Now I may be asking a dead obvious question that I already think I know the answer to but...

Are these really dinky cheap ebay netbooks actually any good for surfing the internet? - eg something like:

ebay netbook link

I already have a work laptop that I lug around a lot and a decent dual core desktop at home with wireless for connecting the lappy in the evenings but wondered if something like the above would be any good for the the usual simple Briskoda surfing, internet shopping and ebay trawling we do of an evening?

Dont.. For the love of god dont!

At a bare minimum you should be looking at a 9" model.. these are usually same size physically as the 7" - plus theres that many around that prices should be similar... my aspire was 150quid brand new!

I also had one of the original 7" Asus EEE pcs, with a 600mhz celeron.. which just about coped when overclocked to 900mhz... but battery life was pants, struggle to get an hour.

the biggest problem with the 7" nettops is the screen res.. 800x480 just doesnt cut it.. modern web is designed for 1024x wide as a minimum, so you will find yourself having to scroll across pages as well as up and down.

Also the link you provided.. that model is terrible.. maplins sell them for 70quid! and they run windows CE which isnt proper windows, and cant be upgraded..

My advice.. get a 9" netbook with a Intel Atom cpu.. - cant really go wrong with that i think

+ 1

Got myself a 9" eee as soon as they arrived in Sweden (summer 2008), the previous 7" was just too small IMHO. It should be easy to find a second hand 9" Asus eee or Acer One at a good price.

Specs: depends of course on your needs. Contrary to Neo_VR I've not found eee's 900 MHz clock speed a great drawback. But the advertised thingy with 300 MHz cpu and 128 MB RAM... you'll have to think twice about what OS you choose. You'll probably stuck with some kind of Palm OS (as WinCE) or a very lightwight and stripped Linux variety (or maybe Windows 95 ). Even then you'll find yourself more or less constantly working on a swap file (disk cache). Not fun with a slow processor and probably a slow, low-budget SSD.

When an offer is to good to be true it probably isn't true

Thanks guys - you've all confirmed what I already thought. but with no experience of ultra-portables (other than my Palm Tungsten T) just wanted some reassurance - I'll chase an 9" Asus or Acer as I was originally thinking of doing. :yes:

Thanks guys - you've all confirmed what I already thought. but with no experience of ultra-portables (other than my Palm Tungsten T) just wanted some reassurance - I'll chase an 9" Asus or Acer as I was originally thinking of doing. :yes:

Anything with a Atom CPU will be reasonable... but try to avoid the SSD models, as they are usually slower than their hdd counterparts.

Any thought on an Asus Eee PC 1000H Go?

Not THAT small but doesn;t look a bad spec and there are a few S/H shop returns knocking about?

Otherwise there seem to be quite a lot of 901's knocking about as well...

Sure you don't want a 12" dual core 2510p Mark?

Think of all that screen real estate

My 12" HP does me just fine, running Linux

Sure you don't want a 12" dual core 2510p Mark?

Think of all that screen real estate

Yeah but looking for something small and lightweight for chucking around, web-browsing and taking to the in-laws for looking at photos (and to use at home occasionally instead of digging out the current HP nc8000 brick I have through work!). Coming down to a Asus Eee PC 900A, 901 or 904 or similar I think...

WWell dropped on an Asus 901 earlier tonight - SSD but should be good battery life... we'll see how we go

Glad you got sorted

(and to use at home occasionally instead of digging out the current HP nc8000 brick I have through work!)

- how have you still got one of those?! That model's like 'my first laptop' - tell Eva you need something new and cutting edge

Glad you got sorted

- how have you still got one of those?! That model's like 'my first laptop' - tell Eva you need something new and cutting edge

Yep the Eee PC 901 has the same speed processor so is as powerful and has almost as much storage and memory...

I've been suggesting I need a new one for the last 12 months or more and apparently I'm high on the list of "next needing replacement" - unfortunately times and overhead budgets as they are the approach is zero hardware spend this year unless abolutely necessary - and it's still working OK (I look after it!)... so I'll have to drop it

My constant recommendation to eee buyers: check www.eeeuser.com

Lots of knowledge and experience there. Maybe not as instant help as here every time, but decent enough.

Thabks Swedish - I'll check it out

I've been suggesting I need a new one for the last 12 months or more and apparently I'm high on the list of "next needing replacement" - unfortunately times and overhead budgets as they are the approach is zero hardware spend this year unless abolutely necessary - and it's still working OK (I look after it!)... so I'll have to drop it

Absolutely, same here - just that we managed to get rid of the 8000s in time