Gaming 2 unrelated questions about Computers

[Jamstruth]

Right, I've got a couple of random and unrelated questions I want some advice on.

1. Just something I've been thinking about. Given my rampant downloading habits and the surprisingly cramped feel of my 500GB harddrive I've been wondering about this. I have no Windows 7 CD for my laptop which makes upgrading the HDD a hassle. I do however know of free harddrive cloning software and just wondered if I used that then increased the size of the main partition to fill the extra space on the main drive would it work with no problems? I have Ubuntu on my computer which i know breaks if you so much as delete a partition without telling GRUB and then you have to boot a LiveCD and reinstall Ubuntu to fix it. I'm not thinking about upgrading my harddrive right now its just something I wanted to ask about.

2. My Dad's been looking into netbooks for my little sister and has come up with this for her. http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.212-4681.aspx (details on Tesco are VERY sketchy but that's where the price etc. is coming from). He asked me what I thought about it and as far as I can see its a pretty good netbook. It has Win7 Home Premium (compared to some I've seen with *shudder* STARTER!). I don't know much about Netbook specs though and the Processor especailly has me a bit wary as I know Intel have been beating out AMD over the past generation of processors, not sure how their low-powered end is though. This has an AMD C-50 dual core in it, is it better or worse than its Atom equivalent? I'm just checking up here since I know near nothing about Netbooks. This netbook would be used for school work primarily (boasts a full size keyboard so good there I think) and general internet browsing (and HUGE amounts of video streaming, seriously she's been known to stream 3 videos at once).

 

[Originality]

1) I don't believe there'll be any problems using cloning software for a drive upgrade, but I've never used it before so I can't be sure.

2) Atom CPUs are very weak. Their newer dual-core versions have improved things somewhat, but I wouldn't want to do anything demanding with them. Bobcat wiki. The C-50 is the dual core at the lowest end of the Bobcat series, with each core rated 1Ghz and the GPU rated 276Mhz. You won't want to try playing any games on it, however it should have no problems running Office programs and using the internet. As for video streaming, so long as it's SD or LD, it shouldn't have any problems either. For HD content (probably using h.264) I don't think it would handle it well, but the screen doesn't suit HD content anyway. As for streaming 3 videos at once, that's more dependant on the RAM. 2GB is enough for running Windows 7, but won't leave much room for multi-tasking without slowing down. I think it would be fine with just videos, but that's just a guess.

In short, for her needs, it's probably great.