Before flying over to Las Vegas for Blogworld, I was looking at my carry-on bag and trying to decide if bringing my full laptop was a good idea. Would I really use it while I was travelling? While I was at the conference? In the downtime in the evenings and mornings?

In the end I did take it, partly as a massive file storage for TV episodes and films to watch (via the PSP) and so I’d have a full editing suite if I decided to do any recording. How many media files did I transfer? Three. How much editing did I do? None. Saying that, I was still happy I had the laptop with me, mainly because that far from home it provided a safety net and a bit more redundancy.

But will I need that in Paris at the Le Web conference? Nope. To be honest for the regular conference attendee and traveller there’s so much you can do with the smaller computers and netbooks that are available that I’ve no hesitation in turning towards by Ubuntu powered Asus Netbook for the Parisian distraction. It’s good for blogging and Twitter interaction, plus a touch of web browsing. If called on to do a presentation; Open Office will handle the slides; and with the spare battery I carry I know I can reach out to nine hours of operation with careful use of the processor throttle and intermittent Wi-fi use. There may well be power and RJ45 supplied but I’d hate to rely on that (although given I’m one of many invited bloggers I think it’s safe to say Geraldine will be on top of that issue as well).

Actually forget all that. The perfect computer for Le Web would be an up-gunned ZX81 Psion Series 5mx running Firefox and a decent blogging client – ultra portable, long battery life, not too heavy or bulky to carry, discrete when in ‘walk and talk‘ conference mode, but a machine still able to do everything a super sized laptop could do.

Just a shame that a modern version doesn’t exist…

# November 6, 2009, tags: 901, asus, eee pc, le web, netbook, pda, replacement, s5mx, ubuntu. psion; subscribe to the Musings RSS Feed.