While the price was good, I must say, and it was too good to be true. Performance sucks, picture was terrible, camera was so blurry no one could see properly.

My Acer Aspire netbook over-heated and died yesterday. My first impressions were pretty good.

I had reservations because of the single core processor and 1GB of memory, figured I was going to lose a bit of performance compared to the desktop I use (I7 processor, 6GB memory). But the price was right, I liked the size and my buddy uses one and swears by it.

However, I feel that the full OS should be included and that forcing consumers to buy Windows Home Premium is a blatant money grab. I did end up upgrading to Windows Home Premium, which is full of features and does not put off the same buggy problems as Windows Starter. Keyboard is sufficient, with quiet keys. Also you’ll need it to run, assuming u upgrade to Home Edition 7, instead of standard STARTER Version 7, so there’s another $80. I have been very happy with my purchase of the Netbook. The Netbook is performing very well I have installed Microsoft Office 2007; I plan to upgrade the memory to 2GB. I suppose people were complaining about the battery life being too long. It’s one step forward for Microsoft and Intel, and a step backward for mankind.

They give you 3 USB ports, as well as sound and mic ports; the sound is excellent through my Apple earbuds. I can’t believe some of you complained about this unit only having one speaker; if it had two it would NOT sound that much better. I had a little trouble getting this netbook to see the external USB hard drive, and then realized after a lot of poking around, if you have the quick boot option in the bios settings turned on, the netbook will only look to boot from the hard drive or SSD (or LAN I think). In order to boot from an external (USB) device, like for installing another OS, you must have quick boot off. It is a perfect size to take along in my purse and is unobtrusive for me to use. I only do simple word processing on it and check e-mail or does simple Internet work. If you’re looking for a small compact quality Notebook, Don’t let this one get away! I love everything about this new computer.

And for me, since I’m a writer, far more functional than a tablet or “smart” phone. I need that keyboard, and 250 gigs of storage space. Look on the bottom of your netbook and if you see “D3″ on the product label, then it uses DDR3. Overall, I love this netbook. It’s a neat, small, well-built netbook that should satisfy basic needs like web browsing and emails. The NB505 is a nicely constructed netbook. We also went ahead and upgraded the RAM to 2GB for another $25, so we have none of the lagging complaints I’ve seen when viewing videos. I was also impressed there was not a ton of “bloatware” considering the price.

So, if you’re looking for a good, lightweight computer that’s very portable, I highly recommend the Toshiba NB505 netbook. marble top coffee table.