I'm planning to buy a netbook sometime in the next few weeks. The most likely choice is an Asus 1005HA :
http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=025389&cid=NBK.862.656 It has a 1600 MHz processor, 1 GB memory & a 160 GB hard drive. Asus is a very reliable manufacturer in my experience & this version is the cheapest & looks as if it would meet my needs. Hopefully, the price will drop a bit more in the near future. My intended use is simply to be able to read, edit & make notes on texts, esp books I have downloaded (eg Jane Austen, Gibbon), while lying back in my chair or on my bed, not sitting up at my desk; It may also be useful to take to my office at the UoT to work on my transit archives there occasionally & might help at public meetings, making notes or checking documents. My desktop manager wb Fluxbox, my typical app Gvim, other regulars Terminal (Xfce), Xpdf, Feh: no KDE or Gnome; I might install the binary OO for a spreadsheet; I don't see myself using it for wireless Internet, video or sound. Most of the time, I sb able to run it plugged in, not from the battery. It comes with M$ XP installed in the factory (with Firefox), which I may keep in case there's a hardware failure under warranty (I can demonstrate it's not Linux which is causing the problem), but of course I shall use Linux for all my activities above. I thought re other distros to avoid a lot of slow compiling, but the advantage is a mirage: Slackware & Arch users have to compile kernels & I would have to learn how to do things their way to get anywhere; Mandriva has a version for EEE, but it's likely to default to KDE 4 (ugh!). I see myself using System Rescue to get started, reducing the XP partition, installing the Gentoo system + Kernel 2.6.31 + X , then a sparse set of apps; I might try compiling on my desktop machine, then copying the binary across. There are howto's on the Gentoo Wiki & elsewhere, eg http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:installgentoo http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Asus_Eee_PC_901 http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Asus_Eee_PC_1000HA Does anyone have warnings, suggestions or advice ? -- ========================,,============================================ SUPPORT ___________//___, Philip Webb ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Cities Centre, University of Toronto TRANSIT `-O----------O---' purslowatchassdotutorontodotca
