So, I have to go to a conference next week, and realized I no longer have a work laptop. Thinking vaguely about picking up a netbook for the trip. Does anyone have a recommendation? I will mostly use it for net surfing, possibly some word processing. Or should I look into a tablet?

eta: possibly some movie watching, too, but not a lot.

Thoughts?

The word processing means you probably will want to bring along a compatible keyboard. I have never seen a netbook or laptop whose keyboard I'd want to use for even 20 minutes at a time. Also if you are going to do word processing those tiny high resolutions screens which are so wonderful for graphics and OK for briefly reading email and web sites become intolerable. Drew can make the case for the ipad, which gives you a choice of keyboard. These days tablet+keyboard will give great web surfing, and OK word processing when you add the keyboard. Pack the keyboard in your luggage/briefcase and use only for typing intensive stuff. You can use the tablet alone on planes, trains, any time you are doing just about anything but word processing.

Which tablet I'll leave to others. Don't know which have what word processing capabilities. Also do you need to do word processing when not connected to internet? That makes a difference. A lot of tablets don't have native word processing, just let you do wp in cloud (google docs and such) when connected to internet.

The thing about netbook is that a 10 inch netbook is tough on the eyes for word processing and once you get a 12 inch, and ipad is not that much more expensive. A quick Google says "pages" for the ipad is a great word processor. So if you have the money I'd at least consider an ipad with pages and an external keyboard. Umm except that you cant watch any flash based movies. Which means no youtube or vimeo. Sigh.

iPads come with a YouTube app. So you're screwed for embeds but you can watch YouTube.

I was thinking about this: [link]

Is 2 Gig of Ram enough for Window 7 home premium? I think performance would really suck in ways that would affect usability, like random long pauses and freezes while you are doing stuff.

Maybe you could downgrade it to xp or Linux. Either would get really good performance on those specs.

Ooh! That convertible tablet is totally what I want it to be! Except I want apple to make one (and they're not going to). But I basically want the macbook air to be a touchscreen and fold both ways.

Vortex, I've had this for traveling with since last summer, and it has worked out very well. The keyboard is a little cramped -- it takes me a day or so to make the adjustment from my regular full-sized keyboard, but after that it's all good.

I got this instead of a netbook for three reasons: 1) screen size, 2) keyboard size -- the netbook keyboards were just too cramped, and 3) 4Gb RAM, plus an SD card slot I can use for quick expansion if I really need to.

Okay, I love the new MacBook Pro, but I *loathe* iPhoto '11. When you edit a photo in an external editor (like any iteration of Photoshop, for instance), iPhoto immediately makes a duplicate of your original photo and then keeps it in the iPhoto finder window, next to the edited version. Not only does this bloat the hell out of my photo library (I edit almost all my photos), but visually it's a fucking nightmare. It's not user-friendly at all.

Any Mac users who manage their photos in something other than the shambling horror that is iPhoto '11 -- what do you use?

I'm thinking of just using the Finder and manually managing a hierarchy of folders. And opening things in Preview when I want to just look at them.

(Apparently iPhoto '09 was bad but didn't do this duplication thing. Well, it *did,* but it just stowed the duplicates in folders but didn't make them appear in the iPhoto window. But since I kept the trusty iBook for 6 years, I jumped from iPhoto '05 [or possibly '06] right to this nonsense. I'm half-tempted to see if I can kludge iPhoto '05 onto the MBP.)