Dave Winer wrote about his experience taking only his Asus EEE PC 901 on a cross-country business trip. I had been teetering on the brink of buy for weeks. Rodfather recently bought the Asus 1000H, which initially upped my lust meter. But, what really got me considering a new netbook was running across the Acer Aspire One in Microcenter for $349. Wow! I thought. I was so tempted to buy one for the massive 120GB HD and Atom processor and 1024x600 res screen. I probably could have and saved about $150 compared to the 901. But, I didn't. Why?
For one, the 3-cell battery in the Acer means that you won't be untethered from the grid for long. I've fallen for that limitation too many times. It means buying an extra battery or always carrying the power brick (which they call a brick for a reason). A second reason was the hard drive. It's a pacifier. This isn't the machine that stores all my music and photos. If it were, I could put them on an external HD. Take away music and photos, and HD requirements aren't really that critical. Owning the original eee pc made me aware that we only *think* we need a big hard drive. So, I said no. Not this time. Aside from the hard drive, the Asus is a better spec'd machine in a few areas. Finding it for around $500 was enough to get me off the ball.
This isn't my only machine. In fact, it's about time for me to have some sort of electronic garage sale. Still, I appreciate the small form factor, and this machine is powerful enough to run my business applications away from the office and it's a great cloud computer too.
Take-away from this experience? Challenge your inner voice that says you need a big hard drive. Check out a netbook in a retailer near you. Cheap, ubiquitous computing is here. Forget about whether you prefer Windows or OSX or Linux. Find a device that does what you need it to do in the smallest possible form factor you can tolerate because you will use it more and take it more places.
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