Project: Road Communications

I've resurrected an old HP Omnibook XE3 as a mobile communications system.  It's got Windows XP Home that Microsoft spiffed me years ago ( and has lived in a drawer unopened until now ), a 700 MHz processor and a total of 256 Mb of RAM. It's not much but it will do blogging via MS Live Writer, Skype, and Gtalk.  It's only got a 10 GB hard drive so I've got to keep it to the minimums.  I loaded on Star Office, FireFox and Thunderbird so that there's not much I can't do on the road.  I also loaded on Picasa for posting pictures on the road.  I threw AVG on for some lite weight anti-virus protection.  The goal behind this project is to only run free "open source" software.  I'm interested in seeing how far I can get without having to purchase software.  I believe that there is very little that will hold me back even with this limited setup.  I have added a piece of hardware. I pulled a Microsoft wireless PCMCIA card out of the "junk bin" or more like bins.  Isn't it amazing how much hardware and cabling that you pickup over the years.  I did also install my Sprint air-card software so that I can be truly online anywhere. I may try to scout up some more memory for it.  I would like to get to 1 GB so that I could think about adding video without the flicker.  More from the road...