Leading up to Christmas and her birthday, my eldest daughter had been asking for a new computer. She has been using a hand-me-down Titanium Powerbook (the G3, 500 MHz version), which is still in perfect operating condition, but runs a bit slow. So, for her birthday and not knowing for sure how I wanted to handle it, I gave her a “Free Computer Upgrade” coupon. Yes, it was a bit of a copout, but I had my reasons: primarily I wanted to wait for MWSF, to see what Apple might have up their sleeve.

A couple weeks later I had made my decision: buy her a netbook. So Karyssa and I sat down together to order an HP Mini 1000. Over the next week or so, Karyssa and I looked for an email informing us it had shipped. The email finally came and we watched the progress of the package as it made its way from Shanghai, China to Dallas, Texas.

I was a little worried: concerned that maybe this wouldn’t work out. Once the netbook actually arrived, I was disappointed that it did work out. I knew within the first hour of her using it, Karyssa was very happy with her new computer… and I wanted one. I mean, there are a couple concessions (the screen can be a bit small for some things, and the keys on the keyboard are a shade smaller than standard keys), but it would easily handle the vast majority of my needs. And HP has done an incredible job putting a very slick UI on top of the standard Ubuntu Linux distro. The fit and finish of both the hardware and software — the way they complement each other — reminds me more of Apple than of HP.

My move to The Cloud will be complete when I switch to an HP Mini 1000. And at one third the weight and 40% the size of my 17″ Macbook Pro, it will fit incredibly well with my plans to travel light.

It’s time to start saving my pennies!