Nestled In

For the whole summer, I’ve been obsessing about netbooks. I have spent dozens of hours reading about the old, new and up-coming models. Surprisingly, after several monologues of trying to convince her, Katja agreed that a netbook (mini-sized laptop that is meant mainly for web use and e-mail) would be kind of nice to have around the house. We are planning to use our new baby at home (e.g., on the sofa) and on the move (on the beach, in the park and during trips). A netbook is a great and mobile option for someone who’s looking for a device for e-mail checking, web surfing and light text processing. A netbook also offers entertainment in a form of games, videos and music.

[nerd jargon] First, I was after a brand new Asus Eee PC model 901 with 8.9″ screen, Intel Atom processor and 20 GB of storage space, but, on last Thursday, I ended up getting an older 701 model with 7″ screen, Intel Mobile Celeron processor and 4 GB of storage space. [/nerd jargon] 701 wasn’t nowhere near as expensive (toy) as the 901 would have been, so I bought that one instead. Netbooks, regardless of the technology inside the chassis, are not capable of replacing “a real computer” so, in my opinion, it doesn’t matter if the processor is not the newest of kind or the screen is a tad smaller than in the other model. Netbooks are always mini-sized laptops.

As you can see from the picture above, our Eee PC is very small. It is 22.5 cm wide and 16.5 cm deep. The height is some where around three centimeters. This netbook weighs about 920 grams. It fits into almost any purse or bag and it’s easy to take along. In addition to all other features, it looks very pretty on our new IKEA side table!

I’m addicted to gadgets and home electronics. I suffer from chronic “computer fever”. I’m never happy with what I have when it comes down to home electronics. I have a need for better and faster and more beautiful computer although there’s no sensible reason to purchase a new laptop or desktop. I bought my current laptop (LG R1-G2KKV1) 9 months ago and it still fulfils my needs (unfortunately).

I’m not going to write often about computers and such, I promise, but now I have to because I got a permission to do so. There’s a condition though, I may not talk about the tech specs, only the design. Oh, I’m a PC person so I’m ignoring Macs in this post.

Okay, so there’s a lot of ugliness in computers: the piles of wires and the dull grey cases. I picked up pictures of couple of nice looking, compact and up-to-date laptops to share with you. Nowadays it’s a trend to replace old and ugly desktops with stylish laptops which are just as powerful as the desktops. Laptops are great also because they are easy to put aside and out of sight.

So, here’s four laptop computers that are designed for very different situations. I think all of these laptops would be welcome to any home.

Here’s Fujitsu Siemens Si 2636 laptop with glossy black lid and red highlights. It’s quite small (the screen is 13.3″ and the computer weighs only 2.3 kg) and it has all the equipment you need either at home or on the road.

Asus U6S is even smaller that Amilo. It is designed for mobile use and for people who like luxury. U6S has 12.1″ widescreen and it weighs only 1.6 kg. There’s magnesium metal chassis, piano lacquered mocha brown lid and leather palm rests. It has obviously been designed for business users.

Sony Vaio FZ series is designed for entertainment and it is powerful but it still is portable (magnesium chassis). There’s lot of disk space for music and video and there’s a built-in web camera and microphone. FZ has silver and black finishing and it’s smallish laptop with 15.4″ widescreen. Stylish replacement for desktop.

HP Pavilion HDX laptops are fully loaded multimedia computers with 20.1″ widescreens. A HDX laptop includes digital TV tuner and it has a remote. This giant weighs almost 8 kg but it is compact and totally replaces almost any desktop computer. And still, there’s only one necessary wire, the power cord!

P.S. I’m planning to purchase a new desktop computer within a year. Meantime, I’m going to pimp my laptop with Wacom Bamboo Fun pen tablet and extra RAM (from 2 GB to 3 GB!).

And so it happened. We are proud owners of second-hand Husqvarna Electronic 215. On Tuesday we went to see what kind of options with sewing machines we have within our rather small budget. We asked around at two stores which both are specialized to sewing machines and sellers at both stores recommended a second-hand sewing machine instead of a new one. The cheap ‘made in the Far East’ sewing machines are made of plastic and get broken easily, so they said. That’s way we ended up bying about 7-9 years old Husqvarna which is made in Sweden and has one piece metal casting. New sewing machine like this would have cost at least twice as much. Our Husqvarna has been checked that it’s in order and it has one year warranty. Today I’m going to test it for real and finish our livingroom curtains.

Like always, Lissu couldn’t keep her paws and nose away from something new and interesting.

After all the Husqvarna excitement Lissu was exhausted and took a nap on my laptop. All the white and grey hair on my keyboard (for several days) were so delightful decoration!

Only yesterday morning I wrote that it would be great to own a sewing machine and start learning sewing for real. Last night we started to browse different sewing machine manufacturer’s web sites. The sewing machine doesn’t have to be state of the art; instead we are looking for a basic (preferably mechanical) sewing machine which would be reliable and long-lasting and which wouldn’t be too expensive. We are thinking about either Husqvarna Viking or Brother. We are going to town today to find out more and to look into different sewing machines. We are also considering a second-hand sewing machine as an option.