My motivation is that while I’d like to work on the train, getting anything done at the moment requires more effort than I’d like. Which, ideally, is no effort at all. At the moment, hammering out a review on the journey home involves lugging a (relatively) heavy laptop in an extra bag, with the respective power cables in case I decide to use it when I get home, too. I’d like to condense this down somewhat, and some sort of smaller, lighter laptop stands out, as I’d be able to slip it into my backpack with everything else.

Given its runaway success, the Eee PC stands out, but there’s already two models to choose from – the original 701, and the newer, slightly bloated 900. However, both, while being undoubtedly brilliant little machines, come with caveats. The original Eee, for instance, has a screen that could be generously described as cramped and, while I use FireFox and OpenOffice at home, they’re both on Windows XP. The Eee’s custom Linux distribution doesn’t sound like it’ll co-operate with Football Manager, and Windows XP costs a bit more. The keyboard also looks a little cramp for my sausage-sized fingers – my colleague Sasha Muller has warned me away from the 701, as I’ll probably spend most of my time on the train deleting letters that I’ve inadvertently hit.

It’s fair to say that the 901 does address many of these problems. The screen, thankfully, is larger, supporting a resolution of 1,024 x 600. The hard disk can be up to 16GB in size – far better for Football Manager, as well as all that work I’ll be doing – and the Celeron processor now uses all of its 900MHz, as opposed to being clocked down to 630MHz, as it was in the 701. It runs XP comfortably thanks to the doubling of RAM – 512MB to 1GB – and weighs not far over a kilogram. It sounds like the ideal train companion, and one that I can slip into my bag with ease. It’s also a better performer than the original Eee.

However, these improvements come at a price – £280 excluding VAT, to be exact. Which is another sticking point – for not much more than that, I could invest in a genuine laptop with a 13in screen. Back in Issue 161’s Light Laptops Labs, nothing stretched beyond 2kg in weight, with 12 and 13in screens the norm. Almost all of these, though, were far more expensive than the little Eee that could, and benchmark scores indicate that virtually all of them are far more capable performers than the Eee.

And then there’s the raft of pretenders to the Eee’s ultra-cheap, ultraportable crown. MSI’s forthcoming Wind should be arriving in the PC Pro Labs pretty soon, and that is promising to be another contender for my cash. However, the top specifications of that model could cost up to £700 which, again, would buy me a very tasty laptop with a 13in screen and, no doubt, a better specification.

The battlelines have been drawn for my wallet’s affection – the Eee 900 will sate my train-working needs, sure, but the price could be a sticking point when better-specified laptops – I’m thinking larger screens, better processors, hard disks and optical drives – could almost as easily fill a niche in my bag, and be far more versatile and powerful for it.

So, any ideas or clues as to where my cash should go? What’s the best small, light and cheap laptop you’ve seen? I’m open to suggestions.