Nikulas

This review is long overdue. I was busy and lazy, but it’s more on the latter.

I bought a netbook October last year so that I could have my own portable computer. We already have a very basic PC in the house, but my brother and sister and mother and cousins and people all over the universe use it.  It is extremely annoying to discover one day that you can only view pages on half of your browser’s window because countless toolbars were installed, unknowingly, by your kin. They just blindly accept the ToS of whatever program they downloaded and choose the recommended installing option which involves adding a shortcut in the desktop, a shortcut in the taskbar, a shortcut in the Start Menu, a search bar on your browser using the program’s partner search engine; allowing the program’s official website to take over your default homepage, inserting a slab of a toolbar in all of your browsers, installation of an anti-virus program and many more of similar nonsense. Aside from that, it’s time to purchase my own computer because I receive from and send sensitive data to my clients.

Now, I already know what I was looking for before purchasing Samsung NP305U1A. I heavily considered ThinkPad X120e for its no-nonsense look and rugged built, however, it is not available in the Philippines. You can buy this netbook from online merchants but the price is almost doubled it’s highway robbery.

You may be thinking why I chose to purchase a netbook instead of a full-fledged laptop. First, I don’t like carrying around heavy things. According to Ryan Bingham in the movie Up in the Air, “The slower we move, the faster we die.” Second, I am not a programmer, i3/i5/i7 processors will be such a waste of energy and processing power. I don’t winrar large chunks of files. I don’t encode and edit videos, create music or anything that puts a heavy load in the processor. I just write. That’s it. Lastly, I’m on a budget. I no longer benefit from any kind of financial support from my family and that started RIGHT AFTER my college graduation.

My life is on me now.

Aside from ThinkPad X120e, I also considered ASUS 1215B. But during that time, it is not yet available and I had to have a portable computer immediately to bring with me to my vacation in Boracay. YEY!

Also, HP dm1z received a lot of praise and is considered the best of its class, hence I wanted to purchase one. It was such a close call, but it has three things I really hate: the touchpad from hell, the glossy finish and screen, and it is an HP product.

Now, let’s stop rationalizing the greatness of my netbook by shooting down its competition. It’s time to talk about my netbook. Before we start, I call my Samsung NP305U1A, Bestfriend. So I’ll be using Bestfriend instead of Samsung NP305U1A to cut things short.

Build Quality

I don’t quite understand why people love their gadgets being glossy. Glossy finish makes the device a fingerprint magnet, a smudge festival. Well, in some degree I do understand the love for everything glossy when it comes to laptops’ body but, for your eyes sake, not the SCREEN. First, glossy screens are of lower quality. Manufacturers use it to cheap out on you, people. Bestfriend has matte screen and matte finish from lid to everything. It has this aluminum finish that makes the netbook look expensive.

However, it’s made of plastic. It’s not the worst kind of plastic out there but it will suffer in the hands of people like me. I just throw my netbook on my bed or on the couch. I just smack it inside my backpack. I bought a sleeve yesterday because it has scratches on the lid already. The scratches are barely noticeable but should I wait for them to be noticeable?

Keyboard, Touchpad and Screen

These are what I was looking for a netbook:

• A matte screen, so that I won’t be blinded by white light when I use my netbook outdoors.
• A great keyboard, for typing thousands of words for thousands of Pesos.
• A great touchpad, so that I won’t get irritated by the cursor flying all over the screen because it’s too sensitive or dragging it down from one place to another because it’s too insensitive.

Bestfriend has amazing island keyboard that doesn’t show any flex at all. It all also has rubbery feel so it feels good typing on it. The touchpad is your basic touchpad. It’s large and responsive, it’s perfect. Bestfriend has multitouch support, but it’s sketchy at best.

The screen is at 1366×768 resolution, it could be better but I can’t complain. It’s not hideously glossy so it is not hurting my eyes. The bezel also is thin since Samsung rammed in a 12-inch screen on an 11.6″ netbook.

Processor , Graphics and Sounds

I also made sure the netbook I’ll be purchasing is armed with AMD Zacate processor. This is AMD’s combo of processor+GPU in one. Bestfriend has E-450 clocked at 1.6GHz paired with Radeon HD 6320 enough for me to play NBA 2k12 in low settings but more importantly can handle heavy Flash gaming. I work as a quality control at ArcadePreHacks.com as well as two other Flash-based browser games portal.

I play a minimum of 10 Flash games per day so a capable graphics solution is mandatory. However, I failed to recognize this: I am a multitasker. I open a lot of tabs, listen to music, play Flash games, write documents, use spreadsheets, edit ID3 tags, download large files via Orbit, watch video clips, capture screenshots using SnagIt, chat through Skype, stalk people in Facebook; all of these at the same time. The E-450 and 2GB of RAM cannot handle such set of daily activities. I could change my ways, but I can’t, huhu.

The speaker is ok. It is not the best, but it is not bad either. It’s below average leaning to average.

Connectivities

Bestfriend has all the necessary ports, 3 x USB 2.0 (one of which is powered for charging gadgets through USB even if the netbook is shut down), Ethernet and HDMI. A USB 3.0 should have been included. The inclusion of HDMI is great, however, I don’t have an HDTV yet so it sits useless as of this moment. There is Bluetooth and card reader too. Very handy.

Software and Battery Life

This is where problems came crashing in. Bestfriend is powered with a 3-cell battery life for a God-awful three hours of autonomy. My previous laptop, MSI EX460, just gave me around 2 hours of battery life, so I thought this won’t be an issue. It is, actually. It’s just annoying to be looking for the charger and the nearest outlet every three hours. This greatly disturbs me from my favorite working position, lying down on my bed. Recent units of Samsung NP305U1A is now available with 6-cell battery. The hell with you Samsung.

That three hours is not three hours exactly, sometimes I get only two hours, sometimes three hours and a half. But on average, it is around two hours and forty minutes of autonomy.

Bestfriend, out of the box, is running on the worst combination of OS and hardware ever conceived in mobile computing history: Windows 7 Home Basic 64-bit on a machine with 2GB of RAM. Seriously!!! COME ON! Installing a 64-bit version of a mightily crippled OS on a machine with 2GB of RAM is like moronic across the board. Plus, Bestfriend come with bloatwares pre-installed like Norton, Samsung Services, etc, etc. I reinstalled a fresh OS of Windows 7 Home Premium from my old laptop so that I could finally use Bestfriend without it slowing down to the pace of bureaucracy.

Warranties and Freebies

I bought Bestfriend with the Kuya Salesperson throwing in a free gaming mouse worth around 200 Pesos. The mouse is nothing special. The unit also comes with a laptop bag that is too girlie for my taste and gave it away immediately to my sister. The usual 1-year  full warranty comes and a seven-day unit replacement warranty was promised. Bestfriend did not come with factory defects so I didn’t have to use the latter.

Price 

This is the first ever purchase of mine that breaks my college career monthly allowance exponentially at 22,000 Pesos in cold hard-earned cash. Samsung NP305U1A is now available around 19,000 with six-cell battery. I hate you world.

Therefore, I conclude 

Bestfriend is a good netbook that rightfully serves its purpose. I haven’t used the 500 GB HDD (I really prefer SSD, even if it’s only 160GB, I’d take it) much since I use this netbook mostly for work. It is a must-buy if you want quality netbook with a sufficient power for your basic needs. This is on the premium side, there are cheaper netbooks with the same capabilities but it’s hard to find a netbook of this price range with matte screen.