Firstly, I’m writing this on the Eee and I’ll tell you what I thought about the keyboard when I get to the end.
I forgot to mention in the first impression blog that the screen wasn’t as small as I feared. It’s small, but it fits the machine and doesn’t look small on it.
Well, the first impression is that it’s small. Really small.
And cute! Holding in my hands, I get the feeling that it’s my best new friend and I’ll never let it go again. The only reason that I’m not writing this using it, is that it’s charging. I can clearly understand why this it the new hot sell. Once you had it in your hands you want to own it. Turning it on only makes it better – the screen is just beautiful.
I went by the office today to pick it up, and turned it on (it booted in 16seconds) and walked down the hall to find somebody to show it to. Handing to our (female) secretary, she exclaimed “wow, that’s cute. And it will fit right into a ladies handbag. How much is it?”. Handing it to my wife when I came home, the first thing she says, is “wow – it will fit right in a ladies handbag”. Any gadget that has that kind of instant lady appeal has to be a winner. I can’t wait until I can bring it to a café and see what kind of effect it will have :-).
The “simple” user interface is nice, but I’m not sure I understand the idea behind it – starting any application will reveal a normal, not the easy GUI. But I guess that it’s better then the usual “Start” menu. All the needed applications are there, as expected. Inserting my wife’s 2GB usb key had the desired effect of giving my a choice to open a file explorer, and it was easy to find a document, and a double click opened it in OpenOffice.org (started in seconds).
I haven’t tried to change the keyboard to a Danish one yet and I haven’t tried to install any software, but everything seems to work.
Things to do:
(hey! Merry Christmas!)
The on-board soundcard on my wifes old machine stopped working and I used it as an excuse to make a new box for her.
Her needs are rather limited. Work processing, mail and web-browsing. She does have an IPod, but detests iTunes.
Currently she’s running Word 97 on Windows 2000.
So she gets the retired web-server. A bit noisy, but I can switch the low-noise PSU from the old one when I get the time.
I’ve moved her domain to google apps, and I simply setup a IMAP account and copy all her old mail to googles server.
Copy all her documents to a usb stick, where she will keep them, as she also needs to edit them on the labtop and office PC.
Ask if she wants to keep bookmarks. Answer is no.
Install Ubuntu 7.10, on the old one. No problems.
Add the essentials like flash and stuff (so that the kid can play online games on it)
Insert USB stick to check that it works. Works and auto-mounts.
Add IMAP account to thunderbird.
Show her around, explain about the lag of drive-letters, give short OpenOffice.org demo.
Wait….
Two weeks later her only complaints are about the clipboard. You have to middle click on the mouse when copy/pasting from firefox to OpenOffice. If you open a document in OOo, copy something, close the document, create new document and … the content on the clipboard is gone.
There simply isn’t an excuse good enough, that this hasn’t been fixed years ago. Add a unified clipboard to X or something.
I’ve a home server. It’s running windows 2000, it’s that old. I just checked – it’s 153 days since it was re-booted last. And the reason I rebooted was to move some hard drive around, not because it crashed.
Not bad.
It will be replaced through. It can only take 384MB of ram and it’s a 566Mhz Celeron processer and it’s starting to run a bit short. It’s mostly feeding my music collection to a SqueezeBox, but as the collection grows it’s getting a bit slow.
I’ll probably install server Ubuntu on one the retired desktop machines.
But that’s for another day. For now I’ll just reboot the old one, just to clean it up a little…
I’ve ordered an Asus EEE PC – or rather I’ve asked my boss who’s currently in the US to buy me one and he assures me it has been ordered. Not sure exactly which model he has ordered, but the white 4G surf model seems to be the only one in stock, so it’s probably that one. Which is fine. Anything by the 2G model…
I intend to use it as a couch computer. Something to do a bit of surfing on while the wife is watching TV. I’ll tell you more when I get it…
I have been fighting with ActiveSync (on my home XP box) and SyncCenter (on my work vista box) for the last couple of week. Couldn’t sync my Dell x51v PDA with any of them. Was driving me nuts. Tried all kinds of … crap.
So I decided to try a home brewed Windows Mobile 6 rom. And it works! No wifi problems. I tried to do a back up and restore, but that soon got to messy, and I’ve decided re-install everything from the top. Only thing is that, most of my programs where registered so long ago, that it may be hard to find a version to download. On the other hand, maybe it’s time to upgrade to a new (WM6 compatible) version.
Anyway. I’ll try to report back when I’ve tried it a few more days. And a big thank you to “football” and the people at xda-developers. And a big F… you to Dell for not providing this.
I’ve been trying out the last few Ubuntu releases. Ubuntu 7.10 looks even better and the installation was really easy.
Observations:
All in all, it looks good. I’m sure the minor issues could be solved. To bad about the “deal breaker” with Lightroom.
I’ve been thinking about the, much ignored and rather unglamorous, state software ends in, when it’s about to be replaced by a newly developed version. It may be an old maintained branch, or it may have been or be about to be replaced, with a new version that’s based on a new code base.
While thinking about this I heard the song The Bare Necessities from Disneys The Jungle Book. Here Baloo sings:
Look for the bare necessities
The simple bare necessities
Forget about your worries and your strife
I mean the bare necessities
That’s why a bear can rest at ease
With just the bare necessities of life
The Bare Necessities, by Phil Harris, Bruce Reitherman
I decided to name the method used for this kind of development after Baloo.
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I’m trying to find a worthy replacement for my current pda + mobile phone combo.
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I’ve been thinking about complexity vs. simplicity, and I’ve decide that the general issue can be described with these two statements:
1. No issue is so complex, that it can’t be reduced to a meaningless yes/no question
2. No issue is so simple, that it can’t be made to complex to decide on.
Not totally happy with the phrasing, so suggestions are welcome….