My daughter heads off the college in a few days. She has a nice laptop already, but it’s large; I’m thinking she needs something with enough power, that’s also really portable. And it can’t be expensive, seeing as how we just paid the tuition bill.

That, of course, led me to examine netbooks. They offer a nice compromise between functionality, size and price. My daughter isn’t much of a computer gamer, so it doesn’t have to be a fire-breather; something with which she can take notes, check e-mail and surf the Internet (only for research for classes, of course (wink, wink)), and that won’t tire her out lugging from class to class.

Here’s what I’m zeroing in on: it’s a Dell Inspiron Mini 10v Netbook.  The 10-inch screen lends itself to small weight, but is still large enough to be easily viewable. It has an Intel Atom processor and 1GB RAM, which is plenty to run Windows XP, the operating system of choice for this netbook (Windows Vista is too resource-hoggy to use with a netbook.)

Another very nice thing is the hard drive. It comes with 160 GB, a very nice size at this price point. I’ve owned many Dells in the past, and have been happy with the quality and service they offer.

In all, this is a capable computer in a form factor that works for my daughter. It even has a webcam, so she can chat with her parents at night, and see them crying that their baby is gone!