I apologize in advance for the corny, rhyming title

I’ve been using an Asus EEE PC 900 netbook for about a year now, and have used it mostly for light word processing and web browsing. I also have a MythTV server running in my basement on an old Duron-based system. I can do almost all of my personal daily work on the EEE PC, but when I need to do anything MythTV-related, I’m forced to switch machines.

This can be a pain, so I decided to try running the “frontend” for MythTV on my EEE PC. To my surprise, everything is working very well. It only took me about 5 minutes to install and configure the frontend software, and after that, I was able to do the following on my netbook:

• Watch live tv
• Watch recorded shows
• Edit shows (i.e. cut out commercials)

And the best part is that it’s all working very well over my wireless G network. Your results may vary, but at least it’s nice to know that this configuration works for some people.

Here’s some more information about my setup in case you want to try this yourself:

• My netbook has a 900 Mhz processor, 1 GB of RAM, and a solid-state hard drive
• I am using the integrated graphics card made by Intel. Apparently, it uses the i810 chipset.
• I am serving up standard-definition television

And finally, a few caveats:

• I don’t know the limits of the video card that comes with my netbook. The highest resolution that I’ve tried is 1280×1024 on a 17″ monitor, and it looked pretty good. I have no idea how it would look at a higher resolution on a more regular-sized TV.
• I have heard that his netbook simply can’t display HD recordings. I’m not an expert on this type of thing (since I don’t have an HD TV or monitor), however.
• As with any hardware purchase, don’t buy anything based solely on a blog post or product review. This system worked well for me, but it could work terribly for you for a variety of reasons. Do a decent amount of research before you spend any money. For example, the MythTV wiki and mailing list are great places to do exactly this type of research.

I don’t quite remember how I came to be invited to take a look at JoliCloud, its based on Ubuntu Netbook Remix and offers a different UI theme (not that different) and the ‘JoliCloud’.

The JoliCloud is a sort of online portal for updates, applications tracking and contact. It offers applications that are not normally part of a typical linux application vault, for example Spotify is in there. What’s interesting about that is that Spotify does not have a native linux client (come on Spotify, why NOT?) so this is the windows client and Wine.

That makes it a more interesting prospect, the JoliCloud is trying to take the hassle out of installing the apps you had on your windows desktop but cant get out of the box on your linux desktop. Want to run Google Chrome as your browser? No problem, just install it from JoliCloud. Now some of these ‘apps’ are little more than the normal web pages, served in a full screen view, but even so, its making it easier.

So does JoliCloud offer the best linux mix for a netbook? A light weight linux distro based on UNR (Ubuntu) and a pretty well desinged app store that means you need never see a .deb package or have to chant “./configure, make, make install” (though you will be missing out)

In the week where Google announced it was taking over the world… oh sorry, thats next week, announced Google OS and made its starting play in the netbook game what does it all mean for JoliCloud? Well I suspect like many nice projects it will either be absorbed in part of whole by other bigger or more ambitious projects or maybe it will just disappear.

Its all going to come down to the niche’s for the netbook, corporate adoption and how well we all take to really trying to live in the cloud. JoliCloud is an evolutionary step in my opinion, it takes the well established update/app store model that Ubuntu uses and adds more to it. Perhaps its the closest thing to an open app store yet?

This is an easy install. I’m installing to my Asus EeePC 901. Download the ISO file from the Ubuntu web site then burn it to a USB, I used an SD card. Your netbook needs to be able to boot from whatever device you choose, if you have a usb CD drive you could use that. In fact I found the getting my EeePC to boot from a USB key impossible, but it would happily boot from the SD card slot.

The default install is perfectly good, but a little package tweaking was needed. I removed the games (it stops the kids wanting to steal the netbook), installed Skype, Opera, Dropbox (I am not happy with Ubuntu ONE and I need something that has a Windows client too) and Tweetdeck.

