Equipment question for reporters

Windows 7 is supposed to work well on it and be usable. If you just surf and use Google Docs, they would be a great item for reporters.

 

I never threw out the flipscreen one they gave me as an intern and never asked for back.

 

It might be worth something now.

 

Is there someone out there who collects them?

 

Just bought a MSI Wind 10 inch netbook on eBay for just over $200 (open box return). It has a 92 percent keyboard and the manufacturer markets it as an ergonomic keyboard, but the jury's still out on that as far as I'm concerned. For what it's worth, the Wind is functionality is excellent. It came with Windows XP, a 160 gb hard drive and 1 gb of ram, which I've since upgraded to 2 gb's. It's as quick as you'll ever need it to be with the extra ram, and that's with Kaspersky internet security running on it. The 3 cell battery lasts just under two hours surfing the web wirelessly and writing. The Wind is all the rage on youtube with hackers who've found running Mac operating system on it seamlessly for some reason you'd have to have more technical knowledge to explain than I do. People are partitioning the hard drive, and running XP, Leopard and Linux. They're calling it a "hackbook" or "hackintosh." There's also an Acer with an 11.6 inch screen that has a full sized keyboard that sells for about $325 on Amazon. I tried it out at officemax and it was way easier to use, but the processing speed is a joke, according to most reviews I've seen. They're supposedly making one with a better processor but Amazon's preorder price is $450. I figure if I'm going to spend that much, might as well get a refurbished macbook.

 

There was a story going around at my old paper (years ago, mind you) that a sports guy took one of our TRSs to Frankfort for the state hoops finals. A guy there saw it and offered him $300 for it. So, yeah, those nutbars are out there...

 

TRS-80 on e-bay. starting bid: $24.95. number of bids: 0

http://cgi.ebay.com/Radio-Shack-TRS-80-Model-100-Computer_W0QQitemZ350244845286QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item518c3836e6&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

 

I've had many a night when I wanted to see how far I could throw one of those babies.

 

I was writing on one of those the night my daugher was born in 1994.

The netbooks. 16GB SSD isn't all that big, but if you're going to do nothing but text work, it should be plenty. My Dell that I bought 6-7 years ago has a 16GB hd, and it still works fine. Reallyl slow running streaming video, but I don't do much of that. I'm actually thinking of getting netbooks for both of my kids, just so I don't have to share my laptop any more.