Nine Reasons Every Eee PC User Should Get Easy Peasy
In my previous write-up about my six-month journey with the Eee PC, I spent a fair amount of time griping about the default install OS. Though a few of my complaints, such as battery life and keyboard, were primarily related to the laptop itself, most were more software-oriented.
Shortly after penning that review and opening up my Eee PC to use the version 2.0.0.20 Firefox that was inside (there was no means to update to 3.x) I realized I had to change something. With all of the system software hopelessly out of date, the OS wasn’t merely annoying, but dangerous.
So, I did a little bit of research, learned how to install Linux distros using UNetbootin and raced to download an ISO of the latest Ubuntu version.
The experience, however, was less than rewarding. Though the install worked perfectly, requiring only a free 1 GB pen drive, which they now give out in cereal boxes, Ubuntu was a poor fit for the Eee.
The wifi didn’t work properly, the OS gladly ate up much of my precious screen real estate and it required some brutal hacking to get everything running.
Then I read about Easy Peasy, formerly known as Ubuntu Eee (I’m forced to assume the name was dropped fr trademark reasons). I gave it a whirl and it was a like a breath of fresh air. Not only did everything work out of the box, but the system was up to date, shiny and new.
It was what my computer should have been when I first plucked it from the box.
Need more reasons to try Easy Peasy on your Eee? I’ll give you nine, especially if you’re stuck with their version of Xandros. If you want to make it ten, leave a comment and make a suggestion. Read more
Some Advice for Saturn
When I purchased my car, I was in a pretty bad situation. The vehicle I had been driving was involved in a very serious accident that was going to be the subject of an ongoing lawsuit and I had only a limited amount of cash with which to buy a new vehicle.
I did the best that I could with limited time and budget. I acquired a 1998 Saturn SL2 with a cash payment and have been driving it for the past two years. The car, however, has had a lot of trouble. Since I’ve bought it, I’ve had two engine sensors go out, the driver’s window crank break, the fan motor go out and, worst of all, the engine mount bolts snap in two.
Though the engine itself has been reliable (even running perfectly when the bolts broke), the car has spent more time in the repair shop than I’d like to admit. However, it seems that most of it is behind it now (knock on wood) and I’ve had no issues at all for nearly six months.
So, I decided to take this period of quiet not only to pay off all the repair debts, but to see about fixing the only problem I was aware of when I purchased it. You see, for whatever reason, the car did not have a dome light when I bought it, instead opting for a hole and some bare wire where the light should go. But I knew dome lights were cheap and unimportant so I let it go.
Little did I know exactly how difficult Saturn would make this. Read more
The Mac (Un)Mighty Mouse
Usually I can justify the “Mac Tax“. Sure, I pay a premium for Macintosh products, but nine times out of ten I find the difference to be justified. I get more work done on my Mac, so the fact it cost hundreds more doesn’t bother me. I type faster on my Apple keyboard, so the fact that it cost twice as much as a reasonable replacement is acceptable.
Though I seem to rag on them a pretty good deal, Apple actually has a strong history of releasing good products that justify at least some premium.
However, this makes me wonder what they were thinking when they released the Mighty Mouse. Though it was a Christmas gift from an absolutely wonderful pair of in-laws, it seems to come pre-packaged with a set of headaches and problems that have me wondering if this is really an Apple product I’m using.
It sure looks like one, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t act anything like one. Read more
Six Months with a EeePC
Back in June, I purchased an EeePC 701 4G Surf off of Amazon for about $300. The goal of it was to replace my aging Compaq laptop that had been dropped, beaten, overwritten, broken and was doing good if it could turn on without flashing an error screen.
I had been doing a lot of traveling and I wanted the EeePC to be my go-to laptop for all my getting around. I already had one trip out of the country planned and had almost half a dozen other conferences lined up. I needed something light, portable and simple. The EeePC seemed to fit the bill.
When I purchased it, I wasn’t looking for anything that would replace my home PC, just something that had enough power to “get me by” while I was on the road. I had no plans to be editing podcasts or making movies. I just wanted to write a few blog posts, touch up a few PowerPoints and check my email.
Now, after six months, two overseas trips, about ten presentations and countless hours of use, I’m finally ready to offer some of my thoughts on how well it has held up and what others might expect from the line should they buy one. Read more
AT&T: Another Terrible Telephone
Today’s post was originally supposed to be about going to the bank and how multi-billion dollar institutions can’t spare a few thousand bucks to make the customer experience even remotely palatable. However, that post has been, well, postponed. The reason being that an altercation with AT&T, the provider of Web and phone access at my office, has consumed my brain cycles for the day and, if this blog is to double as therapy (without the hourly expense), then this is where I start.
Before BellSouth was purchased by AT&T, they provided a pretty good product. Sure, their prices were higher and their service was slower, but they had a good customer service reputation and this really shined in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when BellSouth connections were online weeks before Cox, the cable company, even got on the ground.
Plenty of people were happy to pay more for BellSouth, simply because they had reliable service and didn’t screw over their customers. However, once the big guys came into town and bought out the company, things changed quickly. AT&T shifted much of the focus to selling bundles and trying to own every aspect of their customer’s digital life. Where BellSouth was a phone and Internet company primarily, AT&T is a phone, Internet, cable, cell phone and wireless company. You get the feeling that they would sell Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Men if they could find a way to bundle it with your phone access.
The problem is that the cable companies tried this and service went downhill (not that it had much lower to go) and the same is happening now to AT&T. But AT&T is spread across more markets and is stretched even thinner than the cable companies. The result: Stories like mine. Read more
Zune Fail? No Surprise.
