Several readers have asked about my post listing the dollars I have invested in my Eee PC, specifically about how I bought XP Pro for $35. As an MVP awardee, I'm allowed to spend a very limited amount per year at the Microsoft Company Store, where I can buy software at the same discount as Microsoft employees. Unfortunately, this isn't an option for the average user.

So how do you get XP on your Eee PC without spending almost as much for the OS as you spent for the computer? If you happen to be a student or faculty member, even part time, your best bet for software prices may be an academic version. Check with your college bookstore or an online software vendor such as Academic Superstore.

However, the easiest way to get XP on an Eee PC at the lowest cost may be to wait and buy it with XP pre-installed. According to this Forbes article, Microsoft "agreed to give Eee PC buyers the option of getting Windows for under $40, more than a third off the standard price."  We hear the XP version of the Eee PC is to be released before the end of the year.

One of my favorite applications on my Pocket PC 2003 device (Samsung i730 PPC phone) was Microsoft Reader. I could buy books in .LIT format and put them on the SD card in my phone, and have a whole small library with me wherever I went. It was great for traveling and for those times when you get stuck someplace around town, such as waiting for your oil to be changed. I always had a book to read.

When I recently replaced the trusty old i730 with a new i760 running Windows Mobile 6, one of the first things I did was install my favorite mobile programs. But I was surprised to find, when I went to the Microsoft Reader homepage, that there is no mention of support for Windows Mobile 6. According to the FAQ web site, the software is only supported on Pocket PC 2002 and 2003. Another page indicates that it will work with WM5, but the last update to the Reader for PPC download page was November 2005, two years ago.

Most WM5 applications work on WM6, but some don't. Wikipedia (which is well known for not always being correct) says "No version has been released for Windows Mobile 6.0 and it is not currently possible to use it on this operating system."

If that's true, why? Why would Microsoft drop support for Reader on handhelds, which is exactly where it's most useful? There are still lots of books available in .LIT format. I suppose I can buy books in .PDF, but I much preferred the Reader interface.

What software are others using to read ebooks on WM6 devices? Has anyone out there tried installing Reader on their WM6 devices and gotten it to work? If you have a solution to this problem, please let me know.

Well, my little $399 Eee PC with XP installed was already faster than my $2200 Sony laptop with Vista, but today I replaced its factory installed 512 MB of RAM  with a 2 GB module (which cost $57) and now it's really smokin'.

The RAM upgrade couldn't have been easier: turn it off, turn it over, unscrew two small screws and pop out the cover plate. Pop out the old RAM module, pop in the new one, screw the cover back on and boot her up. It literally took about a minute.

XP immediately recognized 1.99 GB of RAM. No problems, just nice fast performance. The RAM I used is Kingston DDR-2 667. Note that if you choose to keep the original Linux operating system, I've heard that it will only recognize 1 GB.

Also note that opening the case voids the warranty. There's a tiny yellow sticker across one of the screws and it's impossible to remove it intact or unscrew the screw without destroying it. So be very sure everything else is working fine and you're not going to want to return it before you take the upgrade plunge.

Eee PC recognizes 1.99 GB of RAM after the quick upgrade

As modified, I've spent $399 for the system itself, $57 for the RAM, $63 for an 8 GB SD card, and $35 for a copy of XP Pro (from the Microsoft Company Store). All in all, I have $554 invested in the little guy. Yes, I could buy a more powerful laptop for that - but not one anywhere near this tiny. The least expensive subcompact under 3 lbs. that I've seen was $1000, and I have a very functional one (at 2.5 lbs) for about half that. I'm happy with it.

The day before Thanksgiving, George Ou posted in his blog over on ZDNet a list of Black Friday computer and electronics specials boasting prices too good to be believed. Now, you couldn't pay me enough to go anywhere near a retail store on Black Friday, but that's because I'm at a point in my life where my time is money.

My son, however, is still young and hungry and much more inclined to suffer a bit for a bargain. So Thursday evening, after we'd all spent the day together and had a great Thanksgiving dinner at Fearing's at the Ritz, he headed over to CompUSA in Plano to stand in line from 9 p.m. until 5 a.m. to buy a 17 inch Core Duo HP laptop with 2 GB of RAM for $425. In fact, the specs are pretty much identical to those of our "tank" (the HP 17 incher for which we paid $1199 - and thought that was a great deal).

The way he described the experience, it almost (but only almost) made me wish I'd gone along. He said at 9:00 p.m. there were 13 people there; by 3:00 a.m. there were over 50. And they made a party of it, getting to know each other and taking turns making soft drink and coffee runs to the nearest 7-11 store and sharing extra blankets and chipping in to buy pizza from the Papa John's guy who came around. Rather than the typical Christmas shopping experience where you feel as if you're competing with a bunch of strangers for the goodies, all that time waiting together caused them to form a bond, at least temporarily. Meeting new people, making new friends - the very essence of the holiday spirit.

