[Leica] Travel hard drive?

[henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff)]

>At 12:42 PM 1/8/2009, you wrote:
>>I just ordered an Aspire One "netbook" from Amazon, which I'll be
>>coupling with various portable HD's and readers.
>
>I would love to have one of these for travel.  My only concern is 
>that the reviews go from 5 star - everything is wonderful - to 1 
>star - the thing died two weeks after I got it.  I would hate to be 
>on a month long trip and have the netbook just die.  The reviews of 
>the ASUS Eee PC 900HA are much better with no reports of failures. 
>It costs about the same, but I like the looks and features of the 
>Acer Aspire better. :-(
>
>Does anybody have either one of these or another netbook that you recommend?
>
>Tina
>
>
>Tina Manley
>www.tinamanley.com

Hi Tina,

I got the Asus 900 with Linux, and in general it's fine. It's no Mac, 
but it's quite useable. The Linux version it comes with is 'dumbed 
down', and is quite uncomplicated. File transfers work well, it comes 
with Star Office (like MS Office), internet and e-mail work fine with 
the built in WiFi, it has Bluetooth and an SD card reader built in. 
When I have some time :-), I'll probably fiddle with or change the 
operating system and make it do things more the way I like.

It's quick (Intel Atom) both on startup and in operation, and it has 
excellent battery life (6 to 9 hrs). It has 1Gb RAM and a 20Gb solid 
state drive. The screen is excellent, the keyboard rather small, but 
I can type on it OK as long as I don't try to switch back and forth 
with my Mac.

I use a couple of WD 320 Passport drives. I bought it this summer, 
and in comparison with the Acer Aspire, it had a lot better battery 
life and generally seemed more useable to me in the configuration I 
wanted. Also, user's reports seemed generally much more favourable 
about the whole esperience.

-- 

    *            Henning J. Wulff
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