I seen a mate with an Acer Atom/Aspire One laptop.

Just wondering what peoples thoughts are on them.

Someone mentioned Laptops | Laptop. Buy Cheap Laptops in the UK. Notebook, Cheap Notebooks, New Cheap Laptop, Used and Refurbished Laptops. Find bargain Laptop Computers for Home or Business.

While browsing came across this one (theres loads of models but haven't a clue of the differences)

Acer Aspire One AOA150-BGw- 1GB - 160GB - 3G - Windows - White LU.S080B.051 From Laptops Direct

Re - software, whats the Linux operating system like? Although if you get the Linux one does that mean you can never run Windows on it?

Also whats this Open office like?

I have an old XP DVD disc with other stuff on it, but the unit doesn't have a DVD drive to run it, and also dunno if it would fully up-date

I might look at also putting photoshop on at some stage, would it work with its spec?

I see they come with 3cell battery which lasts about 3hrs, the 6cell 6 hr equivalent might be a better buy but can't see it.

I have no need for an all bells and whistles laptop. Just thought this might be good for remote net access, watching movies when abroad and bascially generally having with me. They are really small.

A few peeps here that have fallen for netbooks, I'm one of them (Asus eee with Linux).

The more you want to fiddle with updates/upgrades/new programs, the more you'll notice that Linux has a learning curve quite distinct from Windows - so unless you find a pleasure in mastering a new OS, Windows is more convenient. Setting up network connections under Linux can be trickier for instance.

No problems to install Windows on a netbook that comes with Linux, provided you have a legit cd You can also partition the HDD so that you can boot from either OS and pick the best of both worlds.

1GB RAM and 160 GB HDD should be enough for XP - and Photoshop. For Vista some (most?) would say that you should have a bigger RAM. That's probably the reason why most netbooks comes with XP.

OpenOffice is a good (and free) alternative to MSOffice. The latest version (3.x) also handles the new file formats in MSOffice 2007. It's almost 100 percent compatible, but you'll notive that some editing tasks are done in a slightly different way (e.g. advanced document styles).

For straightforward word processing (and no need for perfect compatibility when it comes to such things as numbered headings) there's a "lightweight" free alternative: Abiword.