They had only ten of the 17 inch systems, and Kris was 7th in line. He was pretty pleased to have snagged one.

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying doing my own Christmas shopping online. As much fun as it might have sounded, I think I'll continue to leave the all nighters in the cold to those younger and braver than I am.

Okay, the transformation of the Eee PC is finished. I now have a fully functional Windows XP computer in a super small form factor at a much lower price than any other Windows laptop under 3 lbs. After installing XP yesterday (which went without a hitch after having to start over once because I'd failed to delete the small system partition), today I got wireless networking up and running and put Office 2007 - or rather, part of it - on the little guy, and downloaded Adobe Reader and a few other small necessary programs.

To save space, I only installed Outlook, Word, and PowerPoint 2007, since those are the only Office programs I tend to use on the road. After installing everything I need, I still had almost half of the internal flash drive free, and seven eighths of the 8 GB SD card was still free so I have room to store some docs and install a few more programs on it in the future.

 
With XP installed, I still have almost half of the internal flash drive free

With Office 2007 installed on the SD card, there's still over 6 1/2 GB free for future programs and documents

The only problem I had was that for some reason, Windows had trouble recognizing the external USB DVD drive (which I had used to install Windows). After hassling with that for a while, I attached the USB DVD drive back to my desktop machine, shared it over the network, and connected to it from the Eee PC to install Office that way.

Here it is, running Outlook 2007:

Outlook 2007 on the Eee PC

And here we're running both Word and PowerPoint:

 
Running Word and PowerPoint 2007

The XP driver installation from the Asus support disk installed a client utility for the wireless network adapter, and I was happy that the built in adapter supports 802.11g; I was afraid they might have stuck with b to save money. It works great: I'm connected at 54Mbps with excellent signal strength.

Here's the best part: when I press the power button to resume from hibernation, the little guy recovers almost instantaneously. I wish I could say the same for my Vista laptop - with him, there's time to go make a cup of coffee (including grinding the beans) before he's back up and ready to use.

I have to admit that after a few days of using it, I was not so impressed with the original Linux incarnation. It was fine for someone who just wanted to web surf and read email, but I felt as if I were using a kid's toy. Now, with XP and Office, I'm very happy I bought it and I will be taking it along with me a lot.

As I'm writing this, I'm in the process of installing Windows XP on the Eee PC. I ordered a brand new copy of XP SP2 from the Microsoft Company Store for the purpose. Interestingly, there is an option in the Eee PC BIOS for installing the OS. Here's what you have to do to get started:

1. Hook up the USB CD or DVD drive (in my case, a Sony DVD-RW) to the Eee PC.

2. Boot up and press F2 during startup to get to the BIOS.

3. Go to the Advanced tab, enable all the devices and change the OS INSTALLATION item to Start.

4. Save the changes and reboot, pressing ESC during startup to get to the boot device menu, then select the USB drive to boot from.

The familiar XP Setup screen appears. I deleted the partition on which the Linux OS was installed, created a new partition from the free space, and selected it to install XP to, with a quick NTFS format. Erring on the side of caution, I didn't delete the small (8 MB) system partition.

The  XP Setup screen on the Eee PC

Copying the Setup files took several minutes (as always). After the file copy and first restart, I got the message that "NTLR is missing." I figured that meant I should have deleted that small system partition, so I ran the Setup program again and did so.

That was indeed the key; this time Setup proceeded to the GUI phase.

 
The graphical portion of Setup starts

This part of the installation wasn't particularly fast, but it wasn't a lot slower than on some other computers to which I've installed XP, either. All in all, it took approximately 40 minutes.

 
It's starting to look a lot like Windows

Of course, the first thing one is compelled to do after installing XP is to switch to the classic theme and change that awful wallpaper. :)

 
Now it's looking better than (default) XP

I still have a bit to do: installing Outlook and Word (just those two, to save space), optimizing the paging file, compressing the drive and performing all the other recommendations in the Asus manual to enhance performance. So far, with just the OS, it's running acceptably fast (okay, I admit it: faster than Vista on the Sony with Aero turned on).

So now I have a tiny little XP PC. Cool!

Today, for only the second time in the 3 years we've had it, our FiOS Internet connection was down. The other time, it was a problem on our end; the GFCI outlet into which the ONT (Optical Network Terminal, the device on the outside of the house where the fiber optic line terminates) was plugged had tripped and the ONT wasn't getting power.

This time, we checked the ONT and both the Power and Battery lights were green, but there was a red blinking Failure light. Nothing on Verizon's troubleshooting web site addressed that situation.

