geekchick | (no subject)

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.

Threaded | Flat

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...