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My EEExperience Part IIThey've arrived! After using about a month on the trip to Norway, the PCs arrived Friday 1.st of August.Do I need to say that this article is written on my EEE? This is part two of the story, part one can be found here I put mine on the charger as soon as I got it and promised myself that I would not turn it on before it had been charged for four hours. The kids were at their mum, so they wouldn't get their PCs till the next morning. Eventually I charged them to - over night. My own experience. Three and a half hours later, I couldn't wait anymore and started my EEE with the power cable still attached. It gave me some intro-questions. I opted for logging in manually, since I feel that some security is required. I don't like that «Log me in automatically». At first glimpse I was impressed over the screen. It's not too small in any way and it presents a crisp, clear image. The keyboard was and is still a bit small, but it's getting bigger as I use it (or at least it feels that way). I needed «kate», a KDE text editor I am used to and like to use when I was programming. After looking around a bit, I found the terminal in the file manager under «tools». An sudo apt-get install kate gave me that, but I didn't get any icon for it anyplace. I didn't find a way to add one either. The solution was to invoke «advanced mode» on the EEE according to what I found on the web.Now it looked like that should be fairly easy. But it wasn't. The configuring og advanced mode required an install of «ksmserver» and «kicker» by using apt-get install.... However, none of those were in the repository for the EEE 900. I was determined to change mode, so I looked around on Asus' ftp-server, and found the applications in the 701's pool. I downloaded them an installed them with dpkg -i .....That worked. The interface now looks like an ordinary KDE-session. Now I could get my icon for «kate» and configure a few other things I like to get it personalized to myself. I started Synaptic package manager and asked it to mark all updates. There were two. The problem was, however that the updates were for the English version and my PC came with Norwegian OS. Bummer! Other than that, I feel that the selection of application leaves something to be desired. But that is because I am used to Ubuntu's thousends of packages. I think I will change to Ubuntu Eee, but I will wait for the 8.04.1 version, since it comes out one of theese days and since it's not possible to upgrade from 8.04 to 8.04.1. Now, so here's my scoring for the macine so far based on what I expected before I got it and my first impression:
The kids' experience. Now, the kids got their PCs and after I'd helped them to go through the personalization and set up the wireless, they were on their own, more or less. The youngest one (8), needed a little help finding kids-youtube on the net, but Scandinavia Online (www.sol.no) has a link to one of those sites - a Norwegian one, even. They use their EEEs a lot, but we haven't turned on the desktop that runs Windows XP PC after the EEEs came. The kids doesn't need to or can't be bothered when they've allready got a macine in their lap. It seems like it's working just fine for them. After I'd set up my EEE to «Advanced mode» I asked my kids if they wanted that too? But, no they liked the basic interface just fine and wanted to keep that. They did mention that they didn't like much that they could not run their windows games, but only once. Anyway, they use flash based web-games most of the time anyway. In addition they have gained some respect from their friends, being the only ones in their age group with their own laptop. Here's my kids scoring for the macine so far:
Conclusion: I have allready changed distro to Ubuntu-eee - couldn't wait for 8.04.1, even if it means reinstalling from scratch in a few days. It works fine! The kids love their more and more, and the Windows PC has been used once or twice. Once because I haven't got around to copying over their bookmark.html from the Windows PC. The other time it was a Windows game they wanted to try. I've had it for two weeks now, and I am still amazed by the crisp screen and the general functions of the little laptot. The kids loves theirs. Once I have used it for «some real work» I will complete this review and even look closer into what the kids use their for mostly. |
Newsflash!
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