5.20.2012

Netbook: Yay, Nay, or Wait?

Every time I visit my parents (like I did last week) I wind up using my mom's adorable HP netbook and loving the super light portability of it, though it's slow and buggy running Firefox and a few other things.
Then I get home to my MacBook and remember how much I like OS X.

My MacBook is getting on in years, though, and I wonder if switching to a netbook running Windows 7 is a good idea. The cost would be roughly 1/3 less. It would be easier for me to haul around and use in various places.

I've been looking mostly at Acer Aspires with the AMD processor and Windows 7 Home Professional. They look like solid little machines, get good reviews and are on sale for a fairly reasonable price at Target.

I need a real keyboard as most of my computer use involves intensive typing. Tablets seem too limited to entertainment and basic communications.  And though I love Apple, I'm not sure I really need a machine quite so swanky or expensive again.

I do a lot of web browsing and reading. A fair amount of wordprocessing and large amounts of presentation making. I'd probably stick with OpenOffice. Streaming video might be fun, but isn't immensely vital.

I hesitate going back to Windows, though. I suppose a Hackintosh is possible, but would it be worth it? Or Ubuntu? I'd rather not spend huge amounts of time debugging and tweaking.

Thoughts?

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