The screenshots above give a general idea of the look and feel, the terminal window has had its background turned transparent and colours set to green on black. The desktop wallpaper was changed to an image from Desktopnexus.com

I can honestly say this is a solid linux distribution and I can see this being the netbook operating system I stick with after trying out a few of the alternatives.

Moblin is an optimized Linux platform that provides a modern, engaging user experience for mobile devices. Installation is a pretty standard affair and follows the usual download the image, burn it to a bootable media (USB or SD), boot it and install. Painless.

Once it boots you’re confronted with a very different UI, one that is very neat and well designed. A floating tool bar appears at the top of the screen when you mouse up to the edge, this is the main navigation and, quite restrictively, is fixed to what you see. I guess adding to it or changing it is there somewhere but its not something you are going to do easily. Thats a good thing or a bad thing depending on your point of view, for me it wasn’t so good.

The UI is well laid out and quite nice to use, but adding applications not in the Application Installer ‘Garage’ was troublesome and I found myself losing the will to live over getting what I wanted installed. This shouldn’t be viewed as the big problem I am making it out to be, if you don’t need other apps then there is no issue and the garage does have a decent spread. It didn’t have what I wanted though.

I also had problems with WiFi dropping out and refusing to reconnect. I tried this on both the wireless networks here so it wasn’t that, I am guessing its a driver issue on the EeePC901.

I don’t feel like Moblin is quite ready for use in the wild and in fact I don’t think it’s meant to be either, I think we are going to see devices running it soon and as it is built to order for each device I am sure its going to provide a very friendly and effective UI. But for a general purpose geek’s netbook, nah!

Since I first acquired an Asus EeePC its had Windows XP installed. This has worked fine if a little slow and cumbersome. The atom based netbooks are not fast and this one (a 901 with 1G RAM) is no different, but they are perfect for light use and taking everywhere. Anyway, I decided it was time to move on from XP and started to look at options.

Option 1. Stick with Microsoft. This meant Vista or Windows 7. Well I’ve had pretty much no trouble at all with Vista on my desktop, it all works pretty well. This isn’t the usual story though and I cant see it running well on a netbook. So Vista was out on the basis of it being slower than XP unless fed a decent CPU and RAM. I’ve been running Windows 7 since early beta on my laptop and I have to say its very good, this was definitely going to be an option, but I’m not ready to fund Steve Balmer’s retirement (unless he guarantees to retire) yet, so this would have to wait.

Option 2. Hackintosh. I’ve always liked Mac’s. I haven’t actually used one as my own PC for years though and the thought of introducing a 3rd OS into my daily mix isn’t appealing. Conclusion, review again as a choice between OSX and Windows 7.

Option 3. linux. I’ve had Ubuntu 9.10 on a desktop linux PC since it released a little while ago and also as a dual boot on my laptop, so far I’ve not had any trouble and its been a decent operating system for daily use.

So I decided to bin Windows XP on my EeePC and try out some linux based solutions.

My netbook needs are simple

• Terminal access (via SSH) so I can get at all the systems I look after
• Web Browsing, preferably using Opera but FireFox will do
• Skype (plus something for yahoo and messenger)
• Office suite, light weight ideally but must be word/excel compatible
• A twitter client (using the web isn’t great)
• BBC iPlayer would be nice
• eMail
• Remote desktop /VNC
• Media player, though not so important
• Easy to use

So, will UNR910 cope? What about Google’s newly released ChromeOS? How about Intel’s Moblin project? and what is Jolicloud?

I’ve had an Asus EeePC 901 netbook since August 2008, and have been very impressed with it. However, I was not very impressed with the stock Xandros version of linux; very restrictive and limited and clearly intended to provide a simple experience for any users. Needless to say, within a few weeks of having it I wanted to try a difference OS.

The EeePC Xandros does have a full desktop mode, so I intitiated that. It was certainly better, but still very limited. The repositories did not allow you to install Firefox 3.0 (v 2.0 was installed), Open Office was version 2 and the media player really struggled with streaming.

