Jack, I’m writing this on my EEE PC 701. I must admit, the Eee PC has sat unused mostly since I purchased a Lenovo S10. Small keyboard, small display, and limited memory. I’ve got mine all beefed up with a 32gb SD card and I’ve got a 32gb thumb-drive I use with it – but it still can’t keep up with the S10.
But this whole “keep it by the coffee table” thing with the iPad got me thinking – wouldn’t the Eee Pc be really good in this capacity? Awhile ago, the Ubuntu 8.x on it stopped working. I changed my WAP to WPA2 from WEP – and we all know that Ubuntu 8.x was sketchy on wireless,the Atheros chipset in particular,to begin with. So I couldn’t get wireless to work, which made it kind of useless as a device. I spent about 10 minutes today messing with it, and decided it wasn’t worth the effort, and rolled the dice and did the 9.04 upgrade – hooked up by ethernet. I figured it would kill the whole, highly customized, 8.10 install – imagine my surprise when all the upgrades downloaded, applied, it rebooted, and it came up working beautifully. Even Compiz and the cube were still working – and better yet, the wireless now works with WPA2. You know how skeptical I am about the quality or fitness of Ubuntu in cases like this. I think this is literally a *first* for me as a Linux experience. Upgrading worked flawlessly, didn’t seem to break anything that will take weeks of searching to resolve, *and* fixed problems. Amazing.
So, my goal, having that part out of the way, was to be able to use the Eee PC in a similar manner to how the iPad is proposed to be used. I actually use my Android in that capacity quite a bit. I’ve got TV guides on it, I’ve got an eBook reader, I can browse sites and follow up on things while I’m watching the tube. (continued)
