The Netbook

Seems like every year I have been acquiring a new fun gadget or piece of equipment lately. I save up my pennies, dollar bills, and the occasional twenty, and when I have enough I am able to get myself something I've wanted or needed. For example, in 2008 I got my Yamaha PSR-9000Pro; last year it was N8, my beloved Nokia N810, and later in the year I was able to get another computer, a used but excellent eMachine to use with my 9000Pro for recording, with my husband's help.

This winter my laptop computer died. There was another old laptop with myriad problems laying around, and Pete was able to get it into working order for me. It's slow and unreliable, and anything but the most basic software causes it to crash. While I'm thankful to have it, clearly a new one was in order. So last week I finally had enough saved up for a netbook and on Friday (today is Wednesday) I ordered it from amazon.com.

And today is delivery day! Amazon quoted a 7-10 day delivery; today is day 5. But I've been following the tracking, and it has been sitting at the post office a mere 1/2 mile (as the crow flies) from my house for the last 24 hours. Our mailman Rick will be here within the next hour or 2 with my new "toy".

The laptop I chose was the Acer 250AOD-1584. If you look at the specs, reviews, and price you will see why. This is a LOT of computer for the money! 250GB HD, 1GB RAM, wireless b/g AND n, dolby headphone sound, bluetooth (to connect to N8 and to my cell phone), 6 cell battery (for up to 9 hours of use!)...it has everything I wanted and more, for <$300! And of the 117 reviews, all but 1 or 2 were glowing.

No other netbook had all of these features for such a great price AND the excellent reviews on every site I checked.

And within minutes it will be here. I'm ready. I've read every single review, watched any videos I could find about it, read the manual cover to cover (figuratively speaking as it was a pdf file)...anything I could find, I've studied.

So why a netbook? First I considered where and how it will be used. I typically do my "computing" sitting in my recliner with my feet up, my computer on my lap on a heavy open-mesh (for air flow) platform, and whenever I get up I move it to the table kept next to me for that purpose. This will be light and easy to move back and forth from table to lap, and will be small enough so as not to block my view of the television across the room.

In addition, I use my laptop in the car. Since I can no longer drive, and I'm a TERRIBLE rider, my husband learned that if he plugs in the internet-anywhere-thingy from our cell phone company and puts my laptop in my lap, it will keep me occupied enough to not drive him crazy with my observations about potential hazards (which may or may not be real) and comments about how I would be doing things if I were behind the wheel. :). And, of course, I use it when I'm not at home.

Second I considered what I use my laptops for: getting online. Almost exclusively, emails, blogging, social sites, a few light games (nothing really system intensive), videos. That's it. The lack of an optical drive won't be an issue since I use very few apps, and those are already on my external hard drive; plug in via USB and I've got what I need. For music I have a good sound system on my desktop already, and any listening I might do on the netbook will be via headphones which, according to customer reviews, sounds phenomenal. And getting on the 'net is what a NETbook is for. For anything else I still have my desktop and, of course, N8.

I'll let you know how I like it after I've had ample opportunity to get acquainted :).