After months of lusting for a netbook, I finally bit the bullet and purchased one: the Dell Mini 10v.
For the past weeks, I have been polling friends of mine who have various makes and models of netbooks. Several people urged me to get the Dell Mini 9 because of how easily it can be "hackintoshed." Meanwhile, Panasonic, Samsung and others have some sweet netbooks that I've seen in Best Buy and J&R stores.
But in the end I purchased the Dell Mini 10v, which has all the specs I'm interested in: large-ish hard drive (120 Gig), very long battery life (6-8 hours!), comfortable keyboard, and only somewhat annoying trackpad. And it only cost about $370.
The major downside is that its running Windows XP. This is the first PC computer I have purchased in about 15 years!
So far, I've enjoyed using it for work meetings, blogging on the go, and watching videos on long subway rides. As a travel machine, it's just about ideal. I had it with me last weekend at ILHC in DC and it performed quite well. And I'm bringing it with me to Amsterdam later this week, which should be handy during the long plane flights. I'll report back how it performs.
Good for doing light things on it best for kids specially good enough to play light games and basic computing.
Uh… yeah, what he said.
I’ve got a copy of Ubuntu running in a Sun Virtual Box here on my Macbook, to kick the Linux tires. Generally pretty impressed with it — if you’ve got enough drive space to handle a dual-boot, I suggest you give it a shot.