freeform goodness

The netbook business is an odd one, really. As a product category, it’s easy enough to describe: take a notebook computer, and start taking things out until you end up with something really small and really cheap. Optical drive? As long as you assume the consumer already has a full desktop or laptop somewhere with a CD/DVD drive, you don’t need one. Full sized keyboard? Too big, give them something smaller. Top of the line CPU? Don’t need it for basic web surfing and light editing. Tons of storage? This is an appliance, you don’t need it to hold all of the user’s media.

As a business, though, it turns out it’s pretty dicey. It’s just not possible to make much money on a $300 computer, no matter who you are. Some companies have done the math and decided that it doesn’t make sense for them to be in the business. To be honest, though, the business model doesn’t matter much to me — that’s up to computer companies to figure out, not me.

I bought Tammie a little Acer Aspire for her birthday last year. Of course, I probably use it more than she does. It arrived with Windows XP installed, and I’m pretty sure I had the hard drive reformatted within a half hour of unboxing. Yeah, I’m one of them.

I installed Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and it was OK. The machine was OK for running Firefox, but I had recurring issues: sometimes, the WiFi would just stop working for no reason, for example.

I’m happy to say the new Karmic Koala release of Ubuntu drastically improves the overall feel of the machine. Everything feels a little snappier, it connects to the household wireless with much less hassle, and after I copied a few fonts from one of my Macs things even look pretty good in the browser. I installed an early access release of Chrome and the performance is very usable on all the sites I visit regularly, even Javascript-heavy sites like Google Wave.

Overall, though, the netbook is still a toy; something to check the IMDb or Wikipedia on while sitting on the couch. It’s a nicer toy than it was last week, though.

:: Dave Walker 14:46 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/tech/computers/os/linux]
:: tags: linux

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A neighbor of ours was moving and had stack of crap she was throwing away / giving away. One of the items was a ~3-year old Dell desktop — one of those ugly grey and black towers with the meaningless names (OptiPresidioFlexron 3000 or something.) It had XP Home on it, and she thought the motherboard was bad or something. Really, it was mostly just too slow to be usable and she had a new laptop anyway and just wanted rid of it. She gave it to Tammie, and I figured I’d take a look at it and replace the MB if necessary. After booting it into XP, it didn’t look too bad but I really didn’t want an old Windows box of mysterious provenance on my network, so I wiped and repaved with Ubuntu current. A wireless USB NIC and 15-minute driver hunt later, we have a perfectly adequate 2nd websurfing desktop in the house— total out-of-pocket cost: $20 for the NIC.

:: Dave Walker 14:34 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/tech/computers/os/linux]
:: tags: linux

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You wouldn’t believe (OK, actually, you probably would) how much low level BS it took to get the wireless card working in Linux on this silly Dell (short version: Broadcom is the devil), but the payoff is that I’m posting this entry from a nearby Panera (yay for free wireless) while having hot chocolate and a ridiculously tasty cinnamon crunch bagel. I guess that makes this my first ever moblog post… Next step — pictures.

:: Dave Walker 11:38 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/tech/computers/os/linux]
:: tags: linux

:: Comments (2)