The (hopefully) Last Crusade

I have been chasing the Holy Grail for some time. Examples:

• I had a Palm Pilot Pro.I had the first Nextel Blackberry (the 6510, if I recall correctly)
• I have used various flavor of Moleskinae over time
• I have an ASUS eee PC 900
• I have had each model of iPhone

I have been looking for technical solutions to, in-the-field: Calendaring, Note-taking, Task-Capture, remote access, email/web if possible.
The iPhones have been the best investment. All three are currently in use (by myself, my wife, and my oldest son in reverse chronological sequence. The ASUS has been the worst investment. I used it sporadically for a few months, then less-and-less.
So, naturally, I bought a new one.
The new computer, on which I am writing now, is an eee PC 1005HAB.
My main disappointment with the eee PC 900 was that the keyboard was just too cramped. It was just so uncomfortable and caused so many typos that I just became discouraged from even trying. Plus, the onboard mouse was crappy.   Sorry,  let me correct that: Crappy.   There, that’s better.    Lousy.   And now, the buttons essentially don’t work at all.
A friend gave me a roll-up keyboard to use, and that was better (though one more thing to drag around, and still not like a real keyboard. But, thanks Alden!) but the mouse was still terrible.
I could have bought an external mouse, and that would be better, but it would be one more thing to drag around.

The %$#@* eee PC 900

I have been lusting for a Macbook Air. Of course, it costs twice as much (at least) as a decent Netbook and is similarly underpowered.   That seemed to be a selling point, though.   I don’t want a real computer, I think.   I want something a little crippled so that I use it primarily for what I am purchasing it for: taking notes.

I really just want a decent tool that can do these things:

• Allow me to take notes quickly and comfortably, such that I will actually lug it with me, break it out, and use it
• Allow me to work with shared documents on the road; I think that use of DropBox and flash drives can let me get most of the way there; a Document Management service in the cloud would be great, one day
• Allow me to occasionally use it with a projector to run PowerPoint or collaboratively work on Office docs
• Support use for browsing while on the road, particularly on vacation, to research restaurants, events, public transport, synch photos off cameras (including iPhone), and use for the occasional watching of video in the car on long trips

And that’s pretty much it. Clearly, it needs to be small and light, but not so small and light as the eee PC 900. An aside: the build quality on the eee PC 900 was crappy. The case never really fit together just right, and the mouse buttons were always hinky.
Back to the Air. I’m not saying I will never buy one; if I can get a good condition used 1st Gen Air, I might just get it. But it would have to be >$600. Not to put too fine a point on it, but having an underpowered computer appeals to me because then I would be (maybe) less likely to use it for all kinds of other purposes and it would be too great a distraction. Having an eee PC, particularly one running Linux (talk about the antithesis of compelling!), is a more focused, Spartan experience. Trust me.

The new eee PC; the 1005 HAB

The Great Merlin Mann did a speech at MaxFunCon (whatever that is) about distractions and how trying to find the Perfect System (aka The Holy Grail) is just an excuse for not doing what you want to do but are afraid to do. His point was: if you want to write, then just site down and write, don’t worry about getting the perfect pen and the perfect paper.
Then, today, I was searching through my documents for a certain Word doc; the Google Desktop search brought up a document that, in preview, looked interesting and unfamiliar. It was a detailed document with key points from a meeting that I was in months ago. A really good capture of the minutes of that meeting. Then I realized that I had taken those notes, using my eee PC back before I came to hate it.
I want to be the guy who takes those types of notes and has them available for review. I need a decent, if not perfect way of capturing those notes. And so, today: the eee PC 1005HAB.
We shall see how that works out.