Archive for the ‘Netbooks’ Category

Update On My Intel SSD

November 12th, 2009
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After using the SSD in my netbook for a couple of weeks now, I have to say that I really love having it in there. It hasn’t turned my netbook into a high-performance workstation, but it has definitely made the system more responsive, increased the battery life, and given me the peace of mind that it’s more durable.

To the last point, I take better-than-average care of my gadgets, but now I find myself being a bit less careful with my netbook. Since the upgrade, it hasn’t been uncommon to see me toss my Aspire One onto the couch, walk around the house with it running, or let my kids take it wherever they want to use it. Knowing that I don’t have to worry about the hard drive crashing in the device is very comforting indeed. Now, if I can just keep from dropping it off the roof while I’m hanging this year’s Christmas lights it will all be good (I might need to reference something on the web while I’m up there)! :^)

Aspire One, Netbooks, Posts | Posted by Brian

Intel Solid State Drive In My Netbook

October 22nd, 2009
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A few months ago, IT at work upgraded the hard drive in my Lenovo T61 to an Intel solid state drive (SSD).  The difference in performance was amazing – it was the largest performance difference I have ever seen in a single upgrade.  From boot times to sorting email in Outlook, everything was suddenly faster.  The speed at which my laptop responds makes the computer a joy to use.  Ever since the upgrade, I have wondered what difference an SSD would make in my netbook.

I may be crazy for wanting to put an SSD that cost as much as the computer into my netbook, but I have always wondered if the upgrade experience on my T61 could be replicated.  Would the lightweight processor in the netbook cancel any benefit from the faster I/O?  Could a person justify spending that much on an upgrade for their netbook?  Well, yesterday I got to find out when  I got my hands on an Intel X25-M 160GB SSD to play with.

It almost killed me to not rip my netbook open to install it, but I had to practice some patience in order to get some baseline performance info for my system with the native 120GB hard drive.  To get some subjective data, I timed how long it took for the system to boot from a powered off state and open a text file I had placed in the startup folder.  I then placed shortcuts for a word document, an Excel spreadsheet, and Visual Studio 2008 in the startup folder, logged off, and then back on.  The first test took 54 seconds and the second test took 31 seconds with the hard drive.

In our lab at work, we have a hard drive duplicating device that does a bit-by-bit copy of hard drives.  I slaved in the SSD and made an exact copy of my hard drive (dual boot operating systems, temp files, data, and all).  I then installed the SSD into my Aspire One and reran the tests.  This time the boot took 47 seconds and the application launch took 24 seconds.  The improvement was 13% and 22% respectively. 

The netbook goes to sleep from Windows 7 faster than a worn out gamer after a two day LAN party.  It’s tough to get a good time, but it seems to sleep in just about three seconds and resumes in just more than four.  It seems so much faster than the hard drive based system that it feels like instant-on!

Anecdotally, the system feels quite a bit faster.  It takes about 10 seconds to launch iTunes and parse my larger than average library, only about 3 seconds to open a two page document in Word, and some very small fraction of a second to open “My Documents.”  I don’t have anything empirical to compare it against, but it feels significantly faster than before. 

Now, to get to the question of whether or not I think the upgrade is worth it.  Honestly, probably not in a netbook (although certainly worth it in a full laptop) but I want to spend a couple of days forming a full opinion.  I can say for sure that I didn’t see the huge leap forward in performance that I noticed on the T61, so the processor is definitely a big part of the equation.   There are benefits to consider beyond raw performance such as battery life and durability that will certainly need to be considered though.  For a device that was designed to be small enough to take everywhere with you, these could be important factors.  I’ll try to weigh in after a few days to tell you what I think.

Aspire One, Netbooks, Reviews | Posted by Brian

A Bit of a Teaser

January 8th, 2009
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At work, one of the mobile product managers has had an unopened MSI Wind in his cubicle for about a week now. Today I shamelessly asked if I could steal it for a while since it was obvious he was in no hurry to evaluate it. Now I have something new to play around with for a few days. I’ll do some side-by-side comparisons of the Aspire One and the Wind. If there is anything that you would like to see, let me know.

Netbooks | Posted by Brian

Want To Purchase An Aspire One?

December 29th, 2008
2 Comments »

Over the holiday, I came across this amazing deal from the Home Shopping Network:

It’s hard to notice much besides the woman who looks like she’s looking forward to taking a bite of her tasty Aspire One, but try to look at the “Retail Value” of the netbook:  $847.60 – ON WHAT PLANET???

