Years ago my mom bought a tiny Sony Vaio PictureBook PCG-C1VN . This was the second sub-notebook computer I had ever seen: the first was a Toshiba Libretto owned by another guy at the consulting company I was working for at the time. The PCG-C1VN was perfect for my mom, who only needed a computer to give her PowerPoint presentations when conducting a training or retreat. Remember, this was years ago, before the proliferation of USB media. She learned pretty early that simply burning her presentations on CD was insufficient because while every facility had a projector for her to use, not every facility had a computer to connect to that projector, and when they did they didn't always have PowerPoint. So she bought the PCG-C1VN and took that loaded with her presentations. All in all, this worked out extremely well for her.

Late last year, during the height of the One Laptop Per Child Give One Get One program, I bought an XO-1 laptop for myself. I used it off and on for a couple of months, and finally sold it to a friend of a friend. It's a terrific piece of hardware, with some very clever software, but it's not really something I need. I occasionally sat on my porch using the XO-1, but as often as not it sat powered off in my office.

The XO-1 isn't exactly a netbook, but that's how I was treating it. Sometimes I don't want to lug my laptop around with me, when all I really need is something on which to check email, or occasionally ssh into a server somewhere. I can, of course, do both of those tasks from my phone, but anything more than just skimming the contents of my Inbox from my phone involves too much typing on the infuriatingly small keyboard on my Palm Centro.

So last night, with help from Mike, I installed Debian onto the PCG-C1VN. It, too, isn't quite a netbook, but it's closer than the XO-1. The Sony has a Transmeta Crusoe CPU running at 800 MHz, and while it only has 512 MB of RAM, I think I can install a slim window manager (matchbox, openbox, etc), a small terminal, and the Epiphany browser to get most of what I need out of this small form factor laptop. It won't be a speed demon by any stretch, but it should be satisfactory.

I thought long and hard about installing Ubuntu onto the PCG-C1VN so that I could try out the new netbook remix, which puts a nice netbook interface over the top of a standard Ubuntu installation. The netbook remix looks slick, but, alas, I think that running a standard Ubuntu installation would be too much for the poor little PCG-C1VN to handle.

Or maybe I'll break down and finally buy a true netbook, like the Asus Eee. Everyone I've seen using the Eee seems to really enjoy it.

I read with interest Ben Armstrong's post about his Asus Eee Pc 4G. I've long been casually interested in ultra-portable computing devices, and this thing looks like a real winner. Solid state storage means fast boot times and no worry about failed mechanical parts. The specs look decent for the price, and I'm sorely tempted to buy one for myself. Amazon sells the Eee for $399.

We've decided to get the twins laptops for Christmas this year, and I immediately thought of them as I reviewed the Eee specs. Small, sturdy, low-power consumption, and it runs a free-as-in-speech operating system! I think the kids could easily enjoy using something like this, as it should support all of their major activities: word processing for school, email and web, YouTube (and presumably Club Penguin), and I could install a JVM so that they could play RuneScape. I'd feel a lot more comfortable with them using something rugged like this as opposed to a traditional laptop with a hard drive that is susceptible to the not-always delicate handlings of a 10 year old.

I also thought, briefly, about the One Laptop Per Child XO laptop for the kids. In November the project is running a Give 1 Get 1 campaign, whereby you buy two laptops: one for yourself and one for donation to a kid in Africa. I think the XO laptop would be a lot of fun to use personally, but I think it's a little too do-it-yourself for my kids at this time: they've grown up using computers, and have certain expectations about what they can do with them. It's not clear to me that the XO would satisfy their YouTube and RuneScape requirements.

Finally, for $100 more, I can get a name-brand traditional laptop. Best Buy currently has a Compaq for $499, complete with 1GB RAM and 120GB hard drive. It comes with Microsoft Vista, but that should be easily remedied (although I'd try to boot an Ubuntu LiveCD at the store to confirm hardware compatibility before purchasing). A traditional laptop computer would probably be the best choice for the kids, as much as I'd love to see them use something more unique. After all, 7" is quite small and probably not the best long-term choice for a general-purpose computing device.