The hot seller this holiday season has been the lowly netbook. Amazon has reported that of the 25 top-selling notebooks this holiday period 16 of them have been netbooks less than $500. We realize that there may be quite a few owners of new netbooks that are trying to get started with their little laptop and since we’ve offered up a lot of information about netbooks we decided it a good idea to compile some of this information here.
Your new netbook likely didn’t come with much software and we know a PC is only as good as the programs it has. It also seems a bit incongruous to install a lot of expensive software on a computer that likely only cost a few hundred bucks. Our parent blog GigaOM recently shared 10 Ways to Trick Out Your Netbook that points out some good free programs like OpenOffice that will help you get the most out of your new netbook.
Netbooks usually come with either Linux or Windows XP installed and believe it or not there are some folks who do like Vista. We point out how to Make your Windows XP work like Vista for those of you in that camp.
Those of you MSI Wind netbook owners may be interested in learning out a BIOS upgrade provides an easy way to overclock that Atom processor. This gives faster performance for free and this guide will show you how.
Netbooks are perfect vehicles for working in the cloud and we show you how ThinkFree can be used to simplify your netbook experience.
One of the top sellers this season is the Acer Aspire One netbook and a common complaint is the loud, whiny fans used to keep it cool. We show you how a freeware utility can get that whine under control making you a happy netbooker.
Solid state disks (SSDs) are the storage mechanism on many netbooks but Windows XP does not use them very well. We show you how to tweak XP to get the best performance out of those SSDs.
I’m curious why you have no tips for the HP 2133 mini note, you did use one for quite a long time.
I guess the best tip though is to know which netbook to get based on what you will be using it for, since they are not at all the same. For me, the 2133 was the winner, does everything an entry-level laptop does, and with a few simple tweaks/upgrades even leaves friends with their jaws open.
http://lgponthemove.blogspot.com/
Very interesting tips as always. Also interesting to see more proof that the Psion case against getting people to use “netbook” as a generic term is going to fail – it’s apparently automatically all over this blog entry.
If you aren’t a user who’s historically and emotionally tied to Windows, installing a light version of Linux is one of the best things you can do for your new netbook. An installation of gOS or Ubuntu 8.04.1 can dramatically increase performance by relying more on the cloud than a regular laptop machine. For more information on alterntive OS’s and tweaking tips, visit http://www.NetbookStation.com
Actually, what would really work (for me) is the ability to install a splashtop type alternative on the machines that do not natively hav it. Anything like that available?