There it was, sitting on the shelf like it was a perfectly normal thing to be sitting on a shelf at Target: the Asus eee . As soon as I saw it, I thought, man, I’d love to take that with me to Palo Alto this weekend for the conference.
I just might buy a netbook. Maybe not the Asus, although its the perfect size and has, in general, decent specs. Why a netbook? Well, I’d do my current job a bit better if I operated out of the office. I could bring my Macbook to work, but carrying even that tiny thing around gets annoying eventually. I need something smaller. (One of those convertible-style OLPC s might work — they make exception ebook readers, as I’ve seen with my own eyes– but I hear bad things about performance and how well they stand up to abuse. )
I’ll probably settle for an Acer Aspire On e (or something similar), which is slightly wider and about $30-60 bucks more than the eee Target carries. It does, however, have an actual 160 GB hard drive. In theory, a solid state drive would be better for a fellow who bikes to work, but 4 GB is so incredibly small and, while I’m not a speed queen, applications tend to run much slower. I’d dump XP and add the Ubuntu netbook remix. It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be pretty good. Brad Linder, of WHYY fame, has a website devoted to netbooks…liliputing …(I think he was hoping that lilputer would stick, but that’s before the term "netbook" received its official blessing from Intel, sorry Brad).
Now, I know what my perfect mobile computing device is: a 7-10 inch tablet computer, something like the iPhone, but bigger with a detachable keyboard. Something that would make a great ebook reader, internet device and occasional typer-uponer. However, I’m fairly skeptical Apple would ever build a device so amazing, despite the constant rumourmongering .
A netbook is a good substitute, mostly because they actually exist.
Of course, as soon as I buy a netbook, Apple will immediately release my dream device. No matter how good said device is, my sense of guilty practicality would forbid me from purchasing it, ensuring great despair. Therefore, all you Apple nuts — especially if you hate me — ought to get me a real good deal (heck, free) on a netbook, ASAP.