I was checking out the mini laptops when a friend of mine from online was reporting on her new one with squeeing positivity.
Now, I have a laptop. It’s my only computer. I don’t use a desktop at all, and don’t really need one. But the idea of a lighter, more portable laptop sounds good to me and I’ve been thinking about a mini laptop for my next computer.
There are those who would say, “What about computing power?”
What about it? There are mini laptops that have as much as my present laptop does. That’s not my complaint about the laptop I have. I use a low-end Inpiron. Lousy battery power and a propensity for overheating so bad I have to use a notebook cooler if I use the machine for any length of time. Also, I figured that 40GB would be PLENTY of disc space. (Not for my music collection, it’s not!) There are mini laptops with much larger hard drives than mine.
I don’t play interactive online games. The most complex tasks I do on a laptop mostly involve text. I could almost do my job on a smartphone, though would hate to have to. The smartphone versions of Office do have irritating limitations. I do sometimes watch movies on my laptop and have a pretty decent collection of Doctor Who on my external hard drive.
What I actually use a computer for is to write, bid on jobs and do research. I also travel as much as I can manage. Something I can slip into a purse, feel comfortable opening on an airplane that has lots of battery power and won’t overheat sounds like bliss to me! Firefox with a lot of tabs open is a far worse resource drain than any actual program I run to do Real Work. I was looking at the Asus EEE 1000HD recently. (And by the way, Mom, if you’re reading this, you might wanna check it out. The screen and keyboard are small, but this has about the same power as my machine, is a lot cheaper!)
I’m not buying one right away, mind. For all its limitations my present laptop is plenty useful for what I do and there’s no need to blow money away on a Nifty Gadget. But when I need to replace this one? Yep, I might consider going small.