[clug] Portable computing options?

[Ben Davies]

Hi all,

I thought I'd throw this rambling post out to the linux list & see
what might be unearthed.

Having returned a *third* defective Asus transformer, I'm back to
hunting around portable computing options for a more suitable (and
reliable) system. I'm close to ruling out (non-rooted) Android for a
few reasons (although I've not tried any open source variants). For
the most part, several things I tried (beyond fairly basic tasks such
as reading PDFs, watching video, some web browsing, tapping out notes
or a quick email etc) were frustrating or involved faffing about. I
also don't like the idea of having a shared device linked to a single
google account, and needing that to access app repositories.

I was thinking of things we'd (it'll be shared between 2 people) need
to use it for (beyond being a video player and PDF reader), and
thought of: a travel laptop, something to handle some digital
photography while travelling (backups, moderate editing), a media
player for the TV, and have useful utils like a bash command line, SSH
and so forth. All this is pointing toward a "better" solution being to
try an ultrabook/subnotebook (whatever the lingo is these days), or a
Macbook air.

Has anyone else gone through the tablet+keyboard vs slim laptop
experience & have any thoughts to share?
[I gather some here have installed a GNU linux distro on a slim
laptop, although my partner is a mac user & likes that as "middle
ground" :-) ]

cheers,


Ben