My New Travel Buddy

I can’t help being overexcited about sharing you my new travel buddy. :) He (or rather it) is my new netbook: an Asus Eee PC 1015 PEM :). Let me tell you how I made the decision of buying this stuff.

It all started like most newly acquired gadgets this time of year also started: with the 13th month pay. I used to buy new things for our house, and I’m not one of those techie persons who always want to be geared up with the latest in technology. But then I thought about buying something for myself this time around: something that’s going to fit all my simple needs.

I wanted something that’s portable. I need to travel from Manila to Batangas very weekend, so I need something that I could always carry with me without giving much extra load in my bag.

I wanted something that has wi-fi, Bluetooth, and USB ports, so I could write, edit pictures, and connect to the internet anytime. I don’t need an optical drive for reading or writing. Hey, we’ve got flash drives!

I wanted something that has a real keyboard or a keypad . My sister asked me “Why don’t you buy an iphone, instead?” I said no, because I can’t type fast with an iphone, with its mini keys. She said “How about an ipad?” I said no, because I couldn’t type on it without looking at the letters. (And helloooo, it’s too expensive) Weird, but I don’t appreciate Apple products that much. Yeah, they’re cool to look at, but I don’t want to carry all those kinds of stuff, each with a different purpose. I’m satisfied with just having a Nokia “never-mind-the-model” phone, because I only use it for calling and texting.

So I decided on buying a netbook. To prove that I’m not technologically inclined (even if I’m working in the I.T. industry), I didn’t even know that smaller notebooks are called “netbooks”. I just told my brother who’s in Saudi about my plans of buying a small laptop. I realized my Dell Inspiron laptop seems to be out-dated now (bought 2006) and doesn’t serve much purpose to me anymore because I can’t carry it with me all the time. He bought a Vaio laptop in Saudi for a much cheaper price than the stores here in the Philippines, and I knew he was coming home on December so it would be great if he buys a netbook for me. He asked me for the specs, and I said anything that has Core 2 Duo processor will do. He’s like “Core 2 Duo??? That soooo 2006! Nobody buys Core 2 Duo anymore. And don’t even ask computer shops about that because they might laugh at you. Hahaha.” Did I just time-travel? Where have I been? “Intel I7’s are the latest” he said. “And netbooks use Atom processors. Hehehe.” Ohh … OK. Whatever.

So it’s time for google. Google, google, google. I almost got dizzy looking through the specs of the latest laptops and netbooks. In just a span of 1 to 2 years, there have been so much updates and there seems to be an upgrade every other month! I searched for magazine and user reviews, and found out that Asus and Toshiba consistently made it to top 3. I kinda expected Sony Vaio to be on top but it wasn’t anywhere on the list. Toshiba has a pretty good reputation on laptops and netbooks, but I found Asus, Samsung and Lenovo to have higher specs. They all use Bluetooth 3.0 already and the latest Intel Dual Core Atom processor, the N550. So my list said Toshiba, Asus, Lenovo and Samsung.

After reading user reviews in the internet, I went to the local computer shops to get my hands on the actual models and test the functionalities. I checked out the Asus 1015 PEM first. As I looked at the first mini laptop my fingers could type on, I wondered how the hell one could type “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” as quickly as one could with a desktop keyboard . But when I started typing, there was not much difference at all. So I said could be just what I needed. A mini laptop with a great keyboard.

Then I tried the Toshiba NB305, the most famous of the Toshiba netbooks. It looked fine, had a sturdy case, but I didn’t see how it edged other netbooks, so there could be no reason why I’m buying that.

Next stop was the Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3S. Like the Asus 1015PEM, it has Dual Core Atom processor. This kind of processor would be nice to have for multi-tasking. The white casing was nice and elegant. The sound was I think its greatest asset; powerful for a small thing. It actually has Dolby headphone and nice speakers that boost the bass sound. I thought wow, I’ll buy this one. Sure, Lenovo is also another big name in laptops and netbooks so I thought this would also be a great choice. I tried the quick brown fox sentence again and proved the qwerty keyboard was also great, but when it was time for copy-paste, that’s where the problem came out (at least for a copy-paste person like me). The position of the Fn and Ctrl keys are interchanged. Oh … this would be hard. Everything I wanted in a netbook, but my soul in writing lies on Ctrl X, Ctrl V and Ctrl C. Something to think about when I get home.

I gave my last test on the Samsung NF310. It also runs on the Dual Core Atom, and received high ratings on the net. The design looked sophisticated, but I got disappointed on the screen size. It’s a little smaller (just slightly smaller) than other netbooks. I don’t know how I noticed that slight difference, but that became my deciding factor not to choose it.

So … after I gauged everything, I realized I wanted Lenovo, but then Asus has a normal keyboard. Keyboard over that thing I loved about Lenovo’s speakers. So Asus it is. A friend of mine said Asus is for commoners, how come I ditched off Lenovo? Well, that’s alright. I am a commoner. So far, I’m loving my Asus, even if it has a few extra Arabic characters in my keyboard. :-P

My new travel buddy

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~ by travelwithjet on December 24, 2010.