So, my current computer is on it's last legs, and I'm planning on replacing it with a desktop and a netbook. I pretty much know what I want in a desktop, so my question concerns the netbook. I'll be going to grad school in physics in a couple years, so essentially all I need it to do is get on the internet, write LaTeX stuff and do some light programming (The desktop will handle anything more complicated than that). Also, I'll be putting Linux on it (probably Mint or Ubuntu, but I'm open to suggestions). Does anyone have any brands/models they'd recommend? I've heard good things about Asus and Lenovo, and would like to avoid HP. I'd like to spend less that $500 if possible.

Also, it must have a keyboard that's reasonably comfortable to use.

At that price range you'll easily be able to find either a laptop or a netbook that fits your bill.

The remaining questions are battery life, weight, and keyboard size. To find out what keyboard sizes you find comfortable, I say just go to a store, try out a few different sizes typing and see what you like. Battery life generally goes up as screen size goes down (though if there's a discrepancy in battery cell count, that's not true). Weight is another thing that generally is related to screen size, though not necessarily (there are some heavy small laptops out there).

I know you said "no HP," but a friend of mine just got http://www.amazon.com/HP-DM1-4170US-11-6-Inch-Laptop-Charcoal/dp/B006OEL9S8, and I have to say that I was impressed with it. Only very slightly larger than a netbook, battery goes 7-8 hours, dual core i3 processor, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD. For a unit that size the keyboard on it is great...it doesn't feel like a compact keyboard at all. I'm sure you could find something cheaper with similar specs and a larger size. Depends on how important a compact form factor is to you.

I know someone else that recently bought an Asus laptop for under $500, but I don't remember which model it is. He likes it, but the first one he ordered had a light splotch in the middle of the LCD, and the replacement had a good number of stuck pixels. That, of course, isn't to say that all Asus laptops have screen issues, but I thought it was interesting.

Eh, I'd have to side with the OP to stay away from HP. They've got pretty shoddy QC on their consumer-grade laptops IMO, and it shows up in how long their laptops last. When dealing with ultraportables/netbooks I'd say it's even more important since ultraportables/netbooks are more likely to have heat issues and other problems than full-sized laptops due to their compact nature.

Also, i3 is a misnomer in that thing as it's extremely underclocked to the point it gets half the performance of the standard laptop i3, only slightly outperforming an Atom.

Got a 14.1'' one at work for $350 (with an anytime upgrade for Pro, which made the total $420). Light for a 14.1 inch, has i3, 4 gigs, 500 GB hdd, and the best touchpad I've ever used (It didn't drive me bonkers!). They skimped on the battery life though, only a four-cell (that said, it still manages around 4 hours of use) and there's a bunch of junk installed by default on it (not an issue if you're wiping it with a linux distro).

It was this: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Asus+-+14%22+Laptop+-+4GB+Memory+-+500GB+Hard+Drive+-+Black/3672031.p?id=1218425883601&skuId=3672031

Well of course it's not going to be on-par with a desktop replacement or a desktop i3. It's a CPU for an ultra-portable. It certainly performs better than AMD's E-series of ultra-portable processors. Which Atom comes close? The brand new ones? Last time I checked (which was the last generation of Atom) the Atom platform wasn't coming anywhere close to this in CPU or (especially) GPU performance. I saw this thing running Portal 2 pretty well...I've never seen an Atom do that.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Atom-N570-Notebook-Processor.44429.0.html

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Core-i3-2367M-Notebook-Processor.64165.0.html

So, it spanks the Atom N570 handily...it's about 3x the computing power.

As far as HP QC, I don't know. I've never owned an HP machine, but I haven't heard of QC issues with them any more than any other low-price portable. The only issue I've heard much about is with the drive protection tech that can cause the HDD to act funny if you don't disable it.

Which CPU is it? In my experience it's rare for machines with more powerful CPUs to get more than about 2-2.5 hours of battery life. That's the draw to the lower-power CPUs...

We have a few netbooks at work I could try typing on. My computer science professor has a 11.6 inch ThinkPad that seems pretty workable, but I don't think I'd want to go much smaller than that. Also, since there's a tradeoff between more powerful CPUs and battery life and cost, how much processing power do I really need for what I'm doing? I'm guessing the hardest thing I'll ever do with it is numerically integrate something with Mathematica.

