Small computers Whic One

Left out a H sorry .... Which One hahaha

Isuzumu,

I have the Acer. It's very good. It comes with XP (not sure what the Toshiba has but I prefer XP to Vista).

I noticed the other day in a Retravision catalogue, they had the Acer at a very good price, better than Dickies after cash back. It might be worth checking to see if it's still current.

Unfoirtunately I can't recall the exact dollars.

Although the freebie hard case Dickies are offering would be really handy. I had to wrap mine in the middle of my suitcase during our recent trip to China to protect it.

cheers

Bruce, I have the EEEPC 900 and its been on every 4wd trip I have been on, its never given me any trouble. I have it conneted to a gps mouse and run Ozi explorer. I power it in the car with a charger/power supply from ebay. I have it mounted on the dash of my Patrol and bumps, rough roads atc have not so far upset it, you could do worse

cheers


Ken

Hi Bruce

The FIRST thing I would be looking at is what you going to be using for computer for? GPS; email; internet; WP; etc

As stated the EeePC 900 has a solid state drive. The Toshiba has a 120GB HDD. The latter doesn't take too kindly to being bashed around the bush. (not that I have tested either in that respect).

The EeePC uses a 12V power supply. Don't think you can just plug that into your cigarette lighter - it's NOT 12V - and the cranking amps can also affect supply. I'm currently investigating a "pure 12V" supply for computers to take into consideration these factors. Still in infancy stage.

If you don't know much about computers I would recommend you get XP as your OS. At least you will find somebody around to help you get out of trouble when necessary. Linux (Ubuntu, Red Hat, etc) IMHO is for the geeks and Vista is a real screwup. Even a lot of the pros are avoiding it.

As for software, don't get suckered into having to buy Microsoft Office etc. There are far cheaper options (and just as good) available for download e.g. www.OpenOffice.org has a full office suite for FREE.

PM me if you want to.

HTH

Malcolm

Dont worry about the hard drives in the laptops. They are close to bullet proof.
The Toshiba is a good unit as we have a couple of the small ones at work. The Aldi 10" unit $600 WinXP is a great unit. I managed to get another Aldi unit last week as some stores still have them. If the Aldi 10" had not been available would have bought more Toshiba.

All great advice thanks everyone.

Cheers Bruce

I for one will never ever again use a standard laptop with a hard drive when going bush. Though I should note that I have only tried my old Sony Vaio 12" laptop in doing so, but it constantly crashed and system had to be rebooted, navigation system restarted etc. etc. So I would not recommend it, and with the price of SSD based systems these days, it is by far a much better option if you are serious about going bush.

I am for one going to get a SSD state one, or a user Toughbook (but expect it to be too dear!).... as I grew tired of all the problems with coorugations etc. Trackranger itself was bullet proof, but the laptop... hmmm... cause of frustrations for sure!

Just my $0.02 cents worth.

Bruce
I was in Myers yesterday and they had Asus brand for $399. I didn't look at them so have no info but I have an Asus laptop which I find to be excellent
Clare

In this morning's paper in Perth (Sat) Harvey Norman have the Acer advertised at $496 after $69 cashback.

That's the lowest I've seen it and about $100 less than I paid.

Just out of interest's sake, I was in Hong Kong 3 weeks ago and the same unit was AUD$800.

cheers