Netbooks have really caused a rally of computer buying spree lately. Today, many vendors are joining the netbook bandwagon. Once a market considered as just fad, the netbook market has now grown substantially.
Students, whether in college or not, benefits the most from netbooks. Today's basic computing needs make netbooks perfect for what it offers. For the majority of students, many computing functions can now be performed on the internet via a browser. As such, computing power requirements on the consumer side is now very low. All that's required is power to run the Operating System and a browser. Everything else can pretty much be performed on the web. Netbooks serve this market very well indeed.
So many players have now entered the netbook market. With so many players, choosing the best netbook now becomes a problem. Especially for students who has yet to master the technology. Making it even harder, almost all netbooks are made up of the same hardware specification.
The following guide is to help students out in purchasing the best netbook for their usage. These are what you should be looking out for when shopping for that netbook.
CPU.
This really should not be a problem as all the current netbooks basically have the same CPU in them. At the moment, the CPU in use should either be the Intel Atom N270 or N280. The N280 may be a little bit speedier than the N270 due to the very slight difference in processing speed.
Memory.
The latest configurations in the market today comes with 1GB RAM. That should be enough for most students. If you will only be using the netbook for browsing, you don't really need to upgrade the memory.
A heavy multitasking type of person, should think about upgrading to 2GB of RAM. This should allow you to run your Word document, Excel Spreadsheet, PowerPoint presentation, Music player and a few browser windows at the same time.
Disk Space.
Is 160GB disk space enough? Are you the type that likes speedy disk drives? For those that prefers speed over space, there are a few netbooks that comes with a Solid State Drive (SSD). These drives provide you with speedy data access. They lack space, however.
Students that have totally grasp the cloud concept would probably store their files on the many online storage providers. Thus, they should then go for netbooks with these faster SSD storage.
Screen Real Estate.
Today's netbooks gives you at the most a 10inch screen real estate. They provide you with a 1024 x 600 resolution to work with. No a lot, but sufficient for relatively most of your student work.
Of course, if you are into high end graphics, then netbooks are not the best choice for you.
Keyboard Size.
Keyboard size is probably the most looked at specification on a netbook. It is, after all,the main input interaction between a student and the netbook. As netbooks are small in size, the keyboards are also smaller than regular computers and laptops.
You must always test out the keyboard yourself. Give the keyboard a run in before you buy a netbook. If it is too small for you, go for one that has a larger keyboard.
A few vendors provide close to full sized keyboards - HP, Samsung, and Toshiba among are among the few that offer models with close to full sized keyboards.
Battery Life.
Mobile computing would be difficult if you have to always be plugged in to use your netbook. Thankfully, the most recent entries today come with 6 cells batteries. These should at the very least give you a 5 - 6 hours of usage after one recharge.
5 - 6 hours per charge should be enough to cover your daily usage at the college or school. No longer will you need to frantically find a power socket to boot up your netbook. Just charge it at the end of the day at home.
Design.
This should not be a problem area. Netbooks of today are designed to be eye candy. Most come in a variety of colors and finishes. The days of the old dull looking laptops have passed. Netbooks are now designer items.
So, if you are in the market to find the best netbook to use in your daily student life, use the guide above as your base.
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