Clearly, I want Apple’s latest toy.  And no doubt, I can rationalize and afford ownership.

I mean, I’m about a week and a half away from traveling to the edge of the universe, also known as Southeast Asia.  I don’t want to be lugging my 5-pound, dusty old (by like a whole year or something) MacBook into the rain forest.  It’s heavy.

Nah, truth is it is really, heavy schlepping a laptop onto a plane any way you stretch it.  I almost wish I didn’t carry it the six-hour flight to Boston.  Almost.

Cutting a couple pounds means more books and magazines to amuse me for the endless stretch of sitting in coach-class seats and hating humanity.  What’s a girl to do, but lust after a shiny new thing that’s rich and thin?

On the other hand, the other long, long trip for which I am probably destined to jet is not Asia but a whole other swinging, exotic (to me) continent, Africa.  For Africa, it will actually be work, and so a computer would be likely more than a luxury but a necessity.

But, then again, the whole point will be indeed to see some of the spots off the tourist miles and into the real folks and all.  Infrastructure and wireless at every turn is not really a hallmark of the neighborhoods in which I will likely find myself.

El Jobso, as the CEO might be called, wasn’t, I think, designing for places where electricity is iffy, let alone freaking wifi. 

Then, there’s the cold, harsh reality.  If you walk around with bleeding edge technology in a corner where folks aren’t getting the basics of food, clothing and shelter, might it be expected that a ne’er-do-well might get all Jean Valjean on your ass and swipe your shiny, new thing?

After much research, and no doubt annoying the snot out of my partner, the occasionally long suffering M., I settled on the not-quite ready for prime time world of Linux, and the latest out of Taiwan.  The Asus EEE PC.  The e’s are all for words like easy.

At $400, I might just leave it in Africa, if anyone there wants it.  At two-pounds, I won’t do nearly a speck of whining.  Well, I still might, but this thang is book-sized, so it won’t be over that.

This entry is fully open-sourced.  Written on a Linux machine, using FireFox and the plug-in Deepest Sender.  And, every single word I’ve used is code that’s been used and passed along by others for centuries.

On the plus sides, when the IT guys at work get all chauvinistic and anti-Mac, and can honestly, really and truly say, “Pshaw, I gots me three laptops, each with a different OS.  Windows, Mac, Xandros Linux, I’m covered.  I’m nothing if not petty and macho.