I have been following the “netbook” craze for a while now and think I am almost ready to jump in. My mobile needs fit very well what these computers were made to do; surf, facebook, twitter, watch movies or play music… oh, and work in Photoshop!
That’s right, with 2gigs of ram and a 160gb HD, these little machines have more than enough horsepower to handle high end applications. Now, I’ll admit I am not going to do the major color work or corrections on this type of machine, but for me, I need a laptop that will connect to my Nikon D3 and using Bridge, give me a larger preview to show clients for approval during a shoot than the small 3″ screen on the back of the camera.
In all my research, the build/keyboard/size/design of the HP Mini 2140 seems to be a winner. All that I need until I get back to the office and download to the main machine is there. And for around $450.00 is almost half of what a refurbished MacBook would be.
Now, as a Mac OSX guy, this sort of adds to the confusion since these netbooks all run either Linux, Windows XP or Vista. But, rest assured, others have also had this question and solved it… Hackintosh!
Yes, there is a whole community of users of these netbooks that have cracked them open and installed full, working copies, of OSX and love it. How about a dual boot netbook for under $500.00… sign me up.
I hope to pull the trigger on this unit in the next few months. I will post what I find as the best working solution for me and let you all know.