I had a bit of an accident with my last netbook. After flogging it on eBay then doing heaps of research, I settled on the Toshiba NB200-10Z as a replacement.

I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now. Here’s what I think.

Styling and design

Several reviews of the NB200 slate how it looks. But actually, with its silver keyboard and brown lid, I quite like it. Maybe that says more about my tastes than anything else.

It’s certainly well put together – if a little plasticky – and I like that it’s uniformly thick, rather than wedge-shaped. The screen pushes back a good way too, giving you a bit more flexibility in where you work.

On the downside, the high capacity battery sticks out and looks like an afterthought. It’s not particularly neat, but hardly the end of the world.

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Here are a few interesting links I’ve spotted (and, er, created myself) lately in the worlds of writing, online marketing and creative type stuff:

• Over at True Business, Nick Saalfeld has taken a close look at the red hot competition between price comparison sites. He’s written a good breakdown of the branding efforts of the companies in this market, but do be wary of playing the Go Compare advert he’s put up. The tune will stick in your head for hours.
• I’ve mentioned the myth of the fold before, but thanks to @paulahillier for tweeting this visual explanation of how important the fold is (or, more accurately, isn’t) in web design. Bookmark it for the next time someone insists everything must be squished into the very top of their site.
• Finally, excuse the self promotion, but here’s a quick heads up on a couple of things I’ve done lately. First off, I’m really pleased with my plain-English copywriting contract. Grab a copy and use it however you like – maybe you can adapt it for your business. Secondly, I’ve written a similarly simple answer to the question: what is cloud computing?

Spotted anything you think I might be interested in? Let me know in the comments.

Budgets. Now there’s a tricky subject for conversation. Yet if there’s one thing you need to do before you spend too much time in discussions with a potential new client, it’s to establish whether they’re ready to pay what you’re expecting to charge.

A recent conversation with a promising-sounding client served as a timely reminder about this. On the verge of agreeing to a meeting which would have taken at least half a day of my time, it was only the off-hand question “oh, and what do you charge?” which revealed our expectations were seriously out of kilter.

In this case, it was just one of those things. You can’t win them all, and rather than being disappointed at missing out on an interesting-sounding job I was at least able to focus on the fact that I’d narrowly averted a pointless meeting.

Money. It’s not easy to talk about. But even if you don’t mention it explicitly, you have to get a feel for whether your clients will pay what you charge before you spend excessive time preparing for the job.