Netbook hacking

[NoSpoon]

hey everyone, this is my first post, although i have been lurking here for a while.

I was wondering if anyone had an opinion on netbooks for hacking. do they have enough processing power? what is the best brand? etc, any opinion would be helpful, at the end of the summer i'm probably going to be getting a cheap laptop for notes in classes at college that's smaller than the large laptop i have now, and i don't know too much about netbooks. wondering if a netbook will cut it for note taking or if i should just spend teh extra few hundred and get a lower end laptop.

any opinions?

[fashizzlepop]

Check out Eee PCs. They are pretty powerful (enough for most hacking, you aren't going to run super powerful programs on it), they are light, they are reasonably priced and you can run Linux or windows on it. I suggest Linux of course.

[cilpolir]

what kind of hacking?
for example:If you're into wardriving(-walking,-sitting,-etc.),keep in mind that you need to look for a wireless card that can inject packages.

[msbachman]

My sister bought a laptop on sale from walmart that competed in price with most netbooks. Just under $200.

Honestly, there's little that you can't do with a laptop/netbook that you can do with a desktop. I stay away from them personally for the following reasons:
a) less serviceable
b) can't custom-build them (I can't at least)
c) no need for mobility

If you're like me and dirt poor, I'd just as well buy the cheapest thing you can find. Make sure if you put linux on it maybe dd an image of whatever came on the laptop for safe-keeping. A lot of the cost of laptops/netbooks must come from licensing Windows (I think), so even if you prefer Linux there's no sense in throwing away something that you payed for.

Protip: look into imaging the os that comes on the laptop and adding it as a virtual machine under Virtualbox (or something analogous) under Linux!