Norman's anti-fatware crusade2008-09-05T13:16:43ZNorman Perelson norman@shoso.co.zaCopyright 2008, Norman Perelson norman@shoso.co.zaSPHPBLOGFirst impressions EeePC 1000 My first disappointment is that it was delivered without the just-as-beautiful assistant.
Five minutes of looking at the Xandros OS that comes pre-installed from Asus and I fully agreed with one writer who described it as a Fisher-Price toy OS.
Without hesitation I reformatted the 8+32GB SD drives and installed the copy of Ubuntu-Eee that I had prepared before the new notebook arrived. That was when I had my second disappointment - neither the Wireless nor the wired network devices were recognized by Ubuntu. It seems that the special version was designed for the earlier models of the Asus Eee PC. Learning more made me realize that the model 1000 is bleeding edge as far as development of a compatible version of Ubuntu is concerned. Many users are still experimenting with varying degrees of success.
While learning how to get Ubuntu to work on this new baby I decided to restore the Xandros back to factory default. The Eee PC comes with a recovery DVD that makes this a simple 10 minute procedure. You do, of course, require a USB DVD drive - not included with the Eee.
I battled with the "Easy Mode" Xandros user interface for a while longer - trying to find the underlying Linux, It took an Internet search to learn how to open a terminal window - Ctrl-Alt-T. Once in a terminal I could install the required parts that allowed access to the "Advanced Mode" user interface. The advanced mode user interface is scaringly similar to Windows 98. It is not surprising that Microsoft have chosen Xandros for a broad collaboration agreement.
Compared to Ubuntu, the Xandros repositories are out of date and incomplete. The menus were not customizable and, in my opinion, badly designed. But in spite of my complaints, it is a lot more usable than the "Easy Mode". The real killer however is the flakiness of the wireless network and the inability to mount another file system using SSH (it offers the aging NFS mounts instead). It also seemed much slower than what I expected - hopefully that is due to the bad wireless connection. I did manage to do a bit of work under Xandros - although 'bit' is too big a description. I have just downloaded Ubuntu 8.04.1 and I am going to tackle the installation of compatible drivers. If I can pull myself away from the fun games on Xandros.]]>http://norman.shoso.com/index.php?entry=entry080903-2213212008-09-03T00:00:00Z2008-09-03T00:00:00ZGeneric, chemical-free, 'Prozac' Ubuntu is a non-chemical substitute for the potentially dangerous and expensive drug, Prozac.
After using Ubuntu for just a few weeks you will be feeling happier and more relaxed, mood swings will be a thing of the past, your productivity will rise to new heights and your love for your computer will be renewed.
Caution: Ubuntu can be addictive. However there are a number of support groups to help Ubuntu addicts.]]>http://norman.shoso.com/index.php?entry=entry080831-1522572008-08-31T00:00:00Z2008-08-31T00:00:00ZQuote from Vista SP1 installation The suffering that some people are willing to endure!]]>http://norman.shoso.com/index.php?entry=entry080827-2128302008-08-27T00:00:00Z2008-08-27T00:00:00ZRewards offered And I'll double the price if it leads to a conviction of the robbers.
See the PDF file with pictures at the related link below.]]>http://norman.shoso.com/index.php?entry=entry080827-0021462008-08-26T00:00:00Z2008-08-26T00:00:00ZMy ex-wife got my Ferrari They got away with 3 laptops, 3 cellphones, a Nikon camera with telephoto lens, a Garmin GPS plus some cash and jewellery.
It could have been worse. (Divorce settlements come to mind.)
I have now ordered an Asus Eee PC 1000 with 40GB solid state memory to replace the Ferrari. It is smaller, lighter and less than half the price. The only down-side is that the screen resolution is lower - 1024 x 600 - but testing a live Ubuntu Eee CD at the 600 pixel resolution proved that it will meet my needs albeit with less comfort.
The best thing about the Asus Eee that I have ordered is that it is not burdened with Windows. It will come pre-installed with Xandros which I will probably replace that with Ubuntu because that is what I was using on my Ferrari. Ubuntu Eee comes pre-configured with all the correct drivers for the Asus Eee and judging by the Live CD it will look very nice.]]>http://norman.shoso.com/index.php?entry=entry080823-1416512008-08-23T00:00:00Z2008-08-23T00:00:00ZNumber Muncher I came across a really bad example the other day. Instinct told me that, if a web page is refreshed every minute then the megabytes will add up to a significant amount after a time. Here is a screen shot of xe.com - a service providing mid-market exchange rates. Because these exchange rates are adjusted in real time, the web page is set to automatically reload every 60 seconds. This would not be too bad if it was a text-only page, because then the page size would just be a few kilobytes, but this web page has many small to medium sized image files as well. My measurement found it to be approximately 230 kilobytes per refresh.
230kb/minute is 13.5MB/hour 13.5MB/hour is 323MB/day That is over 3GB in just 10 days!
Sometimes it is cheaper to pay for access to the data you require than to be burdened with advertisements. ]]>http://norman.shoso.com/index.php?entry=entry080726-1308442008-07-26T00:00:00Z2008-07-26T00:00:00Z
