If traveling light is important to you, and if you want to carry a computer on your travels, then think about taking an Eee PC with you. I do, and I get a lot of work done without worrying about lugging a bulky laptop computer around. The Eee PC is the perfect out of office and events companion.
Overview
I speak at several conferences each year. Since I'm only at these conferences for three or four days, I like to travel as lightly as possible. Usually with a single carry-on bag. That doesn't leave a lot of space for a laptop.
But I don't just speak. I blog, try to record a few interviews for the podcast that I contribute to, write, check my email, and read news. I've found that my Eee PC is perfect for all of these tasks while I'm on the road.
Why the Eee PC?
It's small. It's light. It's tough. I can pull it out anywhere, and get working in under 30 seconds. On top of that, the Eee PC has all of the features and software I need: excellent wired and wireless networking, a preinstalled word processor and Web browser, and links to some of my favorite Web applications like Google Docs.
The fact that the Eee PC runs Linux is a bonus. I have a fast, snappy machine that doesn't take up too much space in a cramped conference room or on a very cramped airplane.
Using the Eee PC while on the road
I first tried using my Eee PC as my conference computer in May, 2008. I was surprised at how well that worked out. I had no trouble connecting to the hotel's wireless network, and likewise getting a wired connection in my room.
Blogging was easy, too. I did it from within my browser using a Firefox extension called ScribeFire. I typep my notes in ScribeFire during a session or a keynote and save them locally. Afterwards, I fleshed them out into a full blog post. From there, all I had to do was click the Publish button in ScribeFire and the post is up on my blog within a few seconds.
I record podcast interviews using Audacity. Audacity doesn't come preinstalled with an Eee PC. But you can quickly install it using Synaptic Package Manager (which is standard software). To do the interviews, all I did was plug my microphone into the mic jack, start up Audacity, and start recording. My only problem was filling up the remaining hard drive while doing an interview. It ran about 40 minutes, and at the end of it I only had about 100 MB or so of free space left on the Eee PC's disk. That taught me to record onto a USB flash drive or an SD card.
The next steps
The only thing that I haven't done is use the Eee PC to display slides. At least, not yet. I can use the preinstalled version of OpenOffice.org Impress or the PDF reader. Why haven't I done that yet? Chalk it up to an irrational fear of the projector not playing well with my Eee PC.
My Eee PC hasn't yet let me down while we've been on the road. And I don't expect it to.