Please recommend a durable Netbook

Hi there,


So I travel around the world with my rucksack on my back, I never stay in any place that long, so obviously a lot of roughing it etc. Anyway I need a Netbook. It needs to be small, lightweight and be able to take a lot of knocks and bangs and of course be a great, fast, dependable device.

I know ..... I'm not asking a lot

I don't play videogames, I do use a voice recognition program (Dragon NaturallySpeaking) the Internet of course, Word documents, Skype, Photoshop and torrent the occasional file. That's about it really!

So please could someone tell me what they recommend for this situation?

I'm from the UK


kind regards Gin

 

Sorry to burst your bubble, I think laptops should be dealt with reasonable care, no matter how sturdy it is built. Why? Its durability is limited by the storage you use. I mean, laptops can withstand huge drops without breaking and still be on one piece, but not so for the hard drive. Good thing SSDs have more shock resistance than HDDs, so I strongly suggest an SSD to better protect your data. So yeah, any netbook will do, but just make sure it has an SSD installed. Cheers!

 

Asus Zenbook is up the alley of what you may be looking for, but as spence pointed out, it's better to look for a system you plan to take care of rather than one that can go through fighting tournaments and still work ok.

You might want to look at a product line called the Panasonic Toughbook which is designed for your request, albeit the prices are much higher than laptops, ultrabooks, or netbooks significantly.

 

Assuming the thing will not be suffering from knocks and bangs while you are using it maybe you should be looking more into hard, rugged, industrial level protection cases, something like the ViVAX laptop case. They have a video of a car running over one of their cases and the laptop inside being pretty much intact.

They are expensive though, but not THAT much, a laptop case will set you back around 150$, considering all the protection that they offer I think that it is a good deal. They are even waterproof if I remember correctly.

No laptop is going to survive much if you kick it around when using it and it is outside the case.