A month ago, I fell prey to buying what my wife calls a “mini dumb laptop”. I use a powerful Mac Book, and she uses the latest Core 2 Duo processor-based machine. Between us we have 3 GB of RAM in our laptops, and large capacity hard disks, mine is a 13.3” display and hers a 12.1”. So why on earth did we opt for a so-called small wonder.

My company installs complicated wireless networks and often I have to get my hands dirty on the field. As my white Mac could not take the beating any more, I thought of picking up a 15” laptop for my on-the-road work. But the thought of carrying a second laptop—I need both when I travel—in my bagpack made me ensure that I didn’t end up adding more weight.

My needs were simple, the machine should weigh about 1 kg, have a battery time of at least two hours, should run Linux—Yes, I am a Linux guy, but Windows, too, will do—should be decent looking, and have both a wireless and a wired network device. A webcam would be nice, and a built-in microphone so that I can chat with my team using just the laptop.

My options were limited to the HP Mini Note (brilliantly made, but costing around Rs 40,000), the Asus Eee PC (the original 4GB Flash Drive version is now available for about Rs 14,000 and comes with a 2GB SD card thrown in for free) the MSI Wind, the Dell Mini and the Acer Aspire One. A few showroom visits later, I was still mulling the Idea Pad U110 from Lenovo, though I was in no mood to spend the price of a Tata Nano on a laptop that I would rarely use.

... contd.