Yesterday, I tried to do everything in Mac OS X (Leopard), and also tested out Thunderbird 3. I reckon I could live with a Mac as my only computer, and the only thing that bugged me was the speed (my Mac is somewhat ancient now). I especially liked iCal, and how it integrates perfectly with the Google calendars that map out my whole life, and I love the way OS X renders fonts and colours. Thunderbird 3 was a nice surprise, and I love the way it integrates with Gmail. Maybe I’ll consider switching back to Thunderbird the next time Evolution does something to annoy me.

Today I’ve been using the daily build of Chromium on my netbook. It’s seriously faster than Firefox, and I’m finding that I can do pretty much everything I need to do without a plethora of extensions. This might be one to keep I think.

I’m also having monitor envy. Or possibly screen resolution envy. I think I may be nearly ready to consider spending my day looking at something larger than a laptop screen.

Increasingly I get asked about netbooks in particular. I dislike the term netbook, but I’ll use it because people know what I mean. And because I get asked about them, I try and stay up to speed with what is on the market, which in turn makes me carefully sum up the pros and cons of each one. The things I look at tend to be:

• Physical size – small is good, but I totally see how something as small as my EeePC 701 is not to everyone’s taste. If I was buying one now, I’d want a screen size of at least nine inches, with a resolution of 1024 by 600. The larger EeePCs are good in this regard, but I think the Dell Mini beats them all with a 10″ screen pitching it between the EeePC 701 and my (once again) dead 12″ iBook.
• Hard drive size – the hard drive can be anything from a 4gb solid state to a 160gb laptop hard drive. I use mine as my 3rd machine, with all my files living on my main laptop and the important ones synched via dropbox. But if you’re going to use it as a main (or even second) machine, then get a big hard drive. With all the major manufacturers you can now choose between a small solid state drive and a larger hard drive, so this shouldn’t influence choice too much.
• Battery life – 3 hours does me fine, but if you are going to travel with it then this becomes important. I’m sure I’ve seen a couple with with 7 hours of battery life (although I might be thinking of the new Macbook Pro).
• Price – You can get a first generation Acer Aspire One or EeePC for under £150 now, and even some of the slightly larger netbooks come in at well under £300 (which would be my personal price limit). Some of the mid range EeePCs (the 1000H for example) are quite reasonable, as are the Dell Minis (before you add too much customisation that is).
• Operating System – Some come with really dire versions of Linux, some come with XP, the Dell Mini and Lenovo Ideapad actually ship with decent Linux distros (Ubuntu and Suse). I’m not too bothered, because I tend to reformat and reinstall everything I buy, but for non technical users this has to be a factor. Now, I love Linux. But I’d think twice before advising anyone to try and use the versions of Linux shipping with the EeePC and the Acer Aspire One. They are a bad advertisement for something that is great, and for that reason I’d say that if you want something with Linux on then choose something with one of the big distros (anything in the distrowatch top 10).

So yes, that’s what I tend to look at. If I was buying one today I’d probably go for a Dell Mini with a large hard drive, Ubuntu preinstalled, and as much Ram as I could fit in it. My second choice would probably be an EeePC 1000H, although I’m loathe to pay for a Windows licence when I have several I don’t use already. If price was more of a factor than it is, then I’d go with an Acer Aspire One (which I’ve just discovered I could get for £160 with a 120gb harddrive and 1gb Ram, which is actually really tempting if the noises my EeePC is making mean what I think they mean).

And once again I seem to have settled on a very similar setup in each. I’ve not got photographs of my desk at work, but I have taken a couple of pictures of my desk at home, which should demonstrate what I mean.

My desk (Linux laptop on the left, iMac on the right).

I am trying to use this laptop for everything at present.

And yes, I gave up on KDE4 after a few hours. While I’m more than happy to bounce between several different operating systems, I do have very definite preferences regarding how each one should look.