Lobster wrote:

An Asus Eee PC would seem to fit that spec spot on.

The newer bigger one looks like:

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/04..._asus_eee_900/

Thanks for this; never having heard of these I'm definitely very
interested and have been clueing myself up on them.

One concern is the Linux o/s which neither SWMBO or me have ever used;
if it were me I'm sure I'd be fine with it but knowing er indoors as I
do I strongly suspect that would be an issue, so I'd only buy it on the
proviso that I could swap to XP. I'm presuming that would mean buying a
USB CD/DVD drive (which I suppose we'd probably want anyway) to be able
to access an XP installation disk? or could it be done over my home
network?

They do a version with XP preloaded as well. IIRC that has a hard drive
as well though so battery life is not quite as good. There are also
plenty of sites explaining how to add XP yourself.

Also - despite already owning 3 copies of XP for the families' existing
PCs, I assume I'd need to buy another one? Having just checked dabs,
that costs an eye-watering and deal-breaking £191 though. I'd happily

You can legitimately move an install of XP only if it was bought as a
retail version and not an OEM preloaded one.

buy a cheap legit 2nd hand version off eg ebay but haven't MS tied XP
license numbers tied to individual PCs now - ie, would an ebay version
work? Or is there a more reasonable way forward?!

Well if you want XP then get the Eee with XP, although it loses a little
of its "turnkey" charm. (the Linux on it is setup such that it does
everything you need from the outset - email, browsing, media playback,
digital images etc. So you never need to get any closer to it than that).



--
Cheers,

John.

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