[SLL] Netbook?

[Jarod Wilson]

On Sunday 29 March 2009 13:09:05 Jesse Keating wrote:
> On Sun, 2009-03-29 at 09:35 -0700, Glenn Stone wrote:
> > 
> > I'm in the market for a netbook.  The big things I'm looking for (aside from
> > the obvious, lightness (although relative smallness isn't nearly as
> > critical; we can trade thin for more real estate)) are keyboard
> > size/usability, screen size/pixels, and obviously, Linux compatibility.
> > (Although one is semi-tempted to get one with XP and leave it mostly generic
> > for various and sundry approprite occasions....)  
> 
> I've heard through co-workers that the Dell netbooks have a far more
> usable keyboard than some of the other models.

Dell did a decent job w/the mini 9's keyboard to make all the alpha keys
sufficiently big enough for grown-ups to type on it, but in doing so, they
put a few less-commonly-used-among-the-general-population keys in
funky spots. Like, pipe/backslash, iirc, is in a funky spot underneath the
right shift key. Personally, I like the keyboard on my Acer Aspire One better,
as its both big enough to be usable, and all the keys are in the expected
places. The HP netbooks and Lenovo IdeaPad S10 also have keyboards that
look quite usable.

Stay away from the Asus EeePC 9-series like the plague if you care about
being able to type. They're horrid. The 10-series looks slightly better.

-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod at wilsonet.com