Unlike a few negative people here, I really appreciate and value your article, approach and overall review.

What I’m looking for in a netbook is the best performance (even if it’s just by a small margin, I don’t care) and overall build quality of the product. And yes, HD speed (rpm’s) and size make a big difference for me as well as all the other tech specs.

I don’t know if I missed something, but I would love to know if there is any data on how long these things physically last or endure. I had a HP notebook once, and even though I believe HP makes some not bad stuff, they definitely left me wanting as far as their build quality goes. (The comp died because a few things just came “un-sodered” from the mobo. I was not happy about that. lol).

Anywhoo, not sure when and if I’m going to take the plunge and get one of these things, but I’m going to continue to read articles like yours Claire and keep checking them out and we’ll see what happens. : )

Note: I owned a HP Netbook last year for about 6 hours when I returned it after discovering a failing network card and the fix online being recommended by HP and others was to replace router firmware or buy a new router. I could just see me asking the hotels of Mexico and Central America I often visit to upgrade their wireless routers or buy new ones so I could use my laptop.

So in conclusion, I enjoyed the article – it was helpful but I am still trying to make my final decision. The Acer would be the no-brainer but my fat fingers are a concern. Soon …. soon ….

The HP mini had a restore DVD that lets you make a restore image on a USB drive. The Aspire One I had (160GB drive model), came with no way to recover if your drive crashes – having said that, though, I’d rather have to replace a 2.5 inch SATA (Aspire), than the HPs 1.8 inch.

I just wish the Aspire let me use an external monitor as my primary (can seem to get it to do that…)

dave

You can also get slim, USB powered DVD burners for $100 or less, but that’s not really worth it just for a few installs. They’re still a good option if you need a drive to carry around with your netbook, though.

I agree with the other commenters about your sargastic comments quite unnecesary. I happened to have found the Gadgeteer through a question via Google. I like to do a comparison before I buy stuff and wanted to find out before I purchased the little notebooks, which was best to use. Julie, of Gadgeteer, answered most of my questions. I think she did a great job. She helped me immensely, especially since I hadn’t heard anything about the netbook. Mr. Flowers, your condension on what people might or might not want and the idea that marketing is so cut in dry has completely missed the point. Marketers usually have a target audience directing their communication toward, with specific process of planning, executing, and evaluating their programs that encourage purchase or consumer satistaction. Demographics usually plays a major role.
I thank Julie for her authenticity and the answers about the comparison I was looking for with regard to the HP and the Acer.

I think that netbooks are an interesting evolutionary step in personal computing. We dumped the optical drive in favor of downloading everything, and I think the SSD drives will encourage people to use on-line storage more aggressively. (Although, I like the fact that my Mini has an 80G hard drive.)

If all you do is surf, chat, and email, an SSD will probably be all right, although I’d definitely suggest looking at sites comparing performance on the different SSDs. My eeePC 900 came with a Phison 4GB SSD card, and write speeds are ungodly slow compared to the 4GB SSD chips soldered onto the motherboard of my eeePC 701 (yes, I have four netbooks…I’m insane, I know). I bought an STEC 8GB SSD on eBay recently that was ganked from a Dell Mini 9 – we’ll see how performance is once it arrives and I get it installed.

If you want to do more with your machine (I sure do), a hard drive is a must – and in that regard, the AAO is much better purely because you can upgrade the hard drive to any 2.5″ SATA drive you like. The HP’s MicroDrive is expensive to replace by comparison.

Price also drove my choice on the AAO. I already had an eeePC 701 and thought the keyboard was just too small (if you notice, there’s only 1/16″ difference between each of the three keyboards compared in my photos above). Microsoft had their Live.com cashback promotion, so I got 30% cashback on my AAO – it ended up being $300 shipped on eBay, which saved me $120. At that point, HP only had the Mini Note with the slower VIA processor, and it was far overpriced for the features. The Mini 1000 is much more in line with the competition in both specs and price.

To everyone who has mentioned the Dell Mini – I’ve asked Julie to see if Dell will send me a loaner to review and compare against the others (particularly the eeePC 900, since I didn’t really cover that in this review). Keep your fingers crossed!

For home, I just got an EeePC 1000HE, and I love it. The keyboard is amazing, the battery life stunning, the screen great…it’s a tad heavy, but I can do my Sony Movie Studio video editing on it. I got it with a 2 GB upgrade RAM chip, it has a 160 GB hard drive and I could not be more pleased with it. I have gone through a bunch of laptops recently, and found them all wanting. I use an OQO 02 (for two years now) as well. I really wanted a Fujitsu P1630 to replace my old 1510D that I sold the end of last summer, but it’s criminal what Fujitsu is asking for one of their 1.2 GHz tablets with a whopping 1 GB RAM and poky 4200 RPM 80 GB HD…

But two details I will mention. First, I shopped around and got a very good deal at a web retail site. (That really forced my decision.) Second, I may have made a mistake by getting the flash memory rather than a spinning drive. I thought it would be more durable and less fragile. But the 8GB internal plus 8GB slotted SD drive is just not enough.

the aao lacks these aesthetics and since the technical specifications for netbooks are so similar, the consumer looks for practical things which make the difference between products, in this case, its the keyboard, screen and overall appearance of the unit.

would you describe the aao as good looking? well, no.