When I woke up this morning, I was greeted by the news that every single 1st-gen 30gb Zune had completely and utterly frozen up. I personally do not own a Zune (or an iPod for that matter) nor do I know anyone who does (makes me wonder who all of these angry Zune users are) but it definitely seems that the Web is aglow about this.
It’s a case of global schadenfreude, not so much at the Zune users, who have a legitimate reason for being very upset, but at Microsoft. After all, they made the player and it appears that it was a software issue that caused it to fail. Considering all Microsoft does is write software, the fact that they shipped a product with such a lethal bug speaks very lowly to the company.
But what did anyone expect? From day one the Zune was an iPod rip off released by a software company with an inferior record of security and stability than Apple. This is highlighted by the fact that Apple charges 2 times more for their computers than a similar Windows machine, but people are still snatching them up.
One has to wonder what those who bought the Zune were thinking at the time. It’s price and functionality were almost identical to the iPod, the latter being battle-tested and generally well-regarded. There were no new features that really made worth buying, no serious cost cuts and nothing to be gained (unless you got a great deal).
The Zune was, and pretty much still is, an attempt to compete with the iPod without doing anything better than it. The problem is that, when you’re entering a cornered market, it isn’t good enough to be equal to your competitor, you need to be better, faster and cheaper.
Sadly, Microsoft couldn’t do any of those things. In fact, it couldn’t even make the blasted thing work for four years. Read more
5 Ways to Improve Twitter
Twitter (my account) is pretty useful. Though I was skeptical at first, I have to admit that, after having used the service for some time, I see the merit in it. Though you have to be careful to not let Tweeting consume your entire work day (unless you’re on someone else’s dime and never get caught) it can be a great place to ask questions, join conversations, meet new people and generally have a new means of opt-in contact.
But this isn’t to say that Twitter is perfect. Even if we forgive the outages and other technical issues, there are more than a few flaws on this service, issues that sites such as Pownce attempted to exploit, although unsuccessfully.
The truth is that Twitter, by itself, is almost useless. Without the API and applications such as Tweetdeck, I doubt anyone would gain much from it. Even when it is at its best, it is merely an alternative means of socializing and communicating, a steep second place to IM, Email and social networking.
Its advantages are its immediacy and breadth, being something you can use when a blog entry is too slow or an IM too personal. But how can Twitter keep its niche while adding features that its users might actually want. Well, here are my five best suggestions… Read more
Camino Beta 2: First Thoughts
About a year ago, I was prepared to write off Camino. With Firefox updating its interface to make it more Mac-friendly and improving its performance across all OSes every day, I was wondering aloud why there was a market for another Mac Firefox, specifically one without plugins or themes.
Sure, being built on Cocoa gives Camino a natural speed and memory advantage over its brother, but the difference, over all, has been barely noticeable and certainly not enough to propose switching to a browser with fewer features.
Personally, I was thinking that it was time to take the project behind the shed and put it out of its misery. It filled a nice niche when Firefox was being a jerk to Mac users but now that we’ve kissed and made up Camino seemed to be a third wheel in a very sordid love triangle.
So imagine my surprise when I found out not only that Camino had released a new version, but that it was a beta of 2.0. I was skeptical, to put it modestly, but decided to give it a try. I felt that I owed it to the old girl since she had comforted me when Firefox had me wanting to hang myself.
I have to say though that the surprise is indeed a pleasant one and this version of Camino just might become a real challenger for Firefox, at least until Chrome is release for the Mac in a meaningful way. Read more
5 Apps That Need a Mac Port Now
I love my Mac, don’t get me wrong. I gripe about it from time to time, but I gripe about all of the things I love. It’s part of my nature.
That being said, the most frustrating thing about using a Mac is not anything Apple does, but rather, the imaginative ways that developers screw you over. Not only is the library of freeware a lot less robust on Macs, but developers seem to treat their Mac versions like red-headed stepchildren, waiting unbearably long to release their apps on non-Windows platforms.
The problem is that Macs are insanely popular with the risk-taking geeks that like to try out new software, so releasing an app for the Mac is not long longer an option, it’s a requirement. Still, many developers, including some I respect, are dragging their feet in getting their applications into our hands.
So here is my top five list of applications that need a Mac port, but seem to be sitting on it as their Windows counterparts move forward. Read more
Pizza Hut: Coupon Fail
One of these days I’m going to sit down and hammer out all of the reasons that I prefer online ordering of pizza to ordering over the phone. Shockingly enough, it doesn’t come down to laziness (I actually get carryout anyway) but rather order accuracy, speed and paper trail.
That being said, until recently, Dominos is the only pizza place that has had a decent online ordering system. The problem with that being that my local Dominos sucks, being run by the reject cast members of a bad stoner comedy and managed by the evil father from the Twisted Sister music videos (YAY for obscure references), I would almost rather shove pins under my fingernails than set foot inside of there.
When Pizza Hut finally decided to entire the 1990′s and add an online store to their site, I was thrilled. Though my local Pizza Hut is not run much better, at least it gave me a choice and some competition, especially for price.
Though it has been up for a while, I don’t order pizza that often and finally got the chance to give it a try last night. Off the bat, Pizza Hut did everything right. They enticed me with a good deal, lured me to register for the site and even got my information.
The only thing they botched was actually giving me the deal I had clicked on, causing me to leave the site in a huff of anger and a strange hunger for McDonalds.
What happened? Well, let me explain. Read more