The options I had were either to try Windows XP or a difference distribution of linux. I was concerned that the 4gb main SSD would struggle with XP, seeing as the basic footprint of XP directly after a fresh installation and before any service pack, etc updates is already around 2.5 gb, so after researching on the EeePC user forums I decided to try Ubuntu.

At the time it was a fairly straight forward exercise, although did require manually updating a number of files throught the terminal. Version 8.04 (Hardy Heron) had recently been released. It was straight forward to install. I decided to allow all 4gb of the main SSD for the OS and partition the storage SSD to 1gb for a swap partition and the remaining 15 for normal storage. Both the OS and storage partitions were formatted to EXT3.

The installation was quick and painless, taking no more than 15 minutes. However, once installed, I had no wireless or ethernet access, the webcam was not working and none of the 901’s function keys worked. To resolve this I copied the required files and used the scripts from here, which installed the correct drivers. From this it worked perfectly.

I’ve been really impressed with Ubunutu on the netbook. Firefox works great, and with the Xmarks plugin I can sync the bookmarks on my 901, desktop and laptop, and the battery life has been very impressive, usually last a good five plus hours. The only slight frustration is that the wireless card, which is a draft N, will only connect at .11g speeds, although for general internet use that’s not a problem, and to be honest the 1.6 ghz Intel Atom would struggle to playback HD content if I tried to stream it!

Ubuntu has its own update manager, which it great, until it updates something and it stops that working. I, probably foolishly really, allowed it to update to 8.10, Intrepid Ibex. This seems to remove the EeePC specific drivers and replace them with default ones, which again did not work. Unfortuntely, Elmurato’s scripts didn’t work with it either!

I decided to try a few other alternatives. I downloaded a version of Windows XP which had been slipstreamed with SP3 and slimmed down to suit the 901. As the 901 was formatted to EXT3, the Windows installer flatly refused to entertain putting Windows on the drive, so I had to boot into a live version of Ubuntu from a USB disk and use the veru handy Gparted to reformat all the drives to NTFS for Windows to accept it. After that, Windows installed quite easily. On installation, everything worked, but it was pretty slow. I checked the space on the hard drive and it was already at 3.5 gb, so clearly was going to cause problems and slow things down. I also liked the look of some of the newer Ubuntu distros designed specifically for netbooks with a front end for easy use. I tend to use my 901 mainly for internet browsing, occasional email and occasionally documents, so decided that I didn’t need the full desktop experience as long as I could install the programs and updates I want.

The two favourite alternatives were Ubuntu Netbook Remix and Easy Peasy Ubuntu. I tried Ubuntu NBR first. This installed quickly and easily. However, this time there was wireless, but it would not connect a router using WPA. NBR is based on 9.04, Jaunty Jackalope, so I tried the scripts here, but that did not resolve it. I reinstalled with the full desktop version of Ubuntu 9.04, and that did work ok, and wireless did work. However, after running the update manager, which gave me the option to install 9.10, Karmic Koala, I ran the update, and again wireless would not work.

I decided to reinstall again, so thought I’d give Easy Peasy Ubuntu a try. This is designed for netbooks, and is currently based on 9.04. The installation was very straight forward; create the bootable USB drive, boot to the ‘live’ version from the USB stick and run the installer under the Administration tab. This opens up the partition manager and then installs quickly.

This time I have had no problems with any of the drivers, although I think I will avoid updating to Karmic Koala until I know there are scripts to install drivers that will work!

I really like Easy Peasy. It looks good, it’s a nicely laid out GUI, easy to customise, and runs smoothly.

I am really impressed with the 901. It’s tiny, looks great, and is perfect as a second and portable laptop. I don’t think I’d want one as my main PC/laptop, especially as the keys on the keyboard are quite a bit smaller than those on a normal keyboard, but for what I want it for it’s perfect! It’ll certainly keep me going a few more years unless I cannot resist the temptation of a netbook with a touch screen!

