hp 10-in mini?

[Roland Smith]

On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 06:43:15PM -0800, Gary Kline wrote:
> > But as you mentioned  they do not come with optical drive bays,  but with
> > with 4/8/16 gig flash drives  no one really cares-
> 
> 	do you mean what i know as "thumb drives"?  stick-like thing
> 	you just plug in?  i've never used these and am unfamiliar.  

They're very handy. You can even get them op to 32 GiB these days, although
those are expensive. An 8 GiB model can be had for around $20 from newegg.
That is 2 DVDs worth of rewritable space in a package about the size of your
thumb. 

> 	one reason i want an optical drive is for when i watch a
> 	movie/dvd/cd on my tiny notebook. 

If you re-encode the movies you can make them much smaller than a DVD. Even in
high quality you can fit a movie (without the annoying crap that you cannot
skip in a stand-alone DVD player) in 2 GiB.

> 	indication that i've gone completely 'round the bend.  another
> 	reason for using the optical drive might be to save things
> 	from the notebook if everything else is down...

If you cannot fit a backup on a thumbdrive, get a USB-connected portable
harddisk. They are superior to a DVD, IMO. You can even get thwm up to a
terabyte now!  But you could get a 500 GiB model for around $80.
E.g. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822211029

Some models need an external power supply, but the one in the link above gets
all its power from USB. It's about the size of an iPhone. These portable
harddisks are my favorite backup devices these days. I do use geli(8) to
encrypt the contents in case of loss or theft. 

> 	altho raison d'etre [dont laugh at my spelling, please] for
> 	wanting such a small computer is to use it as a speech device,

Recording or playback? Laptop speakers and microphones aren't very good
IMHO.

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith                                   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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