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  1. Can someone give me a quick rundown on exactly what an ultralight laptop is and what the difference is between it and a netbook? I'm thining of getting an ASUS 1201N Netbook or waiting for the new 1215N, but I hear a lot of people complaing that for the price of a 12 inch netbook that is capable of all that these two models are, that one would be better off to just get a ultralight laptop? Any help is greatly appreciated. Cheers!
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  2. Member classfour's Avatar
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    The netbooks that I have do not have any DVD (or CD) drives. They also are limited to Linux or XP - depending on the model. I believe you can get a netbook with Windows 7 now.

    You'd have to look at the specs on RAM and HDDs to see if there are any other differences.

    I can say that I use these mainly for surfing and portability.
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  3. Netbooks usually have an Atom or some other single core CPU(< 2GHz).
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  4. Member 1st class
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    When you get to the 12 inch screen size, things definitely get murky. A netbook of that size with either NVIDIA Ion or Broadcom Crystal HD will probably fill your needs as both of those GPU's will play HD video. If the netbook does not, go for the ultralight.
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  5. Basically, I kinda want a computer that will do everything. I want it to play 1080p HD video over HDMI, while still retaining good battery life. I want it to be compact and portable, while still retaining as close to a normal sized keyboard as possible. I don't want or need an optical drive built in, but would like it to be able to hook up to an external blu-ray drive and play blu-rays as well as rip them to an external drive. 13" screen is probably the largerst I'm willing to go and also no smaller than 11". And I want it all for CHEAP lol 500-600 range. I realize that with the ultralights you get bigger HDD (which is not competely necessary as most stuff is stored on external drives, but also not appreciated), more RAM (4GB seems standard on ultralights, while 2GB seems standard for Netbooks though usually upgradeable to 4GB if I need to later) and a better processor (how good are the Atom N450/N550's?), but battery life seems to really suffer.
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  6. There are some thinkpads with these specs. the series X200, but they are not very cheap.. then again, they are awesome! (all but 1 laptops I've had are thinkpad.. even my current one)
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  7. Netbooks were all the rage some 3 years ago; it basically gave you a small portable internet ready device for around $300 where the cheapest laptop was still around twice as much. If you only wanted to surf from anywhere that was the thing to get. Today they are still going for $300 while $400 gets you an Acer 5517 at Walmart or BestBuy. At that price you get a larger HDD, more memory, a larger screen (easier to see), a larger keyboard, a DVD burner and it runs standard Windows. Most netbooks don't use standard x86 CPU's and have to use specialized OS'. Their one great advantage is battery life, 8 hours on one charge is common. If you want to do anything (seriously) more than surfing, forget the netbooks.
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  8. Member Seeker47's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by ryangarfield View Post
    Basically, I kinda want a computer that will do everything. I want it to play 1080p HD video over HDMI, while still retaining good battery life. I want it to be compact and portable, while still retaining as close to a normal sized keyboard as possible. I don't want or need an optical drive built in, but would like it to be able to hook up to an external blu-ray drive and play blu-rays as well as rip them to an external drive. 13" screen is probably the largerst I'm willing to go and also no smaller than 11". And I want it all for CHEAP lol 500-600 range. I realize that with the ultralights you get bigger HDD (which is not competely necessary as most stuff is stored on external drives, but also not appreciated), more RAM (4GB seems standard on ultralights, while 2GB seems standard for Netbooks though usually upgradeable to 4GB if I need to later) and a better processor (how good are the Atom N450/N550's?), but battery life seems to really suffer.
    I'm in the market for something like this, though not expecting to find it around the price point you mentioned. Started hearing some good things about newer model Samsung laptops, but then I was not too pleased to read what some were saying about Samsung customer support in the "dead LCD" thread. ( https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/322155-Headsup-on-Samsung-LCD-TV-screens )
    I really don't like buying from any company that fails to stand behind their products. But that may be getting harder to avoid, as witness Panasonic's apparent blowing off of customer complaints about the black level issue on their 2009 line of plasma panels. IF stuff like this turns out to be true, the worst thing we can do is to let them get away with it by remaining silent and rewarding them with future purchases.
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