[aklug] Re: Netbooks

I have had both the EEE PC 701 and the EEE PC 901. Both both were great for
travel, both had excellent battery life, both had a keyboard that was just
to small. They are great for reading stuff, web pages, email,etc. The
901's high resolution was a big improvement. Especially when it came to
getting more text on the screen. But as far as content generation, the
keyboards were just too small. A friend of mine got a 10" MSI Wind, and the
keyboard on that was much better for extended typing. For my next netbook,
keyboard size is definatley going to be a higher consideration. My next
consideration would be storage. Keeping in the spirit of things, I prefer
SSD's on my netbooks. I am not sure if it is the fact that it is more
resiliant or that they use less power, or if I imagine they use less power.
In anycase, using this as secondary computer, you shouldn't have a need for
lots of drive space, unless you are pulling your entire music or movie
library. Finally battery life. I have gotten over five hours using my
901. That is great sitting in a coffee shop leeching of the wireless and
not worrying about power. Screen size and resolution are almost the same
across the board, though you will probably wind up getting a 10" netbook for
the keyboard rather than the screen.

The default OS that came with both devices was adequate. More so on the EEE
PC 701 because of the screen size. It was easy to use. It has Mozilla
Firefox (2.07), OpenOffice, a couple of games....It didn't last long. I
slapped one flavor of ubuntu on it or another. There was a huge boost when
running Firefox 3. I am runnig eeebuntu on mine 901 right now. With Jaunty
coming out, I may reinstalling soon. Prior to buying a netbook, I would
recomend checking to see what issues your favorite distro might have with it
and how to fix it. For the 901, default ubuntu didn't support either the
wireless or ethernet NICs. Also if you are using SSD's there are some
filesystem considerations. There are some tweaks you want to do for SSD's
to improve performance and extend the life of your drive.

http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2008/09/04/four-tweaks-for-using-linux-with-solid-state-drives/

The more ram the better especially if you are mounting your /tmp in ram.

That's just my thoughts.

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 9:32 AM, Kurt Mathews <skidriprekah@gmail.com>wrote:

> I have some review sites that I'm going to pull information from. My goal
> in
> asking the group is to find personal opinions of the products, not so much
> a
> hardware comparison. Has anyone been using them for business or school, and
> how has that worked out? Things like that.
> On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 7:49 AM, Ben Everitt <ben.everitt@acsalaska.net
> >wrote:
>
> > Kurt Mathews wrote:
> > > Hey all!
> > > I'm writing a brief paper on netbooks for school and was hoping to get
> > > personal experience reports or opinions from you folks. Which models
> are
> > > good right now, and why? I'm mostly interested in whats on the market
> now
> > to
> > > keep a focus for the paper.
> > >
> > > All comments appreciated!
> > >
> > > -Kurt
> > >
> > >
> >
> > The last three months of Maximum PC have reviewed them, and wired
> > Magazine has reviews this month. Both would be an excellent place to
> > start. I've personally found that while the 9's are great PC's, I'm
> > comfortable with a 10 but the 9 for some reason is just too small.
> >
> > -Ben
> > ---------
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> >
> >
>
>
> --
> /***************************************
> * Kurt Mathews
> * askim3@uaa.alaska.edu
> * m: (907)-854-3112
> * h: (907)-696-2667
> ****************************************/
>
>
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Received on Tue Apr 21 12:05:55 2009