After several months of contemplating on the idea of a school laptop, I finally caved in and made the purchase of an Asus Eee PC 1000. I’ve thrown the Windows 7 beta on there and it is absolutely fabulous to use.

The thing that I like most about the Windows 7 beta is that it actually works. You can use it as an everyday operating system almost flawlessly. All the hardware worked from out of the box, with the exception of the Ethernet port and the webcam. Just download the XP Ethernet driver from the Asus support website (the webcam is still something I’m figuring out). Perhaps I should note that installing Windows 7 on the 8GB SSD is not a good idea – stick just a few applications on there and you’ll find you’ve got no space left.

Battery life is about 5 hours from a full charge.

Considering the size of this netbook, it is remarkably easy to type on – even easier than most full-size laptops I’ve used. If you read the articles on the internet, though, there are complaints about the right shift key position. Now considering that I didn’t think I even used the right shift key, let me tell it really is atrocious as I keep hitting the up key instead – almost every time. Most of the other keys are well placed (although the Function keys are a little to the left). The trackpad is also good.

The microphone is OK. Considering that I’ll rarely be using it, it doesn’t really matter. And because the microphone is below the screen, typing is very loud.

Unfortunately, most other netbooks are smaller and although they are significantly cheaper, I wouldn’t recommend getting one with a screen of less than 10 inches. You might think £280 is a lot for such a small machine but it’s the portability, the battery and the quality you get – this thing looks absolutely stunning, the white version looks like a little Macbook. When I’ve got the funds, I’ll be modding it with a touch screen and a GPS dongle.

I should stress the importance of a Wind Surfer to help boost your Wifi signal. Mine went from 2 bars to 4 bars and all it took was a few minutes of printing, cutting and sticking.

As a 17-year-old male with just (well, soon to be) a newly acquired driver’s license under my belt, I have the privilege of ridiculous car insurance quotes. For a little Volkswagen Golf (1.4 litre), my cheapest quote lies in at £5,000 a year with a slew of more expensive quotes following it (the most expensive being £15,000) – despite the car only being worth £3,000.

If I was to own the car for 4 years, say, it would cost me somewhere in the region of £23,000 excluding tax and petrol. I could either buy the insurance or drive around uninsured in a fleet of 7 VW Golfs – one for every day of the week. Which one would you choose?

Having spent the day muxing video, converting it from one format to another and compressing it, I don’t intend to do it again any time soon. There’s just so much you have to take into consideration and even a simple task can become extremely difficult. Because some of the common tasks I had to do were so difficult, I’ll be writing several tutorials to aid anyone else who finds them coerced into the world of video.

After a seemingly never-ending torrent of (GCE level) maths homework, I’ve had to turn to Microsoft Math for help. I can’t recommend it enough as it does everything I need it to do. And for $20 (about £10), it’s hardly going to break the bank. Unfortunately, it’s not received an update for about 18 months and it doesn’t appear to be updated any time soon but it’s still a solid piece of software and definitely worth the price. You could even argue that it doesn’t need updating.