A couple of weeks ago my Dell laptop, which had served me so well since the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, up and died.

Didn’t just seize up … quit. Expired. We finally were able to do some diagnostics on it, and the diagnosis was, “Your hard drive is dead.” Which in my world, anyway, means “walk away.”

One of my friends in the newsroom, who has written about tech topics for years, already had warned me that a five-year-old laptop was ancient, and that I soon would have trouble doing basic tasks because the stuff built into my old Dell would not be able to handle newer … apps … tech … programs. Something. I was on borrowed time, he said, and then it quit.

So, what to do?

Time to get a new laptop. And I did. In a fairly impulsive male/non-techie way. I went to a computer store in Abu Dhabi Mall that someone recommended, went looking for a specific brand and make (the Asus EEE), didn’t find it … and bought the cheapest “netbook” style machine in the place.

Whole process took about 25 minutes.

I am now coming to you live via my “HP Compaq mini.” I believe this might be the 700 version. Not the 1000, which I can see in a photo here. Mine is smaller than that.

This is all I really require from a laptop.

–An ability to cruise the web.

–Dependability, reliability.

–Light weight.

–Good battery life.

–Cheap.

This is a work tool. It is not a friend of mine. I do not have the interest or the ability to make a machine sit up and sing “Dixie.”

I use this to write stories and to e-mail, to blog, and to look at websites. And that’s pretty much it. I don’t plan to play movies on this (which is good, because it can’t digest a disk), or to play music, or to make movies or store photos.

My main concern with all the netbook-style laptops was the keyboard. When you get down to a machine that is 10.5 inches wide, seven inches deep, that doesn’t leave a lot of room for a keyboard. So that’s what I did with all of them — get a feel for a keyboard. I typed sentences on them, to see if my fingers were banging into each other and how I liked the feel of the letters.

I could have paid a lot of money at the gray-market Apple store. Like, more than $1,000. So I was over in this generic place, with multiple brands … and the salesman who descended on us was actually keen to sell me the cheapest brand in the place. Which makes me wonder if it’s already obsoleste … or perhaps he was worried that I was so price sensitive that I would walk out. (Which I had earlier, to go look for the Virgin store in the same mall, only to find it closed for remodeling.)

So, I liked this keyboard well enough. I told the guy what I wanted from it. Not much, as you saw above. He then trashed the Samsung label (they’ve been making these for two years; you don’t want that) and the Acer (I’d never buy one) … and when the price of this machine is factored in, well that was that.

Cost? A thousand dirhams. Or $272 dollars. With no tax; no sales tax in the UAE, remember?

So, went home, fired it up, ran the battery for nearly four hours the first full day I had it, and I’ve been working on it ever since.

The keyboard is a bit small. Yes. But I don’t have sausages for fingers, so it’s workable. I wouldn’t want to be on this keyboard 40 hours a week, but for an hour or two here or there … works fine.

And, this thing weighs about two pounds. Down from the 10 or so pounds of the Dell, which threatened to curve my spine and further thrash the Beijing Olympics backpack I often carried it in.

And at $272, even if I decide I made a mistake … it’s not exactly a costly one.