Them Netbooks

After almost ten years of daily commuting between Uppsala and Stockholm I finally decided that enough was enough, and moved closer to where I work. For my current engagement this cut traveling down from about 80 to 30 minutest. One way. Per day. Much better from a getting-up-early-and-getting-home-late perspective.

However, spending all this time on trains had the side-effect of making time available for writing blog entries and PNEHM! articles (and the occasional nap). So with effective train-time cut down from 40 to 18 minutes there simply hasn't been that many blog entries written, except for the occasional #spam.

Time is one thing, but the smaller, more crowded city commuter trains, also makes it harder to open a full-size notebook to do writing and reading. So after much angst I decide to get me one of them netbooks. I bought an Asus Eee PC 901 with built in 3G modem, it came originally with Windows XP, but now runs eeebuntu 2.0. And it is actually rather nice. Sure, its been hit with the ugly stick, but the total lack of aesthetics is actually somewhat refreshing, the build quality is decent, and you almost get used to the tiny keyboard after a while. It could be a bit more snappy though, so I am looking forward to trying out eeebutu 3.0 with LXDE, hoping that it will speed things up a bit.

The 3G mobile connectivity, Google Docs, Spotify and the excellent Dropbox file sharing service gives you pretty much everything you need to write blog entries, catch up on your RSS feeds, browse the web, listen to your favourite music, process e-mails, read e-books, etc. You do your writing on the train, and as you approach the train station you just save and close the lid. As soon as you're back at the office, or home, or wherever, you can easily pick up where you left off, on the same computer or a different one.

Man, this cloud thing is really great!.