The New Addition To The Digital Family

I've been a tad lax in regular posts over the last couple of weeks, largely because I got distracted. I noticed that a few things were going to fall into place which would let me buy a netbook, which meant I had research to do, and deals to find. Yesterday morning I bought an MSI Wind U100, which has propelled me into the century of the fruit bat (Discworld reference).

I have very little in the way of money to buy new gadgets or PC hardware. My desktop PC is a P4 with 256mb ram, a dead DVDROM, an intermittent fan, and a CDRW which has been on it's last legs for a while now. This has forced my hand in how I look at applications memory use, or being careful how many apps I open at once etc.

As I talked to people who have netbooks, most of them told me that I'd be better buying an entry level laptop, and that netbooks were not all that powerful. I guess it's all what you're used to, and what you expect from it. I also don't want a laptop as my main PC, I prefer a regular desktop form factor. I didn't bother having much more than a curious look before when I knew I couldn't afford to buy anything, but all that changed, and I now have a netbook which is arguably higher spec than my desktop PC. I have no intention of using a netbook as my main PC, I hope to be able to replace my current desktop PC with a new one around the summer of 2010. I was more or less forced onto XFCE, yes I know I could easily use Openbox, Fluxbox etc. I now use XFCE through choice because I love it. I'll be running XFCE on my new desktop PC, regardless of the spec.

I compared a lot of netbooks and laptops, trying to find one between £200 - £250. I didn't want to spend "laptop money", but I was prepared to go up the netbook scale to get the spec I thought I'd need, depending on the deals available at the time. I also tried to buy with Linux pre-installed but that proved fruitless, I bought it with XP which was wiped within half an hour of me handing over the cash for it; I had to walk home, unbox it etc. I also decided to make a stand on the refund of the Windows tax, because when I bought my current (and first) PC, I had no clue about Linux, I was a regular Windows user reliant on getting supposedly "unbiased advice" from salespeople. Since then I've been awakened to FOSS, and have been a full time Linux user and advocate for around 3 years now. That also didn't work out but I don't feel too bad because of the deal I managed to get.

I got my MSI Wind from Argos, for a sale price of £199.99; the original price was £269.99. I know retail prices, sales, special offers etc all fluctuate so often that you can never be sure if it's a genuine good deal or not, or whether it's likely to drop further if you just wait a couple of weeks. I figured that a lot of reviews I saw priced it at around £300 and everywhere but Argos were around the £250 - £280 point, that £200 was a pretty good deal, even if it did come with XP. I also got a £10 Argos voucher as I'd spent more that £100, as well as the free slip case that came with the Wind. The free slip case may be an Argos exclusive, I'm not sure.

After reading a lot of reviews, my choices came down to two, an ASUS 1005HA which has an N280 1.66ghz CPU and a much longer battery time, and the MSI Wind U100. The reasons the ASUS lost out was because as much as the battery length is impressive, I'll hardly ever run it from the battery, and when I do, it won't be on for that long anyway, so a regular battery will do fine. I've seen a lot of people complain about the shiny screen being a fingerprint magnet, I wanted to avoid this in whatever netbook I decided to buy. The cheapest I could get an ASUS 1005HA for was £250, which would mean waiting and trusting the third world postal service we have called the Royal Mail, at the busiest time of the year where they're barely competent when it's quiet. That extra £50 I can put towards the desktop PC instead, it's 25% more than the MSI Wind for not much in the way of gains for my needs. On a full spec desktop or laptop, an extra £50 here and there is not all that noticed, but the lower price you go, it becomes a higher percentage of the price.

I must point out that I've never owned a laptop before, I've only spent one day setting up my niece's laptop a couple of years ago with XP, so my fingers are not used to the trackpad. They are learning, the more I play with it, but it still feels clumsy with random accidental clicks etc. Being a netbook, the keyboard is very different to what I'm used to too. It's 92% size, which is better than I expected to type on, but for space it has no number keypad, which is throwing me off big style when I go to enter numbers. Like anything, it's all what you're used to.

