Computing power for the trip

After long and careful consideration, Alicia and I decided it would be sensible to spend a little money and take some kind of mobile computer along with us on the trip.  After all, we need to keep this blog up to date, fed with the absolute latest in imagery and experiential news!
Our problem was that we really have enough [read: "more than enough"] computers in our lives.  We each have desktop personal computers, and I have a laptop from my office on which I ply my trade.  We have Android™ phones that really serve most of our needs for on-the-go computing power.  Really, we have enough stuff!  Unfortunately, and really due to some clever marketing on the part of AT&T™, our phones will not work in most of Asia - more specifically, they will work wonderfully as anything but telephones since the GSM band for Korea (2100MHz) is not physically supported by our HTC Aria phones.  This made us quite sad initially, until we realized that actually trying to type a blog entry and upload photos via a phone's virtual keyboard and tiny screen would probably spell a speedy end to our efforts.

This phone will *probably* not work in Asia

...it will probably work as well as this.

Ultimately, we decided to get a mini laptop (I'm being careful with the terminology since ownership of the term "netbook" has been the source of some heated debate).  I looked at a lot of different models, and discovered there were really few distinguishing characteristics within the broad families of machines.  Mainly, the concerns are:

• Graphics chipset
• Processor
• Disk space
• Disk type (solid state, or classic platter style)
• Battery life

Since the computers I was considering all met our requirements in the above categories (high-definition video, ~1.8 GHz processor, 250GB platter drive), price and reputation were about the only deciding factors, with price being the primary consideration.  I learned that Dell's Factory Outlet site (where they clear their inventory of refurbished, returned, scratched or dinged merchandise) offers the same warranty as new for their Inspiron Mini laptops, and after taking a look at what was available, I was decided.  We ordered an Inspiron Mini-1012 with the HD video processor and a 250GB drive.  My initial testing with it suggests I can get around 7 hours worth of use between charges, even under pretty strenuous use.

Unfortunately, no HDMI output :(

Directly out of the box, I installed Ubuntu Netbook 10.10 alongside the [sort of sad] Windows 7 Starter Edition.  That should improve battery life somewhat as well.
The price was outstanding at around $240 (ymmv depending on availability and price changes) with free FedEx shipping.  I was so pleased I splurged and bought a 5-dot neoprene sleeve for the little fella.

The only thing I did notice about the new computer while hammering on it today is that it gets a little warm to the touch after a couple of hours' use.  I attribute some of the effect to the fact that I was really spinning the disk a tremendous amount, as well as testing out the video quality by playing several YouTube videos at the same time.

So there it is.  I will continue to beat up on this new piece of equipment and report any interesting findings, good or bad.