For the most part, everything worked great. There were even a few things that wouldn’t work that did in Fedora. For example, I have a 3G card (bought it cheap for GPS) which there were no 64-bit Windows 7 drivers for, making it useless. I also have a Creative Extigy sound card. I wanted to be able to hook up my PS3 and laptop simultaneously to my Logitech Z5300e 5.1 speakers (without always having the laptop on, the main draw of the standalone Extigy). Unfortunately, again, there were no Windows 7 64-bit drivers for it. Because of this, I had HDMI running to my monitor, then analog audio from my monitor to the line in of the Extigy. It was a hack, but it worked. Both devices were detected and working immediately in Fedora.

There were, however, a few snags that made it rough to stomach the transition.

No Sleep Mode

The first thing I noticed, was that I couldn’t put my laptop to sleep. If I did, when it resumed, I got a dead screen. I couldn’t even switch to a terminal, I had to force it to power off. There are tons of reports of this phenomenon on various laptop models all over the web. Finally, I found a bug in RedHat’s Bugzilla which mentioned adding “pci=nocrs” ”hpet=disable” to the kernel command line. Worked like a charm. To add this, you can run:

vim /etc/default/grub

Add the options “pci=nocrs” ”hpet=disable” to the end of the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX entry, so your file looks like this:

GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="Fedora"
GRUB_DEFAULT=saved
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rd.md=0 rd.lvm=0 rd.dm=0  KEYTABLE=us quiet SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 rhgb rd.luks=0 LANG=en_US.UTF-8 hpet=disable

Reboot, and you’re good to go.

Horrible Battery Life

The next big issue was the battery life. I was accustomed to anywhere between 4 and 4 1/2 hours under Windows; Fedora gave me 2 to 2 1/2 out of the box. This was unacceptable. After digging, I found that it all boiled down to the video drivers. The open source ATI drivers work flawlessly for what they’re intended, displaying video. However, their power management abilities are sub-par to say the least. Getting the ATI proprietary drivers installed wasn’t exactly a walk in the park though. First, you’ll have to make sure the RPMFusion repository is configured (I won’t repeat their directions, check it our Here).

Next, you’ll need to run:

yum install akmod-catalyst-11.11 xorg-x11-drv-catalyst-libs xorg-x11-drv-catalyst-11.11-2

You’ll need to add a few kernel options as well to make things work:

vim /etc/default/grub

Add the options “pci=nomsi” and “nomodeset” to the end of the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX entry, so your file looks like this:

GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="Fedora"
GRUB_DEFAULT=saved
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rd.md=0 rd.lvm=0 rd.dm=0  KEYTABLE=us quiet SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 rhgb rd.luks=0 LANG=en_US.UTF-8 hpet=disable nomodeset

Now we’re almost done. The last tidbit is to allow a few options through SELinux. Without this, GDM will simply crash before giving a login prompt. I’m not a huge fan of playing with SELinux stuff, so I just set it to permissive mode:

vim /etc/selinux/config

And change the option for SELINUX to permissive, your file should look like this:

# This file controls the state of SELinux on the system.
# SELINUX= can take one of these three values:
#     enforcing - SELinux security policy is enforced.
#     permissive - SELinux prints warnings instead of enforcing.
#     disabled - No SELinux policy is loaded.
SELINUX=permissive
# SELINUXTYPE= can take one of these two values:
#     targeted - Targeted processes are protected,
#     mls - Multi Level Security protection.
SELINUXTYPE=targeted

Now reboot and you’re all set. You will see a little slowness and artifacts in the new Gnome 3 Shell, and it may crash every few hours (takes less than 2 seconds to reinitialize, and no other applications are affected), but I think it’s a fair tradeoff for an extra 2 hours of battery life. If anyone is interested in setting the SELinux permission appropriately, please let me know and I’ll update the post. If I get bored one night, I may figure it out myself and re-post

A Note on Edits: The pci=nomsi isn’t required after setting SELinux to permissive. The pci=nocrs does not work with the proprietary ATI drivers. I guess I posted too soon before full testing :/

It was ugly, a mess, and impossible to work with. I was constantly unplugging one to plug in another. Today this device needed to be charged, that device was needed for a project or another just for fun. Finally, I decided to do something about it. I got the clever idea to use an old (but only lightly used) ATX power supply. This had a high chance of success, since almost every device had either a 5v or 12v adapter. It didn’t take long either, and it accomplished a few goals:

1. Cleaner; no more cabling jungle…
   Every device which was using a wall wart is now run from the power supply.
2. More efficient…
1. No more vampire-draw (switching power supplies only draw [slightly more than] what is necessary).
2. More efficient (cheap small switching power supplies typically have lower efficiencies than ATX PSUs).
3. Expandable (even with all devices running under full load, the ATX PSU has plenty of breathing room for more devices).

