With Wi-Fi spots springing up all around the world, many cycle tourers are tempted to take laptops on their travels, for keeping a travel blog, Skyping, downloading photos, checking ATM transactions, etc.
With its compact size (22.5x17x3.2cm), Asus’s 901 Eee PC notebook is ideal for bike travel. We tried out the 20GB Linux version, which uses a solid state hard drive that’s more amenable to being lugged about.
Ours spent several weeks jolting around in a pannier across particularly bumpy, dusty Cambodian tracks with no gripes whatsoever.
The computer’s Intel Atom processor is a little on the sluggish side compared to a fully fledged laptop, but it chugs along and gets everything done, with three USB ports and an SD card slot allowing extra storage space.
Most importantly, it’s both light in weight – 1.1kg – and on battery use – the six-cell battery gives up to eight hours.
Nimble fingered typists should be fine on the 21cm keyboard, though fatter fingered riders or prolific bloggers might prefer one of the slightly larger netbooks, adding a few hundred grams but offering a bit more digit space.
For a full review and detailed spec list click here