Spec me a Windows 7 netbook

[Lysander]

I'm looking for a netbook which will be used for mainly playing music [I'm not expecting sensational quality] editing Word/Excel documents and internet browsing. That's about it. I would ideally like it to have W7. Does anyone know of something that would fit the bill?

 

[Lysander]

Hello. Um well, no more than £350 ideally.

Do I care if it has an optical drive? Ideally I'd like one, but I won't lose any sleep if it doesn't.

 

[Lysander]

OK thanks. Any idea on the netbook itself?

 

[Lysander]

Thanks. Does it have W7? Reading around there are few complaints about the CPU being 'sluggish'.

 

[Lysander]

This HP DM1 netbook is the best buy at the moment:

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/HP_Pavilion_dm1-1020sa_Entertainment_Notebook__VR598EA/version.asp

You get a dual core CULV processor, much more powerful than atom, x4500mhd better than the common 950, 3GB DDR3 memory and a USB optical drive to boot! None of that at the expense of battery life either, only thing it cant really do is game, the 4500 is still quite limited.

Well, I kind of wish that I'd read your post earlier, I went ahead and bought a Samsung N110 at the weekend. Out of all the ways to choose online, there was no substitute for actually physically going into a shop and looking at things, investigating the choice of OSs etc etc. In the end what convinced me about the Samsung was the keypad which was much better for writing [which I do a lot of] than the Acer 1410 which was the other one I was considering.

It comes with W7 [starter, but what can you do], and I have to get used to the slowness over my home PC with 5GB RAM - this only has 1GB. But since I won't be using it for anything demanding it's no biggie. Music quality is pretty good too through earphones, and the battery life is excellent.