Sure, I was able to install Audacity on my Eee PC, but what good is an audio editor without an audio input devices? I figured if worse came to worse, I could always pop the SD card out of my Zoom H4 audio recorder, throw it in the Eee PC's SD card slot and edit audio that way.

But it turns out the Eee PC has some pretty excellent hardware support for a Linux machine. When you plug the H4 into a PC, you can either use it as an external SD card reader or as an audio I/O device. That means you can speak into the H4's microphone and record audio on the PC, or plug devices into the XLR/quarter inch jacks. I didn't really expect this feature to work on my new Xandros-based laptop, but it does!

Here's a picture of my Eee PC running Audacity and recording audio from the Zoom H4 mic. The Eee PC also has a built in webcam with a microphone, so if you're not looking for professional audio quality, you don't really need an extra device. But as a radio journalist, I can fit the Zoom H4, the Eee PC, and a couple of cables and mics in a bag that's barely large enough to carry a full sized laptop.

Related posts:

• Installing Audacity on the Eee PC
• Zoom H4 review
• Zoom H2 review roundup