Any Experience with Netbooks?

**Lemur** · 06-12-2009, 20:31

I wanted to get one of the Asus linux netbooks when our old WinXP laptop died. But Mrs Lemur insisted -- insisted! -- that we get a MacBook instead. Bitter? Me? Only a little.

I've got nothing against OS X, and Apple can still make a slick piece of hardware, but I really, really wanted to play around with the Asus. Grumble grumble grumble.

**Furunculus** · 06-15-2009, 11:18

10" netbooks are great travelling companions, they are so small you just chuck them into your rucksack without a second thought.

having said that, when i buy again i want a minimum of 1366x768 with an integrated DX10 chipset, which can be done down to a slim 11.6" chassis IMO.

for me that would be the ideal compromise, as it would still have the horsepower for productivity tasks and light gaming as well as video and web use.

**Tellos Athenaios** · 06-21-2009, 02:44

No experience; but still a piece of advice you may want to take into account:
Keyboards probably aren't the problem if your hands aren't too big, however screen real-estate *is*. You'll notice with websites that many of the more `large amounts of text' types do seem to be based around the idea of a _minimum_ of 1024*768. Unless you plug in an external (USB) mouse which has rather good low-friction scrolling (as opposed to the incremental model of nearly all mice) that may be a bit annoying with N-page documents (with N any amount larger than 2).

It's not just that your screen is particularly small. It is also that unless you get yourself an OS tuned to a netbook (if I were you and I were to get a netbook anytime soon, I'd most definitely try out Moblin for that: if only for the fact that its a heavily optimised Linux for the Intel netbooks: 5seconds for a cold boot to desktop is not bad at all) you will notice that all aplications love to take up some X amount of vertical and screen-real estate, with X likely being about 50px for anything that supports tabs, and in the vicinity of ~100-150px for things that use the 'ribbon' thing or uses many layers of toolbars (so that is many common office applications right there).

I find myself noticing that on a 1280x800 laptop screen: I have my desktop configured to trays, task bars etc... If you want to do anything like displaying 2 Word documents side by side, it's going to be mildly unpleasant I'd expect. It takes a fair amount of re-sizing already on what is a much more convenient resolution of 1280px in width.

**Xiahou** · 07-20-2009, 20:57

Anyone ever play with putting an alternative Linux Distro on the eeePC? I'm kind of sick of the Xandros install that it comes with. The interface feels too constricting and everything is so far out of date that it's a real problem to do something as simple as update flashplayer.

First, I downloaded Mandriva (my current distro of choice). I had read that it had good compatibility with netbook hardware and it's a distro I feel familiar with. However, when it came to getting it to boot a live install from a USB flash drive, I ran into problems- of course there are fixes for it, but it started to feel like I was shoe-horning something onto it that really didn't belong there.

So now, I'm looking at Easy Peasy and Eeebuntu, both are Ubuntu variants. It's basically a coin toss, so I asked my wife which she thought looked nicer... I'll be trying Easy Peasy first.

If anyone has experience with these or any other distros on a netbook, let me know.

**Husar** · 07-20-2009, 22:46

That Easy Peasy looks sexy, if I had a netbook I'd want to try it.

**Xiahou** · 07-21-2009, 03:22

Originally Posted by Husar

That Easy Peasy looks sexy, if I had a netbook I'd want to try it.

It looked great... but too much didn't work out of the gate. I wanted a distro that worked from the getgo with minimal frustration. Eeeubuntu fit the bill.

For both I did the live test running it off a USB drive. For Easy Peasy, things like LCD brightness controls, the mute button- and most importantly wifi did not work when testing the live version... pretty disappointing for a distro that supposed to be designed for netbooks. With Eeeubuntu, everything I tried worked- so the choice was clear.

I've already got it installed and running- it installs right from the live version as its running and I'm able to do everything I could under the old install. Now it just runs much snappier and its a proper, full featured OS.

**Whacker** · 07-21-2009, 03:35

Originally Posted by Lemur

I wanted to get one of the Asus linux netbooks when our old WinXP laptop died. But Mrs Lemur insisted -- insisted! -- that we get a MacBook instead. Bitter? Me? Only a little.

I've got nothing against OS X, and Apple can still make a slick piece of hardware, but I really, really wanted to play around with the Asus. Grumble grumble grumble.

Shenanigans, brother Lemur. Shenanigans. I love my wife dearly, but there are certain things where I firmly, unswervingly put my foot down and will not suffer to be in this household, Apple-based computing devices other than ipods being one of them.

Dell recently had a big commercial on TV for it's own little mini-laptops. I don't know how much they were going for, but they looked kinda slick on the outside.

**Lemur** · 07-21-2009, 14:56

Originally Posted by Whacker

I love my wife dearly, but there are certain things where I firmly, unswervingly put my foot down and will not suffer to be in this household, Apple-based computing devices other than ipods being one of them.

Why the iPod exception?

The main user of the laptop is Mrs. Lemur, so it didn't seem fair for me to overrule her. Also, I do not have quasi-religious objections too all things Apple. I am a computational slut, spreading my love between all OSes.

**Whacker** · 07-22-2009, 01:13

Originally Posted by Lemur

Why the iPod exception?

The main user of the laptop is Mrs. Lemur, so it didn't seem fair for me to overrule her. Also, I do not have quasi-religious objections too all things Apple. I am a computational slut, spreading my love between all OSes.

My dearest Lemur, please do not call my hypocrisy into public display.

In all seriousness, the only reason I got the iPod was because it was the only 60gb portable mp3 player available at the time. I really wanted the iRiver, but the biggest they had was 30 gig, and my music collection clocks quite a bit higher.

As to Apple, my reasons for despising them are known, I will not spew them yet again in here. Suffice to say that, as the poor bastard who runs tech support for my own family, my parents and in-laws, I have a very distinct say in who computes with what in all households. I've only had to fight this battle once when my brother in law and his wife were suggesting to my mother in law that she get a Crapple, to which I promptly responded that was fine but I would provide zero tech support for it. Thankfully she wasn't really interested to begin with.

Now that I think about it, a Netbook would probably have been a very good choice for both of them, they are not "power users" by any stretch of the imagination.

Finally, please stop being such a promiscuous user. I had to get a new keyboard and mouse since you touched mine after using that horrible unmentionable ... thing of yours. There are some stains that bleach and fire cannot erase. You need to find a good, wholesome OS that you can settle down with and will treat you right.

Like BSD.

/runs like hell

**Furunculus** · 07-22-2009, 08:59

this is about the most appealing 'netbook' i have yet seen:
http://www.liliputing.com/2009/07/sa...is-summer.html

i don't like 1024x600, as 1366x768 is much more useful.
but i'm not convinced that 1366 on a 10" screen would not induce eye-strain, so 11.6" is better
it also uses the nVidia Ion chipset
the battery life will be great

all it really needs is a better CPU.