I’m doing a lot of presentations lately that are just PowerPoint. There’s no need to carry a laptop for demonstrations all of the time. For example, I’m squeezing in a tonne of information into 3 hours at PubForum 2010 and I’m speaking at Epicenter in Dublin in a few weeks. I also sometimes think that a smaller computer would be a great replacement for my Epson image tank – it’s a device photographers use in the field to store photos on when the requirements for memory cards are too much. My Epson’s battery only lasts a very short while and additional ones cost a staggering and unjustifiable €90 or so.
My requirements for a netbook were simple: VGA port, USB slots, decent sized hard drive and longer battery life than I’ll get from a laptop. Check, check, check and 9 hours. OK, it’s listed as 9 hours but I reckon it’ll give me 6.5. There were machines that claim 12 hours life but they cost another €100 to €150.
Last night I ventured out and purchased a Samsung N150. No, it’s not the latest, doesn’t do touch screen, doesn’t start with an “i”, and isn’t going to make nerds go “ooooooh!”. But, it won’t overheat on a warm day, can run flash, and can run the OS I want: Windows 7. That’ll make it great to replicate content from my laptop and PC via Mesh.
It came with an OEM build of Windows 7 Starter. That wasn’t ever going to last too long on there but I decided to let it configure so I could see what was on there. An hour later and the Samsung configurations were still running. I quickly prepared a USB stick with a Windows 7 installer and wiped the netbook. 20 minutes later I was installing software and patching the OS. I’ve no idea what Samsung were thinking but that was a great way to make their customer think they’d made a bad purchase.
As usual, the machine came with 1GB RAM. I really don’t get that. It’s got one slot but it’ll take up to 2GB so an upgrade will be done at some point. All the usual good stuff will go on there: Office (I still have to use 2007 to use my publisher’s Word extensions), Live Essentials, MS Security Essentials, Faststone Image Viewer, etc.
Hello,
I was wondering if by any chance you had any problems with some of the settings after your upgrade to the better OS? I pretty much did the same thing and once I was all done and I had Windows 7 Ultimate up and running with a 2gb ram card I can no longer use the FN keys like intended. That means that I cannot change some of the key settings from the keyboard shortcuts. Then I realised that I also cant change the brightness from the power settings slider aswell. I am thinking that I may have jumped the gun a bit with putting Ultimate on there but seemed like since it can handle it I shouldnt have a problem.
Can you please get back to me soon with some thoughts and ideas before I really start getfing things messed up on there.
Thanks,
Matt
Not had any issues. But I tend not to upgrade an OS … I prefer to do a fresh install. That’s always the recommendation from MS too.
Hi just received n140 last week. Finding it very slow. any suggestions please
Upgrade the memory to 2GB. Then user Google Chrome as your browser. It’s much lighter and faster than other browsers. Don’t expect this to be as fast as a full PC … it’s basically a light way to get basic computing. I probably wrote 1/5 and edited 1/2 of my book stuff last year on my netbook.