top contenders
I love my Mac, but I'm finding it impossible to lug around everywhere without having major lower back pains when I'm trying to go to bed at night. Also, it's a distraction machine. I lug it along to write and blog, and I end up messing around with graphics and screen-caps instead.
So when kleogade mentioned the XO yesterday, I thought: How great would that be? It's small, simplistic, and incapable of doing most of the activities that would distract me from getting writing done. Alas, when I visited their site, I discovered that the Give One/Get One programme was not in effect (and, according to Kat, is only in effect during the Christmas season).
Moving on ... I did a search for small no-nonsense laptops--and found netbooks. There a bunch of them to test out at BestBuy.
Models of these are the best-sellers on Best Buy:
Asus Eee Netbook 1005HAB
HP Mini Netbook 110-1025DX
Asus Eee Netbook 1005HAB
HP Mini Netbook 110-1025DX
The HP is thirty dollars more than the Asus, but the specs are basically the same. Typing feels a little strange on either one, but I think that's more due to flatness than actual size, since I'm very used to the raised keys on a normal board.
They both seem like decent little machines for the purposes I have in mind, but the HP just feels cleaner to me. The Asus attracts fingerprints like crazy, and I know myself well enough to know that the apparent dirtiness (and subsequent need to constantly wipe the casing down) would very quickly drive me mad.
In short, unless Apple comes out with a netbook in the very immediate future, the HP Mini is in mine.
So when kleogade mentioned the XO yesterday, I thought: How great would that be? It's small, simplistic, and incapable of doing most of the activities that would distract me from getting writing done. Alas, when I visited their site, I discovered that the Give One/Get One programme was not in effect (and, according to Kat, is only in effect during the Christmas season).
Moving on ... I did a search for small no-nonsense laptops--and found netbooks. There a bunch of them to test out at BestBuy.
Models of these are the best-sellers on Best Buy:
Asus Eee Netbook 1005HAB
HP Mini Netbook 110-1025DX
Asus Eee Netbook 1005HAB
HP Mini Netbook 110-1025DX
The HP is thirty dollars more than the Asus, but the specs are basically the same. Typing feels a little strange on either one, but I think that's more due to flatness than actual size, since I'm very used to the raised keys on a normal board.
They both seem like decent little machines for the purposes I have in mind, but the HP just feels cleaner to me. The Asus attracts fingerprints like crazy, and I know myself well enough to know that the apparent dirtiness (and subsequent need to constantly wipe the casing down) would very quickly drive me mad.
In short, unless Apple comes out with a netbook in the very immediate future, the HP Mini is in mine.