Fitting the battle of life

Not good news. Tottenham Court Road, that bastion of computer shops, still has no eee pcs. The shops I visited briefly today are taking pre-orders only, can’t say when they’ll be back in, and I’m fed up with it all. Ho hum, life goes on eee-less.

I tried nearly every shop on Tottenham Court Road today (on the way back from the hell on earth that is Oxford Street) looking for an eee pc (and if you don’t know what one of those is, don’t bother reading the rest). Lots of shops had one in the window, or on display inside – but this wasn’t good enough.

The only stock anyone seems to have is white 2 gig models, which isn’t what I want. I want one that’s worth having. The best I can do is wait for the rumoured deliveries next week that everyone’s expecting. But I want one now!

I did get to have a play around with one at (one of the many) Micro Anvika, testing out the keyboard with my manhands. If I do splash out, it will take some getting used to, but since I will be mainly using it for lecture and meeting note-taking, and working in the library, I think it will be fine. It’ll certainly be lighter than my current 15.4″ Dell, and not so conspicuous in a bag. Plus, having more than an hour’s battery life can’t be a bad thing!

[I also popped into the Apple store on Regent Street. No MacBook Airs in just yet, but I'll go and drool over them when they do come in. Just think, Ubuntu on one of those...]

Well, like many, I would rather like an Asus eee pc. Not just because it runs Linux and is cheap – because my main laptop now only gets about an hour’s battery life, which of course is pants. A new battery from Dell would be approaching half the cost of the eee, and this laptop (15.4-incher) isn’t exactly ultra-portable. Even with Ubuntu it takes a little time to load up, poor thing, and for note-taking in lectures and society meetings I’d want something I can turn on and off quickly.

I think, having made a budget for this term’s major spending, I might be able to afford one. Might. This worries me somewhat. It means I’m likely to buy one.