crimson5pheonix said:
BlueMage said:
RAKtheUndead said:
But the question was about whether notebooks or netbooks were better. Now, I like the idea of a netbook. Small, able to be carried about easily - I can't see why university students would want anything else for actual college work. I've tried lugging about my laptop through college - it's a gargantua compared to an ASUS Eee PC, not helped by the fact that I haven't been able to hack in a wireless connection to Trinity College's network. However, I'd rather have that larger screen and slightly lesser cost compared to a netbook, and so I chose notebook, less because I'd ever want it for games, and more because an old one can be picked up quite cheaply.
Again, I can speak from both sides here. 2.5 of my 5 years total at uni, I carried with me a fairly large Acer Travelmate, and while I loved it dearly (and still do! Desk-bound though it now may be) it was a pain to lug, and required an investment in a whole new backpack complete with laptop area.
Not so the Eee. That thing I could practically carry on its own, or just chucked into a small backpack with its own carry-case around it for protection. It ran all the presentations my lecturers had, and while it wouldn't run all the software we needed to run, that's what uni lab computers are for.
The only failure of the Eee was that QUT's wireless network at the time was in the transition between exclusively VPN and exclusively PEAP-authenticated, with the VPN to be phased out very rapidly - and the VPN being the only method offered for Eee users to connect. And despite my efforts, I could never get wpa_supplicant to play nicely
Portability was never a problem with mine. I already had a backpack left over from high school that had a laptop area-thing and weight means nothing to me. My backpack in high school after the first month, never went below 50lbs and I had to carry the thing down 2 flights of stairs in the morning and up 2 flights of stairs in the afternoon because it was the only way to get to my room.
Edit 50lbs=22.6796kg
Oh, I remember the problems I had with my bag at secondary school myself, my bag being a more reasonable 20lbs which I could run with, sometimes even at sprint pace. My bag's still heavy enough though, closer to 10-15lbs at the moment, and my problem is more related to size and awkwardness than sheer weight problems, because that addition of a laptop makes it somewhat difficult to do the things that I do, like running up stairs two at a time, jumping the last few stairs of a staircase, et cetera. It restricts my shoulder movement, which makes all the difference, sometimes.
Also, wpa_supplicant: Horrible. So many problems with it myself, which has led to me giving in and downloading a Debian wireless manager for KDE. I'll try again with my laptop soon, because I'm sick of having a laptop that I can't use at college, despite the facilities being available.
