Board logo

Very small laptop
givemethebighammer - 24/1/07 at 10:31 PM

I'm looking for a very small laptop or sub notebook for work. I need something with reasonable battery life and at least a usb port. It's for configuring routers and switches etc because I'm fed up of dragging my normal sized laptop behind wiring cabinets etc. It'll probably end up having Linux installed on it so it doesn't have to be the fastest machine in the world.

I've had a look on ebay and found nothing particularly suitable.

Anyone got something lurking / unused / forgotten in their cupboard ?


MattCraneCustoms - 24/1/07 at 10:36 PM

I was in a computer shop the other day and saw a real tiny laptop I thought looked pretty cool, I think it was made by MSI. It was in eclipse computers that I saw it, might be worth checking on there? cant imagine it being silly money.
Regards
Matt


givemethebighammer - 24/1/07 at 10:37 PM

Where's eclipse computers Matt ? I don't venture into Leicester much.


graememk - 24/1/07 at 10:42 PM

toshiba used to make a very small p3 that sits on a docking station


jlparsons - 24/1/07 at 10:45 PM

I picked up a pretty small (less than A4 footprint) IBM thinkpad for £150 a year ago refurbished, was a 800mhz job, stuck a big hard disk in it, upgraded the ram and it's perfectly fast enough for office/web/DVDs on windows XP, perfect second computer for the living room. Only thing is it doesn't have wireless built in, but a PCMCIA card will sort that out.


McLannahan - 24/1/07 at 10:48 PM

I have a Fuji Lifebook I use for just this purpose! It's touchscreen too so perfect up a ladder leaning out of a cab!



Pint glass shown as a point of scale!

Can get a lesser model for less than £100 quid easily on Bays...


Catpuss - 24/1/07 at 10:56 PM

quote:
Originally posted by givemethebighammer
Where's eclipse computers Matt ? I don't venture into Leicester much.


If its the same lot, Eclipse are in Coventry. I don't know if there reputation has improved though in the last few years.

If you really want _really_ small the GPX32 game consoles run linux and IIRC have a USB port.


the_fbi - 24/1/07 at 11:06 PM

Dell Latitude L400
PIII 700MHz, Max ram 256MB, XGA
Circa £180 for a good one.

Or same chassis
LS400
PIII 500 or Celeron 450, SVGA

Both very nice units, light, small and with great battery life.

If you don't need a keyboard, then Fujitsu Stylistic LTP-600 is a great machine too, although not TabletPC.


rayward - 25/1/07 at 12:24 AM

panasonic toughbook cf-37,touchscreen

got mine from THIS

guy on ebay good service too

Ray

[Edited on 25/1/07 by rayward]


Donners90 - 25/1/07 at 08:23 AM

How about a tablet PC. My mums got one similar to this and they are very small. If you flip the screen over onto the keyboard, you can use it as if it were a pad of paper and write on the screen, or use the pen as a mouse pointer.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Acer-TravelMate-C204TMi-Tablet-Writable-Slate-PC_W0QQitemZ250076552977QQihZ015QQcategoryZ177QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem


rgrs - 25/1/07 at 12:22 PM

Have a look on flea bay for a sony c1 series,
i use one for the same purpose running a lite version of xp. With a double battery on it you should get 6 hours run time.


MikeRJ - 26/1/07 at 09:20 PM

quote:
Originally posted by rgrs
Have a look on flea bay for a sony c1 series,
i use one for the same purpose running a lite version of xp. With a double battery on it you should get 6 hours run time.


Yep, these are great little systems. I have an early Picturebook (266MMX CPU I think, running '98) and it's perfect for stuff that doesn't require much in the way of processing power.

NTDWM but this C1VE might be worth a look.


[Edited on 26/1/07 by MikeRJ]


givemethebighammer - 26/1/07 at 09:32 PM

thanks for the replies, I have several suspects being watched on ebay. I really needed a small laptop today, stuck in the back of a rack putting IP addresses on some SAN switches. Use a longer CAT5 lead..... nope the serial cable was only a metre long!


stevebubs - 26/1/07 at 10:11 PM

BT serial dongle....