i need a small laptop or mini to run excel, whats the best option?

[busyfixin]

so im headed to seattle next week to get things all in order for loading the barges that will be headed to barrow for the upcoming job.  i need a small laptop with good battery life to run excel and word, along with emailing and internet use.   ill be using it all day inputing info to a spreadsheet while in seattle, and once im in barrow, ill have it all day in the loader or whatever im driving looking up info.  a mini would be ideal as far as size and battery life goes, but they dont seem to have the ass that im looking for.  what would be a good choice for me?

[Pete]

a mini like Erik's with 2gb of memory and a fast SSD would work fine.  Do you think the CPU will hold you back or what?

[busyfixin]

i think so.  i dont know too much about this stuff, but everything i read pretty much says excel+mini=sucksatlife.  Erik also said a mini would be gat like clat for what im doing.  all i can do is go with what im told, since im not up on this stuff.

im surfing dells site right now.  the latitude 13 looks pretty good, but is a bit spendy once its dolled up.

[Pete]

check out the Latitude E4300/4310

once you go out of the mini's, the prices go up to that of a normal laptop (or a bit higher for the size)

The 4200 is a 12.1 where the 4300 is 13"

[busyfixin]

would i still need a SSD?

[Pete]

no, but it really makes the machine run much faster and be more reliable.

[busyfixin]

sounds good.  im sick of looking at them for the night.  pretty much thoroughly confused.  ill start over tommorrow.  can memory be easily added?  there are some 4200s on the refurb site, but all have 1gb.

[Pete]

not sure on the 4200's, we don't have any of them.  Craig at Olmsted does so maybe ask E to take a look at it.

[ELake]

Just under the service panel, looks easy to me

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/late4200/en/sm/memory.htm#wp1180215

Pete I never really thought about an SSD on a mini, that could be a nice performance bump. I told him to shy away from them because I get headaches if I use it for any extended period of time. Also typing gives me troubles sometimes, just so damn small.

4200/4300 is money, remember that your dvd-rw will be on a dongle though, that is Craig's only complaint...

[Pete]

4300 has built in optical drive, no dongle.  They are being phased out for the less desireable E4310 so get one now.