$199 Acer netbook with 8.9-inch screen, 16G solid-state drive and Win XP Home: E-reading possibility?
For e-reading, I’ve had good luck with my Acer Aspire One with a 120G hard disk, 1G of memory, WiFi, an 8.9-inch WSVGA display and Win XP.
But some e-bookers might prefer a more rugged XP model with a 16G solid-state drives. $199 for the reconditioned solid-state model at uBid isn’t an incredible price, but it certainly isn’t a gouge. You’ll be able to download books directly and read them with a variety of programs ranging from FBReader to Adobe Reader.
Of course, I’d rather go with a linux netbook, but thanks to the Tower of eBabel, I need to be able to run a variety of programs, and you may be in a similar situation.
July 31st, 2009 at 3:41 pm
The problem with this is if it is like the Asus solid state models, it is actually a 4gb drive and a 12gb drive, with the primary drive being the 4gb one.
This is a huge pain in the ass, due to the fact that Windows XP with all it’s voluminous updates is >4gb these days. I could never get it to install the service pack due to a lack of free space.
I’d just get one with a traditional mechanical hard disk if you are set on the netbook, or an ipod touch/stanza (which is the best option in my opinion)
July 31st, 2009 at 7:55 pm
What a useful tip, Kyle, thanks. I wonder what the minimum would be for the service packs to work well. David