I have always known the person I wanted to be – hanging out in coffee shops, the park or the beach; writing a book, blogging, twittering and facebooking. And as I pictured myself doing all this, there's one constant accessory by my side: a computer small enough to be my companion.

Netbooks seemed perfect for my aspirations. They are compact enough to slide inside my Brahmin bag, light enough for my 120-pounds frame to carry all day and fit exactly the kind of tasks I had in mind: word processing, e-mail, social networking and surfing.

So when the pink MSI Wind arrived at the Wired.com office a few weeks ago I was almost giddy with excitement. As I cradled the MSI Wind home that evening I believed it could change my life.

But – and there's always a "but" when you have a crush – our romance was short-lived.

Things were promising at first. My HP and Dell laptops have have always been too big and bulky to lug around. And I blamed them for keeping me away from the coffee shop. After all, for me the bitter brew doesn't taste the same if there isn't an electronic screen to sweeten it. Now I could start going to coffee shops and spend time surfing on my little netbook.

Setting up the new netbook at home was easy and I was online within minutes. And then the nightmare started. The keyboard was too cramped. I spent most of my time correcting what I had typed, even simple URLs. My fingers were cramped and my wrist started aching after a while. And staring at the screen hurt my eyes. I closed the Wind and hoped to come back to it the next day.

Over the weekend I carried the Wind to the coffee shop on the next block. Thirty minutes later I was out of the door nursing a painful wrist and watery eyes. It was the same story at the beach next day. My dreams of typing the next great manuscript didn't work out. I couldn't stay on the machine for more than 15 minutes.

After four days I gave up. The pink Wind now sits in a corner of the the Gadget Lab, unused and unloved.

I haven't given on getting a sub-$400 netbook that is really lightweight and comfortable to use. Someday the right one will come along and it could still change my life. But for now, I live with the same old me.

Photo: (mochick/Flickr)