Laptop

[lostcarpark]

My laptop has been developing some severly odd quirks...

• The network adapter uses a funny connecter, which only seems to work properly if I balance a pencil under it to raise it up slightly.


• The infra-red will talk to my phone for transferring ring-tones to the phone, but not for transferring pictures back to the computer.


• The cable which connects the floppy drive to the printer port doesn't work, so on those rare occasions when I want to read a floppy disk, I have to power down, swap the CD drive for the floppy, and power up again.


• And the latest one... The CTRL key has stopped working. This is most annoying when editing as I use CTRL+Left and Right for moving a word at a time, plus a lot of other short-cuts (though I admit there could be more annoying keys to stop working).

So I guess I could soon be in the market for a new one.

Some of you remember this post, in which I drool over Sony's U101, which is about the size of a couple of DVD boxes. I've since tried placing my fingers over a DVD box in the "home key" position, and I'm not sure I could comfortably type on something that small.

So, I'm looking for a laptop that's as small and light as possible, but with a keyboard that's comfortable for typing. An external CD/DVD/Combo drive would be okay, so long as it's bootable from. I don't need vast amounts of processing power as it's mainly for writing, but it needs to be PC compatible for those times I need to do work stuff on it.

I'll be trying out laptops at every opportunity for the next while.

Suggestions welcome.