Eee!

[ellarien]

After seeing an Eee in action at last week's meeting, and in view of a couple of upcoming trips where it might be an advantage not to have to lug even the relatively small Dell laptop, I gave in and got my own -- a black 4G Surf. The keyboard turns out to be even smaller than the folding one I use with the Palm, but usable, and the screen is nice and crisp, with good viewing angles. Thanks to these clever folks, I found the console and unlocked the hidden real-computer functionality, which turns out to include Thunderbird! I may try for some of my other favorite applications at the weekend.

So far, I'm having a little trouble with the wireless networking. It seems to forget the key for my home network every time I reboot, and it also seems to be having a slightly disruptive effect on my happy little home network: it sees shared files the other machines, but can only actually access the ones on the Vista machine which has password-protected shares; on the others it gets into an endless loop of prompting for a non-existent password. And now the Behemoth laptop has decided it can't see the local workgroup at all, which hasn't happened since I got the desktop settled in. Maybe I just need a better router, or maybe it just got confused because I messed up typing the password the first time. (Or it could be a side-effect of Vista SP1, I suppose.)

OpenOffice seems to be a little overfaced by my eighty-odd-thousand-word novel file, and refuses to give me a wordcount.

Otherwise, I haven't found any major roadblocks yet.

I'm a little bemused by the bit in the manual that talks about the heads on the solid state drive being retracted at power-off to avoid scratching the surface. Am I wrong about the whole point of solid state drives, or is that a bit of careless copy-pasting from the manual for a different machine?

Comments

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link. I haven't actually done anything with my Eee yet other than use it as a word processor or to access the Net when I'm sitting relaxing in front of the telly. As we have a wired network rather than wireless, I haven't noticed the network problems you've had, though I haven't yet persuaded it to see any of the other computers, perhaps because we're still on XP or Windows 98?

[ellarien]

My home network has been much better behaved since I gave up using the Win98 machines, on the whole, but Windows networking in general seems to be temperamental and not entirely subject to Earth logic. At one point last night I had everyone talking -- and then I rebooted the Eee and it wasn't seeing the Windows network at all. Googling 'eee windows networking' brings up a slew of tales of woe and suggested solutions, so it obviously isn't just me.

I quite like this kind of fiddling about, but I hope I can get it working smoothly eventually. The trick with remembering the wireless key seems to be not to use the 'tray icon' to connect, but the networks menu item.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

As I've now decided that the Eee is going to cut it as a second computer, I've officially retired my aged laptop, which gets rid of one Win98 machine from the system.

Actually the worst culprit is my husband's XP computer which has a very tenuous grasp on the network and has to be constantly reminded that it can and should be talking to the other computers. :)

[ellarien]

There are all kinds of things that can upset network sharing. Does your husband have VPN software installed, by any chance? When I set up my work laptop for that, it refused to be seen by the home network even when the VPN wasn't running.

[ellarien]

Oh, and one more thing that might be worth a try -- it's been my experience that the networking goes more happily if all the computers are in the same workgroup.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

All the computers are in the same workgroup, though for some reasons G's XP machine can lose its settings. Basically I think it's always been slightly dodgy as it now won't recognise the USB ports.

Re the Eee and networks, the trick does seem to be leaving them for a bit to get acquainted. Thanks for suggesting it. After using it for a while, when I looked last night, the Eee could see the shared folder on my Desktop machine. So that seems to be OK then, should I ever need that facility. :)

[ellarien]

I'm glad something helped! I'm coming to the conclusion that adding a new computer to a network is a bit like introducing a new cat to a household.