According to Easypeasy’s wiki ;

” easypeasy is an operating system optimized for netbooks. It favors the best software available by delivering Firefox with Flash and Java, Skype, Google Picasa, Banshee, codecs (ie. mp3) etc. out of the box. easypeasy 1.5 is our latest stable release and was released September 7th, 2009.”
According to me it’s a really easypeasy operating system to use that does everything from the first time you boot it up. The Wireless connection is ready for you, the Function Keys work (most of them, I couldn’t actually switch off the wireless). Out on the internet and Flash websites work, MP3’s play it all “just works”.

Of course it’s not actually FREE as in FREEDOM but if you can live with that and need to be up and running on your eeePC fast it’s definitely worth a look.

If you are reinstalling your operating system or even just trying different versions on your ASUS eeePC then you may need to select the boot device or your eeePC will keep starting up from the internal drive.
Press the “esc” key after powering on the eeePC, you may need to tap the key a couple of times. You will then be taken to an options screen where you can select the device to boot from ie: USB or CD/DVDRom whichever contains your new distribution.

Technorati Tags: Key, sequence, boot, USB, External, CDRom, ASUS, eeePC

Check the temperature of your eeePC CPU with this nifty little command;

cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/TZ00/temperature

this is another one of those quick commands you can fire off in a console to get instant information and it’s another one of the reason’s I could never go back to using Windows.

I should point out that this command was issued from within the Easypeasy eeePC distribution not Xandros etc. so i’ll check further on that and your mileage may vary etc. etc.

Technorati Tags: ASUS, CPU, eeePC, temperature, command, Easypeasy

Com’è scomodo scrivere un post col portatile da 7′, me ne ero dimenticato.

Tuttavia, è importante non lasciare che le cose restino lì a prendere polvere, così ho voluto scrivere questo primo post, dopo mesi dall’attivazione del blog, con un vecchio ma ancora funzionante eeepc701.

Però mi sto cecando gli occhi.

Evviva il primo post!

]]> http://niki382.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/sfondi-1024%c3%97600-03-windows-7/ Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:21:08 +0000 nik382 http://niki382.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/sfondi-1024%c3%97600-03-windows-7/

Things are looking up.

The rt2860sta driver is now working properly: the panic bug was fixed in Linux 2.6.32-rc5, and another bug which broke things for all but those of us whose EeePC has a Ralink 2860 has been fixed (the patch which caused it has been reverted), ready for 2.6.32-rc7. (The “panic bug” being the one which caused the kernel on any EeePC with a Ralink 2860 wireless network chip to panic, freezing the computer, when Fn-F2 was pressed while the wireless interface is associated with an access point.)

Also, linux-next has a newer version of rt2860sta which doesn’t require the fix from -rc5. I’ve tested this driver on my 901, so I should know (I’m guessing that this will be included in 2.6.33-rc1.)

I’ve also found that rt2800pci (from Benoit Papillaut’s repository) works nicely. (For the terminally interested, I tested up to commit d83ad2c9.)

I’ve not recently tested rt2×00 (which is upstream from Benoit’s repository) recently, though I should think that it too is fine now.

Which, all considered, is all rather good – may the best driver(s) win

Si tenéis un EeePC y estáis pensando en instarle Arch os recomiendo que leáis este artículo del blog de David Tsunamy. Con un comando os funcionará a la perfección el Netbook.

+ Activar el 100% de funciones de un EeePC en Arch

Finalmente estou postando o tutorial para ganhar mais algum espaço no ASUS EEEPC 701 após a instalação do Windows Seven. Este tutorial terá mais serventia caso você possua um cartão SD de pelo menos 8GB, e o mesmo deverá obrigatoriamente estar formatado em NTFS.

