Portable Workstation

I bought a little Acer Aspire One netbook from the clearance section at Best Buy, and I love it. I’ve barely started using it, but I can tell it is going to be very helpful for portable writing and edits. I maximize the productivity of my commute time by usually taking the bus and train instead of driving, and I do a lot of writing and editing then to bookend my day. I work from a printed edit copy while in transit, making markups by hand and then entering them to the file later. This is tantamount to creating an illuminated manuscript – it goes very slowly and creates double work for me, but I did not really have a solution until now. I am still saving up to buy an Apple MacBook Pro for music and larger projects, but until I get that, all I have had to work with is a very old IBM Thinkpad. The battery stopped functioning a while back and it’s so old they don’t make replacements anymore, which is why I have had to resort to such old-school tactics for my edits. My housemate has a netbook like the one I ended up buying, and I asked if I could see it. I realized it was a perfect solution for what I need, because it’s really lightweight (less than three pounds), it’s got enough memory for work documents and email, and if it gets lost or stolen, it cost less than $300, so it’s easily replaceable. I bought the sapphire blue one, because that was the only one marked down, and I love it. I named it Computer Jee, in homage to Slumdog Millionaire (I looked it up online, and that really is the way to say "computer" in Hindi), and found an awesome Ganesh painting for my desktop wallpaper. I plan to give it a test run this weekend at home on the edits I’ve already done that need to be entered. This really is a huge step forward for me – I think I can speed things up by 5-10 hours per week working this way instead of by candlelight and quill pen.

Here is the model I bought in case anyone is interested – I really think this is a good, affordable tool for writers: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9163291&st=acer+aspire+one&lp=1&type=product&cp=1&id=1218040477207

And here it is at regular price in different colors:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&id=pcat17071&type=page&st=acer+aspire+one&sc=Global&cp=1&nrp=15&sp=&qp=&list=n&iht=y&usc=All+Categories&ks=960

And here is the main product website:
http://www.acer.com/aspireone/

There are several kinds of netbooks on the market right now, but I bought the Acer because it got the highest consumer rankings for its class. My housemate Ryan highly recommended his, too, and he's very tech-y, so I figured if he liked it, it would be good enough for me. You can apparently get a longer life battery for it, too. The one it comes with lasts for about two hours, but the six-cell battery is supposed to be good for up to seven hours of worktime. It’s a little pricey and apparently it weighs a little more, but I want one anyway. I think it is worth the investment.

Re: edit progress, I’m less than twelve pages from finishing my first edit draft of Parsifal. This is also huge – it still needs work, but it’s moved from being a true rough first draft into a workable manuscript. I should have all of the current edits entered by early spring (it’s six hundred pages long, so it’s going to take a while). I’m already on a second read-through at the back end, too. When I get tired of just entering edits I’ve noted by hand, I go back and read through the first section where that process is already complete. I also need to work on refining the notes in the back that explain my inspiration and the spiritual meanings behind some of the concepts. I have not touched that in months and it needs a lot of filling out, but I am very pleased in general with where I am with the book.