best deal for laptop/netbook

[Aconitic]

Im looking for a new notebook/netbook for college. Im getting ready to build a new gaming pc so this doesn't need to be capable of intense gaming. Id like to keep it under $400 but my budget is expandable if its really a better value.

I was thinking about a netbook, i plan on mostly using ms/open office and it doesnt need to come with an operating system. It needs to be powerful enough to run programs like mathamatica, matlab, and solidworks but thats probably the most intensive thing i will do on it.

ive looked at this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220505

that seems pretty good to me but does anyone know of any better deals?

 

[Koggit]

stuff like matlab really sucks on such a small screen.. I hope you don't plan on using it as your primary computer for those tasks. I use Mathematica and MATLAB on my netbook during lecture or in a pinch (e.g. in a study room without a university PC) but otherwise just use one of the school's desktops. For open office and even solid works it's not that big a deal, but for MATLAB (where it sucks to only see a small portion of your code at a time) it definitely is.

With that said, I see no reason to go 10" -- the pricing separating the two is about $100 (as in, 1" costs you 33% more than the $300 9 inchers) and you don't gain much usability. The 10 inchers are still 1024 x 600 and still much too small for programming-type work that requires a lot of screen real estate. The 80% keyboards on the 9 inchers are fine and, in some cases, superior to their 10" counterparts that feel a little bendy.

So, summary: Don't plan on doing your MATLAB assignments on your netbook (but Mathematica & SolidWorks should be fine) and look into the cheaper 9" versions for around $300.

Also consider the high capacity batteries, if you ever expect to want one -- it's a much better value to buy a 6-cell netbook than it is to a buy a netbook and later buy a spare $100 battery.

 

[Aconitic]

first off thanks for the response,

this wont be my main computer, im getting ready to build a kick ass gaming rig.
I dont plan on doing huge matlab assignments on it I was just thinking that would be a program i would probably want to be able to use, and probably the most demanding.

I only wanted 10' because i was worried the keyboard might be too small on the others, but if you say its not a big difference ill look into the smaller ones.

any reccomendations?