(no subject)

[geekchick]

When I stopped by Microcenter to pick up some USB flash drives for the office (8 GB for $18, hey hey!), I took the opportunity to play around with Eee PCs that they had on display. I've been thinking about picking up one of the mid-range ones sometime in the future when finances allow such things again for times that I'd like to have a computer handy but don't want to lug my heavy laptop around. Sometimes even the awesome Halloween-themed Hello Kitty skin doesn't make up for hauling around the weight of my current laptop.

It turns out that I actually liked the Acer Aspire One much better, but maybe that's because I know what I'm doing in XP and the Eee interface (the displays were all running their Linux variant) made me go "Buh? How do I get to a terminal window so that I can DO anything?" Have I mentioned lately that I get very attached to my interfaces and am disconcerted easily when they change? I'm assuming that you can get rid of the "big friendly buttons" interface if you want to, yes? It was getting late and I didn't have time to screw around long enough to figure out what, if any, different modes were available.

I also tried to play around with the g netbook, but someone had locked the screen and it had the most annoying touchpad in the entire freakin' world, so that one's right out.

Comments

[anmorata.livejournal.com]

Aww man. I just paid twice that for an 8gb flash drive tonight, thinking it was a stellar deal (given that the SanDisk ones were $80.. eep). I've already opened it, too. Feh.

[geekchick]

I paid about $40 for mine a few months back, and thought I was getting a fabulous deal. Well, at the time I was. =) These are the private label ones, and the 8GB is $25 without the coupon from their email.

[anmorata.livejournal.com]

Okay. That doesn't make $34 sound too bad, then. :)

[elgecko.livejournal.com]

I haven't played around with the eee yet, but I can tell you that for most Linux variants, you can do ctrl-alt-F1 through F6 to get multiple console sessions, and then ctrl-alt-F7 to return to your X session.

[geekchick]

Apparently it's Ctl-Alt-T to open a terminal on the Eee in "Easy Mode", and "Open the Work tab, start the File Manager than click Tools menu, Open Console Window." in the standard interface. I'm reassured to see that you can get into KDE mode; I suspect I'd be much less annoyed by that.

[elgecko.livejournal.com]

Cute! And you're right, that Asus does look like a nicer box

[also-huey.livejournal.com]

I like the eee a lot. I got my OQO after a friend bought both, and couldn't get over how pissed-off he was that the $400 one was so much cooler than the $1500 one.

Getting it out of 'easy' mode, replacing the filesystem, and dpkg-ing in a bunch of useful software are definitely recommended, though.

[geekchick]

Getting it out of 'easy' mode, replacing the filesystem, and dpkg-ing in a bunch of useful software are definitely recommended, though.

Yeah, if I end up with one eventually, that's the first thing I'm going to figure out how to do I suspect.

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

8 gb for $18? I guess I'm stopping by Microcenter this week.

I've wanted to get a Eee since I first heard of them, but the budget just hasn't allowed. It'd be my actual laptop-the 10 year old beast I'm typing this on just isn't terribly portable.

[geekchick]

For the $18 price, you need a coupon that they mention in their email. Online version is over here. (There's no limit on the number you can buy, at least according to the sign in the store, but you do need a coupon for each one.) The bulk drives are kept up at the register, so just ask for them when you check out.

[samldanach.livejournal.com]

We are currently struggling with our EeePC. It's handy, and super-portable. But, getting a GSM card that will work with it is a MAJOR pain in the butt. At this point, we are seriously considering dumping the Linux that came on it and installing Ubuntu (there is even a flavor of Ubuntu specifically for the EeePC).

Also, I recommend not getting the 2GB version. I'm actually quite stunned at how restrictive such a small hard drive is. The 4GB should be sufficient, and the 8GB should have no problems at all.

[geekchick]

This is good to know, thanks!

I was considering eventually getting the 2GB version and sticking a reasonable amount of RAM in it (512K? Shyeah, right.), but I think that's probably not really feasible. That drive is just too small.

[samldanach.livejournal.com]

Double-check the specs. Ours says the RAM is not upgradeable.

I think ours will be okay, once we blow the partitions away. But, the way the factory install is set up, the OS is installed on one partition, the user files are on a second partition, there's a third partition for the page file, and a fourth partition for the restore files. And, if you make changes to the OS (like, say, installing drivers), it goes into the user partition instead of the OS partition. They pretty thoroughly locked down the OS partition, under the theory that you can only do so much damage that way.

When we thought we were installing tools and upgrading the kernel, we filled up the user partition halfway through. It pretty well killed the PC, and we had to do a complete restore (fortunately, we haven't put much on it other than bookmarks yet).

Once we get it up and running, we're planning on effectively just keeping an SD card in the slot as the "user partition."

[geekchick]

Heh. Was going to update the typo; that should be "MB", not "K". Whoops. =)

You've got the 2GB Surf? Yeah, I hadn't looked closely enough; in the notes section of one of the "how to upgrade memory" pages, I did just find the "this doesn't work on the 2GB Surf because the memory is soldered to the system board". Well, there goes that plan for sure.

[samldanach.livejournal.com]

Yup. Since the entire plan is to use it solely to surf the web, primarily while on vacation. Also, maybe use OpenOffice to do a bit of writing (though my hands are too damn big for that keyboard).

It is a great deal. And the form factor is really nice. And lots of people enjoy it a great deal. But, it's not nearly as easy to setup as the ad copy would lead you to believe, and, unlike many Linux machines, it actively discourages user customization.

[also-huey.livejournal.com]

getting a GSM card that will work with it is a MAJOR pain in the butt

I dunno from GSM, but the EVDO is apparently easy enough...

[rottgrub.livejournal.com]

I really like the look of the MSI Wind, compared to the bigger EEEs. However if I were getting a netboot type device, I'd wait for either the Dell E, or the Gigabyte m912 mini tablet that is coming out.

Mmm... mini tablet pc...