I have been running Windows 8 on my old netbook (an HP Mini-Note 2133), and for basic web browsing and email, it works quite well. It boots and runs markedly faster than Windows 7, though there has been the odd issue (Camera app crashes before the webcam comes up, etc.). Definitely not a perfect fit, but compelling enough to cause me to load up the consumer preview in a dual-boot configuration and use it almost exclusively for about 3 months now. The new version of Windows is the best yet, in my opinion, and I will be looking forward to adopting the release as soon as it’s available! What is really remarkable though, is how many useful ways I have found to optimize some of the Windows 8 features on the old nbook using my iOS devices…
iPad Posting Test
Finally making it to the 21st century and trying to post up to my blogs directly from iPad. This is a simple test to see if I made it (to the 21st century that is)…
What I like about Windows Starter!
I have been a Windows user for a long time. I have also been a big fan of Linux during that time, particularly Ubuntu. I have the latest version installed on a PC (now only in a virtual box), but the glitches have finally gotten the most of my patience on my netbook (dual-boot with XP)..
I cleaned it completely off the old netbook, as it kept core dumping, and instead decided to try Windows 7 Starter edition. I now wish I had done this at the very start. I could have saved myself a lot of wasted hours troubleshooting Linux kernel updates. Starter just works, and works well. For all my grousing about M$, I must give them credit when it’s due. It solved my Ubuntu woes… I do miss Ubuntu One, but hey there is a Windows client coming soon (hopefully)!
If you have an older Netbook, and aging XP is becoming too bloated and sluggish, an easy shot in the arm is to switch to Starter (if you can get it). If you use your older NB for basic tasks like email, and web, Starter is a good fit. XP (with all the updates and SPs) is becoming ridiculous to maintain, and will eventually EOL anyway. The newer Linux distros may or may not work either. Starter could be the perfect answer. I’m not saying it’s a match made in heaven. You give up some things to run it.
1. Starter will not let you change the desktop background or use Aero features.
2. Starter does not natively support DVD creation and playback.
3. No snipping tool (that hurts a little).
4. 32-bit only.
There are many more features missing, but for the home user, those are some biggies above. Still, if you bought a NB with an OEM option for Starter but was stuck with XP from the vendor, you might want to consider giving Starter a try. One thing about M$, they try to exploit every niche. Starter fits the older or slower netbook market, but at the price of some significant features.
Awesome Video of the Cassini Approach
Hello WordPress Blogging World!
Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!
Okay, I will edit then… and might try this out for awhile. My blogger blog is not getting much attention from me of late (so I imported my junk over here). You can check out my iphonelife.com blog here if you are interested in iPod/iPhone related stuff…
So far, I like the WYSIWYG editor here a lot…
>Test
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>Ubuntu Sound and Power Glitches
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Well, I am always singing praises about Ubuntu Linux, but recently my netbook started glitching on a few things. One I noticed is that the power manager is erroneously shutting down my netbook when I remove the power plug (thinks the battery is critically low, even though it is full). The battery monitor works fine if I start the netbook without external power. I’ve tried tweaking settings using “sudo gconf-editor” (under apps >> gnome-power-manager), but have not been able to stop the issue. The second problem I have found a workaround for so if you notice that your Linux sound stops working, you might try this (there is a good sound t-shooting tutorial here by the way). Use the following commands shown below and your sound should start again (I added them to a simple bash script). That is, if you have the same exact issue with Lynx. The aplay -l output shown above might be a clue. It does not show anything when sound stops working in my case…
#!/bin/bash
killall pulseaudio
sudo alsa force-reload
pulseaudio -D
Add the first line above only if you want to use it in a bash script like I did (save it using gedit with .sh extension, and make executable). Otherwise simply run the commands one at a time in a terminal window. I dug them up on one of the many Ubuntu user forums I had to google through, and give a hearty thanks to whoever posted them up.
Test Only
Disregard…test post only >Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx is…WOW!
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I upgraded my portables this past weekend to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. I have an old HP tc tablet computer, and a newer netbook. Ubuntu just gets better and better. I plugged in my iPod touch, and not only was it recognised and mounted, I could play all my DRM-free tunes through Rythmbox, transfer pix automatically using F-Spot, and browse the iPod’s filesystem. I did this without jailbreaking anything… Seriously, I don’t understand why anyone would not want to grab this easy-to-use and full featured Linux distro! If nothing else, download and try the WUBI install version… It installs inside Windows, just like any application…
>Ubuntu Running on HP TC1100 TABLET
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At CES this year I saw one gadget I really loved and it is not new. In fact it is an old HP tablet model tc1100. Evidently Hal, our editor over at smartphonemag.com got a bunch of these for re-sell, and brought one to the show. They are old tech, and many are not in very good shape, but I have wanted one of these for a long time. Hal and Thaddeus sent me one after the show to play around with. The unit is badly scratched and wouldn’t boot up properly about half the time, and the battery is not holding a charge very well, but hey it still mostly works! I had it connected to the internet in about 5 minutes after it arrived.
The HP tc has a swivel base keyboard, but that doesn’t work at all on this unit. I tried updating and patching the default XP install that came installed, but it started hanging pretty bad after startup, and Windows update was complaining about install failures. It went from slow to snail-speeds. I finally had enough, and decided to slap Ubuntu Linux on it. I also removed the keyboard completely, so now it is not too far removed in capability from a low-res iPad. Though it’s been around the block and back, it’s running Karmic Koala now very nicely, and has stopped having boot issues. Check out some demo vids below…
Playing one of my fav free games–Scorched Earth, runs really pretty well on the tc1100, even with only 512MB of RAM. Scorched was a bear to shutdown though…
A general demo of the main apps that come with Karmic…chat, view pix, videos, handwrite notes and listen to music (that’s the excellent free magnatune service).
The latest Ubuntu full desktop release has some nice graphic enhancements (which don’t work with my netbook because of compatibility problems), but work just fine on the tc. There were mucho tweaks of course (wouldn’t be Linux without that), but this post helped alot. If you have not experienced the magic of the easiest to use (and master) Linux release freely available, then you don’t know what you are missing…Thanks, Hal, Thaddeus and especially Linux. Next on the list is to find a newer battery…
