Linux Format forums

[majortomgb]

Acer Aspire 1 and an external hard drive for all the picture etc, I did the same with an Asus for about 6 months.

[beast2k]

Sorry I thought he said "notebook" and in that case Acer would be great if it has no Cd/Dvd to mess with.

[gn2]

[nelz]

Of course it can be cheaper, you get less hardware. The Windows version has 4+8GB SSDs while the Linux one has 4+16GB.
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"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." (Albert Einstein)

[gn2]

[Haakin]

Thanks for all the answers. There are a lot of thing to think about.
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English is not my mother tongue. So, be ready to read bad grammar and limited vocabulary

[nelz]

[gn2]

Storage is storage whether it's internal, SD or USB flash.
The prices that I linked to are the cheapest I could find for the Eee901.
A Windows Eee901 from Ebuyer can have Linux installed on it for free if that's what the OP wants, including the cost of 8gb of additional storage, it's still cheaper than a Linux one from Misco.
If you want to tie yourself to one retailer, i.e. Misco in this instance, that's up to you, but I prefer to shop around.
Looking around, these are the lowest prices I can find.
Eee901 with Windows = £240 with free delivery from Ebuyer
Eee901 with Linux = £251 inc delivery from Misco
If The OP ever decides to sell it on, the residual value will be higher for one with a Windows licence than one without, and will have wider appeal.
There is also the possibility of declining the EULA and claiming a refund on the unwanted Windows licence for additional savings.

[nelz]

[gn2]

True what you say about the advantages of SSD over other storage forms, however even with the Linux model additional storage will be required because 20gb just isn't enough.

Further, SSD's wear levelling advantages are good for / but for /media the advantages are marginal because the number of writes will be minimal.

All academic really, The Eee901 only wins on battery life and compact size, when other factors are placed higher up the wishlist, e.g. build quality, screen resolution, keyboard, storage capacity, the best VFM today (by a long way) is the HP2133 which was the first one I linked to in the thread.

[nelz]

Whether 20GB is enough depends on your usage, for Internet usage (it is a netbook, after all) 20GB is plenty, although 12GB would be tight. If you want to use it for photos or videos, then you can use the SD slot.

It's true that wear-levelling is less important for /media, but what about /home. Mail and browser caches get a lot of writes.

The HP looks good, but I've a slight aversion to Via CPUs and a total phobia when it comes to Broadcom wireless chipsets, having used an iBook for several years
_________________
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." (Albert Einstein)

[gn2]

True about the writes to /home, which is why I would leave it in the SSD and use /media for storing files.

Separate /home partitions are perhaps not as necessary as once they were, with the option to preserve files in /home during a clean install.
Well Ubuntu does, not sure about the rest.

From what I've read, the wireless chipset in the HP2133 works just fine with Linux.

[nelz]

I think a separate /home is essential on a low powered portable computer. It allows me to use an encrypted filesystem for /home without the extra overhead of using encryption on the system directories.
_________________
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." (Albert Einstein)

[gn2]

Ah, it's a terrible thing paranoia.

Seriously though, it's probably a good idea if you store sensitive stuff on your laptop.
I don't.

[nelz]

It's a netbook, used for email and web browsing. Therefore it contains sensitive information
_________________
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." (Albert Einstein)