Netbook for travel and hacking

[Don.Kiser at Optimation.us (Don Kiser)]

I had recently purchased a Sager 7260 to use a netbook. It's has all the bells and whistles of a full size laptop in a 
nice small 12.1" Screen. However the 90min battery life with the standard 4cell battery and hope of getting up to 2hrs 
with the 8-cell relegated it to being the new home machine.

After looking at the various offerings in the 9" to 10" range. I found the screens or keyboards to be too small and 
lack of optical drive deterrent. Trying to do much of anything beyond a CLI was just aggravating. So, I went in look of 
a replacement.

I think I found a happy medium between portability and size in the Dell Inspiron 13. While it's not going to win any 
rave reviews from gamers, for the road warrior it looks to be a good choice.  It's has a 13.3" screen (1280x800), 250GB 
hard drive, 1GB RAM (I upgraded to 4gb from Crucial for $50)  wireless( I opted for N since the standard is Broadcom 
and unreliable in Linux), Bluetooth, webcam, slot load dvd writer/cd, SD card slot.

What sold me was the 85w/hr battery. I currently have a D820 as my primary laptop. It has an 85 w/hr battery and that 
get's 6hrs easily so the Inspiron should do at least equally as well if not better. The price point of the Inspiron 
isn't bad either. Nicely equipped with the Celeron processor it's close to $600, go with a core duo and you jump up 
another $100 or so.




Don Kiser
Senior Software Engineer
Optimation Technology, Inc.
50 High Tech Drive
Rush, NY
01-585-321-2300

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