Before I got my netbook, I was pretty confident that I'd try a few distros out, before installing Mint XFCE as my main working distro on it. It was like a rigged race, the winner already chosen and the rest having an unfair impression to make and un uphill battle to make me even consider them. I have since changed my ideas on that, with the 10" screen being a bit of a limiter. While it's perfectly functional, a traditional layout like I always use on my desktop 15" screen isn't all that practical. The distro that made me rethink was UNR Karmic (Ubuntu Netbook Remix). I'd sought out "netbook distros" on YouTube to get an idea of what I was facing, and liked the look of UNR. I just didn't think I'd want to use it because of the unusual UI. I'm always the first to say I'm wrong, and in this case, I was wrong. My MSI Wind now has UNR installed, and I'm very impressed with it.

To be fair, I've only tried Mint XFCE and UNR Karmic on it so far, I guess I'll try more as time goes by. I found the only issue was a known bug, that the built in webcam does not work in Ubuntu Jaunty or Karmic. This is no problem, as the only part of the netbook I doubt I'll ever use is the webcam, so it's no loss for me. I don't know if Bluetooth works as I have nothing to pair it with, as I see no comments on reviews or forums I assume it works fine. I assume wifi works as it detected 4 networks around my house which I never knew existed before. It's amazing what you suddenly see when you have equipment capable of seeing it. I don't have a wifi network so I have no way of checking it. I did try to connect to each network it listed out of curiosity if they'd protected it, and each one asked for a password. I chalked that down to my neighbours being at least tech savvy enough to know how to protect their networks, which is a good thing. I have no intention of trying to crack their networks, it was nothing more than a curiosity.

It's amazing how a mass produced device can become imbued with a personality by it's owner. How many people feel some attachment to "their" iPhone, laptop etc. It becomes much more that just one of 100,000's of identical devices in their hands. They personalise it, they come to rely on it for more and more of their day to day stuff. They'd rather use their own devices at work instead of the ones provided for use at work, as the work devices are just devices, but "their" devices are extensions of themselves. I've found that with my Creative Zen mp3 player, and now with my MSI Wind. It already feels like part of me, despite the fact that I've only had it around 24 hours.

I've seen people on IRC create nicks which are some merging of their regular nick and their portable device, from eee, droid, wind, meso etc. It's a way of letting other chatters see that the person is on a portable, lower powered device, which means possibly at work, or their ability to play videos etc may be limited. It's also an indicator that the person may well be on battery power.

Initially I had no intention of doing this until someone on either IRC or Identi.ca mentioned ThistleWind. I'd never thought of that combo, but it struck me as ideal on two levels so I registered it and have started using in from my MSI Wind. The obvious connection with the netbook is only the first. I am a huge fan of the novel series Discworld by Terry Pratchett, as people who follow me on Identi.ca may have noticed recently. One of the central characters in some of the books is a wizard called Rincewind, who had an accident with a spell book, and a powerful spell has lodged in his head, making him incapable of learning any others. He's also very good at running away. He does not mind being called a racist; 100m, sprint, he's raced them all. I can't remember who suggested it, I think it may have been ClaudioM, but whoever it was, thank you.

For now, I'm still in the new phase, so no doubt I'll try some more stuff on it. I expect my typos will decrease the more I get used to the keyboard too. I know I can get a USB mouse and disable the trackpad but I have no intention of doing that. I believe the best approach is to embrace it for what it is, rather than try to shoehorn it into being something I'm used to. This has already started with UNR, it will continue by me adapting to the trackpad. The device is capable all on it's own. The more you have to start adding peripherals when you take it somewhere, the less portable it becomes.

For those in the UK who fancy a £200 netbook bargain, the spec of the MSI Wind U100 is:

• Intel Atom N270 processor.
• 1.6GHz processor speed.
• 512MB cache.
• 1GB DDR2 RAM.
• 160GB SATA hard drive.
• 10in screen size.
• Resolution 1024 x 600 pixels.
• UMA graphics.
• 1 Ethernet port.
• Wireless/Wi-Fi enabled - b/g.
• 3 x USB ports.
• Media card reader.
• Bluetooth.
• Integrated 1.3MP webcam.
• Windows XP Home operating system installed.
• 3.5 hours battery life.
• Size (H)3, (W)26, (D)18.cm.
• Weight 1.1kg.
• Free slip case.
• £10 Argos gift voucher.

I'll do a separate post about Argos, MSI and Linux friendly companies, as this one is already long enough, and I want to go into a little bit of detail on my experiences.