Good thing they’re offering it for the amazing value of just $499.90 (plus $27.95 for shipping and handling).  What they’re really doing is preying on the uniformed because the almost 50% markup they are charging is ridiculous.  For people who want one that bad, I’d be willing to part with mine for a mere $475 (with free shipping)!  :)

Aspire One, Netbooks | Posted by Brian

Returned the Classmate PC

October 7th, 2008
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I had previously posted about a Classmate PC that I was borrowing from work for a short time.  I returned it yesterday after having gone a couple of weeks without touching it.  Before checking it back in, I powered it back up to make sure that I wasn’t leaving any personal data on it and the experience just reaffirmed my impressions of the Acer Aspire One being a far superior platform.  The keyboard on the Classmate is just not large enough for adult hands, the non-standard key placement just drove me crazy, and I like the widescreen format of the Aspire One.

The fact that I could barely pry the Classmate out of the hands of my kids is a testament to the fact that it is great device for its intended audience.  For non-touch typists with small hands, it’s a great device for authoring brief documents and doing some simple web research.  In all, I think it’s a great little computer, just not for me.

Aspire One, Netbooks | Posted by Brian

OS Choices For Your Netbook

October 1st, 2008
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When it comes to netbooks, there is no shortage of options to choose from. Most of those choices are centered around what hardware to choose, but there is also a choice to be made regarding which operating system will run on the device. Even after the purchase, there are a variety of aftermarket options that people use. I have been playing with some of these options and decided to write up my experience here.

Ubuntu
I was a Linux admin for about two years at Intel and can honestly say that I love Linux. That doesn’t mean that I use it every day though – mostly because the OS lacks the polish of most modern operating systems. It is very capable, more secure than anything else, and way more adaptable – I just don’t think it is ready for the masses. How much would Apple mock Microsoft if the directions to enable the wireless on your system was open a command window and type the following:

mkdir source
cd source
wget http://snapshots.madwifi.org/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r3835-20080801.tar.gz
tar -xzvf madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r3835-20080801.tar.gz
cd madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r3835-20080801
sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r)
make
sudo make install
sudo modprobe ath_pci

There would be commercials poking at that for years, nonetheless, these are the directions for getting the wireless card to work in Ubuntu on the Aspire One. It works, but it sure isn’t pretty!

All criticism aside, Ubuntu is my favorite Linux distribution by far. It is the easiest to install, has an amazing community, and takes less configuration than many other distros. I have very high hopes for it in the future, but just don’t think that it’s ready for prime time. It makes me wonder if a Linpus experience would have been better, but I have used it in the past and was not very impressed. I just don’t see any Linux distribution being used by non-techies any time in the near future.

OS X
I installed a Hacintosh version of OS X on my Aspire One just to play with it some. My limited experience with OS X has been on huge cinema displays at one of the Universities I attended and I wanted to see what it would be like on a small screen. It turns out the small screen experience is not the best.

When UMPC’s first came out, Windows didn’t know how to handle the lower resolution screens and OS X is struggling with the same problem today. There were a number of the configuration windows and a few applications that were too tall for the Aspire One’s 600 pixel high display. It was frustrating to not be able to click a critical button or read what was somewhere below the bottom bezel of my netbook.

Click on the image for full resolutoin

Click on image for full resolutoin

It is too bad that it didn’t work though, because the operating system had promise otherwise. The system was quite snappy at its command and things worked quite well aside from a problem with my audio (that I didn’t take the time and energy to resolve). I really enjoy using Leopard with all of its eye candy like window animations and animated progress bars.

I realize that due to Apple’s screwed up EULA, it isn’t legally an option as an operating system on an Acer system. I’m sorry Apple (or any other ISV), if I legally purchase your software, I’m going to install it where I want. That is a whole different animal though and I will debate the merits and future of digital rights another day.   :^)

Windows XP
Next up is the operating system that came installed on my Aspire One – Windows XP Home Edition. I have to say that this OS seems to be best suited for the capability of the system and provides the best user experience out of the box. Sorry Apple fan boys, but it “just worked.” It seems to walk the line between performance and features better than the other options and is an excellent choice by the people at Acer. Since it’s not my winning vote though, that’s all I’m going to write about Windows XP on the Aspire One at this time.

Windows Vista
That leaves one mainstream OS that I haven’t already covered – Windows Vista. I have to remind everyone that I have upgraded the RAM on my netbook to 1.5GB, so I cannot speak to the experience with less RAM than that. I am quite pleased with how well it works though. I love the added features of Vista like folders giving you a preview of the contents, the animation of the windows, the built-in searching functionality, automatic file backups, and all of the interface touches like Aero (which runs very nicely on the Aspire One). I have been using Vista since its release and never had any compatibility issues, stability issues, or security concerns. I don’t mean to turn this into a post about Vista, so I will leave this issue by saying that I have never understood all of the bad press that Vista receives.

