Netbooks: Economical Computing Option or a Waste of Money?

The Mini 9 beside a 13" MacBook.
Image by InfoMofo via Flickr

"Your computer is so cute!"
This is what a random stranger on the train told me today. It is not the first time.

I wouldn't normally think of computers as cute, but in this case it's an understandable comment because my new computer is a netbook–tiny, functional, inexpensive, and yes, cute.

There are several good netbooks on the market now, but the cheapest one I could find with all the functionality I need is the Dell Mini 9.

It's no longer a big decision whether to take my laptop with me when I leave home because instead of nine pounds of computer and battery pack hogging all the space in my bag and killing my shoulder, it's a barely noticeable 2.38 pounds that takes up no more space than a book–why not bring it? I can do research on the train, take notes at the library, check my e-mail in between classes, chat with a friend if I get stuck in a waiting room somewhere....

By the way, this is not a paid post or a plug for Dell. It's just my own independent review.

Pros
Granted, the Mini 9 is no good for running any applications that use up a lot of memory, but when I'm traveling or just out and about, I don't tend to use those anyway. Besides all the standard package applications you'd expect a computer to come with, the Linux version I have comes with OpenOffice (pretty much the same as the MS Office suite), a decent music player, an easy to use browser (just like Firefox) and chat application, and some others that I haven't used yet. Really, that's all I need.

I was worried the keyboard would be too small to type on comfortably, but after a day or two I was completely used to it. I can see how it might be cramped, however, for people with large hands.

The screen is great, no different from my iMac, just smaller, but the touchpad is uber-sensitive and even seems to pick up my finger hovering over it. That might cause some problems, but since I much prefer to use a mouse anyway it's not really an issue for me.

The AC adapter is delightfully small and light, it charges quickly, and the battery holds for about 3-4 hours of steady use (so far). Also, the internal wireless works great–it can pick up a much better signal than my old laptop.

Cons
Obviously netbooks, with less memory and less capacity, have significantly less functionality than regular laptops, but as I've said that doesn't much bother me.

The Mini 9 has three USB ports and a multi card reader, as well as a VGA slot, and an Ethernet port, neither of which I'll ever use. The model I have only comes with 1 Gig of memory, so that may be an issue in the future when it starts filling up. But that's where USB jump drives and memory cards come in.

The only thing I've really missed so far is being able to burn to and read from CDs and DVDs (i.e. transferring music isn't easy and there will be no movie-watching on that long plane ride). I haven't tried to plug my iPod in yet, but I'm interested to see if it'll be compatible with the no-name music software.

And of course, the tiny display takes some getting used to. I definitely have to do more scrolling than usual.

Bottom Line
At just over $200 (including a nice sleeve), I think the Mini 9 is a steal. It's the portability that makes it worth it. And it's pretty sleek looking, so that doesn't hurt either. I'm really glad I didn't spend $1200 on a normal-sized notebook I'd only use for internet, music, and writing anyway. I wouldn't recommend it for a main computer–its functionality is too limited–but for travelers and people on the go, it's solid. By the way, guess where I'm blogging from? That's right. Roughly 55 sq. in. of adorable.

If you use a netbook or have considered one, let us know what you think about it. Leave a comment below.


Update: Thanks to Greener Pastures for including this post in The Money Hacks Carnival #59 - The Duct Tape Edition.

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Reviews: Online Money Mgmt Tools: Mint, Quicken, and Rudder

A couple weeks ago I reviewed Mint.com, but I've recently been trying out two other free online money management tools, Rudder and Quicken.

Here's the rundown:


Speed
Of the three sites, Rudder loads and updates the quickest, and it's also the fastest at adding new accounts. (Mint is the slowest--it's kind of a pain.)

Account support
As I mentioned in my review of Mint, I can't for the life of me add my Dollar Savings account, even though their support team says it's been fixed. It must be something with the DS login system because Quicken doesn't support it either. Rudder technically does support it, much like Mint, and it even found and added my account. The problem? None of the info loads. Obviously, not very helpful.

As for types of accounts supported, Mint still comes out on top. Mint and Quicken both support various types of bank accounts, credit cards, and even PayPal! Very cool. But Mint is the only one that supports my Nelnet student loans. Rudder again, falls short as it only supports bank and credit card accounts. I did manage to add my Nelnet account, but it shows up all wacky because Rudder categorizes it as a credit card.

Interface
Rudder's interface is the least intuitive, and incidentally, the least functional. It offers no budgeting capabilities, which is my favorite thing about Mint. Quicken has good budgeting features, but they don't display as nicely as Mint--you can't see all your categories at the same time. Also, the Trends section of Quicken seems to be off--at least in my case, the graphs are highly inaccurate.

My verdict: I'm sticking with Mint, at least for now. It's definitely the most functional. And I like the interface a lot more than Quicken.