Utilizamos o VLite, para retirar toda a gordura possível da instalação do Sistema, no entanto o que mais consome espaço em disco no Windows Seven (e VISTA) é a pasta “C:\WINDOWS\WINSXS”.
Inicialmente com um tamanho entre 1,5Gb a 2GB, esta pasta cresce de forma desordenada, podendo chegar a mais de 10GB dependendo dos programas que você instala.

A pasta WINSXS ainda por cima não pode ser limpa ou deletada pois ela contém os arquivos necessários para o funcionamento do recurso “Windows Side-by-side” que foi inaugurado no Windows XP. Explicando de forma bem porca, este recurso permite que diferentes versões da mesma DLL coexistam dentro do sistema, evitando os problemas tão comuns no Windows 95/98/ME onde a instalação de uma DLL desatualizada por algum programa mal comportado corrompia o sistema fazendo com que ele travasse. Ou seja, nem adianta chorar, apesar de grande esta pasta deve continuar no sistema.

Sendo assim, resta-nos a alternativa de mover esta pasta para o cartão de memória, liberando assim espaço no HD principal do EEEPC. O grande problema aqui é que mesmo em modo seguro não conseguiremos mover a pasta, sendo necessário então o uso do Pendrive que utilizamos para instalar o sistema.

Vamos lá, são 14 passos. Simples mas complicados Procure segui-los com atenção.

1. Inicie o sistema normalmente e abra a pasta “Computador”
2. Plugue o Pendrive que você utilizou para instalar o Windows Seven no EEEPC. Ele vai ser mostrado como a letra E:.
3. Clique com o botão direito sobre cada uma das unidades e escolha renomear, colocando um nome amigável nelas.
   Veja na imagem como fiz nas minhas, coloquei a unidade C: como SISTEMA, o cartão SD (D:) como CARTÃO e o Pendrive (E:) como PENDRIVE. Isto vai ajudar a identificar as unidades mais tarde.
   
4. Para copiar as pastas você precisaria do Explorer que não irá funcionar, então vamos utilizar o programinha A43, que você pode baixar aqui clicando aqui.
   Salve-do descompactado dentro do cartão de memória. Ou seja:
   D:\A43\a43.exe
5. Agora reinicie o computador e faça o boot pelo Pendrive. Como se fosse instalar o Windows.
6. Ao iniciar pelo Pendrive, escolha o idioma e então clique em “Repair your computer” (Reparar seu computador).
   
7. Aguarde o programa procurar os discos e clique em “Next” (Seguinte).
   
8. Clique em “Comand Prompt” (Promp de comando).
   
9. No prompt de comando execute os comando na sequência:
   DISKPART
   LIST VOLUME
   
10. Observe que as letras do cartão e do Pendrive estão trocadas.
    O Cartão que antes era D: virou E: e o Pendrive que era E: virou D:.  Como renomeamos as unidades fica fácil perceber qual é qual.
    
    Antes de continuar precisamos corrigir isto. Colocando as letras da mesma forma como era dentro do Windows.
    Digite os comandos abaixo:
    SELECT VOLUME 1
    REMOVE
    SELECT VOLUME 2
    REMOVE
    SELECT VOLUME 1
    ASSIGN
    SELECT VOLUME 2
    ASSIGN
    LIST VOLUME

    Agora sim, as letras das unidades estarão iguais ao que eram antes:
    
    Este procedimento é importante para que os links continuem funcionando após a reinicialização do sistema, quando as letras das unidades voltarem a ser como eram antes.

11. Feito isto digite EXIT para fechar o diskpart e vamos a cópia dos arquivos. No próprio prompt de comando vamos abrir o programa A43. Digite os comandos
    D:
    CD A43
    a43.exe
    
12. O A43 se parece com o explorer do Windows XP então não há segredos. Entre na pasta C:\WINDOWS e copie a pasta WINSXS para dentro do cartão de memória.
    Agora atenção! Somente proceda com os passos abaixo se a pasta WINSXS for completamente copiada para o cartão “SEM ERROS”. Se houver qualquer erro na cópia interrompa o processo, reinicie o computador e faça tudo de novo.
    
