Mobile / Cell Phone Thoughts & Reviews

So I’m shopping for a UMPC or Ultra Mobile Personal Computer, it’s a really small and light laptop and I have all kinds of questions.

What are the brands I should be looking at? What do I want out of it? What features must be present? And what are my minimum hardware requirements.

Well my options are vast, there is Asus, Acer, MSI, HP, Dell, Lenovo, Sony, and a whole bunch of other brands I can’t think of right now.

I want a UMPC also known as a NetBook to have a few key components. For starters an Atom processor, 1 gig of ram minimum, bluetooth and a 6 cell battery (I would like it to last at least 4 hours at a minimum). I need this thing to be a work horse for a single task at a time. I will be using it for entertainment for my daughter when we travel, so she can watch movies on a 14 hour flight. I need it for email, surfing the web, IM and video conferencing the rest of the time. I plan to run my email over GMail so that will be in a web browser and then I will be surfing the web in the same app. I have also been hearing good things about Meebo, it’s an IM client that runs in a web browser. So there is most of what I need all based in one single app. I also need to run Skype separately and SightSpeed/Dell Video Chat when I get alerted that someone wants to do a video conference. SightSpeed is great when the bandwidth is at a minimum.

So there you have it, I will probably run 4 apps regularly on the UMPC. Now which one should I get? I can’t just go to the store and play with them, most electronic stores don’t sell them yet and if they do it’s probably only 1 or 2 brands and models. I don’t want to go online and purchase 5 or more netbooks just to return all but 1. So I need to rely on my readers to give me some advice. What do you plan on buying or what do you have already?

Lastly do I want a solid state drive (SSD) or a regular spinning hard drive (HD)? And do I want it to run Linux or XP?

I’m leaning toward the Asus 901 for $429 , the Acer Aspire 1 for $399, Dells high end offering for $494 (specked the way I want it), or the MSI Wind for $506. I just can’t decide.  I would prefer it to run XP.