Comments | redwitch_g: Stuff and things

redwitch_g

Stuff and things

Jun 16, 2008 21:41

Haven't seen this sort of thing in a long time, so thought I would gack it from
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shebit June 17 2008, 10:19:43 UTC

What are you getting for the surfing/novelling box? Everyone who meets my new little pc eee falls in love with it, and I'm hoping to have improved my typing speed on it by november so that I can NaNoWriMo wherever I go.

redwitch_g June 17 2008, 15:09:36 UTC

I was thinking probably an ASUS Eee, though I'm more inclined toward an XP one than a Linux one. Which one have you got? Do you carry it around with you and use it random cafes and things? I have images of me sitting in the park while Rosemary goes 'Up the ladder and down the slide' a gazillion times and tapping away. And just being able to get it out easily downstairs to check email/Facebook/blogs/etc. while Rosemary plays, would be great.

Anyway, would be very interested to hear which one you have and how you find it!

shebit June 17 2008, 15:24:17 UTC

Mine's the original 701 with the smaller screen and only 4gb of onboard flash (I liked the cheapness of it). It runs by default on Linux, but it would run XP if I wanted it to. I'm quite happy without Windows at the moment - OpenOffice does everything that Office can do, and I have a Windows emulator (WINE) which can handle .exe programmes when necessary ( ... )

redwitch_g June 17 2008, 15:38:45 UTC

Sounds fantastic. I definitely want one, just need to decide on the XP/Linux issue. The price is certainly tempting and I don't think I'd use it for much other than writing and surfing. I use Firefox as my web browser, anyway, and I wouldn't want to shell out money for Office on a machine like that. Hmm. Think I'll find out a bit more about OpenOffice.

shebit June 17 2008, 15:47:57 UTC

Does the new 900 come with XP pre-installed, then?

I use Firefox as my default on any machine, too.

OpenOffice lets you do .docs, powerpoint presentations, spreadsheets and most other things from Office.

The Linux desktop come with nice little things like direct links to googledocs and wikipedia.

Also, there's a massive online community for the eee, with tips and tutorials on doing everything - it's been a huge help to me.

redwitch_g June 17 2008, 16:01:31 UTC

You can get either, whereas the older smaller ones only come with Linux (it seems). Think that's because XP's so big. The 900 with XP only has 12gb hard drive, while the Linux one has 20gb.

I've been having a quick look at OpenOffice and it looks like it should be fine - what worried me a bit was whether I could easily go between OpenOffice and Office, and it looks like that would be mostly fine,though I don't think I'd be able to work on some of the complexly layed out Word files that we work with. But then I don't want it for work, so that doesn't matter.

I'm very tempted. I wonder if the 900 is necessary, though. Maybe I should just go for the 4gb, or even 2gb one. Will see what Chris thinks.

Thanks for all the info. Will let you know which one I get!

shebit June 17 2008, 16:13:55 UTC

The 900 wasn't quite out yet when I got mine a couple of months ago, and I decided that, for my needs, the 701 was enough - the price difference is fairly hefty, with the 900s going for over £300 - I paid just £187 (inc. p&p) for Borgil on eBay, and that was including an 8gb SD card (which I haven't started using yet, but is there ready for me when I fill the 4gb internal)

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