britishtrident
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| posted on 1/7/10 at 07:54 PM |
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Took the plunge bought a £200 Netbook from Tesco
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
[I] “ What use our work, Bennet, if we cannot care for those we love? .”
― From BBC TV/Amazon's Ripper Street.
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v8kid
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| posted on 1/7/10 at 08:05 PM |
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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
You'd be surprised how quickly the sales people at B&Q try and assist you after ignoring you for the past 15 minutes when you try and start a
chainsaw
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britishtrident
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| posted on 1/7/10 at 08:26 PM |
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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]
[I] “ What use our work, Bennet, if we cannot care for those we love? .”
― From BBC TV/Amazon's Ripper Street.
[/I]
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v8kid
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| posted on 1/7/10 at 08:36 PM |
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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
You'd be surprised how quickly the sales people at B&Q try and assist you after ignoring you for the past 15 minutes when you try and start a
chainsaw
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stevebubs
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| posted on 1/7/10 at 08:52 PM |
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Dell Mini 10 with later N450 processor and Win7 available from Ebuyer for £200....just bought one...great little machine...
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imp paul
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| posted on 1/7/10 at 10:07 PM |
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window 7 with dta swin not so good as i have had a go with it but back to xp for that
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stevebubs
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| posted on 1/7/10 at 10:28 PM |
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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?
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RazMan
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| posted on 1/7/10 at 10:56 PM |
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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.
Cheers,
Raz
When thinking outside the box doesn't work any more, it's time to build a new box
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Mr G
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| posted on 1/7/10 at 11:05 PM |
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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!
Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a
car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes
and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.
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britishtrident
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| posted on 2/7/10 at 07:35 AM |
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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.
[I] “ What use our work, Bennet, if we cannot care for those we love? .”
― From BBC TV/Amazon's Ripper Street.
[/I]
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britishtrident
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| posted on 2/7/10 at 07:36 AM |
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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] “ What use our work, Bennet, if we cannot care for those we love? .”
― From BBC TV/Amazon's Ripper Street.
[/I]
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MikeR
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| posted on 2/7/10 at 07:55 AM |
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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.
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Ivan
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| posted on 2/7/10 at 08:03 AM |
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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.
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v8kid
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| posted on 2/7/10 at 08:36 AM |
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"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?
You'd be surprised how quickly the sales people at B&Q try and assist you after ignoring you for the past 15 minutes when you try and start a
chainsaw
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BenB
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| posted on 2/7/10 at 09:53 AM |
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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).
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RazMan
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| posted on 2/7/10 at 04:59 PM |
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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 
Cheers,
Raz
When thinking outside the box doesn't work any more, it's time to build a new box
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Mr G
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| posted on 2/7/10 at 05:19 PM |
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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]
Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a
car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes
and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.
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