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Anyone tried one of these and would care to comment? My son busted his laptop and is looking for a replacement. He really only needs basic internet and email so he doesn't need a fully fledged laptop.
UBISurfer Netbook
- Thread starter PaulH
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I've used an Acer one an it was good -- small, light, all solid-state so good battery life and no moving parts to go wrong. You can get them running Window or Linux and the latter seems much better to me but that's always gonna a be a contentious one. Boab's a bit techie so he might know more.
The Mac tablet is out later this year: ten inches of touch screen and OSX. Mmm.
The Mac tablet is out later this year: ten inches of touch screen and OSX. Mmm.
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I have an Asus EEE PC - bought in Toys'ï'Us - bought it mostly for being 'on call' at work so I could literally slip it in my pocket - does the job admirably well. Keyboard is a bit fiddly for me, but I'm a bloke with large hands... Battery lasts about 4-5 hours, slightly less if coupled with a USB 3G dongle, but more than enough for my needs.
Had it running Xandros (that it came with), XP and Ubuntu - I prefer the Ubuntu - and now I don't have to think about on call stuff with work, that's what's on there.
Had it running Xandros (that it came with), XP and Ubuntu - I prefer the Ubuntu - and now I don't have to think about on call stuff with work, that's what's on there.
OP
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- #4
The attraction of the UBISurfer is the free access (even though it's GPRS). He is unlikely to be using it enough to bring him into the heavy user (pay) category.
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I've no experience of the UBISurfer, but on netbooks more generally, my wife has an Acer Aspire. It's a rather impressive little gadget, and quite fast too running what I think is Linpus Lite: it boots in about 15 seconds. I don't much care for the OS as it's difficult to find the admin tools to tinker with it (it took a bit of head scratching and muttered cursing to track down a terminal), so I'd go along with HM and either put a full blown Linux installation on it, or maybe something light but more adaptable like Puppy or DSL. I also find the keyboard cramped and tend to get a lot of typos, but that's only to be expected, really.
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I shall be test-driving another Netbook soon - since the magic smoke has decided to come out of my current laptop 
- as you'd expect, this happened a short time outside it's warranty period. I have the service manual and access to the knowledge base and looking at it, it's a case of the motherboard needs replacing :?
Oh well it's been used for several hours a day for nearly 3½ years - it's only to be expected that it'll fail dramatically (there's been a blue vertical line on the display since "warranty ran out + 3 days")
- as you'd expect, this happened a short time outside it's warranty period. I have the service manual and access to the knowledge base and looking at it, it's a case of the motherboard needs replacing :? Oh well it's been used for several hours a day for nearly 3½ years - it's only to be expected that it'll fail dramatically (there's been a blue vertical line on the display since "warranty ran out + 3 days")