As a working journalist based in the wilds of Western Australia, but conducting most of my business on Australia's east coast, I fly a lot. In the last month I've made the four-hour journey three times to attend video trade shows, business meetings, have production meetings with my printer and even attending motor sport events - the V8's at Sandown.

I work on the maxim that any spare time is a good time to write so a laptop as my main weapon of choice although I have a desktop that's used solely for accounting and video editing. However, my Acer Ferrari has a major flaw; when sitting in a standard airline seat the screen cannot be fully opened making the beastie all but useless.

Because of this, I was looking for a more portable solution. Then Asus launched their original Eee PC and I decided to invest. On the surface, the Eee had everything I needed basic word processing, spreadsheet, diary and email (although I hated the interface of the mail client). It also has a swag of USB ports, WiFi, a usable, albeit small, keyboard, so-so screen and passable battery life of around two hours.

On my first trip away with the Eee however, its Achilles heel appeared. On the flight it was fine, I typed some stories, did some magazine edition planning and all seemed good. However, I have an ExpressCard 3G modem that I couldn't use. That meant I had to resort to using the hotel's cabled internet system, which is a very expensive especially when you need to download and upload large files.

With the benefit of experience my next netbook foray steered me towards a Windows based system as that was more in tune with my needs. Yes, I know that I could have installed Windows XP on the Eee, but I prefer to buy what I need.

I was convinced by a colleague to have a look at the HP series of netbooks. Locally in downtown sunny Mandurah, there is not much of a range to view, and as my next trip was the following day I decided on an 'available now' HP 2133. Good keyboard and screen, solid build, ran Windows Vista (which I actually like), USB, Bluetooth and importantly, an ExpressCard slot.

And it performed mostly brilliantly, until ...

... after 1 hour and 15 minutes and even on low power settings, the battery went flat. An aberration? Nope. A long recharge and checking all the settings to make sure the minimum possible was running and no change. As the average flight time from Perth to the east coast is 4 hours, this was simply not acceptable. Yes it was extremely comfortable using my common applications of Word, Excel, Filemaker (not all at once though as the processor, the 1GB memory and the overhead of Vista means it is no Road Runner!) but this was a serious, serious limitation. So bad in fact that when doing a start from hibernation, finally getting to the login screen and then to the point where you can connect via 3G to the net, battery life was already 30% gone!

This was bitterly disappointing as apart from this, I loved the little HP. The only feature I would have liked was backlit keys, but for the first time I could really be productive in that idle, boring time called 'flying'. It remains familiar and adding applications such as Google Calendar Sync, Dropbox, Evernote and Tweetdeck in conjunction with Office (Excel, Word, Outlook only) means I have a complete mini-office on the road at the right price.

But wait! There's hope! HP has informed me that this 'pooter should never have been sold to me! It's well over 12 months out of date, and has been replaced by the 2140, which apparently has solved many of the failings of the 2133, or the more up-market 5101 which on paper, is the dream machine I really want.

So for this third episode at getting what would be the perfect netbook for me, I'll spend a bit more time on research. Just like I would when buying a full size notebook, desktop or even a new car. Makes sense really.

By David Hague