Scratching that itch or: 7" is all I need

You know the way some guys are convinced they absolutely need an iPhone, the answer to their prayers for all needs internet, navigational and entertainment (oh and I've heard it's a phone, too)? Well, that was me with my quest for a small but inexpensive notebook. Like those iPhone-geeks who probably have 5 fully functioning mobile phones lying around at home it's not that I was desperately under-equipped on the hardware front. I'm writing this from my Sony Vaio which I really like, most of all for its shiny screen that allows you to work in bright sunlight even. This is not the case with my work notebook which I could also use 24/7 if I wanted to. It's an IBM Lenovo that has a really good battery but shitty display and weighs a ton. In my visions of myself daintily typing a novel somewhere other than my flat, like, say a nice café or the MQ, sipping a latte machiato or mojito, big, unwieldy notebooks did not feature. What did you say, have I seen to much Sex and the City? Well, Carry B. did look pretty good with her iBook. Anyway... That the elusive notebook had to be white goes without saying. When a visit to the Apple store in NY confirmed my suspicions that I did not want to a) queue for 3 hours (see iPhone guys above) at the checkout and b) nor did I fancy typing on an English keyboard %&/T&?P*k# the Asus EEE PC which I found out about only recently and got it into my mind last night needed to get today seemed to be just the gadget I'd been wating for.

Look, it's tiny!

I'll spare you the details, but I'd almost given up on it. One shop had plenty in stock (the version without webcam anyway) but none on display and the guy there wouldn't let me open the box to check whether the keyboard was big enough for typing compfortably, another store only had one last EEEPC waiting to be picked up by a customer who'd already paid for it but let me try the keyboard without switching the sacred machine on. Hours later, I finally got one, with webcam and all the extras I wanted (there's even a snazzy little neopren case included) - for € 299.

About two hours before that purchase, when I had resigned myself to my fate that I wouldn't get what I wanted - this is me, after all, the world's single most impatiant human being - on top of the prospect of an evening percolating in your usual Saturday-Night-Without-Plans-Depression, made worse by the fact that I went to the hairdresser's first thing in the morning and no one would see me in all my post-hairdresser-glory, I needed a quick fix:

They match the EEEPC, don't they?

The baby should be fully charged and ready to tickle now, will keep you posted on my eeexperience.