Travelling gear...mobile computing

Whenever I travel abroad or most places for that matter, I like to bring a laptop with me for a numbe of reasons: email, browsing, picture dump, entertainment, information center, etc. My first was a Dell Inspiron 6000 15". It travelled with me for about 2 years before the sheer heft of the unit became very burdensome. The shrinking airspace afforded to an economy class passenger has shrunk quite a bit over the years. The size of the keyboard was not restricting. Construction was sturdy but its not as if it was abused as I take well care of my equipment. The small hardrive was augmented by a DVD burner. I purchased an extra 9-cell battery, in addition to the supplied 6-cell, so power was not a big problem.

Not long after that the HP TX2000 model came into my life. I was not looking for a tablet but it had a nice 12" screen and was, overall, smaller and lighter than the Dell. Unfortunately, the touch screen was inaccurate and required alot of pressure on the display. When the screen was flipped around, it would throw off the touch screen by almost half an inch. It was the succeeding model that came equipped with an active touch that made it less prone to miscaligrations. It was augmented with the same drive setup as the Dell. Not once did I ever need to burn DVD/CD on my travels. Alas, it was also supplied with Vista. Even with all its problems, it was a reliable and served me well in my travels. On the picture below, you can see the 6-cell battery extends out the back of it.


Currently, I am working with Acer netbook. I bought this unit as the market was just starting to develop with the major trailblazers being Acer, Asus, Samsung, and MSI. Its a very light netbook with a 9" screen, smallish keyboard, and good battery life from a 6-cell battery. After several uses, I have become very familiar with many shortcomings. A larger screen with higher resolution would be nice. Larger keyboard would minimize my typing errors. Although, that can be alleviated if I brought an external USB keyboard. The cpu can be a stumbling point as its meager power can be very noticable at times. I thought that I would miss not having an optical drive but the 160GB harddrive has been more than capable. Since most people opt for the 6-cell battery, it would be nice if they designed them with these in mind so the battery does not stick out from the back and below the bottom of the unit. The picuture below shows the originally equipped 3-cell battery.


My next travelling companion will still be a netbook.

The specs will be along these lines:
10" or larger screen, higher resolution would nice(>1024x600)

Better battery life, some units boast 9 hours on a 6-cell. Acer's new Aspire One claims 10 hours on their 5600mah 6-cell battery. At some point or another, I always find myself buying a spare battery of all of them

More powerful processor

Touchscreen/tablet, maybe if it works better than the HP and does not cost that much extra