Small Business & Home Office

[mwood]

I am looking for a netbook or laptop that is good for presentations.  I often travel or have instructors check out laptops to give presentations.  They do not need to store much since they are not for "home" use, they need to run a few programs.    I have heard the netbook is not a good fit for this?  Suggestions?

[Mitch-BBFB]

When purchasing a computer you want to look at a few things before you purchase.  Netbooks are wonderful computers for their use.  You want to ask a few questions before you purchase a netbook though.

1. Is this going to be your primary computer? - Netbooks are unbeatable as far as portability.  They are thin and light.  However, what netbooks have in portability they lack in certain other areas.  If this is going to be a primary computer you are NOT going to want to stare at a 10"-12" screen and type on a smaller keyboard for 8 hours a day.

2. What am I going to be running on this computer? - If you are just going to be running some basic programs, like Microsoft Office, then you don't need anything that requires heavy specs and a netbook would be perfect.  If you need something that will do graphic design or to run multiple applications at once then you may not want to look at netbooks because they tend to have slower processors and less ram...that's why they are usually cheaper than Laptops.

3. Do you need a CD/DVD Drive? - Now days everyone is using Flash media for things.  Netbooks have USB ports which makes using Flash drives no problem.  However, if you have things that require CD/DVD drive then you may want to look at a laptop as Netbooks do not have these.

[mwood]

Is there a problem using an external CD drive to load the software?  One on the programs that would need to be loaded requires this componet.  As for speed for powerpoint presentations would this be acceptable?  This would not be a primary computer at all.  Just a travel computer for presentations.

Thanks,

[Mitch-BBFB · Accepted solution]

External CD drives work just fine with Netbooks.  On the speed, I have not personally used a Netbook for running power point but I have customers who use Netbooks for the very same applications and I have not heard any negative results as far as performance.

[collin2]

what kind of printer do i need to printout id cards? ive been researching for 2 days and i still have no idea what kind of priter i should get. it doesnt have to be top of the line but the printouts