4 ms·

I am thinking of getting either an Asus Eee or HP Mini. Does anyone have any experience playing Hulu or other flash sites on one of these? How does it compare?

by nutmeg 18y ago

willwagner 18y ago
FWIW, I really love my Acer Aspire One which I've been using for 6 months or so. I'm not an active Hulu user but I did just give it a try and watched about 5 minutes of Family Guy without incident; your mileage may vary. Originally, I picked it up just to satisfy my inner geek and thought it might be good for my 7 year old daughter. On that score, it sucks because educational/kids games just can't handle the small screen. I can play a mean game of desktop tower defense or a few goodoldgames.com games, but as a gaming machine, you'll be disappointed. I use it mostly for surfing the web, skyping, and watching video while traveling, and it works great. I bought a 3rd party battery off ebay and can literally run it for 6 hours watching video which covers most of the travel I've had to do. When around the house, I tend to use it more than our other laptop; it's just so light and easy to carry from room to room, I prefer it for short stints of web surfing. It's also fairly hackable; I have it running linux, winxp, and MacOS (although I did replace the wireless card to get it working properly). My wife is going to give it a go for a couple weeks to see if she can effectively use it to replace her laptop at work. With the slightly smaller keyboard and less than stellar mouse, I don't think it would be good for 8 hours of office work alone, but when connected to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, it might work for her and you can't beat how much lighter it is to lug around. I think the sweet spot of the market is teens and college students who don't care about video gaming. With it's long battery life and small size, it would be awesome for taking notes in class, and be good enough in a dorm room with an external monitor and keyboard, for most other non-gaming use. You also can't beat the price albeit for $200 more or so, you can get a pretty decent laptop these days (or if you are like me and buy extra junk like a battery, external dvd reader, and a wifi card, it's almost a wash).
bayleo 18y ago
I'd wait on your purchase... the current models will handle 360p okay via Hulu but will lag noticeably while trying to run fullscreen or even windowed 480p. I really think the next major selling point for netbooks will prove to be more HD video capabilities. VIA and Habey have already introduced hardware decoders (the VX855 and BIS-6550HD, respectively) that are able to handle 1080p. These or something similar could easily be included in next-gen netbooks.

I am thinking of getting either an Asus Eee or HP Mini. Does anyone have any experience playing Hulu or other flash sites on one of these? How does it compare?

by nutmeg 18y ago

I am thinking of getting either an Asus Eee or HP Mini. Does anyone have any experience playing Hulu or other flash sites on one of these? How does it compare?

willwagner 18y ago

FWIW, I really love my Acer Aspire One which I've been using for 6 months or so. I'm not an active Hulu user but I did just give it a try and watched about 5 minutes of Family Guy without incident; your mileage may vary. Originally, I picked it up just to satisfy my inner geek and thought it might be good for my 7 year old daughter. On that score, it sucks because educational/kids games just can't handle the small screen. I can play a mean game of desktop tower defense or a few goodoldgames.com games, but as a gaming machine, you'll be disappointed. I use it mostly for surfing the web, skyping, and watching video while traveling, and it works great. I bought a 3rd party battery off ebay and can literally run it for 6 hours watching video which covers most of the travel I've had to do. When around the house, I tend to use it more than our other laptop; it's just so light and easy to carry from room to room, I prefer it for short stints of web surfing. It's also fairly hackable; I have it running linux, winxp, and MacOS (although I did replace the wireless card to get it working properly). My wife is going to give it a go for a couple weeks to see if she can effectively use it to replace her laptop at work. With the slightly smaller keyboard and less than stellar mouse, I don't think it would be good for 8 hours of office work alone, but when connected to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, it might work for her and you can't beat how much lighter it is to lug around. I think the sweet spot of the market is teens and college students who don't care about video gaming. With it's long battery life and small size, it would be awesome for taking notes in class, and be good enough in a dorm room with an external monitor and keyboard, for most other non-gaming use. You also can't beat the price albeit for $200 more or so, you can get a pretty decent laptop these days (or if you are like me and buy extra junk like a battery, external dvd reader, and a wifi card, it's almost a wash).

bayleo 18y ago

I'd wait on your purchase... the current models will handle 360p okay via Hulu but will lag noticeably while trying to run fullscreen or even windowed 480p. I really think the next major selling point for netbooks will prove to be more HD video capabilities. VIA and Habey have already introduced hardware decoders (the VX855 and BIS-6550HD, respectively) that are able to handle 1080p. These or something similar could easily be included in next-gen netbooks.