Mini laptop purchase advice

[LeftyAce]

Hi all,

A friend of mine is interested in purchasing a mini laptop, and I'd like your opinion on her options. She says

I basically just want something that has the internet, a decent word processing program (I don't want Windows Vista, I want one with XP), and I also want to be able to put iTunes on. We have a wireless printer at home so I think I can just use that if I want to print anything. This is the one I was looking at buying: http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/sh...i1000xp_series

Will that machine do what she's asking? I realize it has MSWorks, not Word...I think that should be ok. Will the machine run iTunes ok?

Any thoughts/info on HP's reliability/value are much appreciated!

EDIT: She's planning on getting the "recommended" configuration, which is an Atom processor, 1GB ram, 80GB 4200 rpm hdd, 10" screen.

[glc]

I would recommend an Asus Eee PC. If she doesn't want to pay for Word, you can put Open Office on it. My Eee is a 9 incher, it came with XP, Atom, 1gb ram, and a 160gb hard drive - I bought a 2gb ram module for 25 bucks.

[LeftyAce]

Ok, I'll pass that along. Looks like you get a bunch more harddrive for your buck with the eeepc, plus it's ASUS, and they've sold a ton of them at this point, so presumably the kinks are well worked out.

How much of a difference is there between these models? How much diference does 1.6 vs 1.66 GHz make? Intel graphics? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...c&name=10.0%22

[glc]

The 0.66 doesn't make that much difference, but the 533 to 667 bus may make more of a difference. Note that the N2xx Atoms are single core, but hyperthreaded. Mine is the 1.6, it's far from being a speed demon, but it does what I need. The extra 1gb ram makes a difference too.

[LeftyAce]

As far as the ram goes, she's not local, and doesn't like the idea of breaking open the machine to upgrade the ram herself...is the extra GB of ram worth switching to the HP, or would it be worth trying an eeepc with only 1GB and dealing with upgrading if that's inadequate?

[glc]

The upgrade is simple - 4 screws on the bottom gets you to both the dimm socket and the hard drive.

[LeftyAce]

Alright, thanks a bunch for the input. I'll advise her to go with the eeepc, and if 1GB of ram is inadequate, upgrade to a 2GB module.

[glc]

I used a generic Corsair Value Select DDR2-667 2gb SODIMM, it works perfectly. The 1gb module in mine was an A-Data DDR2-533.

[LeftyAce]

Here's an update in case anyone is interested. The friend with the original question decided they were more comfortable with HP as a brand, bought that netbook, only to discover it was DOA. They're returning it to Microcenter, and are picking up an ASUS...

Another friend of mine just got the eeepc, and it's great. She got the XP version, but wanted to add linux to it. Turns out the harddrive came with 2 ntfs partitions, one 80GB (with XP on it) and the other 60GB. Made adding linux dead easy, with no danger of losing the XP install. The recovery partition only restores XP....a mix-up in the bootloader options resulted in a full wipe and restore, but the linux bootloader and the Ubuntu install were still there.

Count me as a huge eeepc fan.