So, the total lack of a portable computing device is started to get to me, and I want to get something I can slap Adriane Knoppix on and it be small enough to carry in the tote bag I use for carrying things too big to fit in my pockets. Money is tight, so the lower the price without being of disposable quality, the better. I don't need much in the way of power, so economy grade hardware is fine. Firefox plus Orca running on a stripped down LXDE-based X session is the only time I ever leave text-mode. I need an x86 processor as that is the only architecture my software configuration is available for. I have no use for 64-bit or extra cores. The modern counterpart to a Celeron would probably be overkill for my needs. A gig of Ram should be more than sufficient. No need for dedicated graphics, and a built-in monitor would only be dead weight(seriously, no monitor would be preferred). Built-in CD-rom drive is needed for installing my chosen software, though an upgrade to a DVDRW drive wouldn't be a waste. No need for built-in controls beyond standard qwerty keyboard. A full-size SD card slot would be convient, but not necessary. A Ethernet port is required, and built-in Linux-compatible wifi would be nice. Don't need much in the way of harddrive, and would be willing to sacrifice capacity for an upgrade to SSD. My Budget without needing financing is about 100USD. Any advice on this would be much appreciated.
You're gonna need funding then. You'd be hard pressed to find any notebook for under $100. However, Acer will sell you a $200 11.6 inch one with a Celeron inside. Perhaps trawling eBay might be an option. I imagine you won't be using much that's graphics-related, yes? :v:
While its a bit more than I would like to spend, that Acer Chromebook sounds like it would be more than sufficient for my needs, that is assuming it allows me to trash Chrome OS and install Adriane Knoppix. I can't tell from the customer reviews or the information present on Amazon mobile, but does it have a bootable optical drive or allow booting from USB?
Here's an alternative. It's probably heavier than you'd like, but it should do a better job working with the OS you need.
I'm using a Asus EEE 1015B powered by a AMD C50 apu. I first tried the AMD C30 variation of the same machine, but it was incredibly slow. While definitely not a powerhouse, especially today, the C50 works well enough to cover my needs. I replaced the internal HDD (250Gb) with a 16Gb SSD, and am running Debian with LXDE. The results are surprisingly good. Total cost is approximately $150. I bought it new, got a refund for the pre-installed Windows license I did not want to use, which allowed me to upgrade to a SSD. I then sold the HDD to a random PS3 owner on a service similar to Craiglist.
In the end, I ended up getting an ASUS 1015e-DS03, though I still need to replace the pre-load Ubuntu with my distro of choice.
