[Pentaxor]

I have bought many times from abroad but would not do so with a computer, where the chance of DOA features is much higher. Also, anything over about 30 euros is assigned duty here, whether it is a gift or not -- totally crazy! Lenses i have bought on this forum from Canada and USA -- this works out fine.

that's ridiculous. I suppose you get your item forwarded in london, then get it there when it arrives. when I sent someone some gifts there 2 years ago, via Fedex, Neither I nor them got to pay extra duty. and those items are more than just 30 euros or sterling. I didn't disclose the particular items nor did I sent nor order a manifest/receipt coz that would likely reflect the worth of the item. it's a risk though, but I was more than willing to save more, plus I am confident with Fedex delivering my goods.

[jmdeegan]

that's a sound advice. though there is also another trick that I wan't to share. buy yourself a 12-14 inch fully loaded laptop, then also buy a 32 inch separate lcd monitor that you could plug your laptop into. atleast you could do serious work using the same laptop for travel purposes.

not sure why the trick was to me.....but its not really a trick, and honestly, a 9 or 10 inch netbook is a very different beast than an entry sized notebook. Easily a few pounds heavier, to start with, not to mention bigger. If you travel a lot, you will notice it. If you are flying a lot and are trying to carry on as much as possible, smaller is always better. So, throwing out a full sized notebook plus monitor is not a great trick for everyone, and frankly most people looking for netbooks are looking for ultra portability from a secondary machine....

thats what i had in mind with mine. i actually flipped it to my father in law, as i just wasn't able to use it as much as i originally intended (it lacks the horsepower i needed for most business tasks i was ending up doing). however, my FIL retired his full sized IBM/Lenovo for the Aspire One, and he's much happier for it.

My full time rig is a 15 inch MacBook Pro. No external monitor because I do not have a set work area in the apartment...must be able to move and set up at a different spot fairly often, and most often I really use it as a laptop in the living room, so any monitor beyond it's own LCD would be wasted and impractical.

my best recommendation for anyone buying something is get what you need. Don't buy X when you need Y, and get frustrated when X can't do what you really needed. Some buy netbooks because they are really cheap, but get flustered because they are not speed demons. They work, but compared to a typical machine, you will notice things. When I was dumping my SD cards on vacation, it was a lot slower going from SD card to netbook to external HDD as compared to my MBP. But i knew/expected that, and it was something I was fine with for the time, because it was a lot easier than lugging my MBP.

netbooks are definetly nice...but purposely limited in power/function versus their full-sized brethren, in order to be a lot more convenient to a certain user base. nothing like showing the female execs they can check their email and work on reports from a laptop that fits in their pocketbooks....

[Classvino]

I am currently playing with my new MSI Wind Notebook. ...

Me too. I'm happy so far...

It's interesting reading on the web about turning it into a "Hackintosh" quite easily... I'm thinking about doing that... The thought of having a 10" netbook running Mac OS is intriguing enough that I bought the white model

[ifringe]

It's interesting reading on the web about turning it into a "Hackintosh" quite easily... I'm thinking about doing that... The thought of having a 10" netbook running Mac OS is intriguing enough that I bought the white model

I have learned that carting around a little Dell Mini 9" NetBook is really quite handy. Sure, it is not a very powerful thing and is, well, slow. But. It does have a 9" screen (which is bigger than the LCD), has a built in SD slot (meaning it is easy to move pictures from the card to elsewhere...in the field even, which is way nice), is very, very light, and can even be used to tether, again in the field. For little operations like copying/tagging files and seeing what you have on the spot, well, it is hard to beat that form factor. It certainly fills the little niche that I wanted it to. It will run about anything you ask it to, but big programs are just painful.

Does it replace my normal MacBook Pro? Nope. Not even close. But the little one fits easily into the camera bag, goes where I go, and is handy. And sometimes, I even use it as a computer to browse the web, too

In you do turn your NetBook into a Hackintosh, beware that although it is easy to do, you have to worry about updates from Apple breaking it. So, there is some maintenance you have to always do in that you have to stay atop of the updates, and sometimes apply patches or do little reinstalls. If you do go this route, I would encourage you to NOT make it mission critical. In other words, don't store your one of a kind priceless photos on it, and don't put anything on it that you can't part with should the worse come to worse--as happens in this little world. Would I do it anyway?

yup!

If you really want a Mac in a nice form factor, consider the Air. Don't like the regular retail price? (I don't...) Then you can go the online Apple store and get a refurbished one for a whole lot less than regular retail, including the standard warranty. This will give you the stability and darn near the form factor you might be seeking. As of this writing, there is one for $999. About $500 more than a NetBook, and about $400 less than a new one. So, this might be an option for you. If you don't see one, just keep looking every now and then. The refurb store moves items in and out rather quickly and sometimes a page refresh is enough to find it.