As you may or may not know currently my trusty workhorse is in repair. Unfortunately it doubled as my ‘personal’ laptop. During the day I worked on it for my clients and in the evening I did some personal stuff (mostly browsing). The past week I had to rely on e.g. my girlfriend going to bed early so I could abuse her system. 🙁

This got me thinking. As ‘my’ laptop may return today or tomorrow or whenever. How about a system I could use for some browsing/blogging/etc. from the couch? A secondary up to date laptop with a small form factor. Something like a 12″ Apple iBook. 🙂
Added bonus: As a I develop on wintel I always have to ask Mac-people to check my work for me. Owning a Mac myself would surely help.

So this morning I went to the Mac center to see for myself.
Starting at € 1.039,- for a full featured notebook. That sounds attractive. Some highlights:

• Very nice design.
• 12" TFT; 1024×768 resolution.
• 2,2 kg; ~A4 paper size.
• 512 MB memory (1,5 GB max).
• Combo drive (DVD & CDRW).
• Mac OS X Tiger with Safari RSS, Dashboard, iLife, etc.
• Firewire 400 & USB 2.0.
• WiFi G & Bluetooth.
• Scrollpad.
• HD protection against dropping.

BUT… they’re not yet available in The Netherlands. 🙁 I could buy an older generation iBook for a € 90,- discount. No thank you. Half the memory, a smaller HD, missing options. I need one now and I want the new one.

So how about a wintel 12″er? A quick look around the shops, to no avail. Alle the notebooks are at least 15″ and have to be widescreen nowadays. A PDA isn’t what I’m looking for. I want a normal keyboard and a slightly higher resolution.

Hopefully there’s a nice movie on tonight…