13. Terminada a cópia (que pode demorar mais de uma hora) apague a pasta WINSXS original (de dentro de C:\WINDOWS) e vamos utilizar nosso amigo MKLINK. Feche o A43 e retorne ao Prompt.
    Digite o comando abaixo:
    MKLINK   /D   C:\WINDOWS\WINSXS   D:\WINSXS
    
14. Pronto, o processo está terminado. Apenas reinicie o computador e seja feliz!

Algumas considerações:

- É possível mover toda a pasta C:\WINDOWS para dentro do cartão de memória?
Não com este procedimento! E não sei o porque ainda.

- É possível mover a pasta “Arquivos de programas”?
Sim, mas lembre-se de que no momento de usar o MKLINK o nome real  da pasta é “Program files”. “Arquivos de programas é apenas uma máscara. O comando ficaria assim:
MKLINK   /D   “C:\Program files”   “D:\Program files”
as aspas (“”) são necessárias pelo fato do caminho conter espaços.

- Se ao iniciar o sistema houver alguma mensagem de erro, o que posso fazer para reverter?
Apenas inicialize o sistema novamente com o Pendrive e copie a pasta para seu local original.

- Posso realizar o procedimento com minha unidade já compactada?
Não testei, mas acredito que sim.

- Que pastas você já moveu para o cartão?
Já movi sem problemas a WINSXS, Program files e a pasta do Usuário.

- Como fica a performance depois de mover a pasta WINSXS?
No geral o sistema fica mais lento, mas a quantidade de espaço livre compensa (para mim).

- Houve algum problema posterior?
Não consegui utilizar o Windows Update depois de mover a pasta, mas não sei se está relacionado. Preciso realizar mais testes.

With Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) out, the Eeebuntu team has begun work on Eeebuntu 4.0. I am very excited for this release which is due to come out some time in December maybe. For sure I’ll be picking up the LXDE Base release of Eeebuntu 4.0 and putting it on my 2G Surf. I’ll probably even post a how-to guide and give a few pointers on common issues I ran across. After giving Sanguine Salamander, Münchhausen-by-Proxy Mantis, Persevering Pygmy Wasp, Arthritic Albatross, and Gyrating Giraffe a try, I’m sure Karmic Koala will be a great addition to the Ubuntu family.

All joking aside, I’ve come to really enjoy the Eeebuntu Base release. It has (almost) exactly what I need and does it while using up very few resources when there aren’t that many to start with. Maybe this time we’ll get full-screen flash? Er, let’s not dream too high. Bug fixes are so totally boring! But did you know it boots in, like, 10 seconds?! Like, no way!

EeePC ha effettuato una guida per installare il nuovo Windows 7 su netbook EeePC di Asus…

clicca qui per visionare guida

Fonte:EeePC

Oggi ho avuto occasione di provare sul mio Asus Eee 1005-ha la nuova versione di Ubuntu, la 9.10 in versione Netbook Remix. Non so quanto sia veloce perchè l’ho caricato da chiavetta USB, ma sono rimasto colpito dal fatto che riconosce tutti i componenti del computer (wi-fi, webcam, bluetooth, audio, tasti funzionali….) senza dover impazzire a cercare driver ed impostazioni varie.  Tramite bluetooth sono anche riuscito a collegarmi al mio nokia 5800 vedendo tutto il contenuto della memoria senza problemi….di seguito alcuni screenshot che ho fatto

Qui puoi scaricare Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala
Qui puoi scaricare Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10 Karmic Koala

Veeeeery swift update – last couple of weeks or so (I say couple of weeks, it wasn’t that organised) has been mostly rediscovering the art, or at least discovering the art of writing essays. I’ve mostly been going down the argumentative, nitpicking route, which I think I’m supposed to.

