Do you have a netbook? Are you considering a purchase of a netbook or tablet? A netbook is a lower power version of a laptop computer. Good netbooks costs about $300, which is less than any quality tablet, as of this writing. If you are a mission administrator looking for a simple way to equip your team with basic computers in an affordable way, without becoming a computer repairman, netbooks are worth your consideration. I buy a Asus model with 2 key features – a quick booting alternative operating system, and an easy restore feature. The alternative OS allows you to be online in seconds, and the easy restore feature allows you do do a factory reset, anytime anywhere.
To keep things simple I use Portable Apps – normal, often free, computer programs that are designed to be run from a USB drive. Installing these programs on the SD card, which lives in the netbook, makes things simple, as I don’t have to install a bunch of programs when I re-install the computer. My portable apps include Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, AbiWord, (Word alternative), Gnumeric (Excel alternative), Foxit (PDF reader), Skype, and others. Basically, after a re-install, all I need to worry about installing is my anti-virus program, my PDF printer, my printer drivers, and Dropbox. The other programs are there on my SD card, along with the installation files for these programs. If I need Microsoft Office or other programs they can also be installed from my SD card. This way I can easily and regularly reinstall the netbook to its factory state, which is easier than spending all day working on slow computers, viruses, or software problems.
- 14 hour battery life – great for travel or power outages
- SD card
- F9 Restore
- Express Gate – a rapid-booting non-Windows operating system with basic functionality
- Atom N450 1.66Ghz processor
- 250 GB hard drive – plenty big
- 1 GB RAM – I always upgrade this to 2GB right away – buy the Crucial 2GB 200Pin DDR2 SODIMM PC2 6400
- Webcam
- 3 USB ports
- LAN port
- VGA port