Have some dual-core new netbooks at work, not certain exactly what model they are, as well as a Samsung ultraportable with an i3-2357 (so it's not quite the same as that one) and my real-world experience is that the i3 really doesn't perform all that better when it comes to number-crunching. graphics experience is an entirely different thing, though, and yes, i3 with the benefits from Sandy Bridge are definitely superior, but that's hardly a fair comparison, as it's not so much the i3 as it is the sandy bridge heritage of the newer i3s.

They all burn hot. My boss had an HP ultraportable (13.3'', not certain of the specs) which proceeded to kill itself. My experience in general with consumer HP laptops have all been the same: they kill themselves with heat and the heat cuts their battery life in half after a year or so. http://www.squaretrade.com/pages/laptop-reliability-1109 . It's why I'd never recommend either an HP or an Acer to anyone (Acers always start out great, but quickly start picking up problems in my experience, once again backed up by the linked reliability study)

Don't have a clue how you missed my mentioning of i3 and link to the product.

Outside of gaming laptops, I've never seen a laptop with that horrible of a battery life (unless the battery is suffering from damage due to negligent charging or heat damage). God, if laptops had a 2-2.5 hour battery life I'd hate them even more than I already do and I quite hate laptops as-is. Too bulky, 3-4 hour battery life isn't good enough, too heavy, not mobile enough, touchpads usually piss me off, tons of junk preinstalled, etc.

Even in CPU benchmarks the previously-mentioned i3 smokes even the new Atoms by 60%. That's quite a bit...and maybe it's just because it's new, but my friend's 4170 is surprisingly responsive. I was really impressed with the performance even in apps like Photoshop.

Anyway, the Asus laptop you linked to (I didn't see your update) is in a different class than the HP ultra-portable I linked to. The HP is much smaller and lighter, and meant to be away from a power outlet for long periods of time. It's apples and oranges.

Sure, most of them claim 4-5 hours, but usually don't last more than 2-3 real-world. All of our marketing people at work just recently got brand new Dell laptops with 6-cell batteries, and they can't quite make 3 hours on a wireless network despite being rated at 5 hours. I don't think I've ever seen a laptop with a powerful processor get more than 2-3 hours on battery with real usage, and 3 is a stretch. Like I said, I was pretty impressed with the performance of the i3-2367m CPU in a machine that can actually be used for 7+ hours.

I'm not a fan of laptops either. I'll warn my friend about heat. I had the thing on my lap playing Portal 2 for a while and it didn't seem very hot, but he didn't have any monitoring software installed either.

Still can't say I've experienced that. Wireless N network constantly querying a SQL database we can still manage 4 hours and some change on the linked ASUS after I finished optimizing it. Not that I ever let them get the battery that low outside of drain runs. Have scripts run at various battery percentages in increasing levels of annoyance until they plug it in.

My personal laptop gets 3 hours, has an encrypted hard drive (an older i3, so no hardware acceleration either), is going on 2 years old, and that's with an active wireless network.

Perhaps that drop from 15.6'' to 14.1'' helps the battery life more than I figured.

Another question: since I plan on installing Linux on the computer, are there certain things I should be looking for? i.e. are there wireless cards that Linux is better at interacting with?

I'd second the previously linked HP Dm1 model, I have a similar one and am generally really happy with it. I've found it so much better than a netbook because of the better screen resolution, screen size, avalability of 3 USB ports, VGA, HDMI, 8 hours battery life and a decent keyboard. I acutally have a slightly different model, the DM1-4018AU. The model i have only has a 320GB hardrive, AMD Dual-Core E-450 and 2GB of ram, but after upgrading the ram to 6GB I paid $430AU (about ￡ 280) for it. Considering it's only about $80-100AU (about ￡ 55) more than a standard netbook, this was a much better one to buy. I use it for many uni projects including numerous virtual machines and it works fine.

The only downside is the trackpad sometimes becomes unresponsive and i have to pu the computer to sleep and wake it to fix it, but its not a common problem.

EDIT: And I bought it from a store, not online too.

I would recommend adding a few hundred more and buy a Lenovo

The price threw me off a bit, and I ended up buying an Acer. Its good, but its not meant to be carried around (you CAN'T put anything on it). On the other hand, a Lenovo, you can carry it around without much care