Click on image for full resolution

Click on image for full resolution

The performance on Vista very comparable to XP, but there is one area where it performs much better. I have been amazed that the time to standby is only about 3 seconds and resuming is the same (one caveat on all operating systems is that the more you have running, the longer standby/sleep/whatever takes). This nearly instant-on access is a dream come true for a device that gets carried around as much as a netbook does.

Conclusion
The geek in me has had an absolute blast playing with these different operating systems. The reality is that there is a professional in me that pays the bills though, and it’s time to stop playing with the Aspire One and start working with it. I bought the unit so that I could make better use of my mobile computing time and for that reason, I’m sticking with Windows Vista for now.

I enjoy using Windows Vista and am comfortable with it. If I switched to something dramatically different, I would have to spend time and money finding replacement applications for things I already do in Windows (yeah, good luck getting Visual Studio to run under WINE in Linux). The reality is that I’m not going to be doing that at this time. Vista runs great, works great, and helps me get everything done that I need to do. So for now, that’s what stays on the Aspire One. Who knows, maybe next week I’ll change my mind.    :^)

Aspire One, Gadgets, Netbooks, Reviews | Posted by Brian

Intel Atom – Amazing

September 26th, 2008
1 Comment »

If it’s not clear from my posts lately, I absolutely love my new netbook.  I have owned it two weeks now and am pleasently surprised with the capability of the Atom processor and everything it enables me to do.  Today at work, I came across this amazing photo of an Atom processor (that hasn’t been packaged out of course) next to a grain of rice.  It just blew me away that so much capability is enabled by such a tiny processor.

Photo used with permission from Walden Kirsch

Photo used with permission from Walden Kirsch

Blog, Gadgets, Netbooks | Posted by Brian

Getting Ready For Some Fun

September 23rd, 2008
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Yesterday, I made a Ghost image of my Aspire One hard drive and today I did a little surgery on the device.  Following one of the several guides on how to upgrade the RAM in the netbook, I took it apart and not only added more RAM, but also installed an OS X-friendly wireless card. Now it’s time to play.

I am installing Vista on one partition right now and will be installing OS X on another at a later date.  I really want to see what the platform is capable of.  My long term plan is to run Vista and Ubuntu with a third partition in the middle with my personal data on it.  I’ll post updates here.

Aspire One, Netbooks | Posted by Brian

Aspire One First Impressions Are Favorable

September 14th, 2008
8 Comments »

As I was “moving in” to the Aspire One, I was quite impressed with the capability of the system.  One of the first applications I installed was Daemon Tools so that I could mount ISO images of DVD’s and install applications directly from backup images of my software media.  This worked like an absolute dream and I found that I could install things in the background as I copied large data files and made some notes in OpenOffice Writer all at the same time.  The system maintained performance as I multitasked pretty hard.

I really like the keyboard a lot.  There is very little that I need to adjust in my typing habits to be very effective.  I can type full speed and find that I make very few errors due to all of the keys being in the proper locations (something that drove me crazy on the Classmate and would on any unit that moved the keys).  The key travel on the keyboard is just right for the size.  I would guess it is a little less than my Lenovo keyboard, but not by very much.

The screen is very bright.  I can use it at far less than full brightness and even outside it was very readable.  I have heard people complain about the glossy screens in the sunlight, but this worked very well.  Sure, if I tried, I could focus my eyes differently and see myself in the reflection, but it was not a distraction to me at all and I found that the screen was not washed out like I thought it would be.  I am surprised that there is no onscreen display that shows the brightness level when I adjust it.

The battery life is not outstanding, but I am very pleased to see that the power brick has an output of 19 volts.  That means that I can use my batterygeek battery with it.  This may save me from purchasing the 6 cell battery I was planning on, but I won’t know that for sure for a few days.  I will run a few tests to see how long the battery will last for me.  While I’m working it pretty including downloading applications via wireless, Windows thinks that the battery will last right around 2 hours on a full charge.

The only other issue for me is that the fan noise on the device is noticable.  It is a bit louder than my T61, but significantly quieter than my desktop system.  I have downloaded a small utility called AA1FanControl that completely shuts off the fan when the system is below a specifiied temperature.  I will write a bit more about this application at a later date if I decide to keep it.

In all, I am very pleased with this purchase.  The netbook is a very capable platform and I have already been using it more than I thought I might.  I will post more at a later date about some of the specifics of the Aspire One – if there is something you’d like to know, shoot me an email or leave a comment.

Aspire One, Netbooks | Posted by Brian

Acer Aspire One Unboxing Video

September 13th, 2008
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I have never done an unboxing video.  Mostly that’s because I am too impatient when I get a new device, but this time I exercised some discipline and shot the following video after my Acer Aspire One showed up on Friday.

Aspire One, Netbooks, Reviews | Posted by Brian