One Soap Box

Despite what the title may have you think, I do want one. However, everything on the market right now is basically crap in one way or another to a point that I can’t convince myself that it’s a worthwhile investment. I love my T61, but it’s a bit bulky, gets hot in one corner, and the one battery is crap now (probably due to heat; 9-cell with 1-2 hours depending on the mood of my cat it seems).

* One thing that I’ve always hated was the touchpad. It’s too finicky and usually just gets in my way. However, I’d like to have one on whatever I get next since I use it for scrolling (everything else is disabled: tapping, movement, buttons, the works). I don’t think I’d be able to work with one (especially if the buttons were on the side) since I’ve gotten so used to the trackpoint. I thought at first that I would be doomed to live with a trackpad until I saw the Sony Vaio P. It has a trackpoint and all three mouse buttons. Unfortunately, it is overpriced and only comes with software I’d rather not give money to.

* I also would like at least 8 hours of battery life. I can get 4-5 hours from the good battery for the T61 and on powersave, so I don’t think this is too outrageous for a netbook.

* It has to come with Linux (or nothing). Even if I’m wiping it for Fedora, I’m not giving money to companies that don’t deserve the money.

* The Insert/Delete/Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys must exist on their own. Having the latter 4 be modified arrow keypresses is not excusable for me since I use them so often (this kills the Asus machines). It’d be preferable to have them in the standard 2×3 arrangement, but it’s excusable if it means fitting on the machine (laptops don’t have an excuse).

* It has to be less than a kilogram. This is pretty common, but the larger ones tend to approach this limit.

* Sleep and hibernate should work. This is a no brainer, but it currently fails on the T61. It’s not really that much of a problem since boot time is low and the thing isn’t exactly agile either.

* Solid state drive. I have a desktop to tether it to, so 20G would be good, but I could probably work with a 12GB, 8G would be cutting it close. My current installs work on 10G and 15G / partition sizes (/home is the only one that’s separate) and are usually more than half free depending on the debuginfo and mock setup at the time, both of which won’t be happening on the netbook.

* Ethernet port on it. You’d think this would be a given, but the Vaio P is too slim for it and has some weird adapter that’s probably overpriced and defeats the purpose of the thing being so small.

* A webcam would be nice, but it’s not a showstopper.

* It would be nice to have 2G of RAM, but 1G should do it; currently I’m using on 650MB on the laptop and a little over a gig on the desktop with lots of extra stuff running.

Unfortunately, I think it may be a few years until I can find anything on the market that meets these requirements. Even laptops have trouble making them (except for the weight thing which I’d waive for them). Unless there’s one I’m not aware of. Thoughts?