My PDA died. It was an old Palm and had served me well. I asked my teammate to recommend a new one and he said “iPod Touch”. I took his advice and OMG, I have been living on another planet! Sure I used my Palm to keep myself organized, but it was never what I would call fun and there were weeks when I never turned it on. My Touch has hardly been off other than sleep & work time.

So what does this have to do with my Atom netbook? Plenty, because while I praised the AppUp site creation in my previous blog, I really had no idea what the potential impact could be until I started adding aps to my iPod. Now I really “get it” and I am hoping more software developers will too so I can have as much fun with my netbook as I am having with my Touch.

I also wanted to be productive with my netbook and not just see it as another electronic game device. I bought myself a new camera (Canon Rebel) that I use on road trips and one frustrating thing has been coming home and finding that photos that looked good on the tiny camera screen were in fact not so great. Lugging a full size laptop around just so I can check my photos before I leave a shoot is not my idea of fun. But my netbook is perfect for the job. The screen is large enough for me to judge if the photo is what I wanted and it is light and small enough to fit in my camera bag. I downloaded Google’s Picasa (because AppUp does not yet offer what I needed) and I can now view and edit on the spot, saving me much remorse.

I’ve also begun a healthier eating plan and would like to be able to use my netbook to help with meal planning and exercise tracking. Are there apps for those? Ones that do not require I join something or go online? Come on developers, help me and thousands of others in our quest for a healthier lifestyle.

Thanks for joining me on my journey. Until next time…

. Read the rest at Intel.com.