Tiny Lap Tops!

[Rob McCow]

Mini-laptops are here to stay! Although from the picture above I'd guess they're not the best things for heavy photoshopping.

I myself purchased an ASUS Eee PC for the 'Oh-why-not' price of £200 - now available for about £160 at www.dabs.com.

It came bundled with Linux and Open Office. Now normally I'd turn my nose up at these strange non-Windows things, but they've turned out to be wonderful. If you're only using your laptop for browsing the internet, typing and office functions, then there's no reason to spend anything more. Not only has Open Office been a joy to use, it's also completely compatible with Word and the mainstream Windows versions of the office applications.

Amazingly, it saved the day at a recent PS Audios recording session. Whereas my main PC has strange and unfathomable issues with recording from a microphone, the Eee PC did it straight away, with good results. One person's voice wasn't particularly loud - but I can assure you that if we'd recorded them on my main PC there would have been no sound left to salvage!

The battery life is good but not excellent. With the wireless network turned off, I can get three hours out of it no problem, which means it easily covers my journey to work and back.

So what are your experiences with laptops? Do you use them often? Had any problems or issues? Are you tempted by the super-cheap laptops that are coming on the market now?

[Pip Madeley]

When I was looking for a laptop earlier in the year I was seriously considering getting one of those Asus ones, but given the amount of time I spend away from my main PC at my dad's house I'm rather glad I went for the Acer with its larger screen and respectable RAM... just a shame it runs on Vista but I guess you can't have everything. My battery isn't that great, it tends to average around two hours with the wireless network on but I tend to keep it plugged in at home and on the train anyway.

I never thought I'd have a laptop but now I don't think I could live without one!

[WhiteCrow]

I bought an Acer Linux Lite laptop.

I was kind of impressed with it - did everything I did in a neat package. But the thing kept crashing - mainly cos I was trying to update it. And when crashed, I had to do a complete restore to factory settings. Not fun! Hence it had to go back and I'm on a standard laptop now.

Advantages were it was really fast, light, easy to use.

Disadvatanges - difficult to personalise or modify (ever for a UNIX genius like me), not a lot of software out there.