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Took the plunge bought a £200 Netbook from Tesco
britishtrident - 1/7/10 at 07:54 PM

After a lot of consideration I have bought a Netbook.
It is an Emachines EM250 which attracted me because it has decent spec Intel Atom N270, 1GB memory , 160GB HD , 10.1" Screen, Windows XP Home.

First impressions are all good --- Build quality is excellent surprising as eMachines usually have no frills cases.
Importantly it is a lot faster than the early Netbooks I tried, it is really really a very small laptop.

The good bit is it runs all the car diagnostic software I have tried it with, no serial port of course just 3 USB ports. The smaller size makes it less awkward to use in a car than a laptop.

Running time on battery power is excellent and much higher capacity battery packs are available from ebay sellers.

Only problem so far was it took a bit of persistence to get it to connect to my home networks but after a good few attempts it now connects seamlessly to both networks by hard wire or wifi.


At the moment different manufacturers very similar spec machines on the market all based on the same chip set, as far as I can see main difference is battery capacity and HD size and operating system

v8kid - 1/7/10 at 08:05 PM

Interesting I've been looking at these 'cos my laptop is a pita in the car due to the size.

Have you been interfacing to CPU's and is it OK with serial/usb adaptors?

Cheers

britishtrident - 1/7/10 at 08:26 PM

I am not even going bother to try a USB to serial adaptor on it I have only one bit of serial kit left and old ELM323 and it will be as cheap to replace it with a more modern ELM327 USB interface that covers all protocols.

I tried with 4 different USB interfaces diagnostic and LPG (all windows programs) -- and it worked nicely . The only slight problem was with CRecorder as the screen aspect ratio seems not allow all the first screen to be shown but this didn't affect the use of the program.


[Edited on 1/7/10 by britishtrident]

v8kid - 1/7/10 at 08:36 PM

Thanks looks like a viable option I still have serial stuff - DTA pro8 and AP22 I'd like to keep but they work OK with some serial/USB adapters its probably more to do with the adapter than the 'puter

stevebubs - 1/7/10 at 08:52 PM

Dell Mini 10 with later N450 processor and Win7 available from Ebuyer for £200....just bought one...great little machine...

imp paul - 1/7/10 at 10:07 PM

window 7 with dta swin not so good as i have had a go with it but back to xp for that

stevebubs - 1/7/10 at 10:28 PM

quote:
Originally posted by imp paul
window 7 with dta swin not so good as i have had a go with it but back to xp for that


Presumably you tried it in compatibility mode?

RazMan - 1/7/10 at 10:56 PM

I love my Advent netbook. It runs Win7 nicely after bunging in a bit more memory and it runs all my mapping software faultlessly using a cheap serial/usb adaptor. It has all the features of a mid range laptop (bluetooth, wi-fi, mobile broadband etc) and is tiny but very usable - it sits on my sill when I map the car.

One little tip - You can increase battery life dramatically by replacing the hard drive with an SSD, making it vibration proof in the bargain.

Mr G - 1/7/10 at 11:05 PM

Problem I had with Tesco's is they don't want to know when anything goes wrong after the initial 28 days from purchase. My netbook totally died but they wouldn't refund my money and told me I had to deal with the manufacturer

Thought I was being smart purchasing from a well known highstreet retailer... how wrong I was!

britishtrident - 2/7/10 at 07:35 AM

quote:
Originally posted by stevebubs
Dell Mini 10 with later N450 processor and Win7 available from Ebuyer for £200....just bought one...great little machine...


I have had major problems in the past late delivery, canceling orders because of lack of stock but not informing me.

britishtrident - 2/7/10 at 07:36 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Mr G
Problem I had with Tesco's is they don't want to know when anything goes wrong after the initial 28 days from purchase. My netbook totally died but they wouldn't refund my money and told me I had to deal with the manufacturer

Thought I was being smart purchasing from a well known highstreet retailer... how wrong I was!


What did you expect thats what the manufacturers warranty is for.

MikeR - 2/7/10 at 07:55 AM

i thought your warranty was with the person who sold it to you (sales of goods act - reasonable lifetime of the product) - they have to sort it out with the manufacturer. Shops try to ignore this as then they don't have to do the work.

On top of this a manufacturer may offer an extended warranty.

Ivan - 2/7/10 at 08:03 AM

I would love one but can't quite justify it yet however a must have for me is a built in 3G modem - know I could use phone as modem but generally built in ones have better aerials and I am often in areas with poor reception.

v8kid - 2/7/10 at 08:36 AM

"One little tip - You can increase battery life dramatically by replacing the hard drive with an SSD, making it vibration proof in the bargain."

How difficult/expensive is this to do?

BenB - 2/7/10 at 09:53 AM

quote:
Originally posted by MikeR
i thought your warranty was with the person who sold it to you (sales of goods act - reasonable lifetime of the product) - they have to sort it out with the manufacturer. Shops try to ignore this as then they don't have to do the work.

On top of this a manufacturer may offer an extended warranty.


I had this out with John Lewis. I got a Magimix off them and I tried turning it on and it didn't work. The salesperson insisted that I had to send it to Magimix. I simply explained that I had a contract with them and under the sales of goods act they had sold me something which did not work. Therefore I was returning it in exchange for another one, if they want to send it off to Magimix that was up to them but I certainly wasn't doing it.
they gave me a new one
Usually requesting to speak to the manager and hitting them with the sales of goods act does the trick (as does mentioning the contract between you and them).

RazMan - 2/7/10 at 04:59 PM

quote:
Originally posted by v8kid
How difficult/expensive is this to do?


Easy peasy - just whip out the hard drive and replace with SSD. They are identical in every way. Prices are coming down but you will still have to pay ~£100 for a 64Gb SSD. Smaller ones come up on eBay as people upgrade. Definitely worth doing to any computer - I've got one in my workstation and it has transformed the boot times. I get 20 secs on Win7, but then I have 8 cores to play with

Mr G - 2/7/10 at 05:19 PM

quote:
Originally posted by britishtrident
quote:
Originally posted by Mr G
Problem I had with Tesco's is they don't want to know when anything goes wrong after the initial 28 days from purchase. My netbook totally died but they wouldn't refund my money and told me I had to deal with the manufacturer

Thought I was being smart purchasing from a well known highstreet retailer... how wrong I was!


What did you expect thats what the manufacturers warranty is for.


I expected them to be able to give me a refund as the thing totally died, which also happened to a few other people who had purchased the same model so I wasn't after it being 'fixed'

I didn't expect to have no other choice but try and get a refund code out of the manufacturer (a right nightmare) before tescos would give me my money back for a faulty product that was not fit for purpose only a few days out of the 28 day period.

Obviously myself,MikeR and BenB expect too much

[Edited on 2/7/10 by Mr G]