Midwestern Members - Laptop or netbook??

hey guys sorry its been a LONG while it seems since ive been on. school/ clinicals and work own the shit out of me right now. i actually got some chrome rims fpr my car which i will put up later but i digress. im interested in getting a laptop or netbook but i dont really know which direction to go with them. i want it for surfing the net and e-mail (wifi is a must), doing projects on word, playing movies/ hulu/youtube stuff and finally running my video camera programs all for under $500 if possible. i can also work with a USB optical drive for the netbook. so i guess my questions are:

1. are netbooks upgradeable myself? could i swap out the video card and ram myself?

2. are laptops worth the extra money?

3. what are the best quality brands?

Thanks for any help you guys can give!!

Neither have video cards, they are integrated into the motherboard so you can't upgrade that. You can however upgrade the RAM yourself but that is only if they motherboard is able to expand to a higher amount (most cheaper laptops are usually maxed at 2GB from what I've seen) and it will void the warranty if you open it at all.

For processing I would choose a laptop over a netbook because they always have a better processor. I HIGHLY recommend getting a dual core. I'm pretty fond of AMD but Intel will work just fine. other than that it is mostly preference. find what you like and buy it lol. If it were me, like I said, I would get a laptop with adual core AMD and 4 GB of RAM and if you get one with a bit smaller hard drive you should be able to do that for just around 500 dollars depending on where you go. I don't know how close to Cincinnati you are, but there is a store there called "Microcenter" that is reasonably priced on laptops. If those prices aren't good for you PM me and I can give you the name of a web site that I bought the majority of my stuff for my company (RIP.. Lol) and those prices are damn near wholesale lol.

Hope I could help!

yeah there a microcenter about 15 min from my house, in just outside of columbus. i was kinda looking at these two:

http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0320342
- not much battery life with this one, but has windows 7 and AMD dual core
http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0317083
- good battery life, but comes with shitty vista, though not a huge deal as long as i can swith to windows 7 easily

which would you say is the better of the two? i know jack shit about computers really aside from the very basics. i may want that web site just to check it out and see what they got!! thanks again!!

PM sent

if you plan on using your computer for anything other than web surfing/ notes i would definately go with a laptop. I have both, and i love my netbook since its so portable I can just take it to class with me for notes facebook or whatever.... but I definately wouldn't want it to be my only computer. on the other if you already have another computer then i would highly reccomend a notebook since you can get them for soooooooo cheap nowadays.... i would watch www.techbargains.com , you can usually find netbooks on there for ~$200

how easy is it to get a battery with more life for a laptop? im assuming i can just buy one. the netbook i was looking at easily went 6-8 hrs depending on the setting you were on. i geuss a laptop is using a lot more juice though....

it is hard to get long life out of those batteries because a computer takes up alot of power.. but I think they are rated for 4-6 hours of continuous use. I'm sure that you aren't using it for 4 hours at a time haha

lol true enough i just dont want to be charging it all the time.