So not much of the old blogging, but hopefully now I’ve found my feet I’d like to be a bit more organised a blogger. We’ll see. Probably that just means avoiding reading lengthy articles on postmodernism and marxism, which is nice. I have a new favourite geographer for now as well, which I never thought I’d find myself saying.

I’m writing this on a tiny computer – an eeePC from amazon – £118? Thank you please. I’m catching up after my day off spent cookshop shopping in Dulwich and Blackheath,but until next time, tara for now.

Now that Windows 7 has been launched as a kind of cut down version of Vista rather than an upgrade to it, perhaps it will become the OS of choice for Netbooks? Netbooks require a light operating system that performs well without a lot of hardware power. Typical Netbooks include the two I have used in the past 2 years, namely the 10″ EeePC from ASUS and the 10″ NC10 from Samsung. As a small, light and underpowered computer, the Netbook is designed just for Internet use and not much more – like the functions on a standard cell phone but with a way bigger screen and ‘proper’ keyboard.

Xandros

Xandros on Eepc

My Eepc came pre-installed with a Linux distro based on Xandros. It was incredibly easy to get started – all my Google account information and Firefox extensions took minutes to update. The web cam was fine and the Skype app did more than my Mac OS version at the time. I wanted to be able to add more functionality though and for this I needed to plug in a USB CD drive and explore the disk that came in the box.

This was fine for adding a PDF reader but where were image editors like The Gimp 3.0 etc. that I knew were available and even designed for a linux PC? Well, following we searches I found a bit of Shell/terminal editing was necessary – and I’m no programmer! After lots of faffing – I couldn’t get a bare basics that I wanted. What I should have done was return it to the shop and swap for a Windows XP model but instead I installed my own copy. I used it for about three months but found typing a chore on the tiny keyboard and anything creative had to be done on a ‘big’ computer anyway. So I reinstalled Xandros and sold the unit.

XP

XP on NC10

My next foray into Netbooks was nearly a year later and came down to a large work order of NC10s for a school project. These came preinstalled with XP and also with a 120gb hard drive space. The keyboard on these is far superior to the Eepc of the same size but the big let down is the mousepad – it’s terrible.

XP is exactly the right OS for this size netbook – it behaves as you expect and using Google Chrome browser means you aren’t limited in web screen space either. I had no problems at all with the system and installed extras for the net or disk as needed. So why did I swap the OS again? Well, Windows is so frustrating sometimes; apps can be slow, crash altogether or not even boot up  in a convenient time… and I’m not referring to Vista boot up which takes nearly 5 minutes. Also, the temptation is to ‘tinker’ – its so easy to install stuff and XP can be well boring then I (like others) can’t help tinkering with it. yes, I edited the start menu script but that wasn’t enough I decided to go for Mac OSX.

OSX

OSX on NC10

I do have a copy of the full install disks and don’t recommend using on a non-Apple hardware but this was a little experiment! It took quite a bit of tweaking around to get the disk image to install (just Google it and there are instructions, videos and everything).

The mousepad goes into hyperdrive (totally uncontrollable) and lots of functionality cease to work. No webcam, no wifi (unless you install your own), sound disappears… and yet the beauty of OSX does actually work at this scale!

I know the iPhone is supposed to be OSX but all the apps, the dock and familiarity of the full system make OSX on the Netbook a simple pleasure. I used a USB pen modem to connect whilst out and about and had great “Wow” comments when people saw my mini-mac. C’mon Apple the Macbook Air isn’t that small and portable even if it is slim. But – a big but – it was no longer a Netbook – no longer convenient enough to be able to use anywhere and quickly. So I installed Jolicloud…

Jolicloud

Jolicloud on NC10

This OS is based on a Linux Ubuntu distro that is specifically for and only for use online via WiFi… it is brilliant in it’s simplicity and goes back to the original aim of the Xandros I had used earlier. You can’t even think about putting extra apps on – you really only need the things you can get online and this means free Web 2.0 apps.