Luckily we still had Internet connectivity since we have the T-1 for the web servers and mail server. I went to the Verizon FiOS page and logged into our account and clicked Trouble Tickets, thinking I could create one. All I got was a status page telling me I had no active trouble tickets open. No link or hint as to how to report a problem. There was, however, on the Troubleshooting page a link to engage in Live Chat with a Verizon tech support person so I tried that. No luck - I just got a message saying live chat is not available at this time.

Okay, how about a phone number to just call them? Amazingly, I couldn't find one in all the Troubleshooting links. There was a Contact Us link, and when I clicked it there was a link that said Quick Phone Support. But when I clicked that, I got a message saying the tool I was trying to use was incompatible with Vista. Grrr.

So I go to an XP computer and try again. Now it wants to download a program. All I wanted was a freakin' phone number. But I download the 10 MB program, which turns out to be a diagnostic program. Of course, it was useless in terms of my problem, since the computers were all now using the T-1 to connect to the Internet.

Finally, in despair, I decided to just Google "Verizon FiOS support phone number." That took me to a page with a tech support phone number. At last! I call it and spent 4 and a half minutes going through the computerized voicemail. The computer was confused by the fact that my phone number is not a Verizon number (we have FiOS Internet but AT&T phone service). Finally it found my account and rung me through to tech support. Where I stayed on hold for six minutes.

Once the guy finally came on the line, he was very polite and seemed competent. He had a little trouble finding the account too (he asked me "to whom am I speaking?" and then apparently tried to use my name to look up the account, but it's in Tom's name). When he did, he informed me that they were having a major outage in north Texas and there was already a repair ticket out on it. He said he even had the specific shelf on which the bad piece of equipment was located (not that that information was of any use to me, but I guess it's good to know they knew exactly what/where the problem was) and that it was expected to be back up by 2:30 p.m.

That's a long outage - it had been down since around 7:30 a.m. - but it's good to have a timeframe. Meanwhile we're using the T-1 for everything and boy, does it seem slow after being used to the 15 Mbps FiOS line. But it works.

I would suggest that Verizon think about making the tech support portion of their web site a little more user friendly. Either make the chat feature work or take down the link. And put a phone number out there where it's easy to find. It's true that FiOS rarely goes down so you don't often need tech support, but when you do, it would be nice if you could get some without spending 45 minutes just trying to connect with someone.

Continuing my exploration of the Samsung i760 and Windows Mobile 6: today I decided to play with the wi-fi connection. With an unlimited data plan and good EVDO reception where I live, I don't anticipate using wi-fi much, but you never know when travel might take us someplace where we can't get on Verizon's network, and then the built-in wi-fi support would come in handy.

Connecting to a wireless network is pretty easy. The Today screen has a section that shows you whether wi-fi and Bluetooth are on or off (just under the photo dial pictures below):

Tap that "Wi-Fi: Off" link and it takes you to the wireless configuration screen shown here:

Tap the Wi-Fi section to turn it on. If wireless networks are available, you'll see the "Available" tab. Tap that and you get a list of the 802.11 networks within range.

Pick the one you want to connect to and select the left soft key or tap Connect at the bottom, and a wizard-like series of dialog boxes will walk you through the process of entering your WEP/WPA key (if applicable) and otherwise configuring your connection.

When you've entered all the information, the Wireless configuration screen will show the status of wi-fi as "Connecting" as shown below:

And when the connection is complete, you'll see a signal strength indicator and "Connected" as the status in the Wireless configuration dialog box.

The Today screen's status section will show the name of the wi-fi network to which you're connected.

That's it. Now you can use wi-fi instead of the cellular data connection to surf the Internet, get your email or connect back to your home/office network via VPN.

I've had a chance now to do quite a bit of playing around with the new phone and it is well worth the $199, plus some. The more I use it, the more I like it. I haven't really found even one thing yet that was better on the i730 (although it does feel sad to relegate two perfectly good $500 phones to the "dead cellphones" drawer in the kitchen).

I'm impressed with WM6. It's quick and responsive and I've not had a single freezeup as I occasionally did with the i730. I'm getting faster with the keyboard and now, instead of thinking "gosh, I hope I don't need to reply to anything" when I check email on the phone, I almost look forward to typing on it.

I'm still a little miffed at whomever (Verizon or Samsung) left Sprite backup out of this one. But I guess I can live with having to reinstall Sprite if I ever have to restore the system; it's just a little inconvenient. On the other hand, as stable as this OS seems, maybe I'll never need to restore the system.

I really like Spb Pocket Plus and all the functionality it adds. Now I can have my desktop icons just like on my "real" computer. Here's a screenshot:

One of the best things about it is that it causes programs to close when you press the X at the top of program windows instead of just minimizing (by default). If you only want to minimize, you can press and hold the X and you get a menu that lets you choose to minimize, close the program or close all the programs that are running. You can also add exceptions, so that if you have a program that needs to run in the background all the time (like my Photo Contacts Pro), you can configure the X to only minimize it.

