Netbooks; anyone used 'em with their cameras?

[yalborap]

So, I'm hoping against all hope to get a netbook over the next few weeks, what with Christmas and my birthday almost right after.

For those who don't know, a netbook is a new class of laptop. Small, cheap, and weak, they are doing what the ultra-mobile PC class tried to do and failed. They're rapidly becoming very popular due to being inexpensive but fully functional computers you can practically stash in a cargo pants pocket.

I'm curious as to how these handle photo stuff, especially RAW files of 6+ MP. I'm doubting they'd handle it that well, but hey, you never know, right?

Thanks in advance for any info you can offer.

[Car2n]

I've considered them for shooting tethered but the problem I see is the screen resolution. At only 600px high some software will not run namely Canon Digital Photo professional. They would have plenty of processing power as far as I can tell.
I have room in my bag and would opt for a 13 or 14 inch for the same price. I have a 10" DVD player that I've used for viewing photos and the 10" is not really very large in real world use.

[KodiakStar]

You can work with them, but you would have to pump up the RAM in them.

I have a MSI Wind, (Atom, 1GB RAM), and it works with my jpgs at aroudn 6-7GB... but it gets a little slow. Used GIMP on it. With Photoshop I would imagine it would be horridly slow.

Screen size is a bit of a pain, but all the edits I did look fine when looking at a bigger monitor later.

The key is, you can do it, but should only be if you really want to, or if you have no other choice.

[nicotine]

The major problem I see with them is that if you are on a big shoot working with a lot of images, those small solid-state hard drives aren't going to cut it in terms of storage space and you're going to need some form of external storage, killing the portability of the small laptop.

For a mobile work station I'd personally go for a 13 inch notebook of some sort, such as a Macbook.

[KodiakStar]

Not all of them have SSHD's the wind comes with a "standard" drive

[Jim Bryant]

Go check out MacMall at http://www.macmall.com/. They are offering low prices on their mac laptop's.

[inkista]

Yeah, except a Mac notebook goes in the $1k+ price range.

A netbook's in the $250-$500 price range. You can buy them at Target or Costco.

I've got a MacBook, but I got a netbook as a toy/hobby box for myself for Christmas (since it's what all the cool kids were getting ). It's a $350 Asus EEE 904HA (1.6GHz Atom, 160GB hard drive, Windows XP Home) that I really was only planning on using as photo storage during travel. But, just for jollies after reading this post, I downloaded the Lightroom trial version, and popped in the SD card from my G9 (that's 12MP RAW), just to see.

It's surprisingly usable, but I'd probably limit myself to basic editing (i.e., pick/reject, tagging), and leave the serious post-processing stuff for a larger screen. It's still a little cramped, tiny, and slow. So, as a primary photo editing box, I'd say it's not an ideal choice, but it's kinda/sorta (just) doable. Not particularly comfortable, though.

[yalborap]

Yeah, I wouldn't be doing MAJOR work on this or anything. Just looking at the images and such, you know?

[klew]

I would happily use it as a travel and photo storage unit. Take it on trips so if something happens, it's not as expensive as a full size laptop. Plus you can do all the normal busywork on it, like internet and productivity (though the keyboards tend to be smaller. I would avoid the SSD units, as the hard drive space is much too small for photo offloading (often no more than 16GB). One thing that surprises some people is that they have no optical disc drive.

[inkista]

Yes, you find yourself using SD cards and USB sticks in ways you never thought you would. Unetbootin is your friend, if you're a Linux geek.

If you do get an SSD netbook, though, you can always use a USB external drive for photos.