MacBook Air or EeePC?

The new MacBook Air is a beautiful-looking piece of kit. I've yet to see one in the flesh, but from looking at the various online reviews and the promotional video, it is enough to induce techno-lust in even the most hardened PC advocate. (See another review here.)

It's designed for those who want something smaller and lighter than a conventional laptop for working on the go. So how does it compare with the EeePC, which is my current preferred solution for ultra-mobile computing? I guess they aren't designed to be competitors - but they do share a common role, as a secondary machine where portability is key.

The MacBook Air weighs in at just under 1.4 kilos, as opposed to the eeePCs 0.9 kilos.
The Air has a 13 inch screen; eeePC gives you just 7 inches, but this does make the eeePC smaller.
The Air looks very sexy; so does the eeePC, in its own sort of way. However, the Air will get you more of those jealous glances.
The Air is less robust than the eeePC because the eeePC doesn't have a hard disk.
The Air has a bigger keyboard and is therefore less fiddly than the eeePC.
The Air runs the Mac operating system, if you like that kind of thing; eeePC runs a version of Linux and all the software is open source.
The Air has one USB port; the eeePC has three.

But the clincher, in my view is this:
The Air is £1200; the eeePC is £200.

Eeepc on the road, and a tea tasting

Yesterday afternoon I learned a great deal about a subject I'd previously been woefully ignorant of: tea. It was the Circle of Wine Writers/Guild of Food Writers tea tasting, held in association with specialist tea importers Jing (http://www.jingtea.com/). It's a huge subject - I felt like a wine novice must feel at a wine tasting, and came away with the impression that this is a really interesting but rather daunting subject.

Now for the promised eeepc update. For the last 10 days I've been on the road with just my eeepc. I was slightly nervous about the decision to leave my laptop at home and rely just on this tiny notebook device, but it has served me well. For picking up emails, surfing and posting blog entries it has been perfect. You get used to the small keyboard (any smaller would be unusable) and tiny screen (which has great resolution even though it is small) fairly quickly. Its portability is a great asset, as is its fast boot-up time and easy connectivity by Wifi and LAN (bizarrely, the Iberia VIP lounge doesn't have wireless).

What I haven't used this machine for is image editing or updating the main wineanorak site, largely because I haven't had time to learn how to install the relevant open-source software. The fact that the eeepc has an SD card slot means that photos can rapidly be uploaded even if you haven't got time to download them all from your digital camera. I also haven't been able to do any video editing on the road.

In conclusion, the portability of the eeepc makes it a great choice for a travel computer, and it will take the place of a full-sized laptop for my travels in the future. At just over £200 it is a total bargain.

More on the eeeeeeeepc

Sorry for the non-wine-related digression. Seriously considering taking the eeepc as my sole computer on my next trip (leave on Friday for Chile).

Peter wanted to know how big it is, so here's a picture showing some scale, with a standard laptop, an SLR camera, a phone and a CD in shot. The eeepc is the white machine sitting on top of the laptop, just in case you were confused.

My new toy, the eeepc

I have a new toy: it's the Asus EeePC, which I've mentioned here before.

It's a tiny laptop the size of a paperback novel. It runs linux, has 4 gb solid state memory (no hard disk) and a 7” screen. It comes with most of the software you might need (open office applications, etc). It has 512 mb of RAM, three USB ports and looks beautiful. The keyboard, however, will take a while to get used to – at the moment my typing is a little slower than normal. I'll let you know how I get on with it.

I should add that this isn't intended to be a straight replacement for my laptop or desktop – rather, it complements it as a special occasion machine that I'll use where portability is an issue. To be honest, I'm growing a little tired of lugging a big bag with a laptop in it around with me, and I’m hoping that I’ll grow comfortable enough with this little machine that it will fulfil most of my portable computing needs.

One thing that will take a little bit of getting used to is the size of the screen, which is quite tiny. This makes working on images or anything that requires a good-sized screen very difficult. It will also take a little time to get used to linux: you can't just install programs with a few clicks like you can with Windows XP. For now, linux still seems to require a techie bent if you are to do anything serious with it.

