Netbooks – Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.

an asus 1005ha, also available in pink.

The netbook (my blog) was a hard choice in the end, I wanted a mix of the new and be able to run linux.  The recent 12″ netbooks** suffer from poor wifi (no n only g) and no i don’t want an asus 7 series when one can do better than that – no disrespect the the asus 7 and 9 series is intended but hardware moves on.

My ideal base spec to start with was the asus 1000h which had a decent 10″ screen, n running linux – but the place i was going to buy it from sold out, they did have them with the solid state disks (better performance over a conventional disk). It has a huge battery too running 9 hours (say 6 hours between charge, try getting that on a normal laptop).

There was a lot of difference between it and a dell mini (n and linux) and the asus. Dell lost as it had half the memory, and no bluetooth.   I also have issues with Dell, and didn’t want an Microsoft supplied linux version (see the above link). Netbooks do also vary in price +/- £ 40 (no amazon is not cheap) and since i have to pay the windows microsoft tax even though i won’t use it and its bloody hard to get a linux netbook as is i went to my normal place for hardware.

The next target spec I was aiming for was a asus 1000he after my first target 1000h was not available , but the bad numbering from asus means the 1005ha  is apparently ‘better’ than the 1008 asus netbook model in a number of respects, confused ?

An asus 1005ha was procured which has a 9 hour battery,bluetooth (not on the dell mini with linux) but no solid state disk.

So for £ 300 i have a machine  (i started the exercise at 370+ excluding extra ram) with 2gb ram, and an unwanted copy of windows xp thrown in.

Of note: solid state disks are interesting technology to watch when they do go mainstream and even though pricey at the moment, but i am sure the 160 gb conventional disk won’t be wasted.

In reality the netbook does not disappoint, the keyboard is a little small, but very usable.(lets just say a 7″ keyboard is pushing the envelope, a 10″ keyboard is much much better) but i will nitpick at the mouse button, and the n wifi range is rather limited compared to say a laptop (i experimented with different kernels – some are better than others).  Screen is brilliant and the unit really is compact.

There is little crap associated with the asus, a small (intelligent?) power brick and a power cable, unlike some laptops which can accumulate a ton of related stuff (just in case).

Documentation is sparse and can be discarded.

Windows xp is awful on the unit, I opted for eeeubuntu which is nice except that networking needs some hand holding, the ubuntu netbook remix image i could not get install from a usb drive it had compression errors.

A nit pick with eee ubuntu i had with the camera in the unit does work but is rather hidden in eee-ubuntu.

The amusing thing about the whole microsoft fucking asus (try buying a linux supplied netbook from them now)  debacle is that xp is supplied on a dvd disk since the unit does not have a dvd disk drive (eg its an extra) it just shows the threat is on these class of devices which have scared the shit out of microsoft.

However once you scrape the windows stickers off the unit the unit retains some of its dignity better.

5/5 bananas

Remember just because a pc is sold with a monopoly crap item as well don’t assume that it will be used, and that also means we wont be purchasing microsoft office either.

* not cock size, song from the film resovoir dogs. ** once called a laptop