Top Netbook Buys for Christmas 2009

The Eee PC 1005HA is Asus' major bet in the Windows 7-powered netbook battle. It is preloaded with Windows 7 Starter Edition complimenting some great features that the Eee PC family of netbooks has been known for. This netbook's major attraction aside from Windows 7 is of course its stunning design and form factor. Just imagine a real-life seashell transformed into portable computing machine and you'll have the Eee PC 1005HA-P Seashell.

As for its specs and features, the Eee PC 1005HA-P is among Asus' best featured Eee PC. It has a 92-percent scaled keyboard, multi-touch trackpad, and instant keys for quick access to Wi-Fi and Asus proprietary Super Hybrid Engine. This netbook also boasts of 10 hours of battery life making it a perfect machine for the modern-day digital nomad.

Other features of the Eee PC 1005HA-P include - 10.1-inch LED-backlit display, 250 GB of HDD with 500GB free online storage,1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 CPU, 1GB of RAM and 0.3MP webcam. (Price: $381.46)

Personally, I didn't expect Toshiba to come up with such a great netbook that could compete with the likes of Asus and Acer. But they actually did release a great netbook in the Toshiba NB205. Never mind if Toshiba didn't bother to upgrade the NB205 netbook to Windows 7 yet. I'm pretty sure you can easily do that if you get the Windows 7 OEM. Weighing just under 3 pounds, the Toshiba NB 205 has a full-sized keyboard and touchpad, long battery life, USB sleep-and-charge ports and a hard drive impact sensor that offers full protection for your data. It's battery life is surprisingly at 9.5 hours max. Design-wise, the Toshiba NB205 has a form factor that could easily compete with the nice-looking netbooks available in the market today. It has a brilliant high-gloss fusion finish in Black Onyx that emits a classic professional look.

A quick rundown of the Toshiba NB205's specs will give us the following - Intel Atom N280 1.6GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM, 160GB of HDD, Wi-Fi, SD memory card slot, and fast ethernet. Lest we forget, this netbook's RAM is upgradeable to 2GB. So that gives you an open option to make it perform even better. (Price: $349.99)

Another unexpected netbook that is doing good in the market today is the Samsung N110. The N110 netbook is Samsung's follow-up to the outstanding NC10 netbook. Samsung made some strides and improved its netbook offering by leaps and bounds over its predecessor. The Samsung N110 is definitely lightweight at 2.8 pounds. But that doesn't mean that this netbook has very few goodies in store. On the contrary it is packed with quite a lot of nifty features. These include a 10.1-inch LED-backlit Superbright screen, 93% full-size keyboard and a 6-cell battery that provides up to 9 hours of good use.

Other features and specs include - 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, integrated 1.3MP webcam, and the usual 1GB of RAM and 160GB of HDD, USB ports, and multi-card reader. The Samsung N110 also comes with a VGA output that lets you connect with an external monitor.