131–140 of 207 posts
This little Netbook served me well for light work, travelling and light gaming surprisingly.
Never a bad memory of it, and upgrading aspects of it was fun to try and squeeze more out of it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the most accessible small form factor Linux box right now is the Steam Deck. You're paying a bit more for game controller hardware if you just want to use it as a workstation, but it is just Linux under the hood and looks to be a pretty neat cyberdeck-like device.
I recently learned however that the SteamOS desktop is built on a read-only image, with the expectation software will be installed via flatpak. It is apparently possible to turn the read-only protection off to use pacman or your own thing, but anything you do may be wiped out on the next OS update. See: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/671A-4453-E8D2-32... I believe it was mentioned in a previous story that…
Later came the Netbooks. That put portable general purpose computers for the first time into the hands of students who had trouble affording a "real" Laptop. You could immediately see the change in the university library and computer pools.
After my "regular" Laptop broke I was in a bit of bind financially, but was glad to be able to afford a Samsung NC10. And I must say I really liked it. I cold take it everywhere. It was powerful enough for text processing, powerpointing, webbrowsing and older games. Keyboard and screen where ok, but coming from a resolution of 1400x1050 on my old Laptop I especially mised vertical screen real estate.
The Eee PC 701 was amazing. It was really good for students who needed something small and light that they could take to the library, etc. The alternative back then was a heavy power-hungry full-size laptop. This is before all the stuff we take for granted today like tablets, etc. The Dell Inspiron Mini 9 was the next really good netbook. After those, Apple introduced the Macbook Air which came in a 11.6" size. Even…
> I don't think netbooks will be back. When you look at something like the Raspberry Pi 4, it's way more powerful than the old Eee 701 was and the Pi is a very small form factor. If a manufacturer thinks there is a market for it, they could encapsulate something like that in a keyboard and screen and give it Linux as an open OS. So why won't this happen you ask? Roughly speaking, that is exactly how netbooks started…
"This model runs Windows" was a real selling point for many customers. You have to realize that many people just don't give a flying hoot about their computers, they just want something to access a few websites and such, and Windows is what they were familiar with.
We sold a lot more Windows EEE machines than Linux ones, in spite of being quite a bit more expensive.
Was there also pressure from Microsoft? I don't know; I wouldn't be surprised. But there certainly was a real consumer demand as well.
I still have my EEE Pc 701 from 2007. Still works well with 2GB of RAM, Void Linux+DWM and an extended filesystem in the SD Card. Good for experimenting and for note taking with Emacs+org roam or Zim. Still good for reading wikipedia or stack overflow articles with netsurf or seamonkey(sites with JavaScript). Remember searching open or crackable wifi networks with the little fellow in the palm of my hand. I have anot…
In some ways that era of netbooks felt like the glory days of creative computing devices and OSes. Intel created this really lovely UI on top of Linux called Moblin. My mom ran Jolicloud, which was built around webapps. A bunch of netbooks were coming out with their own Linux flavors to the mass market and webOS was right around the corner. I'm going to say this with a straight face: if only more people would have ha…
They seem to be nailing it for now. Could see them experimenting with other form factors.
Also if they succeed other people will try to copy them.
I still have an Acer Aspire One (522) that I use for VAG diagnostics, as a laptop is too cumbersome to have inside a car whilst plugged in. This little Netbook served me well for light work, travelling and light gaming surprisingly. Never a bad memory of it, and upgrading aspects of it was fun to try and squeeze more out of it. https://tomaytotomato.com/acer-aspire-one-upgrade-2014-2/
It'll be a sad day when it breaks.
Alas, the battery died some years ago and lately it will not even power on when plugged in. The blue lights and the red one come on when I press the power button but only briefly then turn off. The red link will blink while plugged in. I would like to salvage the HDD. What are the chances I can remove the HDD and retrieve the data. It is not a 701 but a later model 1015px from circa 2012. The keyboard is in mint condition as I never used it. I only used a USB keyboard.
IMHO, today's Chromebooks pale in comparison. Fewer USB ports and no Ethernet.
The best thing I ever saw for the EEE PC was this glorious hack https://beta.ivc.no/wiki/index.php/Eee_PC_Internal_Upgrades
It was rugged, too! Carried it around with myself everywhere. At one point I dropped it from ~1 metre (my backpack slid off the arm), and some plastic was chipped off the case with the hit, but the little thingy continued to work. It eventually developed a line of green-dead pixels on the screens, but was still usable.
In 2019, I wasn’t using it anymore, so I gave it away to someone who needed to complete their M.A. thesis while travelling on a budget. I loved that ten years in, the little thingy was still useful.
Looks like I have a separate heart for tiny computers. Now I have a GPD Micro PC, which reminds me of the 1000HE in many ways.