The Netbook Thread

[Dio]

Well, USB did largely eliminate the low level drivers - you don't need to write loads of kernel-mode code to communicate with most USB devices, for example.

You have to have something to parse the data somewhere though. Where there's been standardisation (like HID) it's worked pretty well there too.

[dom]

Whatever happened to printers accepting PostScript? My laserjet 5M works just fine with it; if all that a printer needed was a working network or USB connection and a PostScript driver, just think of the disk or SD-storage space we'd all save

We spent a couple hours in a pub today playing chess, sudoku and mahjong on my Eee - could have stayed there all day if I'd brought the mains charger and they'd had wifi...

Dom

[lis0r]

Whatever happened to printers accepting PostScript?

Licensing fees.

[Dio]

Makes the hardware more expensive too. If the printer driver can do all the work, you only have to buffer data and handle the mechanicals in the printer.

[teamonkey]

Acer has some kind of press conference in 6 hours or so. There's a countdown on their site. Fingers crossed...

[teamonkey]

Acer has some kind of press conference in 6 hours or so. There's a countdown on their site. Fingers crossed...

Bah. They went the wrong way. 16" and 18.9" laptops.

[Dio]

If the 16" is 1900x1200, that's quite interesting.

The MSI Wind is looking the most interesting of the recent eee-style announcements.

[benedictw]

The MSI Wind is looking the most interesting of the recent eee-style announcements.

Aint it just.



10 inch display - roughly 225 quid. Sounds very good.

[Dio]

Choosing these could get fun. If (as I suspect) it's still 1024x600, then for me there's no screen advantages over the smaller eee. But then if they get anywhere near that 7 hour battery life that would be a huge tilt in their favour...

[Firefox]

It's cold and wet and foggy here in Sheff, so I've been having a serious play with my EeePc this evening here in the warm.

I've tweaked the x86 Linux build of Dio's Jag emulator to be optimised for the Pentium-M, and it runs at a nice clip. The game sound effects seem about right, but the music hasn't just got an odd cadence, it's completely fucked up. No idea what's going on there, I've tried some changes that Dio and I have discussed by email previously but it seems much the same. Have to have a dig into that one...

I was looking to see if any tasks are gobbling up CPU power, and noticed that one called "powermonitor" jumps in every second or so and grabs ~12%. Turns out it's not part of the operating system, it's the little icon in the system tray that's a four-bar battery level indicator. So the little battery level icon is actually running the battery down! But it's alright though, if you plug the mains adaptor in it drops right down to nearly zero CPU usage.

Still really pleased with the little gizmo, it really is everything I'd hoped for. I'm looking forward to choosing between the EeePc 900, MSI Wind, and that HP one that was on engadget later on in the year (plus any more that appear).

[Dio]

Is that with native sound and Throttle on? There are some odd resonances in the timing that can cause issues (or at least there are on the Windows version, and the dodgy WSI probably implies you're stuck with some of the same implementation issues).

And you're not joking about the fog. The last part of the Snake Pass run into Broom Hill was 20mph territory.

[StarshipUK]

I am thinking of getting one of these:

http://www.edugeek.net/index.php/compon ... t-stone-pc

Any thoughts?

[Firefox]

Is that with native sound and Throttle on? There are some odd resonances in the timing that can cause issues (or at least there are on the Windows version, and the dodgy WSI probably implies you're stuck with some of the same implementation issues).

Proper emulated sound (if that's what you mean), equally weird-sounding music with throttle on or off (it runs a fair bit faster than throttled mode normally). It definitely isn't like that on my main Linux box...

Oh well, I can have a tinker with it whenever I'm stuck in a hotel now. Ultra-portable dev kit, eh?

And you're not joking about the fog. The last part of the Snake Pass run into Broom Hill was 20mph territory.

Welcome to the People's Republic of South Yorkshire, etc and soforth.

I am thinking of getting one of these:

http://www.edugeek.net/index.php/compon ... t-stone-pc

Any thoughts?

It looks like another variant of Via's reference design, similar to the Cloudbook but with a Skype handset instead of the separate black 'n' white system status LCD.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudbook
http://www.via.com.tw/en/initiatives/sp ... /nanobook/

[benedictw]

Its a Belinea S.Book 1

So its got 80gb HD, 800x480 touch screen, XP and costs 400 quid. I dont think that XP will work particularly well on a display of that size, but I would live to be proved wrong. It has a DVI-I out which is nice.

[arron]

I saw one of the ASUS eee things yesterday, and I was amazed. Took seconds to boot up, seemed to be pretty well what you'd want out of a laptop for doing stuff on the moove and weighs less than a kilo. Plus it was less than 200 quid from eBuyer. If I wasn't in the two month period of many bills to pay at present, I'd be online ordering one