I am in the market for a netbook. My primary requirement is quiet operation. Next is price. Performance, battery life, keyboard configuration and screen size are not that important. I don't need much hard drive capacity.

By quiet operation I both mean 1) low sound level in general and 2) no frequent noisy fan-spin-ups.

So where do I start? There are SO many brands and models of netbooks.

Could this forum say either something general about which brand currently makes very quiet netbooks or something specific about which models are interesting when looking at my requirements? Or is it just a jungle?

Best regards,
Lars

P.S. I have searched the forums but have had a hard time finding up-to-date consistent advice.

Hi I'm using an Acer d250, if you really want totally silence i would AVOID this one there is no control over the fan, though it is temperature controlled and starts off completely passive until a critical temp is hit then fan turns on takes around 30mins - 1 hour.

There are some passive netbookts out there, the Sony vaio P series, or the Dell mini 9 i think is passive too but cant confirm since i don't have one

Poulsbo (the lowest power Atom chipset) nettops definitely have the potential to be silent but some might have fans. I understand Dell has several Poulsbo nettops. Some other brands should have them too. You'll know them by the Z at the start of the processor designation.
There's no reason they couldn't make silent or quiet nettops with other chipsets or processors but it would be harder so it's a good deal less likely that they'd bother. Plus you should get good battery life on a low-power chipset unless you crank the brightness way up.

I purchased a secondhand Dell Mini 9. It has no fans and uses an SSD - completely silent. The only sounds I can hear are some high pitch beeping and whine when I hold it up against my ear. An alternative option could be the Dell Mini 10 which uses a larger keyboard but has a regular 2.5 inch HDD (of course replaceable with an SSD).

I think most netbooks are quiet when the mechanical HDD is replaced by an SSD. My HP Mini 5101 sure is. So get a netbook that looks right for you. Design, keyboard size, display resolution etc differs a bit but to me most netbooks look more or less alike hardware wize. Then replace the HDD with an SSD.

I own a dell mini9 and it's silent (no moving parts). it's a good little machine, and i'm very happy with it. Not great for prolonged typing, but other than that it does what i want it to do, without problems. I also believe that the dell mini10v is silent, but can't confirm this as i haven't tried one.

All Dell minis are fanless, so propably your best choice. Especially if you equip them with SSD.

Thanks for all the useful comments. A fan is ok with me as long as it is reasonably quiet and don't spin up every 10 minutes.

I have considered the Samsung netbooks, but unfortunately you can't buy them in Denmark with an SSD instead of an HDD. I suppose I could buy an SSD myself and replace the bulit-in HDD but that kind of blows my budget.

Nice weekend to all,
Lars

I'll repeat my recomendation posted in neighbour thread. A very interesting low noise competitor is Samsung NP-N220 Netbook:

For hours there was not a sound from the fan. And when it did come to life, it was still so quiet that even the spinning of the 250 GB hard drive was louder. But one can hardly talk of 'loud' or 'noise' in this context. The N220 Maroh is almost as quiet as a netbook with no fan.

P.S. I own a previous Samsung netbook flagship, N140, and it is damn quiet. Delta fan inside, very low rpm.