Just as a side note, my Asus gaming computer with a NVidia 9800 card gets barely two hours on battery, if I am lucky. My grandson tried watching a movie and it ran out before the movie was over and we had to switch to power. I play games on it, like Bioshock and leave it plugged in all the time. You can adjust the power consumption but you lose something in the process. I do not think you would be happy with one to take out and about. By the way my screen is a 15.6 and it is perfect.

My granddaughter has a little Dell netbook and battery time is quite long, it can stay on and on, but she just putts around the internet and plays little girl games.

My oldest daughter that I bought a Dell Studio for last Spring is very happy with hers, she also doesn't game and battery lasts about seven hours.

I agree that the Asus has very good machines, I have no problems with mine and it is Vista and so far plays everything I have put on it. No, I hardly ever play Adventure games and I don't play old games at all.

Regarding the battery life of this netbook I'm going out to get today (I'll have to go out myself, we got 1" - 2" inches of snow last night and Mom doesn't want to risk getting the car stuck in our snow-covered driveway) Mom says that I don't need more than 3 hours battery life b/c while at the mall, I'm not going to game more than 3 hrs., and for movie screenshot captures, I capture on a chapter-by-chapter basis - one chapter/mall outing.

The only games I'll be playing on it will be DOS and Win 95/98 games that don't require much hardware-wise.

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Just returned home with the Asus netbook - it was a chore lugging the unopened box with the netbook around in my backpack at the mall. My arms quickly got tired and achey, this made me realize that had I opted for a 15" laptop with a weight of 5 - 6 pounds, I would soon get tired of lugging it around the mall in my backback - I'm so glad that I decided to get this netbook instead and then start saving up for a desktop PC to get in several more month's time (probably May - June/July), since we weighed the unopened box with the netbook and it weighs 5 pounds. Thank you so much for telling me "like it is," Jenny100 and Drac!





3 cheers for Jenny100 and her fantastic advice! Yay! Yay! Yay!

Was reading Drac's latest post in the "Windows 7 and Games" thread here at GB - Drac has Win 7 on one hard drive on her PC, and XP on another hard drive of her new PC - I wonder if in May/June after I have the money saved up for it, if I can get a desktop PC tower that has an extra bay for a second hard drive and put my 120 GB hard drive (this is the spare HD I bought in Dec. 06 for the old Dell Dimension in addition to its main 80 GB main HD) into this new desktop PC or invest in a second 250 - 320 GB HD for the new desktop PC for in case some of my XP games simply won't work well in Windows 7?

(bump) Just bumping this thread up so it'll be more likely to be seen by Drac, Jenny, et al.

Hawka, the directions that came with my netbook I bought yesterday says not to use it on your lap b/c it'll get real hot and could burn you, it says to use it only on a table. Does your Asus gamer get real hot - "too hot for the lap" Hawka?

I just took the new netbook out of the box now, the directions say to insert the battery pack, plug in the power cord and charge it up for 8 hrs. before using it for the first time - I'm anxious to start transferring my stuff from the old netbook into this new one -

EDIT - The battery charge indicator light's now green, so I can start using it for the first time - Yay!

Most desktops have an extra bay for a second hard drive. The thing you may want to check is whether your old 120 GB hard drive is SATA or IDE. The new computer would have SATA connections for the hard drives. I forget what model your Dell Dimension is, but if it's old enough it would have IDE connections.


According to ***this review of Photoshop CS3***, the minimum system requirements for Windows are:

I think most netbooks, including the Eee PC, only have a 1024x600 monitor resolution (unless you plug them into an external monitor). So I don't know whether Photoshop is going to work on your netbook.

cruise02, it's a definite possibility to have a dual boot setup in a desktop. You could also do it on a single drive by partitioning it. You could get a 1 TB drive and have two large partitions, one for each OS. If it's set up properly, when you boot up, you are presented with the option of which drive you want to boot into. There are driver issues to consider, but I was able to install drivers for all the computer hardware on the XP drive. If you go with ecollege pc, I have a feeling they would set up everything for you.

My setup with two separate hard drives (actually 4 total) was a little tricky because my new drives are SATA and the old one is IDE or PATA. You need a motherboard that will support both. I had to do a bit of tweaking in the BIOS to get it to work.

Yes mine can get hot, especially when playing a demanding shooter or RPG, I bought a cooler pad (which I am very pleased with) before attempting to play. Personally I don't feel comfortable with it on my lap anyway, even just typing. Others have made do with something like a TV tray, like those you eat on. Fortunately on my Asus the heat blows out of the left side, but you have to have a place where the cool air can be drawn in.My house is rather cool at 68 so I am fine, but once I took it to our place on the other side of the island where it is hot and humid and the laptop shut down (no cooler pad then. I first bought these little half-round feet that stuck on with velcro, something like that might work for you when you are out and about. Sorry I don't remember what website I found them on, I will try to locate it later on.

Here's the video card specs and the monitor resolution of my new netbook as shown in Device Manager -
**Cruise02's new netbook video/monitor specs**

Don't know much about this (although I understand that my netbook's monitor resolution is adequate for PS CS 3), but this other info (display adapter) will Photoshop CS 3 and Bryce 5.5 (free d/l) work on my new netbook?

@Hawka - Thanks for mentioning the TV tray option - I'll take this over the half-balls.

@Drac - Thanks for mentioning the dual boot on that new desktop PC I'm going to continue saving up for. Now I feel a lot better taking a new computer that my nephew finds for me that has Windows 7. But if it's 64 bit Win 7, will I still be able to put 32 bit Win XP into it?

That's good. It looks like your resolution is high enough for Photoshop CS3. The 3D features may not work though.

The requirements for Bryce are listed ***here***

So it doesn't look like Bryce will work -- at least going by what they have listed.

The only way to know for sure how much will work is to install the software and test it.

@Hawka - Thanks for mentioning the TV tray option - I'll take this over the half-balls.

Even if you use a TV tray you should have the balls!
This will give your computer air flow under your computer to help keep it cool. You need to try and keep laptops- net or note books as cool as possible.

They are very cheap cruise, here is link to some on eBay. half balls for laptop cooling

Winfrey do you remember where we bought ours from, I think it was in China or UK, someplace odd.

No, I don't remember where- but you are right I think it was China....
I did happen to find these at a thrift shop for $3.00 I really like them they are larger and you can adjust them. Here's a link to some on ebay. I tried to find them directly with google but could not.

NB Heat Dispatcher
Here is their web site- I just don't know if you can order from them-

NU Simply Better

I still liked the "wine coolers!"

I had my new netbook on for about 2 - 3 half-hour - 45 minutes (just guessing) sessions today to move stuff from the netbook my nephew gave me onto the new netbook and also to copy & install the photoshop that I had backed up on a disc onto it, and the bottom stayed lukewarm.

I don't think I'm going to invest in these half balls, tho - just a TV tray will suffice when I'm using it on my lap, thanks.

Just keep this in mind--- a few dollars might save you a lot more in the long run.

Actually they make it easier to use too since the laptop/notebook/netbook will be at a slant.