On MacRumors a guy was touting a Toshiba laptops with similar specs that was less than a grand. I checked the comments section on his link and battery life was listed by one user at around two hours. Another said he knocked off a star because there was a ton of adware on it. A third said the keyboard was not comfortable. Case was plastic. It had a ton of ports on the sides. I’d probably use one or two of them at most.
Same old argument that’s gone on forever. Is it worth the extra money for the better ergonomics and touches? Does the longer life span make up for the extra money? Each user has to make his or her own decisions.
:’) One can try to juice up an old laptop by adding new guts, but to get Mac-level duration out of one battery charge won’t work, simply because Apple has maxed the size of its batteries in part by removing plugs, doors, etc — hence the lack of ability of users to replace the batts themselves.
I tried out a Toshiba netbook or two lately, seems to be very good build quality, pretty much as I would have expected (I remember those excellent — for their time — Toshiba laptops of years ago). I like the size and totability of netbooks, but the keyboards are too small. Having dinked with a few iPads now, I think the same can be said for those as well, but A) I have big hands and B) younger people who have been using mobiles for a while (Palm, Blackberry, iPhone, etc) are going to gobble them up, particularly when the 3G model arrives.