Another new computer

The computer in question is an Asus Eee PC 1005HA that I picked up from Amazon. Already I’ve been asked why I got yet another computer. The reason is a simple one: it’s cheap and “disposable.”On my trip to Labrador I’ll be on my motorcycle during the day and camping at night. The last thing I want to do is bring along a computer that I would be horribly upset if it broke. The MacBook Pro that I have is pretty durable, but I don’t think I would call it rugged. It’s certainly not as rugged as a Panasonic Toughbook or something. The problem with rugged is that you really have to pay for it.The other issue is size. While the Mac isn’t big for a 15” laptop, I’m more worried about the 15'” part. The biggest issue on a motorcycle is space – or rather lack of it. Weight isn’t even the critical issue… not that I want something heavy.So, I decided to pick up the EEE PC for both of those reasons. It’s cheap and small. It also has a long-lasting battery (they claim 10.5 hours, I see around 9 or so of actual usage, but I’m not complaining.) I just got done installing Windows 7 RC on it since I really hate the clutter of the garbage that any manufacturer crams onto a machine when it ships from the factory. (EEE wasn’t as bad as Dell, but it still had too much for my taste)So now I have Windows 7 installed and almost all of the features of this thing are good to go. It’s not OS X, but it’s sufficient for what I need to do. As an added bonus this thing has enough horsepower to give me the Aero interface with the eye candy that comes with it. ;-)The purpose of this guy is so I can check email, write blog entries (I’m doing that now), backup pictures from my camera, and maybe do a bit of writing with Open Office for bigger things. Once I got out of the mindset that I need to keep buying computers for doing development work and heavy image-processing the options opened up.I’ll keep using it a bit before the the trip, but I think this might be the ideal tool for the task as hand!