It would lend itself brilliantly to a touch sensitive screen and really deserves to be a phone OS as much as ‘Droid… however, same problem – I’m not always connected to the web or wifi as I don’t live or work in a particularly urban area. So although it worked really well on the NC10 – you need full functionality of the netbook whilst connected to the net!

Ubuntu Netbook remix

Ubuntu on NC10

As a free download straight to a USB drive, Canonical couldn’t have made the Netbook Remix version of Ubuntu any easier. A similar simplified interface forms your desktop and full functionality either online or offline too.

There is little in the way of personalisation and yet there is the full array of Ubuntu styled apps. Every feature works just fine including the web came and lid-down ’sleep’ mode. I did have a few problems making and keeping the screen brightness at a suitable daylight setting and this was despite changing power saving settings. The brown on black theme looks quite classy but isn’t suitable for summer outdoors (even in the UK). As an OS, its is just as good as XP and better than the others I tried.

Summary

If the pre-Windows 7 netbooks are on offer this Autumn/Fall, make sure you get XP pre-installed and a sizeable hard drive. As a second option, Ubuntu is great and is less processor hungry than XP and is better for smaller disk space. Most of all, don’t treat your netbook as a replacement for a PC or 13″ laptop – it makes a poor substitute. As a communicator rival to a Smartphone or PDA it is far superior, especially when connected via WiFi. Did anyone mention tethering an iPhone to a netbook? This is far the best option as offers the functionality and ease of use of both mini systems and still fits in a small bag.

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I have various PC’s, some Windows based, some linux based. I use Windows daily for the bulk of my work despite that fact that most of the systems I manage are linux based. My personal view on operating systems has always been they are just a tool to do a job, choose the right one and the job gets done, choose the wrong one and its slow and painful for everyone.

I do love the fundamentalist’s views over which operating system is best; Windows, OSx, linux, etc. Personally I really liked OS/400 on the AS/400 (iSeries), but then maybe that’s because it was designed and built to do the job required, not fulfill the need to fluff about with a thousand pointless other things.

So, on my desktop (thats the actual wooden desktop of my desk) I have 2 decent size screens. The main one is the display for my workhorse PC and its Windows, currently Vista (with which I have to say I have had very little trouble since installing it when it launched).

The second, slightly off to the side is, as it happens Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala. I have fiddled with this, it runs a Mac like dock (AWN) and is used generally for web browsing, Tweetdeck (or Seesmic), Skype, iPlayer, SSH, development, etc – a general all things to all men but not Windows PC.

Sometimes I choose the Windows PC, sometimes the  linux PC, sometimes my choice is made for me by what I need to do. We all use Microsoft Word or Excel, that dictates using the Windows PC. Yes, I know, I could use the linux one, but why?

The best choice is not having to choose one but rather use both.

So this brings me to mobility and the generally accepted total lack of in relation to a desktop PC. Enter desktop left, a laptop. In my case a nice 17″ Dell Vostro running Windows 7 (but with a dual boot to Ubuntu 9.10).

A little while ago, as part reward for assisting migrating my brother from Windows to Mac I acquired an Asus EeePC 901. This came with Windows XP and once set up has proven to be quite useful when lugging a full size laptop about seems too much. The trouble is XP is not a light weight operating system, its pretty heavy and slow and not very well built for low power netbooks. Its no surprise that it has taken over netbook sales though, I mean linux is scary, its strange and mostly, it doesn’t do things people want very well. I think it gets a bad rep. but no doubt about it, a normal PC user confronted with some linux distro or Windows XP is going for XP every time.

So what else is on my desktop? Well typically some other assorted junk, usually my cell phones; a little Nokia thing and a Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 (which on various days I either love or hate). Normal land line telephone, often my camera (Eos40D) and always a mess of papers, notes and documents related to whatever real work I’m doing at the time.