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Initial Thoughts On The Asus EeePC 1000HE

// May 21st, 2009 // 8 Comments » // toys

I spent the better part of Wednesday night tinkering with, setting up, and exploring the Asus EeePC 1000HE, and wanted to record some of my first reactions. Most of this is coming from the perspective of the Dell Mini 9, as that was the previous netbook that I had.

First off, the 1000HE has some annoying design flaws that I simply must point out. First, I’m not really wild about the massive tube on the hinge. I realize it’s mostly there to make the battery look like it fits, but it’s simply not aesthetically pleasing. Plus, the silver endcaps are ribbed, a design that usually means I could unscrew the caps to find some feature or something. You can’t.

Also, the speakers face down, with the grills located on the bottom of the computer. Granted, the part where the grills is located is angled up, so that when sitting on a flat surface, like a table, it might project the sound. However, when sitting in your lap, or in bed, it’s likely these will be muffled instead. Boo.

The last design flaw is actually probably the most annoying. One of the selling points of the Asus EeePC 1000HE, in my opinion, is its non-glossy matte display. I much prefer this, specifically on a netbook that’s likely to be used outdoors or at a coffee shop. Unfortunately, the rather thick bezel surrounding the display is made of high-gloss black plastic – perfectly shined to brightly reflect any and all lights. It’s nearly bad enough to completely offset the matte display, which is a shame. I’m looking into options to remedy this.

Aside from that, it’s a nice machine. The 1000HE is closer in size to my Dell XPS M1330 than the Dell Mini 9 was, and I’m not sure how I feel about that quite yet. It’s still more portable than the M1330, but obviously not nearly as portable as the Mini 9 was.

In terms of battery life, thus far I’m floored. At ~4p yesterday I unplugged the 1000HE, with a full charge. I then spent the rest of the night with full brightness and WiFi running, downloading and installing applications, rebooting, etc. At 930p, Battery Bar was still showing 2.5hrs of power left.

Today, at around 11a, again with a full battery, I unplugged the EeePC 1000HE, leaving WiFi and Bluetoth on, full brightness, and Seesmic Desktop running, as well as a Bluetooth headset charging off a USB port. As of 315p, I’m showing just under 1 hour of remaining battery life. While that’s not the full 7-9 hours advertised, it’s much longer than any laptop I’ve ever used. I would imagine if I turned the brightness down slightly, and disabled WiFi or Bluetooth (depending on how I was connecting to the net) I could get alot further.

Thus far, I’m most definitely a happy camper.

Dell Mini 9 For Sale

// May 21st, 2009 // 2 Comments » // toys

Now that I have the Asus EeePC 1000HE, I obviously don’t need the Dell Mini 9. It’s rather sad, really – I completely enjoyed the Dell Mini 9. However, the 1000HE is a bit faster, and offers a much improved battery life and keyboard experience.

As such, I’ve put the Dell Mini 9 on Craigslist, so that I hopefully don’t have to resort to Ebay again. Asking price is $300, and that includes shipping, in case you don’t live locally. Here’s the specs:

Dell Mini 9
8.9″ display
Intel N270 Atom processor @ 1.6GHz
2GB of RAM
16GB SSD (solid state drive)
WiFi
Built-in Bluetooth

I’ve got the original box, as well as the power cord and a zippered neoprene case to throw in. It is currently running Windows 7 RC1, fully activated, with all the drivers and whatnot installed. The Dell Mini is usually regarded as the best OSX hackintosh netbook, if you’re a Mac person (James Burland, I’m looking at you!) I previously installed OSX on here, and it ran fine (though I personally didn’t care for it).

It currently has a camo skin from DecalGirl.com on there, though it’s vinyl, and comes right off with zero residue. I can remove this before shipping, if you’d like. There’s a white Dell cover underneath. Also, there is a SMALL scratch on the bezel around the screen, though it’s hardly noticeable. Here’s the craigslist listing, or you can contact me directly at Ricky(at)RickyCadden(dot)com.

Windows 7 Release Candidate Experience Thus Far

// May 4th, 2009 // No Comments » // technology

I’m no stranger to Windows 7 – I’ve been running one of the early betas on a few computers for a while now, but have resisted shifting the whole house over until the Release Candidate was available. I got ahold of the release candidate this weekend, and spent pretty much all of Saturday installing it on the Dell Mini 9, my old Gateway MX6956, and more stressful, our MediaCenter computer. Each presented a different challenge, which Windows 7 seemed to handle quite nicely, after a bit of tinkering. Here’s the skinny:

Dell Mini 9 – After the install, I needed to install a few drivers, all of which are conveniently available in this thread. I did a few of the tweaks found here, and ended up with a fully working install on my 16GB SSD with 7.92GB free. Not bad for a full Windows install, really. I’ve confirmed that WiFi, audio, Bluetooth, and the card reader are all working great. Speed is on par with the previous Windows 7 install, and that’s awesome.

