[Liverpool] New Netbook/Laptop suggestions

[Dan Lynch]

The netbook market is a bit messed up right now and it seems most of us
agree on that. Now get your tin foil hats ready and call me paranoid but I
wonder how much of an influence Microsoft have had on this? They had nothing
to run on the likes of the eee when it first arrived and so they cut deals
with Dell, ASUS and others that new machines should be at least 10" display,
normal HDD and a more beefy CPU. All this so they could get Windows back on
them using financial muscle. I know it's not as clear cut as that and I'm
not trying to claim they're 100% responsible for this situation, but I think
they've contributed. The netbook was very bad for MS and they had to get rid
of it by hook or by crook. The 10" screen deal with Dell and others was well
documented. Hardware OEMs seem to have their own reasons for wanting to kill
it as well, as I said I wouldn't try to totally blame MS. It's a weird
situation.

Anyway, back to the point of this message, which wasn't to spread conspiracy
theories actually. My mum got a Dell Mini 9 with Ubuntu for about £175 brand
new not so long ago, it's a very nice little machine. I suspect that was
dell offloading the last of their Mini 9's but you may still be able to get
one. They're worth a look. I've also had a go on a friends Acer Aspire One
and was very impressed with that, though Linpus Lite is a pile of... erm...
something rhyming with Lite, let's just say that :D Get another distro on it
though and it would be a killer.

Maybe you're looking for more a notebook style machine that though I'm not
sure. You mentioned 12" screen. I love my M1330 and it came with Ubuntu,
it's a 13.3" screen though and while not expensive for a decent laptop
(£7-800), it couldn't be described as cheap either.

Dan
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