Laptop Blues

I wanted to get a small portable PC to keep in touch, use Skype etc etc. When last in the States I found out about a new notebook - the Asustek Eee-PC. It's a Linus based animal, Firefox, Thunderbird etc (No Windows so cheap), no hard drive, no moving parts at all in fact, weighing in at less then 1 kilo, and £200. The demand was so great I couldn't get hold of one and so place an order in Dec 2007 for 3-4 weeks delivery. 3 weels went by, still no joy and I found a website tracking stock at about 25 major suppliers in the UK. Lo and behold there were 2 sites with stock. I reviewed them both on the web, dropped one immediately and phoned the other to see if they had stock. "Yes sir they said, they're in the building" Can I place an order "Yes but only by the web". So off I goes, places the order to receive in quick succession - acknowledgement - delivery 3 days - no stock and no delivery date for stock. I cancelled that order, the original order and went out and bought a Packard Bell Easynote XS - Windows XP 30G drive .75kilo. Its a bit cheap but is serving a purpose. No DVD drive is interesting - when it comes to loading programs - have to share a netdrive on the desktop and load from there!