Gateway MX6956 – This is my former production laptop, reduced to a DVD player, basically. It was already running Windows 7 Beta, so upping to Release Candidate was no big deal. I was pleased to see that the Windows 7 installer recognized an older version of Windows, and threw everything from the C:/ drive into a ‘Windows.old’ directory, so that I could access my background images and the like, even after the fresh install. I had to install the Synaptics driver to turn off touchpad clicking, but other than that, this machine did not require any special drivers, and everything (WiFi, sound, memory card slot) just works – awesome.

Emachines T6003 – this is my Media Server, and don’t laugh, it was free. This machine was previously running Windows XP Pro, and has an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ processor, ~3GB of RAM, and uses an ATi Radeon Xpress 200 video card, which I believe is integrated into the motherboard. I first installed Windows 7 RC1 64-bit on this machine, and had everything working, except that pesky video card. Finding a good solution proved troublesome, so I tried just putting the 32-bit version of Windows 7 on there. I’m pleased to report that this worked much better, with less headache. Brilliant.

Tomorrow I’ll report on which applications I’m using on the various machines, as I’m sure many of you are wondering about software compatibility.

Trying Things Differently Often Leads To Discovery

// April 29th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // cool, technology

Discovering different and new ways to use technology is something I really enjoy doing. Whether it’s a new application for my smartphone, a new WordPress plugin that simplifies a task, or whatever, it’s always good to think outside the box to find new, potentially better ways to do something.

For instance, a few minutes ago, I found a new, nearly better way to use my Dell Mini 9 netbook. While sitting in….a specific room in Casa Guru, I found myself holding the netbook on either side, using my right thumb to arrow up and down on web pages, while reading. I then attempted reaching inwards with either my left or right thumb, and realized that using my netbook as an oversized thumbpad was actually quite convenient, possibly even more comfortable than squeezing my hands together to touch type on its smaller keyboard.

Unfortunately, there are still a few issues with this new method – for instance, I had trouble reaching the touchpad and left/right mouse buttons. However, for prolonged text input, such as emails or blogging, I could definitely see this being extremely convenient. It was also more comfortable because the Mini 9 was not balancing awkwardly on my knees, or resting on the ground, but rather held firmly in my hands, at just the right angle.

If you’ve got a smaller netbook, why don’t you try it? Hold your netbook on either side of the keyboard, using your thumbs to type. Is it better? What other ways have you found to use technology in a different way to make an interesting discovery?

Why Would You Want The CrunchPad?

// April 13th, 2009 // 6 Comments » // toys

New images of a nearly-finished CrunchPad came out from Michael Arrington recently, and I’m sorry, I recognize the idea of the thing is good, but I just can’t see a market for it. If you don’t know, the CrunchPad is a project from Michael Arrington, of TechCrunch. Fed up with MIDs, Michael decided he wanted to build “[a] machine as thin as possible, runs low end hardware and has a single button for powering it on and off, headphone jacks, a built in camera for video, low end speakers, and a microphone. It will have Wifi, maybe one USB port, a built in battery, half a Gigabyte of RAM, a 4-Gigabyte solid state hard drive. Data input is primarily through an iPhone-like touch screen keyboard. It runs on Linux and Firefox. It would be great to have it be built entirely on open source hardware, but including Skype for VOIP and video calls may be a nice touch, too.”

So, basically, they wanted the Nokia Internet Tablet, as mentioned here. However, now that it’s nearly finished, it has a new set of specs. Apparently, this thing is packing a 12″ capacitive display (similar to the one used on the iPhone, only bigger), runs a custom webkit browser, and, well, you can read the rest here. Basically, the thing is a 12″ touchscreen display that is really only capable of running a web browser (out of the box), and should cost around $300. Wow.

For $350, you can get the Dell Mini 9, with the same Intel Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, a 16GB SSD (solid-state hard drive), VGA-resolution webcam, Bluetooth, etc, and a hardware keyboard. Sure, it’s $50 more, but the utility of the machine is boosted incredibly.

Like many others, I just think this CrunchPad is too late, and priced too high. Maybe at $200, it would be a decent idea, but for $300, it’s just not functional enough to really justify the cost. What do you think?