Imagining the Ultimate Computer for Travellers

Asus EepcI have mentioned my interest in the Asus Eepc before. It seems it is almost the perfect machine for traveling, but not quite.

My current trip to the USA has made me think about the topic again. It seems all the needs are addressed in different devices, why isn’t there one machine that does it all?

What do I need for travel?

Other requirements exist but could probably live without them.

Blackberries are all the rage, often have qwerty keyboards, but software support isn’t quite what you could get with a real desktop operating system.

The iPhone is almost there, but no 3g (yet) and I have doubts that you could do real work on the small screen, even with the funky interface. Apples lock down on apps is a problem too. It seems you still can’t edit documents locally.

Nokias little tablet seemed promising, with linux and a nice wide screen, but was restricted to Wifi and fiddly to operate.

Gadgetry

My old HTC based PDA was almost there but it also had a tiny screen, and crashed a lot due to running pocket pc operating system. The little keyboard was surprisingly good for typing with though once you got used to it, and it could run Skype for both voice chat and text.

Asus seems have the best solution. They have even announced a new model to their tiny notebook with 1024x wide screen. Paired with a bluetooth 3g phone (ok, cheating a little), is this the ultimate traveling machine? Seems to tick all the appropriate boxes.

Posted on May 1, 2008 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under Productivity

Comments

Leave a Reply