My views on certain gadgets have evolved in recent times. For instance, things like netbooks...I strongly encourage the majority of college students to purchase a $250 netbook instead of a tablet or laptop. Previously I have been very critical of such items as they are so lightweight they could never serve my purposes. However, in arguing over and over against users buying Macs, it's kinda hit me that the same arguments could be made for netbooks vs laptops (or similar arguments, at least). Netbooks do the three things college students want, and they do them well. What are these? 1. Surf the 'net 2. Listen to music (which I now do via the cloud thanks to Google Music) 3. Write Word docs Occasionally they might do some lightweight photo retouching. [url=http://www.photoshop.com/]Photoshop Express[/url]. Maybe they video conference. It's hard to find a netbook without a webcam. Watch movies? Netflix. The thing is, the majority of what we need really is in the cloud these days, so there's becoming fewer and fewer reasons to have a full laptop. *I* have one because I do HD video editing and heavy photo editing...and due to the high quality video, my laptop can barely handle it at times. College students don't do that, though. They need lightweight, portable, and cheap...and this is the very definition of a netbook. So, college students? Don't get a severely Macbook Air. Don't get an iPad that is incredibly awful at word processing. Don't get an $800 laptop that you'll only ever use for the internet. Heck, if you live on campus and they offer free wifi to students as most colleges do, in six months, I'll probably be recommending the Chromebook. You can't get more lightweight than that while still be useful.

I have an Acer netbook and absolutely love it. I need to figure out what's wrong with the battery though. It will only charge up to 21% now so I have to keep it plugged up. Other than that, I love the fact that it's light weight, it WAS very portable. It's easy to take back and forth to church to use for teaching Sunday School.

Pretty much. I have tiny, very cheap netbook. Emachines by Acer lol, it's so budget that it's not even properly an Acer, but it does the job. I've had it for a year and a half now and it's almost never caused a problem. It's tiny and lightweight, so it fits in my handbag and doesn't kill my back, but it's still big enough (10.1 inch) that I can see most things on my screen without trouble. The only problem is that my processor is v e r y slow, but if I stuck to net and Word and didn't insist on trying to play games on what is essentially not a gaming machine it'd be fine :P It doesn't like Minecraft much :(

I've been considering getting a netbook as cheap replacement for my pretty cracked and beaten up Macbook. Unfortunately I [i]do[/i] really like to game and bad as my Mac is as a gaming system it's better than a netbook...

[b]Owlright wrote:[/b] [quote]I've been considering getting a netbook as cheap replacement for my pretty cracked and beaten up Macbook. Unfortunately I [i]do[/i] really like to game and bad as my Mac is as a gaming system it's better than a netbook...[/quote] For $350 right now you can get an excellent little laptop that can handle any non-graphic intensive game.

Then I'll just be frustrated that I finally have a PC but can't run any of the games I actually want a PC for to run :P

[b]Owlright wrote:[/b] [quote]Then I'll just be frustrated that I finally have a PC but can't run any of the games I actually want a PC for to run :P[/quote] lol. As only a casual gamer, I can handle just playing video games on a console (aside from RTS's, of course). I know it'd be better on a PC, but oh well. I don't have an [i]amazing[/i] laptop and at this point console gaming is just more convenient for me.

I don't know that gaming on a PC is that much "better" or more core than consoles. It's largely a matter of preference, in my humble opinion. It looks better if you have a great machine, but unless you need your games to be an amazing spectacle of visual brilliance it doesn't matter that much. Decking your PC out doesn't make a game better, it just makes it look nicer than on a console. There aren't that many good PC only games anymore outside of RTS's and MMO's, especially ones that would justify sinking loads of money into being able to play super mega graphic intensive games, so there's not a lot of platform exclusivity appeal. And if you usually play vanilla and don't mod your games, that's not an advantage over consoles. And used to be I would say PC has better indie games but thanks to Live Arcade and Playstation Network that's not really true anymore either. ramble ramble cut to the chase console gaming isn't that much worse than pc gaming nowadays.

[b]Owlright wrote:[/b] [quote]ramble ramble cut to the chase console gaming isn't that much worse than pc gaming nowadays.[/quote] Unless you a) care about how the game looks which I think is a bigger thing amongst gamers than you make it out to be, imo, or b) care enough about the gameplay and features to get involved or simply reap the rewards of a mod community. When you have a game like Crysis that puts a Mods menu in the main menu, it's very apparent the miles of difference between console gaming and PC gaming. And it's statistically more likely that your console will crap out on you than your PC. My main gripe is that consoles are severely limited, hardware-wise. However, since most games are developed for consoles nowadays, that means that developers are either forced to dumb down their game by making the graphics crappier, the maps smaller, or a variety of other details are neglected such as destructability of an environment, etc or the developers are allowed to be lazy. Either way, it's the gaming community that suffers by developers developing for consoles.

Bah I covered all that and why console gaming isn't much worse in a lengthy post that I cut down to ramble ramble because I didn't want to wax on forever about games in a netbook thread :P (heads up this one won't be as long or good) PC games look better but the point I was making is that games looking better doesn't make gaming on it actually [i]better[/i] or make PCs more for core gamers and consoles for casual gamers. PC gaming can look better but console gaming, unless it's a really crappy port, still looks really good. At that point, where games across platforms (excluding the Wii from this. all apologies to Nintendo) have reached a definite level of quality in their graphics, it doesn't affect gameplay at all and that's what I care about in games. How [i]good[/i] is the game? A game can look [i]great[/i] but that doesn't mean anything if it's an awful game. And a good game is going to be a good game whether it's on console or on PC. I didn't enjoy playing Portal 2 more on a PC when I did just because it looked a little better than playing it on a Mac (and the Mac graphics were worse than 360 and PS3, both of which were actually pretty comparable to the PC version in a lot of situations and in some situations better). I barely noticed because I was too busy actually enjoying the game. And, like I pointed out and you said, there aren't actually that many games that take advantage of the fact that PCs can look that good. So sinking a ton of money to make sure that maybe one game every couple of years looks incredible is not really practical, imo, and not a selling point for how PCs are better than consoles, especially not to any normal person on a budget who can't afford to spend money on something that won't be taken advantage of. It's not really cost effective gaming. And modding is great. Don't get me wrong. I love mods in my games, personally, and I use them all the time. But a lot of people play games vanilla, even if they do play games on PC, so it's not an automatic advantage over consoles for everyone. It's like saying console gaming is better because you have couch co-op and party games. A great thing in gaming, in my opinion, but that just doesn't float some people's boats so you can't say unequivocally that is something that makes consoles better than PCs. It's just a preference. Potential-wise PCs may be better, realistically in the way they're being used, they're not that much better. What the PC advantage objectively comes down it is graphical capabilities. Better graphics and the abillity to handle some extra things that a console can't, which doesn't even apply to all games across the board. Other things, like keyboard vs controller, the environment you play in (couch/tv versus desk sort of thing), modding (that not every PC gamer does, even core gamers) are all subjective and doesn't necessarily make a PC objectively better. I love PC gaming. I prefer it in a lot of ways. But consoles have their advantages too that do a lot to balance out the advantages PCs have, in my opinion. I don't think it's something where you can objectively say that PC's are better. It's not just about the graphic capabilities of the system. If it were, I would've been rocking a PSP instead of a DS, and the Gamecube would have been a better platform than the PS2 (no disrespect to the Gamecube. I wish I still had one.)