• GPS navigation, with full-color maps displayed on a 5.5" x 10" LCD screen instead of a tiny black and white handheld GPS display. For this trick, I use a Delorme Blue Logger GPS, which has no display at all, but which communicates with my netbook over a Bluetooth connection, and a Delorme mapping program, such as TopoUSA 8.0.
• Ham Radio Contest Logging, for Portable or Rover stations. For a portable operation at a single fixed location with ample generator power, sure, I'd rather use my ZD8000 with its bigger screen and full-size keyboard. But in a limited-power situation, or in a roving situation, the netbook's gentle sipping of power compared to the laptop's gulping of electrons makes a big difference. You can manage with less screen real estate when you have to. Especially if the alternative is a pencil and paper.
• Amateur Satellite Tracking and Rig Control, in the field. Sure, PocketSat for the Palm Pilot works very well for tracking satellites, and has performed admirably for me on a number of Field Day outings, automatically waking up from sleep and beeping at me when another satellite pass is about to begin, and helping me keep the antennas pointed in the right direction, but it is never going to take over the responsibility for keeping the antennas pointed automatically, nor will it automatically control the Doppler tuning adjustments during a pass, but those things are possible with a netbook computer and the appropriate add-ons. No, I'm not there yet, but it is a direction in which I plan to travel.
• Software-Defined Radio. I just bought my first SoftRock v6.3 Rx/Tx kit, and hope to get it working with the netbook computer. I don't know yet if the netbook will have enough "horsepower" to do the job well, but I intend to find out. I would love to build the SoftRock and EEE PC netbook into a compact, highly portable, all-mode all-band HF transceiver which can interface to 28 MHz IF transverters for 50-450 MHz VHF/UHF operation, and to 144 MHz IF transverters for 902-10368 MHz UHF and microwave band operation. Another implementation could be optimized for portable satellite communication operation, for which I would like to write some of the software myself, incorporating satellite pass prediction and automatic Doppler tuning correction right into the SDR program.
• Bearing and Distance Calculations for Microwave Radio Frequencies. Whether you are the (relatively) fixed portable end of a microwave path, or at the highly mobile Rover end of the radio path, QSO's will not be made unless you know where to point your dish, and you will need to know the distance for proper scoring in some of the contests, and the netbook is fully capable of doing those computations.
• Weather radar storm tracking, while travelling, Contest Roving, or SkyWarn: Wouldn't it be great to look at the National Weather Service live radar plots while driving cross-country, or while out Roving far from home, or while chasing storms for SkyWarn? The majority of netbooks, including the Eee PC-1000HE, can't do this on their own except for those rare times when they are in range of a wireless access point ouut in the boondocks, but if you have a cell phone modem (which can be bought in USB connector format, and so can be added to the Eee PC), you are in luck!
• Not out of ideas, but out of time (for now) to write about it! More later (I hope)!

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