I am sat in Caffè Nero on the High St in Oxford. Having paid in a cheque and been fitted for a ball suit I have popped in for a spot of brunch. While eating my meatball and mozzarella panini and drinking my latté I am keeping up to date with the news on my iPod touch. The guy at the next table is from college and is doing much the same but he is reading the dead tree Times. Over the past few days I have been fairly heavily revising for my prelim exams in a week and a half’s time and so I have been spending large portions of time in the Radliffe Science library. V easy place to work with the advantage of being undergroud and so there is no mobile reception. I periodically check Twitter on my iPod using their Wifi or access the online book database to find the Dewey reference of a text book to supplement my notes. It works perfectly.

Were I carrying around my laptop I would probably be crippled by the weight by now, but I can’t justify buying a netbook yet because my laptop is (kinda) portable and does more than I need despite being 2 years old. Looking at the new Asus Seashell I find myself very tempted but I keep thinking ‘it would be nice if it ran OS X’ (though I’m not sure how much that would change). This isn’t fanboyism, but more that I have a routine established there. I know how to make drive imaging work perfectly and jungledisk backs up my homefolder hourly to S3. Despite how beautiful Windows 7 is, and it really is. You know it’s good when @alexmuller with all his MS hating bile says it is the best netbook OS.

So what am I trying to say in all this. Something, and nothing. Partly I just really wanted to write something that wasn’t related to Biochemistry or Organic chemistry, but I also realized just how little I need something netbook- or even tablet-esque. The iPod is doing everything. It isn’t powerful enough and the frequentish keyboard hangs are getting a bit frustrating but if this had more power and a much bigger battery of would be the perfect computer in my pocket. If I am spending the day writing an essay then I will bring out the MacBook Pro if for no other reason than staring at this for prolonged amounts of time strains my eyes and 15″ screen is easier.

Would an OS X tablet/netbook be nice? Hell yes. Would I buy one? Honestly? probably not… I am not sure I am happy with the middle ground at the moment. My MBP may be heavy, but I bought it for some good reasons which still hold true and so if I am using a laptop I want that. A netbook or tablet won’t fit in my pocket for me to pull out, look up a reference, and then slip it away to dash off to the shelves. Make this iPod/ iPhone better or indeed bring out a competitor that has a similar app infrastructure and availability and then maybe we can talk. Until then the money is staying in NatWest, even if the eye candy is tempting.