New Laptop

[TheFallen]

So I went and bought an Asus R1F-k008e for £1300, and yes, I regret it. Looking at the specs, I could have saved myself some time if I'd gone and just not grabbed a touchscreen laptop. Oh and a 1 hour battery life? OUCH!

So if i could go back in time what would I do?

Buy a nice Dell or other generic manufacturer, same specs however, and then use the extra money to "pimp" it up, change the core RAM upgrade the wireless to a packet supporting ABGN card. Made sure it was 100% linux compatible for future forays into the land of *nix.

Now what would I do?

I'm at University, I could probably sell it for upwards of £800. I'm also dyslexic, I am due to receive around £1600. Setting a sensible budget of £600, I had a look at what the market had to offer.
Lately there's been a lot of talking about cheap, low cost, almost throw away laptops, the OLPC, the Intel XO, the Asus Eee. Looking at the Asus Eee in a bit closer detail it seems they are selling 4 options. 2G Surf, 4G Surf, 4G and 8G, all come in either black or white. All are entirely solid state and have 7" screens and around 3-4 hours of batter life.

The 2G has 256Mbs of RAM, the 4G models have 512Mb of RAM and the 8G model has 1Gb of RAM, in each case they are 200-pin SODIM DDR2 ram modules and each Eee has two slots.

Storage, The 2G has 2Gb of NAND storage, the 4G has 4Gb and the 8G has 8Gb. All laptops have 3 external USB ports and a single SDHC card slot.

Now the other important features are the web cams that are NOT in the surf models, the fact they all run a heavily modified Xandros Linux kernal, but can be "upgraded" to run a lite version of XP. It's also got a BG WiFi card but no bluetooth.

So my plan is thus:

Buy a Asus Eee 4G for £220.
http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx...ationKey=50626

Crack it open and buy taking the internal USB ports (unused off a Mini-PCIe slot) And add another 16Gbs of flash storage.
http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=3982

Buying the 16Gb flash drive from here.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Corsair-16GB-F...QQcmdZViewItem

However I probably won't add the bluetooth, and just use a USB mini-mouse.

I should be able to get it to boot off the 16Gb flash drive, and I will install a version of XP on it, I prefer XP and I'm far more comfortable with it, it'll also allow me to use some XP only programs, and devices, namely a 3G data modem.

Yes, mobile broadband is getting much cheaper (£10 a month for 12 months, 1Gig fair use policy or £29 a month 3gb fair use policy). This will allow me, along with the laptops extreme portability, to essentially carry it everywhere and then be on the net when ever I want, where ever I am, also by not spending all that much on the laptop, about 220 + 100(flash drive) +120(1gb) to 348(3gb) = 440 to 668. It won't too much of a problem should it be damaged, lost or stolen. Even at it's most expensive it won't be much more than half my current laptop.

This is just a plan, I may not need to even go ahead with the flash drive, or XP as the distro may be perfect for my needs (works with my programs and the 3G modem). The first step if procuring the funds, then testing the laptop.

[Beyond]

I just slipstreamed XP onto my Asus G1S B1. Loved it while I had but only bought it to establish credit (planning on getting a house within the next few years). Sold it to my step father today. Only stipulation was that he wanted XP and not Vista on it.

[s25]

Why does Dyslexia come into it? You getting a grant for that ? I think you should not buy a thing till you goto America I got my think pad t60 over there 1.5gb ram and 2ghz c2d process for the equilavant of 600E I know a guy!

[TheFallen]

Heh knowing how governments work I won't get that grant until I'm there!

[s25]

Is that why you are getting it?