Be Excellent To Each Other

What happened to all the netbooks? Am looking for a replacement for Mrs Chinny (she likes hers) and the few I can find have barely a better spec than her 3.5 year old model!

Did they fall out of fashion or something?

Dead market. Not enough money in it as people buy tablets these days.

Don't people type anymore?

There are the Chromebooks but since they rely on a net connection that would be a terribly stupid idea where we live.

Also, ChromeOS is pointless and shite. You can run it on a Netbook if you really want: http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/

Just looking at my old invoice, neither the price or the spec of any of the netbooks has really changed in 3 years. Astonishing!

She only needs the web and some Word Processing, so it might have worked. But frankly as you say its shite.

No mileage in putting a new / clean OS on the current one?

Apparently not! Or if they do want to, they buy an "ultrabook" or a laptop instead.

I'm as surprised as anyone that they can't sell netbooks, but they really can't, nobody is buying them at all these days.

Sure they do, but not on netbooks, which have generally terrible keyboards anyway. Tablets ate the netbook market lock, stock, and barrel.

There's plenty of tablets about with keyboard add-ons if that might suit her.

Am I right in thinking that a netbook is just a small laptop? I looked into buying one of these to use for recording a podcast a while ago but pretty much all of the ones I looked at, didn't seem that powerful.

I kind of guessed there that there wasn't a market for them any more.

This is true. I originally bought my little Acer Aspire One as a word processor, but the keyboard is a real shit to use. I probably do get on better with the virtual one on my iPad.

Ages ago I replaced my netbook with a Pavilion dm1 mini laptop which had a more fully fledged laptop spec but still in a pretty small form factor case. HP refresh that entire line periodically but still under the dm1 name so it's pretty hard to tell at any given time what the current version is; it might be this.

That would not be a battle I would win. Also cost because the netbooks came in at under 200 quid all in.

That's more like it.

What about Grim...'s suggestion of putting a new OS on there? I'm running Ubuntu 12.10 on my Netbook nowadays and it's pretty nice. You could try that ChromeOS I linked to also, as it runs entirely from a USB stick. Plug stick in if you want ChromeOS, unplug stick if you want the OS installed on your hard drive.

Edit: it does slightly fuck the formatting on the USB stick though (although it can be fairly easily un-fucked).

It's well worn. Would be like sticking a new engine in the MaliA mobile.

How old is it? Would it do to use Audacity for podcasts and would you be interested in selling it?

It is a 2006 1.3 ford Ka*, you'd need to change the stereo, and I've no idea. I'll ask MrsA.

*Lowest spec, I think.

No. And in anycase you'd find it a pain in the arse. The screen is far too small. For some reason Mrs Chinny likes it. Each to their own.

Will she know if Audacity will work with it? That's kind of important...

She can tell you where the fuck she isn't going to leave the keys again.

Brilliant! I'll look forward to hearing from you.

You guys!

Chinny I have pm'd you about the HP unit.

Mrs Chinny has refused to have anything to do with a new laptop so I guess I'll have to wait until hers properly breaks before I can get her a new one.

Might possibly look at getting some more RAM into it if I can. Although I daren't go and look at it at the moment as if she see's me with it she'll accuse me of trying to sabotage it or something.

Some days I know what it must be like to be MaliA.

Heh.

Has it got an SSD? If not, can you get one in it?

No it doesn't. It's worth a thought.

It's the best upgrade you can do right now, I reckon, and the prices aren't too bad.

Assuming she does only do word processing and use the Internet, 60GB is plenty.

An SSD and a fresh install of windows made my laptop feel super-fast and lovely to use again. I even put one in my aging desktop and it really has breathed new life into the computer.

Definitely worth doing.

Well worth trying this, you would be amazed what an SSD does for performance. Remember to update to the lastest BIOS as well.

SSDs actually make even more sense in a netbook than they do on a desktop. As well as performance improvements, they use less battery, they're lighter, and if you drop one the data will almost certainly survive the fall.

Increasingly tempted to get one for my MacBook now. As well as a more recent OS.