How My Wife Uses Our Netbook

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My wife and I have 2 computers in our household: a Macbook Pro 2nd gen. and an Asus Eee PC 4G. Both of us also have iPod Touches, which I consider mini computers. I wasn't sure how the Eee PC would be used when we moved into our house. The Macbook Pro is a lot more powerful, has a bigger screen, and functions as our desktop computer replacement. And we can check our email, surf the internet, and install all kinds of applications on our iPod Touches. So where did that leave the Eee PC 4G?

My wife came up with an answer: use it as our 1st floor computer in the kitchen, living room, and dining room. The Macbook Pro usually resides in our basement where my home studio gear is and the iPod Touches are convenient, but can be cumbersome to type on (the virtual keyboard is awesome and Apple did an outstanding job with the predictive correcton, but nothing beats the speed of a full QWERTY keyboard on a laptop). So here's a list of the ways we use the Eee PC 4G, which can be easily applied to any netbook:

1. Assistant Cook
My wife likes to look up recipes and it's handy to have the Eee PC in the kitchen, which is where we keep it when we're not using it. She can also look up the ways to prepare ingredients, like how to prepare the rubarb we get from our plant in the back yard.

2. Email
Self explanatory.

3. Shopping
Home improvement is one of our main activities and Sophia uses the Eee PC to shop around for curtains, furniture, and other things for the house. The screen is a little small, but it's adequate. All of our new 2" blinds were ordered using the Eee PC (and they look great!).

4. YouTube
It's fun to lookup video on the Eee PC. The videos can be choppy sometimes and you can forget trying to play HD video, but the regular quality videos look fine once the buffer is full.

5. Blogging
As I mentioned above, the full QWERTY keyboard is easier and quicker to type on and this makes the Eee PC ideal for blogging. It's a pleasure to type up a blogpost and email it to my Blogger blog account using Thunderbird. The keyboard isn't full size, but my wife's hands are smaller than mine and she finds not problems with the smaller keys.


I'm sure we'll come up with other uses for the Eee PC, especially since we have a baby on the way (is it okay for the baby to be doing that!? Quick, look it up!). But if you find you need a second computer for basic computing needs that's readily available and portable, get a netbook. It may become your most used computer.

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