[PLUG] Lightweight, low-end portable with linux

[Paul Heinlein]

On Fri, 6 Nov 2009, chris (fool) mccraw wrote:

> On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 13:03, Paul Heinlein <heinlein at madboa.com> wrote:
>
>> I read your original post and didn't reply because of the 
>> requirement for a large screen. If that's not really a requirement, 
>> the Asus Eee PC 1000HE is worth your consideration. It runs 
>> Eeebuntu very well; power management and wireless function 
>> correctly; battery life is quite good.
>
> seconded (i love mine), but if you are getting any netbook, you 
> should have the user actually use one for a few minutes before 
> purchasing. the cramped keyboards and less-than-usual-height-screens 
> can be a turnoff or unusable for some, but that should be pretty 
> obvious even when demo'ing the units at a store briefly...

Keyboard usage is the big deal. Our CEO has a Dell and doesn't use it 
as much as she'd hoped because of the keyboard. I wouldn't want to 
work 8-hours days -- or even 4-hour days -- consistently on the Eee 
PC, but it's great at meetings and in the La-Z-Boy at home. It's easy 
to attach a USB keyboard and mouse, and a VGA monitor, when you're 
going to be at a desk for a while.

One issue that hasn't arisen yet is video horsepower.

The standard-issue Intel graphics subsystem is fine for word 
processing, web browsing, and e-mail. Video for, say, Skype is decent. 
YouTube and Hulu videos work, but at 85% to 95% CPU utilization. 
Beyond that, however, and you'll see dropped frames and lots of 
stutter.

If video is really important, I'd wait for the ION-based netbooks to 
mature.

Also -- netbooks typically don't ship with optical-media readers. To 
install Linux, you'll probably want to use a USB stick (unless you've 
already got a USB CD-ROM). The Eee PC boots easily from USB media, and 
I assume that's also the case with the MSI machines.

Finally -- if the machine you purchase ships with Windows, I'd 
strongly suggest using something like Clonezilla to capture an image 
of the hard drive before installing Linux. On one machine, we were 
initially unable to get the onboard NIC to work under Linux. I 
reinstalled the stock Windows drive image and verified that the 
hardware was fine, which led us to a fix in Linux...

-- 
Paul Heinlein <> heinlein at madboa.com <> http://www.madboa.com/