Is the eepc a compulsory purchase? Too soon to tell. But I forgot to mention perhaps the best bit about it, which is the price. A shade over £200. [I got mine from ebuyer.com.]

Tecchy bits

I've been thinking about how I can best integrate my online life. It's currently a bit 'bitty'. I have three different email accounts, two of which I use regularly, of which one currently copies into the other. The third is a gmail account which I'm thinking of making my primary one. Then there's facebook et al, which I check regularly, plus some blogs and online fora, as well as the usual news outlets.

Because I use multiple computers and am often on the road, the idea of being able to access my online life through a single portal is an appealing one. I've been having a look at www.netvibes.com, which seems to be a powerful and flexible way of doing this. It's really, really impressive. Does anyone reading have experience of this - or similar - solutions?

Facebook friends

I now have a staggering total of 10 http://www.facebook.com/ friends. Wanna be my friend? You only have to ask!

Goobye Eudora, hello Thunderbird

No, not the wine-based 'drink', but the email client. I've been getting so weary of deleting hundreds of spam messages each day, I've switched from Eudora (which I like but which is no longer supported), to Mozilla's Thunderbird as my email client, in part because it has decent spam protection incorporated into it.

So far, so good. It takes a while to get used to new applications, but I like the look and feel of it. And it let me import my Eudora inbox without any fuss. Now I need to start thinking about consolidating my various email accounts, two of which I use very regularly.

Where is this picture from?

Where is the picture above from? What can you tell me about it? As much detail as possible, please. [The filename will give no clues.]

With the end of my last laptop, I've thought about my IT situation. I earn my living with computers as a tool, so I should plan my IT stuff more efficiently.

Currently, I have one laptop, two desktops at home (which I don't use much), and a wireless network (connected to broadband, security enabled). I also have a desktop for my science editing job.

Backing up consists of dumping stuff at irregular intervals onto the science editing job network (which is rigorously backed up itself). I pick up emails through two accounts on two different machines, into three different mailboxes. This is an unsatisfactory situation, but I should lose one of the accounts when I go fully freelance in a few months.

The most urgent matter is instituting a rigorous, bombproof backing up procedure that I can then follow to the letter, because computers (and particularly hard disks) fail. Then I need to sort out my email: it all needs to come into just one mailbox - the current situation is too complex. And I need to stop using my inbox as a filing system. Once emails are dealt with they need to leave the inbox. I also need to deal with emails as soon as I read them, not read them, decide to reply later, procrastinate, and then forget to reply - which happens too often. It also makes me feel a mixture of weariness and guilt to come to a full inbox each day. If I fail to reply to an email it needs to be through a conscious decision not to reply, and the email needs to be deleted.

We humans are bad at changing. We read about change, talk about change, decide to change, but only seldom do we actually implement personal change. Well, I am going to implement change, and to do this I'm going to set myself achievable sub-goals. The first one is to source and purchase a USB hard disk. I shall use this to act as a back-up and storage device. I shall back up every week, on Sunday evening. I'll let you know how I get on.

How I killed my laptop

My laptop is dead. It had been playing up over the last couple of months, to the extent that I became extra serious about backing up. Then a few weeks ago it didn't start up. Repeated attempts, however, were successful in firing it back to life, but it was a short-lived remission, and tonight it looks like it's gone to laptop heaven - it won't respond at all.

The machine in question, a Dell Latitude D600, was a good performer, but always a little flimsy. I think I've just worn it out. Now I need to find a replacement, fast. I don't have high requirements - a gigabyte of RAM will suffice, plus decent battery life because I'm using it most days on the train and when I travel. When it comes to operating systems, I don't want Vista - XP Pro for me, please. And I'd like something rugged and reliable. A laptop that is easy to live with, because I spend so much time on it. One quirk is that I like the little nipple mouse thingy more than the trackpad, which I don't get on with. And no one makes these any more.

I'm going to try to revive the Dell, just to take the remaining non-backed up emails and data off it - a few day's worth, so it isn't too upsetting if I fail.