I need a laptop, where to?

[iminhell]

It'll be mostly used for the car and I'd like a small one. I see the smaller laptops are called 'netbooks', that's about the size I'm looking for. Little easier to manage inside a car than a giant Where's Waldo size computer.
Been looking online and honestly I'd like to see these things in person / in action before I buy one. Now I know of Best Buy, Office Max, Radio Shack, Wal-Mart (fuck them), but where else can I find a decent selection of smaller laptops?

The worst part is I'd rather have XP than Vista or 7 on the computer, and I have to be able to dual boot Linux (there are a couple programs on there I want to play with in the car). On New Egg it looks like a Mfg. called MSI is the only one putting XP on their machines, but they don't cost that much less for having a old OS on them.
Also on their site they have this 'barebones/no name' option. What's that about? I have to buy my own HDD (I like) and processor?

[Monkey-Gein]

comps with vista should come with a downgrade CD. that's what i was told. those places sound like the places to go, those and ultimate.

[hermitmaster]

www.newegg.com is the place to go for a netbook bargain. For battery life and performance Windows 7 smokes XP on netbooks and Vista was never offered on them. The bulk of netbooks come with XP. Your best bet is an Asus for performance and reliability. Hope this helps.

[Louis Zerr]

But 7 on a netbooks is very restrictive and you can not do a lot of little things, the simple act of changing your wallpaper is not possible on a Windows 7 netbook. Bought my wife a netbook for Christmas, most used PC like thing in the house, it has XP.

[Y2k]

Go to dell Refurbished and get one for close to $200. Check out Hotdeals.org and they post codes for the dell refurbished product. I got mine for around that price and grand total $280 bucks with external CD writer in August 2009. I got the Dell Mini 10" with atom 1.6 GHZ with 1 GB memory and please stick with XP if possible. For Dell mini, the memory cannot go beyond 1 GB so windows 7 might be a little heavy. I havent checked Dell's product since I moved out of the country but they should have newer products now that offers 2 GB memory.

Dell mini refurbished product = brand new and in my book, no reason to pay retail for brand new when you can get refurbished with almost 30-40% cheaper. I dont know about other brands' refurbished line up since I have been a dell fan for a long time.

[Redlineracer12]

But 7 on a netbooks is very restrictive and you can not do a lot of little things, the simple act of changing your wallpaper is not possible on a Windows 7 netbook.

I think you're thinking of the Starter edition? I have XP on the new netbook I bought (Samsung NC20), but I would've greatly preferred 7 if it could have came with it. XP is old and lame

Try microcenter (microcenter.com) in St Louis Park. Remember most netbooks are built for battery life and size. So they sacrifice things like processing power and screen resolution. Whether those are important to you or not is the key. Some of the newer netbooks are coming with dual core intel atoms instead of the older single core, so they are getting better.

[Louis Zerr]

But 7 on a netbooks is very restrictive and you can not do a lot of little things, the simple act of changing your wallpaper is not possible on a Windows 7 netbook.

I think you're thinking of the Starter edition? I have XP on the new netbook I bought (Samsung NC20), but I would've greatly preferred 7 if it could have came with it. XP is old and lame

Try microcenter (microcenter.com) in St Louis Park. Remember most netbooks are built for battery life and size. So they sacrifice things like processing power and screen resolution. Whether those are important to you or not is the key. Some of the newer netbooks are coming with dual core intel atoms instead of the older single core, so they are getting better.

Yeah, starter is what the ones i was looking at came with. Skipped that and went with an Xp version.

[iminhell]

Yup, I'm not concerned with graphics quality and it doesn't have to be abundantly fast. I'd be for data logging and tuning and that's about it.
, and the logging program I got doesn't work with 7, so that's why I want XP (would be nice if they'd come with XP Ultimate and not Home, oh well).

[hermitmaster]

Nearly any program or application that works on XP will work on W7 if you run it in XP compatibility mode, assuming it doesn't just run to begin with. While W7 Starter is restrictive, it was designed from the ground up to run on netbooks. I don't have a problem with XP, it's still on my netbook, 7 is just better. I'll be installing W7 Pro very soon.

[Miller]

check a sams club (worth the membership) for an open box/display model. usually marked wayy down.

[hermitmaster]

I just installed W7 Pro on my Compaq 110C-1100DX (Mini 110) and it boots twice as fast as XP and runs faster even with Aero turned on.

[endblockclip8]

http://www.newegg.com is the place to go for a netbook bargain. For battery life and performance Windows 7 smokes XP on netbooks and Vista was never offered on them. The bulk of netbooks come with XP. Your best bet is an Asus for performance and reliability. Hope this helps.

Agree 100% I own a ASUS Netbook myself. Mine came with XP and I have zero complaints. I work in the IT department of a large radiology group here in the St Paul area. I use it for work while out working on computers at one of our imaging centers. I can use it all day long on a single charge each night.

[GearHead]

Microcenter in St. Louis Park has quite a few netbooks on display that you can play with.
Get one with the N450 processor, much has been improved with the chipset also.

[hermitmaster]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834220675

[Louis Zerr]

http://www.woot.com/

Today they have: Acer Aspire One 10.1” Netbook with Accessory Kit