New netbook!

Democratic as we are, our 11-year old daughter has a vote in this year's holiday destination. After serveral years of spending time in many different countries, this year we're planning a vacation in Holland! We booked a stay in a bungalowpark with lots of horseriding oppertunities. This gives her lots of rides and me tons of spare time, guess what I am planning to take with me...

In the months before, I want to make a couple of wire antenna's to experiment (follow this blog) on HF, and take the oppertunity to be more present on D-Star. For this reason I ordered a DVAP-dongle at Parmacom. Offcourse for using this dongle I need a computer. Reason enough to buy myself a tiny little netbook. Not a fancy bling-bling state-of-the-art top-of-the-bill model, just a compact 10 inch model (with preferably a little bit of speed) will do.

After reading a few reviews and some googling on the net, I choose a Packard Bell Dot S-E 725. This is a reasonnably priced Dual-Core Intel Atom N550 equipped 10-inch netbook with 1GB memory and a 250 Gb HDD. Good specs, more than enough for the coming holiday. And because our bungalow is having a WiFi connection D-Star fun is ensured.

After completing the pre-installed Windows 7, I installed the apps that I see as standard and neccesary. Standard is also Teamspeak, wich gives me the possibility to listen to my neighbourhood amateurfriends on PI2FLD, my hometown repeater. For managing my Yaesu FT-897, HamRadio Deluxe is also installed.

Can't wait to get my DVAP dongle.....