If the A20 has a three-cell battery, I would think that 3.5 hours of battery life would be about what you’d expect. If you want more runtime, ask if you could upgrade to six-cell.

I agree with everything else you say. I payed $200 for my refurbed netbook, and I’ll be happy if it makes it for two years. Then I’ll have the choice of a new battery for a 100, or a full netbook, much better than the old one, for 200. Decisions, decisions

I fail to see the issue with SSD’s. Modern hard drives are not that unreliable. A netbook won’t last forever. The lithion-ion battery will eventually wear out, you’ll probably break some of the keys banging on them or spilling food on them eventually, the various sockets will eventually break from plugging in and removing cords, etc. A better idea is to buy cheap and then plan to replace when it breaks. $259 is quite cheap.

The one thing that doesn’t work on the Dell Mini10V is the 4-in-1 card reader (SDHC, etc). It sort-of works, but then stops working. I don’t need this thing, so it doesn’t matter to me. Maybe there is a fix out there. The Broadcom wireless might require some tweaking during installation–there is a huge amount of documentation on this in the help forums. I recommend creating your own syndaemon start-up, with a 10 second or more timeout, rather than using the built-in vesion, which hardcodes the timeout at .5 seconds (yes, half a second). This is a Ubuntu bug, nothing to do with Dell, but it is annoying as hell given how close the Dell touchpad is to the keyboard. I use a USB RF mouse myself, and so disable the touchpad entirely with a start-up app (synclient TouchpadOff=1). If I really need the touchpad (because the mouse is missing) I can also re-enable using the keyboard.

The last person asked about the keyboard. I’m pretty happy with my dell keyboard and I’m a touch typist from way back. It took a week or so to get used to the new layout, but that’s been true of every laptop I’ve every bought. Most of the manufacturers offer a photo of the keyboard online, so you can see how the special keys are arranged, which is what matters. I’m assuming you get at least a 10″ screen (keyboard 90% of full-size). Keyboards on the smaller models are going to be quite cramped if you have big men’s hands, like me.

You can get EeePC’s without Windows so I recommend checking them as a starting point.

Dell isn’t a terrible option if you know your way around their site. You can actually configure the Mini 10vn with 2GB if you order it through the Dell Business division. Currently your spec plus the 2GB upgrade comes to $359. Sounds like a better option than your alternatives.

http://www.dell.com/content/products/RBIredirect.aspx?rbi=EESJuqJJunKzV5pVrEFOw3wYxiHXb2uK9L/JIV67WOU3UkEJeYpQS9tWl0gNmEwJ+ZN+mAnfTBzucYifbs+ZgMf9zjNU0SGjp/CwTvdf7fMTcDmUSnmNiteLjRLlQa8r5XZFM45AgQg1/mYFpICVQU8Kl96X6Si35EbG1U0BTLI=

How’d I get here?
Dell.com
“For Small and Medium Business”
“Laptops and Netbooks”
(Choose 10v)
Click Ubuntu build in the far left column

Thanks Dell. None of these options effect the ability of the system to run Linux. Heck the wireless option actually limits it quite a bit if past experience with Dell’s wireless offerings is any indication. I will stick with Intel wireless thank you very much (An option on most other “Business” oriented models like my Latitude).

In my view Dell is only playing lip service to the Linux crowd.

Charlie