Today, I just got the lovely news that I've been accepted for a course at the local College doing what will later amount to a diploma in IT and offical recognition I'm not some bedroom-based FOSS jocky

But, I have a problem; I require a laptop due to disability, now the college does have some for rent but they all run Windows Vista and almost never get wiped...the total time between cold-boot to desktop is a very impressive three minutes. NOT helpful when in class and no I cannot change the OS at all. I would bring my laptop in, but I have to take three buses there and back and walk through neighborhoods which have a less-then-stellar criminal record. Also, battery life is rubbish

Now, I've been thinking of getting a Netbook, but as I don't even know anyone with one, I'd like to ask you folks here if you have any experience with them.

So, first off;

How easy is it to type? That's all I really need it for, just word processing, I was looking at getting the Acer netbook, simply because it seems to be the cheapest going.

How is plasma-netbook doing? Linpus Lite looks good, but I'd rather prefer to work with similar tools and hell, if I can get Kopete running...I don't know what tools are avaible under plasma-netbook.

Battery life: My student life will be from 9 till 4, battery life is a major factor here over my choice of netbook.

How robust are they? I'm hardly the most careful of computer users and every device I've owned has had the pleasure of being dropped about a dozen times in it's life. I'd prefer it if I could of dropped it from a table and it would still work.


Anyway, thanks in advanced for any replies

KDE has pretty decent power management and I've managed to squeeze a few hours out of my battery on my Toshiba Portege S100 laptop.

Toshiba is the way to go if your hands are likely to melt somewhere between class. They tend to use a buggered-up keyboard layout, but all the home keys/enter/etc. tend to be in the right place so it's quite easy to type on.
I know Toshiba's netbook isn't exactly attractive, but...

Samsung NC10 is attractive (I have the white, non-glossy one), has a large keyboard, great battery life (I get around 6-7 hours if I remember correctly), great build quality etc. etc.

Cons would be 1. not the cheapest (well, I rather get one with good quality) and 2. only comes with Windows XP.

I think you should and try typing on one before you decide. I have no problem after getting used to the keyboard, but as said, the NC10 has pretty large keys. When I tried the Eee PC 700 for the first time it felt like a toy - small screen (urgh, ugly thick black borders) and tiny keys - no way that I want to code on that thing!

I use regular Plasma at the moment (out-dated screenshots that I've posted in this forum before) and it works great.

Might want to get a Dell netbook. They come with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS pre-installed.

Part of the reason I suggest it is because, if Dell perceive Ubuntu as potentially profitable, they'll increase support for it. Same goes for other companies, if you find them.

I use an NC-10, and I get 6-7 hours from it too. I put Arch on it and it works just great. I've had no problems so far.

I have a Asus Eee 901 Netbook with an upgraded Runcore 64GB SSD (mainly for faster read/write speeds). I am running Fedora 11 with KDE 4.3.1 and have no real issues. I use this as my only computer.

I carry my "Izzeee" with me everywhere - it is very sturdy - the SSD ensures that even if dropped, I won't loose everything. I have no problems typing - I have big hands for a woman (would be small man hands). If I need to do power typing I just connect to my 19" VGA monitor and full-sized keyboard. But for general meeting notes, surfing, chatting (with Kopete) etc...typing is fine.

I use the regular Plasma/Kwin desktop and finally with the newest kernel desktop effects work without issue. Never even knew that there was a special Plasma for Netbooks...

With an appropriate Power Management profile and depending on usage (eg: BT and WiFi; screen brightness etc) I can easily get 6-7 hours of battery life.

All in all I LOVE my Eee with KDE

I would of thought the full-on KDE enviroment would of been quite a drain on battery life.

I was looking at getting an ASUS Eee, if only for the fact that ASUS have very good build quality, with the latest Eee having an advertised 12 hours of battery life...


I do have another question; a notebook more or less requires a special type of case for it, hardened in some way so it dosent twist. These cases are hell to carry, so, my question is; do netbooks also require it? Or could I just throw it into my messenger bag alongside the rest of my student life without fear of my constant movements tearing it to bits?

I'm very careful with my netbook, no scratches etc. I carry it in my backpack in this: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.15379

The 8"/9" version is small but fits. I prefer to have it tight. It won't protect it from drops, but for scratch protection it's perfect. Generally my NC10 feels very sturdy.

What do you mean with twist?

Well, not so much twisting as snapping, if I placed my notebook in my bag, I know that under it's own weight, it would damage itself, this is partly due to the bag doing nothing then holding it up, rather then supporting it.

The link you provided was invalid.

Using the Asus eee 1000he with arch+kde since about 6 months and very impressive I must say!
Some tweaks here and there and i get 7+ hours of battery life with wifi on. The keyboard is the best i've seen on netbooks. I did try plasma netbook from the trunk and its quite good (uses less resources than plasma-desktop)

and I love it when people ask me " what is that cool thing?" (kde )

The one big thing is to check the size of the keyboard. I've not seen any netbook offered with a 100% normal keyboard. Some, like my Acer Aspire One, have reasonable compromises - the keyboard is a bit cramped and you do make typos sometimes, but it's usable - but others, like my original EeePC 701 have keyboards more suited to a child's hands. Apart from that, as someone said, flash drives are possibly more robust than hard drives, you can use usb pen-drives for data to minimise writes, and turning off wifi when not needed will help battery life. Larger screens put up the weight and cost, so you have to work out what's best for you.

With regards to the keyboard size, I think in part it all boils down to use. I have fairly large hands and nowadays I have a comparable speed on my EeePC 900 (same keyboard as the 701) than on my main machine. Of course the best would be to try out how comfortable you are with it.

I recently got the Dell netbook I linked to before (before the Dellbuntu netbooks vanished from sight), and I'm very pleased with it - it really is all-day battery-life, very lightweight and boots very, VERY quickly. I use Kubuntu, 'cause I'm just too used to Apt and can't be bothered with setting stuff up (lets face it, if you're that lazy then Ubuntu/OpenSUSE generally win). Like I said, it's got all-day battery life and, with KDE 4.4 RC1's plasma-netbook it's a pleasure to use.

Something else you may notice when using Kubuntu on a netbook: it suspends to RAM/resumes faster than a Macbook Pro. I get bragging rights over my friends now (don't know about other distros, but I think that's mostly to do with the graphics card drivers - Intel integrated graphics chips are generally very, very well supported)(I think the boot time will more largely depend on the distro's set-up - the aged sysvinit system still takes a long while by comparison...).