Review: Credit Karma

CreditKarma.com is a site that lets you check your credit score instantly for free--no strings attached. You don't get to see your actual report, but you can track your credit score over time by checking it as often as you'd like.

And no, contrary to rumor, checking your own credit score does not affect your credit score or negatively affect your credit in any way. No worries.

I for one can see no downside to using CreditKarma. It's quick, easy, completely free, and totally useful. I highly recommend it.

After you receive your score, they'll display a list of offers from various partner companies: credit cards, banks, internet service providers, etc. None of the offers are exclusive--you can find them elsewhere, but many of them are worth checking out. For instance, there's an offer from Comcast for cable i-net @ $19.99/month for the first six months. This is a great deal. I've done it before (it's ongoing), and it's totally worth it, especially if Comcast is the only cable company in your area. (I wouldn't recommend them otherwise. They've got lousy customer service and their normal rates are ridiculous. But if you don't have an alternative anyway and want a fat discount, there you go. My roommates and I rotate the bill into each of our names every six months to keep the deal going. This is somewhat cheating, yes, but we certainly don't feel bad.

CreditKarma's site also has some helpful credit-related articles that are worth checking out. Head on over, get educated, and keep an eye on your credit score.

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Review: Mint.com, free online personal finance service

If you haven’t heard of it yet, Mint.com is a free, online personal finance service (and according to their "About" page, “#1 in America”) that organizes all your bank accounts, loans, and investments—including retirement plans, brokerage accounts, vehicles, and real estate—in a place where you can view them all together. You can’t actually conduct transactions through Mint, but it allows you to use one login to view all the transactions, balances, etc. of all your accounts and to categorize your transactions for budgeting purposes. It can make organizing your tax deductions a hell of a lot easier, too, since you can tag your transactions as tax-related so that when you’re ready to file, you can easily find and list them all. And did I mention it’s totally free (and without any annoying ads or pop-ups)? I’ve been using it since November, and for the most part, I’m a fan.

Services
The most valuable service Mint offers is its highly visual budgeting features. It’s quick and easy to set up your own categories and specify spending limits for each category. Once you’ve done that (providing you do a good job of categorizing your transactions), Mint creates a bar graph of your spending for each month and even a date marker so you can see how much of your budget you’ve spent proportional to the time length of the budget. I find this very helpful in preventing the easy trap of overspending early in the month that leaves you without enough budget to get through the rest of the month. If you want, you can also have Mint send you alerts when, for example, you’ve gone over budget, your credit card bill is due, or one of your accounts has a low balance.

There’s also a Flash-powered pie chart you can view under the “Trends” tab that shows how much you’ve spent in each category (even in ones you didn’t list in your budget) relative to the total amount you’ve spent. This is a helpful feature, but it can be misleading because it doesn’t account for returns, refunds, or other income that specifically offsets your spending in a certain area. I’ll talk more about this towards the end of the article.

How can it be free?
Mint makes its money from referrals to banks, investments brokers, and credit card companies through the “Your Ways to Save” bar, which is unobtrusively placed at the bottom of the overview screen. If you’re interested, click on it and see what kind of deals Mint is advocating; they only suggest accounts that are “better” than your current accounts of that type in interest rate, cash rewards, etc. Of course, if you’ve already done your homework and gotten accounts with the best deals for you¹, Mint’s sponsored suggestions might not offer much improvement. Personally, I check the suggestions every once in a while, just in case they’ve found something I haven’t, but for the most part I ignore them.

Room for Improvement
I only have a few complaints about Mint’s services. First and most importantly, there are a few banks/investment companies they don’t connect with. They’re constantly adding connectivity, so hopefully this won’t be a problem for much longer, but at the moment it’s quite frustrating. I have my savings account with Dollar Savings Direct, and while Mint has recently added a link and form with which to add accounts from that bank, the link doesn’t work. (The error seems to have something to do with the way the Dollar Savings login page works, which is fairly complicated.) Not being able to add one of your accounts to Mint really screws up its functionality because you’re missing a big part of the equation.

There are two other malfunctions on Mint that are troubling as well. One is that, in my experience at least, sometimes the category labels you attach to individual transactions revert to default. I don’t know why this happens, and it doesn’t happen often, but when it does it’s definitely aggravating. The second is that there seems to be a fairly sizable delay in the display of transactions; transactions will show up on the online banking pages of my account institutions as much as two days before they show up on my Mint page.

This last complaint is more of a suggestion for added functionality than a gripe about existing malfunctions. As I mentioned earlier, several factors can throw off the pie chart, including returns and refunds. This problem could be solved easily by offering an option to factor in categorized “income” (or have it done automatically). It would also be nice to have an option to view a pie chart of average monthly spending by category and to be able to view or exclude selected categories from the mix.



[1] See the specific suggestions and how-to’s for each type of account on TiredofBeingPoor.net