell options.
The choices, meanwhile, are mind boggling, as netbooks are coming from all sorts of household names, like Sony, Toshiba, Dell, HP, and Lenovo. As a category, netbooks are such a diverse group that it's hard to come up with a single, all-encompassing definition. The best indicators that you're dealing with a netbook are a low price, light weight, and low-powered components. Likely the system will have a screen on the smaller side and a basic feature set. Still, netbooks vary in screen size, typing experience, and specialty features. Despite all the look-alikes, there are certainly differences that warrant further explanation. Luckily, this netbook buying guide does just that.
You'll also find two hard drive choices, solid-state drives (SSDs) and spinning hard drives. The consensus is that spinning drives offer the best gigabyte-per-dollar ratio, and most of them start with at least 160GB of storage spce. While SSDs have faster transfer speeds, are durable, and have longer life spans, they command much higher premiums than their spinning counterparts. In an extreme case, upgrading to a 128GB SSD in the HP 5101 will cost you an additional $450, more than the entire price of our review system.
Many of these netbooks will run fine on 1GB of memory, and most of them can be upgraded to 2GB, provided you can make this simple upgrade yourself. (Microsoft has limited manufacturers to 1GB of memory on systems with Windows XP Home Edition, and a lot of today's netbooks are running XP Home.)
In addition to XP, Linux is cheap and very user friendly, but average users tend to be more familiar and comfortable with Windows. Several netbooks have already been spotted running Windows 7, Microsoft's successor to Windows Vista and XP Home Edition. Check with the respective netbook maker and see if it offers a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it ships in October 2009
