Netbook

...aaaand the reason I made my last post was because I recently had a successful time purchasing a brand new netbook. I have been looking to get one throughout 2009, so that I could get work done from the comfort of my couch, while still conversing and chilling with the roomates, instead of locking myself to my desktop upstairs. But I remembered my past purchasing gaffes, and hesitated to look for the right netbook for the job. I knew which brands were good, but which of those brands' models were the best? Which could I afford? Would I really benefit for finding one online? Did it matter if Linux wasn't preinstalled? These questions caused me to waffle over and over again. The solution was to stop thinking like a techie.

My g/f has a $300 Acer Aspire One, which I have had experience with, and which I found to offer enough power and features for the price. So when I found the similarly priced and speced EEE PC model at a retail outlet, I got it right then and there. No debating whether I should price compare online for an MSI Wind, or wondering if I would be content with Windows XP. I knew the EEE was a popular brand, and I knew it would offer the power I needed. I bought a new Flash drive to go along with it (holy crap memory is cheap), and that was that.
I don't care what anyone says - it was a good choice for me. The EEE is a great little piece of kit, with a crisp screen and enough power to suit my needs (and if not, a RAM upgrade will do the trick). Since I will not be using it as a primary PC, I don't mind having to trash and reinstall the OS on it if it ever starts to slow down. Bottom line, I will get years out of this netbook, and that makes it a worthy choice.


My only complaint was how tricky it was to get Linux running on it, though I understand that this is a silly thing to say when dealing with Linux. The problem is that the model of EEE PC I got has a newer set of ethernet/wireless hardware than previous versions, and support for them isn't built in to every distro (or at least not Ubuntu and even plain Debian). My final solution was to install the ethernet drivers (ignoring all the errors that come from them - they actually did install), update, reinstall with a new kernel, and finally dive into a backport repository to fix wireless. In the end, I got regular desktop Jaunty running at a great clip, and learned a lot along the way. A successful afternoon of hacking if I ever saw one.

So now the EEE is exactly where I want it, and I can't wait to play around with it in the coming weeks. Work has been extra busy as of late, and I'm thinking this will allow me to better unwind at home, and also keep me out of my bedroom for anything but sleeping (which is supposed to help with your sleeping). Wish me luck.