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Netbooks on Mountains?

By Dave Roberts   

on March 9, 2009    No ratings yet.

Netbooks on Mountains?

We’ve had the old arguments of mobile phones and hills, but here’s a new one for you.

Netbooks on the mountain? For those of you who’ve been sleeping in Millican’s cave for the last twelve months, a Netbook is basically a small laptop (7-10inch screen) with decent battery life and optimised for browsing ‘tinternet on the move. There’s a few different brands available, a couple of the better ones being the Asus EEE 901 and the Samsung N10. I nearly got the Asus, but the hard drive was too small, so the Samsung, affectionately known as a Sammy online, was the best option. With a battery life of over 7 hours and a large 10in screen, it’s a brilliant piece of kit.

Not only that, but at 1kg you could conceivably take one on an overnight wild camp. To test it out, i took it for a walk up Yr Wyddfa last night and as you can see from the pics, managed to get online. There was nobody on MSN though to ask them to “guess where I am? No, Guess. You’ll never get it. Go on though, guess!) If it does start a craze off though, you know where you read it first! Going to have to find a lighter version next and couple it to the Freeloader solar charger 😉

Internet connection was using the N95 as a bluetooth modem, and speed wasn’t overly impressive. That said, my home broadband is expensive and speedy so i’m spoilt in that regard. Some netbooks come with built in wireless broadband (such as the Asus eee901) but i’m waiting now for a smaller, lighter version.

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Dave Roberts

Dave Roberts founded Walk Eryri in 2004, with the aim of providing routes that are off the beaten track. Walk Eryri is now part of Mud and Routes which continues to provide more off beat routes and walks in Snowdonia and beyond. Dave has been exploring the hills of Eryri for over thirty years, and is a qualified Mountain Leader. Dave also established Walk up Snowdon, Walk up Scafell Pike and Walk up Ben Nevis just to mention a few.

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