Looking for input on netbooks

[BigTwinky]

I'm in the need for portrable storage for my photography.
I looked into portable drives and they are somewhat pricey, specially if you want decent storage and a screen to view them on.

So I figured for the same price as some of the portable drives I was looking at, why not get a netbook? Somewhat bigger, but way more practical as I currently dont own a laptop.

So anyone have any experience with netbooks? The standard 160 GB drive one would be fine. I'm sure I can upgrade the standard 1 GB Ram to 2 GB.
- What about battery life?
- Would I be able to run basic editing software (Photoshop Elements, Adobe Lightroom?)
- What should I look for in a processor?
- Should I wait a few more months as something new and better is on its way out?

[BlackArrow]

I own this Toshiba netbook the NB205. It has the best battery life of any that I researched (mostly because it comes with a larger and slightly heavier battery than most of the others) and has been a pleasure to use so far.

Toshiba Mini Notebook - NB200 Netbook Laptops

Toshiba Mini NB205-N310 - washingtonpost.com

Toshiba mini NB205 - Review of the Toshiba mini NB205

[H0ly-H@nd-Gr3nade]

MSI Wind U123 | Maximum PC

I have the MSI Wind U120 and it does the job very well! The U123 is more powerful and also has a 9 cell battery compared to the 6 cell of the U120.

Almost all netbooks will be running a version of the Intel Atom processor, so that generally isn't a deciding factor.

[Dead...Again]

My boss got one of the first EEE PCs that came with Linux and it sucked. He got a newer one with a larger HDD and Windows, and he likes it a lot better. It won't be a speed demon, but it will get the job done.

[Qicmee]

[ no hands-on experience here, just reading ]

Most basic photo editing software can run on the current crop of netbooks, but I'd verify two things:
1. That max. screen res. meets the software's min. spec.
2. That I won't be disappointed by the speed. Netbooks are "relatively slower" than everything else. Depends on how productive you need to be while on the road.

Also, some netbook models don't give any opportunity for hardware upgrades. If you find something nice, a little extra research will answer that.

Is something better coming out? Yes.

However, first editions sometimes have their own "special" qualities.

"...Toshiba has debuted their new line of netbooks called the Satellite T100 series and they will be released for sale on October 22nd this year. The two models are T115 (the 11inch model) and the T135 (the 13inch model). Both will have HD displays (impressive) and will run Windows 7 Home Premium. They will also have larger-than-average storage at 250GB (SATA 5400RPM).

These are not Atom-based machines and the T135 will have a choice between the Intel SU4100 or the SU2700 processor. Bluetooth
will be built into both.

The T115 will start from $450 and the T135 will start from $600."

[juneau]

I'm sort of confused by your post Twinky. You say it's for storing your photos. If this is the case then won't a USB stick do?

You do then mention that you'd want to run some image editing apps on it and i can see a few downsides here.

1. Intel Atom CPU's are not very powerful at all. Most image editing apps are CPU (cache and bus) intensive.
2. Depending on the image size and quality (i imagine very large and raw) you'd need a decent chunk of RAM. Probably 3gb minimum.
3. Screen size. Second most important thing when it comes to image editing if you ask me. Netbooks have tiny screens.
4. Screen quality. Most important thing. I haven't seen many netbook screens but i can guarantee none will have a patch on a Dell etc TFT.

Now some questions. Do you need to be doing a lot of image editing on the move? Or can you just take the photos and edit them at home like i presume you already do.

There's always the compromise of a average specced 15" laptop.

[BigTwinky]

Thanks for the input guys.

I'm only going to do basic photo editing on it, nothing major. Going to do that at home with my calibrated monitor.

As for a USB stick, not sure how I can get the pictures from the camera to the stick?

1 4GB card holds approx 475 images. Thats easy to snap in a day, specially when on a trip. When I did the last few weddings, I would average 100 an hour (a bit less, but easier to calc). So a 12 hour gig is 1200 photos. Probably 300-400 keepers though. Thats 3 4GB sticks for 1 wedding.

I did a wedding (the one on my facebook) where I arrived on a Friday, wedding on Saturday, left on Sunday.

So I figure going for 21 days in Australia will have me shooting quite a bit.

[juneau]

Thanks for the input guys.

I'm only going to do basic photo editing on it, nothing major. Going to do that at home with my calibrated monitor.

As for a USB stick, not sure how I can get the pictures from the camera to the stick?

1 4GB card holds approx 475 images. Thats easy to snap in a day, specially when on a trip. When I did the last few weddings, I would average 100 an hour (a bit less, but easier to calc). So a 12 hour gig is 1200 photos. Probably 300-400 keepers though. Thats 3 4GB sticks for 1 wedding.

I did a wedding (the one on my facebook) where I arrived on a Friday, wedding on Saturday, left on Sunday.

So I figure going for 21 days in Australia will have me shooting quite a bit.

Gotya. Ok..... why not buy a bigger memory card? Maybe 16gb

[homosapien15]

Wow I HAD typed out an epic reply of advice about this, but apparently it never posted.....


Basically, it would've shown the Juneau 100% plagiarized my post

my conclusion too was a bigger flash drive

[BigTwinky]

A 16GB Sandisk SDHC is $100 US on amazon. The 8GB is about half that. So to get the 160GB of the netbook, I'd be looking at $1000, plus lots of cards to bother about sorting, labeling and so on.

So going with more cards can be just as if not more costly.

I've done the budget cards in the past and have had them fail on me... as in not able to get the photos back. So going with a slower card or a cheaper card isn't an option when someone is paying me for shoots.

The last wedding I did, I brought my wife's laptop. When my 8gb was full, I backed it up on her laptop and kept the card aside. So if something happened to the card, I had a backup.

Thanks for thinking of the options guys, thats why I like to ask the questions here as people tend to have different views. But I'm pretty set on a netbook.

[BigTwinky]

I ended up getting the Asus Eee PC 1005HA premium.
I was seriously considering BA's Toshiba, but I managed to get this one at a really sweet deal.
160Gb hard drive, Atom N280, 8+ hours battery life... similar products.

I managed to get the netbook and a stick of 2GB of memory (so I'll have 2 total instead of 1) all for $380 taxes in.

[juneau]

Let us know how it goes Twinky.

[Timi]

As it sounds like you are going on a trip and plan to dump all your photos to the netbook, I hope you have a secondary plan for the photos in case that hard drive were to die before you got home.
I realize a new system shouldn't have a problem, but I've seen plenty of systems have drives die in the first 60 days. So that big USB stick might not be a bad idea to have as a backup plan if you think about it.