Today's obligatory EEE post

[dvandom]

I've removed Samba, since there doesn't seem to currently be an update available yet above 3.0.0.24. I can always put it back if I find I need it.

I've found an odd but apparently consistent wireless issue. If I botch the WEP key for a secured system once, then I can't get the right key to work until I restart. It happened at the comic shop, it happened at work today. Rebooting and putting in the correct key got me in right away, but until I rebooted no amount of trying would get past "pending". Probably some process that wasn't killed by merely closing the window.

Coming back from standby doesn't seem to always work right, requiring a soft reboot. Not sure if I'm doing something wrong there, though.

I've largely gotten the hang of the keyboard, although the fact I need to span the entire keyboard to page up or down (Fn is on the left, cursors on the right) is moderately annoying when moving around a PDF or ebook.


If I have more observations tonight, I'll just edit them into this one.

Comments

[sweh.livejournal.com]

Yes, if the wireless device is in pending then it's probably still running dhcpcd (or whatever). Down the interface (from the GUI), kill off rogue processes, then it should work.

Standby resume; wireless can take a while to renegotiate the network connection. That's the only problem I've had.

EEE as an ebook reader; I gave up on that idea because of poor battery life and because it's too big and heavy for long term one-handed use.

[lord-xiphos.livejournal.com]

I've never had much luck with suspend modes in any OS (Windows, Linux, *BSD, Solaris, BeOS to name a few) on any machine. And really, my philosophy is it's probably best to just HALT in any circumstance where you have to turn the unit off anyhow.

You've pretty much sold me on a EEE; it's cheap, powerful enough, small, and would probably look good bound between two wooden planks, covered in decorative leather, with a locking clasp. At $300, I'm willing to case-mod that :)

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

Well, $400 for the one I have. You could get a $300 one but it only has 2G, meaning it can't even have the full suite of pre-installed software (which comes to 2.7G on mine). But if you make the spine from soft leather, it can certainly work. :) Also, the EEE doesn't latch closed, so you wouldn't need to worry about disabling the native latch or having to mess with two latches.

[lord-xiphos.livejournal.com]

I managed to fit a FreeBSD install, complete with X, WindowMaker, Firefox and Thunderbird on a 1GB flash drive.

Of the utilities I'd use, OpenOffice is the only one I see really giving me any kind of trouble.

My only remaining contention is that tiny 7" display.

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

There's supposed to be a 9" display later this year, although I'd be surprised if it's available on the 2G model. More likely it'd go on the $500 8G model, or at best on a $450 4G or something. You can reset the desktop mode to scroll around a more standard size, though, and there's a video out port to connect a real monitor.

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I should add that my vision sucks, even with glasses, and the 7" screen hasn't really bugged me. I do wish I could resize the fonts on the console, but there's other terminal problems I can install later if that really gets to me.