Gave in and....

[sxk122]

I've wanted one for 3 years, and I finally indulged myself. Bought an Asus 4g White surf for $90 on Craigslist Thursday. I'm still getting used to the small keyboard, but it is well worth it. My other laptop is a Toshiba Satellite A15-- and whil it works wonderfully still (after6+ years) it is large, heavy, and the screen is nigh impossible to see in any bright conditions. I've been having fun customizing the Linux GUI on the EEE, and I even got some of my work excel spreadsheets transfered on to here and got some work done. Next up is figuring out how to connect to my wireless printer.....

Actual size....lol.


I don't know why these (and the linux os) haven't caught on faster..... why would you og this down with windows????

[sloked up]

thats pretty cool man. i love ASUS. i trust their motherboards bigtime and i have used them in a few of my computers with no problems.

you can give in all you want to ASUS in my opinion lol

[trickyrix]

At first I thought you bought an R2D2...

[goofygrin]

What OS did you put on it? I pulled the 4g that I had in the Evo for logging and am looking to repurpose it.

[brandonmpace]

If you ever need a linux expert, I'm here :)
Glad to hear that you like it! I have an acer netbook that I run Ubuntu netbook remix on.
My other computers usually have at least two different Linux distributions installed.
I'm currently in the process of implementing Edubuntu at a couple daycares. They love that it never goes down and doesn't require maintenance like defragging and virus scans.

[sxk122]

What OS did you put on it? I pulled the 4g that I had in the Evo for logging and am looking to repurpose it.

I'm just using the Xandros that was loaded on it 'stock'. I've been doing some of the tweaks listed on the wiki/ forum at http://wiki.eeeuser.com/

[brandonmpace]

I'm just using the Xandros that was loaded on it 'stock'. I've been doing some of the tweaks listed on the wiki/ forum at http://wiki.eeeuser.com/

I remember Xandros. That's some old software! (and it still boots as fast as when it was first installed )

Dell's been selling computers with Ubuntu since '08 http://www.dell.com/content/topics/s...=19&l=en&s=dhs and they still are, so people are starting to catch on.

[sxk122]

i'm no computer guru, but so far, i seen no downsides of this os a compared to windows for
basic use. in easy mode boot time was less than 15 seconds. I was shocked. In advanced mode, which seems to slow the boot process, I'm up and running in 30 seconds, and on the internet in less than a minute.

You say it is 'old'-- care to quantify? My main laptop runs winxp, and the work computer runs win98.... I don't need latest and greatest, I want stable, relatively fast, cheap, and usable. I had debated buying a new laptop for work a few years ago (right when vista came out) and nixxed the idea because my old winxp laptop worked as well as any of the vista laptops in the $500 price range.

I do need to buy/build a new work computer at some point. The dinosaur I donated to work was built of parts I had liberated from the trash over the years, lol. Most expensive part is my flatscreen monitor that i took in a few weeks ago... the old tube monitor was ove 20 years old....looked a bit dark.

[sxk122]

question for y'all.

i got the printer setup... kinda.

It's an inexpensive lexmark wireless printer, 2400 series. I managed to find a driver package on the Lexmark webite (the open source printer list didn't show one to exist tho?) . Got it unpacked, and manually installed via theprinter setup. And it does print, BUT it is printing fuzzy as can be. I tried changing the print preference, but no change in print quality. Could it be thats why the open source printer list doesn't list this printer?

[sxk122]

and on an unrelated note, is there any way to increase the font size for the drop down menus in open office- calc? I've tried all the options under the display properties> font settings, but they don't seem to apply to the programs......

[brandonmpace]

i'm no computer guru, but so far, i seen no downsides of this os a compared to windows for
basic use. in easy mode boot time was less than 15 seconds. I was shocked. In advanced mode, which seems to slow the boot process, I'm up and running in 30 seconds, and on the internet in less than a minute.

You say it is 'old'-- care to quantify? My main laptop runs winxp, and the work computer runs win98.... I don't need latest and greatest, I want stable, relatively fast, cheap, and usable. I had debated buying a new laptop for work a few years ago (right when vista came out) and nixxed the idea because my old winxp laptop worked as well as any of the vista laptops in the $500 price range.

I do need to buy/build a new work computer at some point. The dinosaur I donated to work was built of parts I had liberated from the trash over the years, lol. Most expensive part is my flatscreen monitor that i took in a few weeks ago... the old tube monitor was ove 20 years old....looked a bit dark.

The hardware is fine, but in the linux world many operating systems have new releases every 6 months, using the newest technology/programming. I remember when Xandros first came out, and it gained some ground, then lost most of it because the people new to linux either changed to something better or went back to windows.
It became dated.

You might wanna change from xp pretty soon if that machine connects to the internet as microsoft is about to discontinue security updates for it fairly soon. Case in point: IE 9 won't work on windows xp and neither will the next 'windows live essentials'.
Those contain patches for holes in the software so anyone using xp on the internet will eventually have a fried windows install regardless of what anti-virus/firewall they are running. I've seen how these botnets of windows machines work and they're about to get a lot bigger.

question for y'all.

i got the printer setup... kinda.

It's an inexpensive lexmark wireless printer, 2400 series. I managed to find a driver package on the Lexmark webite (the open source printer list didn't show one to exist tho?) . Got it unpacked, and manually installed via theprinter setup. And it does print, BUT it is printing fuzzy as can be. I tried changing the print preference, but no change in print quality. Could it be thats why the open source printer list doesn't list this printer?

This is a good reason for switching to a good, full linux distro. (the latest version too)
I personally would not have installed lexmarks driver. If you want we could test printing from my netbook.

also: http://www.openprinting.org/printers in case you haven't stumbled upon it yet.

and on an unrelated note, is there any way to increase the font size for the drop down menus in open office- calc? I've tried all the options under the display properties> font settings, but they don't seem to apply to the programs......

This would be the DPI setting, if you can find it. Not familiar with Xandros.

[sxk122]

but wouldn't the dpi settings adjust everything, not just the menus?

[brandonmpace]

True, you kind of have to play with it to find a happy medium if you want the fonts a bit larger though.