All, I received many helpful comments about the use of netbooks. Thanks to all. As it turned out, I got an ASUS netbook, which takes more than 5 pounds off the weight of the equipment used for my occasional portable satellite work.

The hard part was finding a USB to serial port adapter that works. The job is to run 2 of these adapters to control the frequencies of 2 FT817 transceivers to correct for doppler shift. One FT817 is used for Rx, the other for Tx. The doppler shifts for Rx and Tx differ. What's needed is CAT control by SatPC32 software, which is a terrific program. The computer runs Window 7.

After trying 3 adapters that didn't work, the problem was finally solved by using the USB to serial adapter made by Sabrent, Item CB-FTDI. This adapter is sold by Elecraft as the CAT cable for the K3 (Elecraft part KUSB). Now I have full freq. control to use with the CW/SSB satellites, just as I had with the much heavier laptop that the netbook replaces. (It needed only 1 adapter because it had a serial port, and an old Radio Shack adapter worked well.)

73, Tony, N2UN