Netbooks ecomodding my computing experience

[blueflame]

First the halogen in the table lamp blew, so i replaced the 40w bulb for a 5w. Initially I thought poorly of the dimness but have gotten used to it fine, being more than enough to see keys at night.

Then the place i bought my 8month old laptop from was discounting the Acer Aspire One and after a day or three of pondering I bought the cheaper SSD drive model.



Intel Atom powered it uses very little power, around 30% of my conventional late model, celeron powered laptop.

SSD instead of HDD delivers only slightly more battery life as screen and cpu account for the bulk of power used.

I ogled the 10inch screen in the shops today, mine is the 8.9inch and the keyboard is almost the same as the 10inch and both almost full size.

Cheaper netbooks are just around the corner. My AAO has weak graphics though surprisingly good for their rating of 8mb!!

New faster browsers seem to be popping up everywhere. and different ones seem to be better at different things. Opera 10 seems is my search choice with an unbeatable load time, but incompatibility is an issue. Ecommodder.com doesnt like it as does many other sites, and Firefox or IE is quicker at times. For some reason Firefox ie slow on the SSD AAO models, but using Opera is quicker than my Celeron 2gb ram lappy, even though the the weak atom uses 1gb ram. Safari seemed too heavy and Google Chrome not as speedy as Opera but much more compatible and stable. Bookmarks in Chrome being a whole new experience.

The Netbooks smaller screen size initially had me thinking I would tire of it, and want a larger screen. What I've found is that I have the Netbook closer to me than my laptop. If the 15inch laptop was as close it would be too close. 30% closer with the 8.9inch screen is no problem at all. As long as sidebars are not shown and your not a user who requires larger fonts to read okay.

So, even faster browsing with new operating systems/net browsers is just around the corner, allowing for even lighter CPU's in low power Netbooks and phones. Lack of a disk drive or HDD? Not as much of an issue nowadays, I find myself barely using disks now, or even wanting to copy and keep large files.

If buying I'd be tempted to wait for the newer graphics improved, image rich models to appear later this year. However I paid very little for a quick XP netbook that in many respects seems the same but a little smaller AND has reduced my MPG by 300-400%.

[some_other_dave]

FF does some pre-caching, and writes things to disk. Which isn't so good when you're using bubble memory as your disk drive. Pick up an extra gig of RAM and set up a RAM disk and point FF to it for all of its temp files and such.

Or downgrade to FF2, which doesn't have that feature.

-soD

[Christ]

I really like the idea of netbooks and portable tablets, honestly.

That said, I never plan on spending more than $200 on one, for the simple reason that I just don't have to.

I can build a much smaller computer that can accomplish the same basic tasks for much less, and it's expandable, plus, I'm not limited by size, since the whole computer, less monitor, will fit in my hand. (Google PicoITX and "gumstix")

[almightybmw]

mmmmm, gumstix. Deliciously delicious.

[blueflame]

Thanks Dave. FF2 is usable now. Opera 10 is still the fastest, however I must remember some sites dont like it.

[Christ]

Originally Posted by blueflame

Thanks Dave. FF2 is usable now. Opera 10 is still the fastest, however I must remember some sites dont like it.

You can use "FasterFox" with FF2... it kinda pales the speed diffs between O-10 and FF2/3.

Get AdBlock if you don't already have it, and for super fast text loading, disable flash and java (set them "on command").

[dremd]

Awesome!

I just ordered a Dell Vostro 90 http://slickdeals.net/permadeal/20057; I can't wait to get it; definitely going to be running OSX on it.

Promises Not To HiJack Thread.

[blueflame]

I had an Asus eee with Linux and loved it straight off first time. Couldn't believe how easy it was to get used too.

$207!! for the Dell!

Model specific forums seem to have useful tweaks, optimisations and hardware hacks.

Thanks for all the good advice here too.

[some_other_dave]

Sadly, the mouse buttons on the eeepc are a little fragile. Mine got flakey pretty quickly. I wound up hooking up an external track ball to mine, though a mouse would have been much smaller. I like the action of the track ball better than the mouse pad anyway.

-soD