This is a grand total of 68.5w:

• 12v 3.0a Max (PSU can push 9a)
• 5v 6.5a Max (PSU can push 20a)

Here’s the PlayStation 3. From left-to-right, the power, optical audio, ethernet and HDMI cables fit perfectly into a 3/8″ tube.

My “Modified MyBook”… a 1/4″ split loom tube worked great for the power and USB cables.

This was the biggest improvement. The blue and black loose cables are the ethernet and HDMI from the PS3 (going to the monitor and router). The “conduit” (as I like to call them) on the bottom holds the wires for the center, left and right speakers, as well as the control pod; all routed down to the amp on sub (Logitech Z-5300e 5.1 THX). The “conduit” on the top has the power and DVI cables from the monitor, and USB cables from the remote transceiver and webcam. Altogether, 8 cables combined into 2 (going to 2 locations)… MUCH cleaner than before!

Not pictured, are the one which has the line and power cables to my phone, as well as the one which has USB and power to my scanner.

The velcro cable ties were used to hold the tubing along the rails of the desk. I’m very happy with the way this all turned out

Being the tech geek I am, nothing less than having it on launch day would do. Less than a day in I can already tell I made the right choice.

I read a lot of complaints that the phone is too big, but I have to disagree. The big screen makes reading a breeze.It may be bigger than most phones, but I don’t find it awkward at all.

Being my first android phone I don’t have a point of reference from previous versions, but 2.1 is an awesome experience.”Experience” really is the only way to describe it. Easy to use and navigate, well integrated and snappy, it makes my previous phone seem like a dinosaur.

The camera works well, and the on phone editing works great, but out of all of the effects and features, I was a little disappointed to see the red eye reduction wasn’t in the arsenal. This is especially disappointing considering the flash has a serious red eye issue.

My favorite piece by far though had to be the inclusion of swype. I got pretty good  over the years with multi touch keyboards, but after a few hours of swyping, I dont think I could ever go back. As proof, I’m writing this article exclusively with swype. I almost feel like its faster than traditional typing on a full size keyboard, which is a complement from someone who pounds out 65 WPM.

I’ll surely spend a lot of time on this little bad boy over the next few days, I’ll post another update once I’ve fully settled in.

Codecs don’t come pre-installed, but are readily available for every major format in the base packages; including the official Adobe Flash player, and Sun Java plugin. Silverlight/Moonlight is nowhere to be found using the Ubuntu Software Center, but a quick browse to the Moonlight project page will give you a quick 1-click install for FireFox.

Although not, it should have been overly-obvious to me that the “Mouse” control allows you to enable touchpad scrolling (including two-finger scrolling).

Integration of  Empathy and Evolution into the navigation bar at the top along-side the other nice icons (wireless signal, battery life, clock) give it a smartphone meets full size computing feel. It puts you right into a usability comfort zone for mobile computing.

The installer works great, and the automatic resizing of the Windows partition and Grub dual-boot configuration was a breath of fresh air from installers of Linux past.

Despite what other may say, OpenOffice is a great [freee] alternative to Microsoft Office, and it has more than enough features for mobile users.

Finally, like most Linux distributions, although it may seem bloated by the dependency hell you suffer whenever you install the smallest utility, the base install, everything I’ve mentioned, as well as the development set I have installed (NetBeans, MonoDevelop, Eagle and a full LAMP stack) still weigh in at a miniscule 3.8GB.

I’m running all of this on the stock hardware (Atom N270 & 1GB of RAM)… so don’t think you have to drop a stack of cash upgrading your netbook to make it a usable system (unless you’re afraid of trying Linux because you realize you may actually like it, and limit yourself to Windows).

Personally, I knew what I was getting in to. I had seen them in the stores, people using them, I knew how small they are. You can’t truly appreciate their compact size though until you use one. I like the ultra-portable form factor; in it’s sleeve, it is smaller than a high-school text book. Many people though will find the screen and keyboard much too small for comfort (check eBay, that’s one of the largest reasons for individual sellers parting with them [that I've seen]).

