Acer Aspire One instead of EEEpc. Oh well.

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Right.  Turns out my online supplier of geeky goods actually sold out of the desired EEE. Just as all the other computer retailers around me in the south east of England. So I ordered an Aspire One. To be exact, the Aspire One A150-AB (Why in the world do makers of laptops come up with these weird and seemingy random model numbers?). This baby sports 1 GB ram, a chunky 120GB HD and Linpus Lite, their netbook Linux flavour, a derivative of Fedora 8. That would be another Linux flavour to get used to. Sigh. So one day the nice man from Amazon knocked on my door and brought a small but eagerly awaited package.

The Aspire is undoubtedly attractive and feels better designed and made than the best girlfriend’s first generation EEE. The keyboard and the screen especially are superior to the EEE, and there is a multicard reader that’s coming in handy.

Still compact, but larger than a Star Trek VI mug.

Apart from the multicard reader there’s 3 USB Slots, an external VGA plug, and an additional slot for more SD cards. It boots up in seconds and apart from a mild whirring noise when the little fan is trying to cool Intel’s Atom processor pretty quiet (though not as silent as the girlfriend’s eee).

It’s pleasant on the eye, balances well on my lap and fits perfectly into my work bag. Unfortunately the batttery is completely pish. While watching Little Britain USA (which, btw was rubbish) the battery drained almost cmpletely, and I presume that under full load the battery wouldn’t last longer than an hour. No comparison to my Macbook that would happily run for 5 hours. So no long train journeys or flights to New Zealand in economy class then.

As mentioned before, Acer is selling the One with Linpus lite, a Fedora 8 derivative. This is quite similar in apperance to the EEE’s Xandros flavour, just with worse applications. I have no idea who had the idea of leaving out Skype (it does have a webcam, you know), VLC and Thunderbird and instead use some other unusuable crap. So my first job was to get used to Fedora’s weird package manager, ‘yum’. I now have all the necessary apps installed, and available via XFCE’s ‘advanced menu’, but still have to remove the annoying apps and then edit the desktop file to add the right icons. I am quite happy to do that, but I can see the best girlfriend ever struggling with that task.  I have no idea what Acer’s software engineers were smoking when putting the One’s software package together, but here they certainly messed up.  Another minus was the lack of the GIMP and the fact that so far my trusty TX1-Powershot is not being recognised by the crappy photomanager.

So, after 3 days with the Aspire, what are the first thoughts?

Well designed hardware that is let down by a crap battery and a software package that is lacking in functionality compared to the EEE’s far superior Xandros flavour. I am pretty sure that very soon Ubuntu’s Hardy Heron will make a guest appearance, but for now I am just happy that I have replaced the Macbook with a credit-crunch model (the Aspire costs exactly a third) and that I can again watch movies and listen to my music.

More EEEs please!

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With the advent of the second EEEpc arriving in the household, it was time to have a look around the web where the EEE -community is hanging out. Cheeelling, so to speak.  From what I can see from a brisk google search is that the two highest scoring sites are EEEuser.com and EEEpc.net. While the latter has the better blog, the former has a very active user forum full of helpful hints from those eeenthusiastic useeers, so with a congratulory ‘kacheeeng’ it will be promoted into the blogroll.

Congrats, and no more eee jokes. Reeeally.

The curse of the electrical household goods strikes

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This weekend was obviously not meant for my two favourite gadgets to survive. On Friday my Macbook got an accidental dousing with a recreational fluid and since then has refused to work (and will probably never work again), and the next day the LCD screen on my lovely Powershot TX1 stopped working.  Sniff.

The next step will be to pray to the gods of backup that I can save my 10 gigabyte of precious photographs from the Mabook’s hard disk. So, a set of small screwdrivers and a USB to IDE connector will have to be acquired and hoped that I can mount the HD under Linux (apparently it works, but you never know).

The next step is to decide what to do with the dead MacBook. Sacrifice it? It is rather reassuring to see that I am not the only one who gave his MacBook a good dousing. The intarwebs are full of people asking for help after recreational fluids leaked all over the keyboard.

The biggest question of all is of course what to replace it with. The best girlfriend ever has been a happy eeepc user for more than 9 months now, and after having a look at the new EEEPC 1000 myself, I decided to finally rid myself of proprietary software once and for all (apart from my ancient windowsbox that I only use to play Settlers III).  After one year with the MacBook I still had to find an application that needs a dual core processor and 2 gigabyte of ram, as I didn’t use any other applications than Mail, Firefox, DVD-Player, VLC, Neo-Office and my twitter client. I find it unlikely that I will suddenly need new applications. I will of course miss the incredible ease of use of the MacBook, but once Ubuntu is installed (and let’s face it, installing is the best bit) it runs just as smoothly.

So, wish me luck in my endeavour. And cross your fingers that the MacBook’s HD is still mountable.

Terry Pratchett’s ‘Nation’

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I can’t remember the last time I cried while I was reading a book, but Terry Pratchett’s Nation certainly did produce a bit of a sniffle today. The first book by Pratchett not set on Discworld since, er, Good Omens, I think, is not only a philosophical masterpiece but also side-splittingly, laugh out loud funny. I think only Pratchett (and sometimes Dawkins) can get this combination right.

In ‘Nation‘ we witness the ancient struggle between belief and reality: If the gods (or god) exists, why is there so much  wrong with this world? Is the proof for supernatural belief a loads of of old twaddle? These age old questions are set on an idyllic island in an alternative reality Pacific Ocean that has just hit by an enormous tsunami, wiping out it’s population. Only a 13 year old inhabitant and an English girl (that was stranded with the schooner she was travelling on) are left on the tropical paradise that is slowly but surely filling up with refugees. In between making beer, defending the island from cannibals and negotiating with the British Crown these two have to come to terms (no, not with their sexuality. This is not Blue Lagoon) with their inner and cultural daemons. While I was looking forward to another Discworld and some Shenanigans of Vimes and his posse, this book is very welcome in a time when the secular western world is under attack from the Sarah Palins of our time.

‘Nation’ is tender, humane, a delight to read, very moving, and has maybe the best ending of all of Pratchett’s books.

I’ll now read it again.

The Dahon D7. An interim review after 2 months of commuting.

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It’s now more than 2 months that I commute 1 km with the Dahon D7 from home to the train station and on arrival in London another 6 km to work (and return). It’s been easier than I thought: my fellow passengers on those busy commuter trains seem to be ok with me and the folded Dahon. I always make sure to enter the train last, after the initial rush, just to avoid any irate travellers with chain oil on their trousers/skirts. The actual bike ride continues to be a joy, and the bike seems to be taking it well.

Apart from a slight reduction in break power due to a natural decline of the break pads everything is working spiffingly. A change of shirts and a wash on arrival at work reduces any complaints of body odour (I am still not fit enough to arrive at work semi-drenched) and so far the weather has been kind. 

I am sure there will be rain drenched morning where I will be refusing to take the bike, but so far there was no reason not to take the bike in the morning. Even my two favourite local Indian/Bangladeshi restaurant have been kind enough to just accept me wih bike and let me place the folded Dahon behind my seat.

I have gained an considerable amount of shape to certain regions of my physique and the best girlfriend ever has been very complimentary about the overall effects. 

Would I recommend it? Heck yes. Those daily kilometers on the bike don’t only increase my fitness, but they also add a considerable amount of fun to my commute, reduce my carbon foot print, keep my budget healthy and shrink my weight and bloodpressure. 

What’s not to like?