bygjohn's blog

Well I'm on my way towards a Microsoft-free life, hopefully, having been a reluctant Windows user from the start. It's OK at work, but at home I was for years a happy Atari user and only bought my first Windows PC in 98 as Apple looked a bit shaky and I didn't want to switch from one dead platform to another. Luckily things have improved lately, partly due to Microsoft's debacle with Vista: who needs an OS that's in the hands of the record and movie companies, which won't run on anything less than a supercomputer, and which breaks most of your existing software and peripherals?

Step one was the purchase of an Asus EeePC, a remarkable little Linux-powered wonder and my portable friend...

Step two has been precipitated by the demise of the optical drive in my XP laptop - I've just bought a lovely new black MacBook and am having lots of fun finding software to replace my Windows stuff, so far nearly all free/open source.

The adjustment to MacOS is proving to be quite easy, though the odd thing has me occasionally flummoxed - Google is my friend at such times! And it's extremely pretty - I can do shallow with the best of them!

I was seriously impressed with the assistant in the Apple store who was more interested in getting me to buy the right Mac rather than the most expensive option, saving me about £500 in the process. Also impressed by their training options, which I'm not currently using, but I reckon £79 for an hour a week for a year of one to one training is pretty good value even if you only use a portion of it.

So far the only peripheral I've tried which hasn't worked is an old scanner which does work on the Eee, but it looks like there is an open source solution to this problem readily available. Meanwhile XP didn't have drivers for it, so it wouldn't have been any more use with Vista.

Anyway, so far so good and I'm seriously chuffed.

Well, after some tribulations with an online retailer who (eventually, after much messing about) couldn't supply one until January, I am now the proud owner of an Asus EeePC. Bought in the end from our local Toys'r'us, of all places! Who seemed to have plenty in stock, for anyone who's looking for one. Needless to say, I'll be cancelling the online order.

The EeePC itself is a thing of beauty: a miniature laptop with a 7" screen, Linux and a whole bunch of installed apps, including Firefox, Thunderbird, Skype, Pidgin (multi-messenger client) and the OpenOffice.org office suite. No Opera, though apparently it's possible to install it if you jump through some hoops. Might be worth Opera making it available via Asus's repository for really easy installation: just a thought.

Browser politics aside, the EeePC is a very neat concept. It's not meant to be all-purpose, it's meant to do most things the average person wants to do with a minimum of fuss and fiddling. So it has a simplified interface/launcher and software to do the commonest jobs: a little browsing, chat and email, some word processing/spreadsheet/presentation work and a few basic games. Plus a media player, photo manager, and basic photo editing software. No hard drive, it's all flash discs/SD memory cards, but it has 3 USB ports so you can plug in any extra storage you might want. Boots up and shuts down in a few seconds, too.

If you're mad enough, you can install WinXP on it, but why would you bother unless you had very specialised needs? It's just plug and play as it stands. You just have to set up your wireless connection and email accounts - not even that if you use web mail. How simple is that?

The real killer is that the thing only costs just over £200, all-in.PC, slip case, mains adaptor. Asus is apparently having problems making them fast enough to meet demand, and is flogging them by the million. Apparently Microsoft is working on trying to supply a cut-down installation of XP for pre-installation - Vista has no chance - because this little beauty is a) not making them a bean and b) going to convince a whole lot more people that Linux is perfectly viable for general use.

Check one out: I think you'll be impressed, even if the only place you can get one in shops is currently Toys'r'us!