I’ve been trying to find a laptop I really like for a while now and I realized that the fancy new EEE PC and the MSI Wind are great for productivity. While they don’t exactly fit in your pocket, they’re pretty damn small, they’re very cheap and have enough power for normal use.

Right now I have a bottom of the line Toshiba laptop, which I really like, but I need some more power for my loads of Firefox tabs, open Photoshop and so on. In reality, the MSI Wind is actually more powerful with its new Atom processor, so even by going down a few screen sizes I may be getting a better deal. I am still undecided weather to go for the $1,500 more powerful and bigger laptop, or the $700 MSI, or the $550 EEE PC.

Whatever the case, small laptops like the two I mentioned have a huge productivity advantage over their bigger brothers. For one thing they’re smaller. This means you can take them with you in almost all cases, or at least you can take them more easily. The tiny EEE PC can fit into a smaller handbag, and definitely into a rucksack easily. They are also very lightweight, and won’t put a noticeable burden on your back.

Also, if you own a more powerful laptop, somewhere in the $2000 - $4000 range you could buy a small one as a travel companion. If you go on holiday it’s better if they steal $550 from you than $3500. It is also of great use if you only need to use the net where you want to go, or write a document or so, you can drop 5kg of excess weight, stop worrying about thieves and so on. I’ve always wanted to take my laptop to the open beach, but I was afraid they’d take it, but these small things are barely noticeable.

If you need a backup laptop I suggest you take a look at the EEE PC, or the MSI Wind, they don’t cost a lot, and they also have better hardware than you’d think.

I just read a cool article on Lifehacker about 10 DIY stands you can make for your laptop. Indeed, they are all pretty simple, anyone can make them (I mean most don’t require any making at all) and they can be pretty useful.

My two favorites are the one with the corks beneath, I love this because I tend to loose the rubber feet of my laptop, and these corks will prevent it from sliding to and fro. I also love the one with the paper towel stand, I love shopping in IKEA anyway. It actually looks very modern, something Apple would create, and for under $10, great! You can also store some stuff under the laptop using this stand, so it’s great to declutter you desktop too.

The vertical wall mount is very interesting, I can’t imagine I could use these, but if you want to create a quick workstation out of an old laptop (for music, videos, downloading and so on), it may be great to display it this way.