Netbook Vs. Notebook.

It's a Saturday night, a cold front is racing in, the pressure is falling (and I can feel it in my joints....maturity is not for the faint of heart ).

First of all, thanks to all of the Colorado Springs Independent readers who cast your votes for Mike Daniels and me for best weathercasters. This year, he took the gold, and I have the silver. We've flip-flopped on those over the past decade or so....we both appreciate the votes of confidence.

Now then, on to the technical musings...

I've been using an Acer Aspire One netbook as my carry-along computer for quite some time now, so here's a quick update on how viable going for a notebook to a netbook is for everyday mobile computing...VERY.

Keep in mind that they don't come with an optical drive (to read CD's and DVD's), but you can pick up an external model for a reasonable price, and they work well. What they usually DON'T tell you is that many of the external drives won't run off the power available in a single USB port on your netbook (or your laptop, for that matter either). The solution is fairly simple, you pick up a special cable that allows you to plug your external drive into 2 usb ports at the same time.

This usually does the trick. It provides enough power, your system recognizes the drive (mine kept thinking it was a flash drive...REALLY annoying), and it chugs along smoothly, reading, writing and providing DVD movie power to your portable. Just got finished watching a movie on the acer, with an I/O Magic external reader/writer, and it looked GREAT on that little screen. OK, it's not the largest viewing surface available, but it's bigger than the iPod Touch you've been watching those TV shows on.

As to the Acer itself, once you get used to the smaller keyboard, you can type almost at your peak speed. I use OpenOffice for my word processing and spreadsheets, and performance has been flawless. WiFi is good and other than the fact that the unit has a fan that sounds like the shuttle landing, I just don't have any substantive complaints.

If you find a good deal (I got mine refurbished for $180), don't hesitate. It's nice to cut down on the weight in your computer bag without giving up the functionality.

I've discovered some really great Podcasts recently...in future entries, I'll share those with you, and I'd appreciate it if you'd share your favorites with me.