Weight-wise, it’s nice not carrying around the lead brick that is my laptop. One gotcha however, is that the NetBook isn’t overly stable. I set it down on my recliner (which is only on a few degree incline), and it flipped over almost immediately. This isn’t a major issue, just make sure you don’t sneeze too hard in its direction, it may end up on the floor.

As for some 1000HEB specifics; The battery life is great. Although it would have been nice to get the 1000HE with 50% more life, I’ve found I get nearly the rated life out of the battery just doing general web surfing (which is what it’s designed to do). I must point out though, that I’ve gotten much better life under Ubuntu than Windows. In Windows, I wasn’t able to squeeze more than 5 hours, Ubuntu on the other hand, gave me a solid 6 with the screen at almost half-brightness and the wireless turned on.

The LCD backlit display is superb, colors are vivid and blacks are deep. I definitely couldn’t bring myself to buy another CCFL backlit display again. I like the matte finish on the 1000HEB. My gateway tablet has the gloss finish, and it’s nice to not have that incredible glare.

Input devices. SO much to say about input devices. Anyone accustomed to a full sized keyboard will no-doubtedly agree with me that getting ussed to a reduced-size keyboard is a little harsh. That being said, the 92% sized keyboard on the EEE is very useable with some practice, I couldn’t imagine one of the NetBooks sporting only 85%; it would be well outside of my comfort zone.

The chiclet keys are nice, I think they’re much better than the standard beveled style, especially for this form factor. The right-shift, however, is too small, and I find myself occassionally arrowing-up instead. Speaking of arrows, the arrow keys are the smallest on the keyboard, and difficult to get used to. So far, they’re probably my biggest complaint about this little guy.

My last hardware note is the touchpad. The pad itself has a good feel, and supports multi-touch. The buttons however, are very stiff, and a little difficult to work with. I like feedback for buttons, but these are a bit much.

Overall, the biggest thing to consider will ultimately be the software. I initially booted to the fresh image of Windows XP SP 3. XP has been a little outdated for my tastes for a while, and the fact that it still had Internet Explorer 6 out of the box, made it feel a  little antiquated. 52 updates later, and I had IE 8 and an up-to-date 8.5 year old OS. All of that aside, it felt a little sluggish. Screen re-draws weren’t exactly fluid, and there was a bit more stuttering than I could handle. I know  the Atom is a  low-power CPU, but the performance in the first hour on Windows just wasn’t to my liking.

I decided to give Ubuntu NetBook Remix a try. I’m no stranger to Linux, I have an OpenSUSE desktop, CentOS firewall, and use SLES and RHEL daily at work. Despite that, I don’t think anyone should hesitate to try this spin. Even though I’m more of a command-line kinda guy, I like the interface. It’s very user-friendly, responsive, and the package selection is well chosen. Clearly, this was designed for NetBook use.

All  of my hardware was recognized immediately (Wireless card, webcam, audio). I especially like the always-maximized environment. Although 1024×600 is a great resolution for such a small screen, it is still a small screen, and working with windows in such an environment is cumbersome, and difficult to read.

UNR also has an option to install all of the little goodies necessary for a true web experience without hassle. Within 15 minutes I had the Adobe Flash player (you can choose open-source alternatives), as well as the Sun Java Runtime Environment and all of the popular CODECs (MP3, WMA/V, etc.) installed with point-and-click ease. It also comes with FireFox 3.5; a browser not only released this year, but in this decade.

Despite less than 10 hours of use, I could write a novella about my experience so far. I think I’ve given enough information though that anyone out there could make an edicated decision about whether or not a NetBook is right for them, and which OS to choose.

ASUS EEE 1000HEB Pros:

• Lightweight
• Good Battery Life
• Good keyboarding experience
• Excellent display
• Stays cool (you won’t be sterilized having this on your lap)

ASUS EEE 1000HEB Cons:

• Ships with Window XP & Internet Explorer 6
• No BlueTooth
• Switching OS isn’t straightforward (must disable boot booster in BIOS)
• Touchpad buttons are VERY stiff, takes getting used to

Ubuntu NetBook Remix Pros:

• Great hardware support
• Well laid-out User Interface
• Great package selection out of the box and for add-ons
• Better power management than Windows XP
• Responsive
• And so on…

Ubuntu NetBook Remix Cons:

• None yet (considering how critical I can be, that’s high praise)