How bad are small laptops? Can you recommend me the best ones?

[Gero43]

My sister needs a laptop, from past experience I told her not to buy anything AMD because they get really hot.
So, she wants a 11.6" laptop or anything smaller than 13". She will be watching movies and surfing the internet as well as using Office products. So, a notebook or pretty much anything would do that I thought. Also, she is looking for a laptop that doesn't overheat as I told her that was the case with a friend's tiny laptop. So I have a few questions:

1. Do any netbook run movies without any problem?
2. Will any 11.6" laptop overheat? and do they fail more often than regular laptops (bigger ones)?
3. Should I avoid Intel Atoms and AMD ones or there are actually some reliable ones and that don't overheat?

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

PS: Oh and of course the budget is...no more than around $400.

[arclite]

I have an Acer Aspire Timeline 1810T. It is an 11.6" notebook since it has a Core 2 Duo processor. If you buy a netbook, it usually is slower as they are optimized for battery life. I have used netbooks with Intel Atom processors and they are slow for my uses.

My laptop tends to overheat mainly because it is a little over 2 years old and I am pretty sure there is dust accumulating inside. I have been undervolting it but I will eventually have to open it up and clean it.

[uber_shnitz]

Usually they'll stick Atoms or AMD Fusions in sub 12" computers because of thermal issues yes. As someone stated, they are slow (Atom hasn't really progressed much since it was introduced performance-wise other than going dual core) with the AMD E-450s being faster generally.

At around the 400$ mark that's probably the best you can get and it should suffice for the needs you stated.

[cloakster]

http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=68571&vpn=1225B-SU17-BK&manufacture=ASUS

This Asus is the best option imo.

[onesong10]

I own a HP netbook for about almost a year now. Netbooks are great if you want long battery life, it CAN heat up at times; depending on what programs you are using. You can always elevate it so that it won't heat up as much; my heating issue is at the bottom of the netbook and there is only one vent on the side. Although it doesn't always heat up.

I watch 450p videos and it's fine. 720p might be a tiny bit laggy sometimes but it still plays it. My netbook is relatively fast and smooth in its operation (I'm running Windows 7 Home)- having MS Word, Documents folder and IE opened up. Mine is the Atom one (I don't recall what chip it is or the speed though).

Hope that helps~

[mikebush]

i think acer is good ，not very expensive （acer）AS4752G-52452G50Mnbb ，but this one has 14'' screen，

[nsx]

:arrow:

Moved from "Shopping Discussion" to "Computers & Electronics"

[Beradon]

My sister needs a laptop, from past experience I told her not to buy anything AMD because they get really hot.Not the new AMD cpu's as they have made strides in low power processors. They actually outperform Intel when it comes to graphic and multimedia acceleration.


1. Do any netbook run movies without any problem?
2. Will any 11.6" laptop overheat? and do they fail more often than regular laptops (bigger ones)?
3. Should I avoid Intel Atoms and AMD ones or there are actually some reliable ones and that don't overheat?

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

PS: Oh and of course the budget is...no more than around $400.
1. Choose a notebook based on a low power cpu that has a capable GPU built in. AMD's C60 or any of the E-series cpu.
2. As long as you stay with a low power cpu they shouldn't overheat.
3. The Intel Atoms and AMD's are built to be used in netbooks so they are reliable and won't overheat.

Since your budget is $400 these are your only reliable options.

[PiusPatronus]

I have an Acer netbook and also a dell inspire duo netbook/tablet and I can safely say that they aren't that good even for everyday tasks. You might as well just invest a little bit more money and get an intel ultrabook if portability is a real issue.

[hobgoblins]

I have an Acer Aspire One. It's the second best computer that I've owned, and I've owned a couple of gaming desktops over 1700$. I've had it for a year and a half, paid around 400$ at FS and haven't seen any signs of slowing. I generally have 50+ tabs open on opera as well as several open on firefox, while running at least one microsoft office application and having a few folders open. It has an ATI Radeon graphics card, 500gb of space, 4gb of ram and the keyboard is very nice too. The only issues I've had are very weak internal Wifi reception (which I easily fixed with a cheap usb Wifi adapter) and having approximately 4 hours of battery life which can be a pain for university. I picked up a rocketfish charger so that I could charge it while flying/driving and it doubles as a very portable charger that I take with me everywhere.

I wouldn't buy a laptop. My netbook is light and small enough that I was able to comfortably carry it around for hours in my purse around New York. It's lighter than a textbook and movies are so crisp. If I want to use an expensive machine, I use my desktop. If it's something I'm more likely to break via portability, I don't want to spend more than 400$.

[clrking]

I'm using the acer 1410, 11.6 inch, core i3-380UM and its a terrific netbook, 4GB ram. Picked it up for 349$ at Staples. No real heating issues. Your best bet is to probably wait until back to school season picks up a little more as there are always deals to be had during that time along with an increased line-up size based on smaller, more easily to commute with netbook/laptops. If you want to go with the netbook, I'd so go with one of the asus eee pc that already come with 2GB ram or can be upgradeable (most acers/hp you can't).