Speaking of Photo Contacts Pro, I really like it, too. It lets you assign pictures to your contacts and put your favorites on the Today screen so you can place a call just by tapping the appropriate photo. Here's what it looks like:

Because it requires a double tap to call, you're not likely to be making calls accidentally, either. And when someone in your address book calls you, if you have a photo assigned to that person it will display the photo full screen so you know who's calling with just a glance. Cool.

It also lets you assign individual ringtones to each of your contacts (or to groups), and perhaps most useful of all, it has a call management feature whereby you can specify numbers you want to block and exactly how to do it (whether to just hang up, send it to voicemail, let it go through but silence the ringer, etc.). It gets more sophisticated than that, though. You can set it up so that, for example, during the period of 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. all calls are blocked except those from members of the Family group. And you can configure it so that during any time period that you have a meeting designated in your calendar, it will turn off the ringer and just vibrate. When the meeting's over, the ringer automatically comes back on.

Another way to place calls (that doesn't require any third party software) is with the voice command system, and it works great. I've had no trouble at all with recognition, and I have a Texas accent that throws some voice rec software for a loop. Just say "Call [name of contact]" and it calls. Or if that contact has more than one number, it will ask you whether you want to call the person at work, at home, on mobile, etc. Or you can circumvent that by just saying "Call [name] at home." You can also assign nicknames so you don't have to say the person's full name (e.g., "Call Tom" instead of "Call Thomas Shinder"). If you want to call a number that's not in your address book, just say "Dial [phone number]."

Of course, you can just dial the number the old fashioned way, too. Here again you have choices. You can use the handy little physical number pad on the front of the phone (which doesn't require opening the keyboard as the i730 did) or you can use the soft keys on the screen. The phone application is shown below:

As you can see, it displays the last few numbers that called or that you called, so you can call one of those back by just tapping it with your finger or the stylus, or by navigating to it with the wheel and pressing the center button.

Email works great, too. It was a snap to set up (much easier than on the i730):

The Mobile Office programs work fine, too. Here's Pocket Word:

And the automatic change from portrait to landscape when you open the slider makes it a lot easier to view Pocket IE in widescreen mode, making it easier to read web pages:

Pocket Plus also gives you touch scrolling in IE, which makes web browsing a lot more fun. It's almost like the iPhone (but unfortunately, you don't get the "pinch and drag" ability for resizing web pages).

Of course, you can also view any other program in landscape mode too, and you'll probably want to use it for actually creating or editing a Word doc, for replying to email, and other applications where you'll be typing.

Oh, and as for how I got the screen captures: I actually tried three different capture utilities before I found one I liked. Ilium's is very popular but I couldn't get it to work. It installed okay, but no matter which button assignment I picked and which hardware button I tried, nothing captured. Then I was going to try one called Vito that displays the PPC screen on your desktop computer. It said it had a 14 day free trial, but when I installed it and tried to open it, it asked me to buy it and wouldn't let me do the trial, so I uninstalled it, too.

Finally I found Capture Screen from Fann Software. It's freeware, downloaded without a hitch and works great, and it has an on-screen soft key for capturing so you don't have to worry with assigning a hardware button. If you need a screen capture program for WM 2003, 5 or 6, you can download it here:
http://www.fannsoftware.com/PpcSoftMain.html 
Click the "Freeware" link on the left side of the page.

All in all, I'm extremely pleased with the phone and all of the software I'm using on it. I'm glad we decided to stick with Verizon and Samsung. I'm sure the Tilt and AT&T fit many people's needs, but this is working great for us.

Well, I had played around with the little guy a bit, and enabled the Start menu, and that worked fine. So I thought I'd get ambitious and go for the full desktop, as described at http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/11/06/eee-pc-tips-a-crash-course-in-linux/.

Opened up the terminal and used apt-get to download the kicker program and installation seemed to go well; after installing I had the "Full Desktop" option on the shutdown menu. Trouble is, when I pressed it, I just went back into the same old "easy mode" menu. So then I did something really stupid; I set preferences to boot into Full Desktop mode by default.

I shut down the computer and rebooted, and found myself in an endless loop - the full desktop will flash on the screen for a moment, then the system will reboot itself, over and over and over.

No problem, right? After all, it comes with the system restore built in. Just press F9 during startup and you can go back to "factory default settings." Went through that process and again, it seemed to work but ... after rebooting, I'm still in the loop. I'm beginning to feel as if I'm in an episode of Star Trek Next Gen ... remember that one?

So I've screwed up my little Linux PC rather badly. I should have known better than to think Linux would work for me, after all the bad things I've said about it. I guess I'll be trying to install XP on it sooner than I'd planned.

Meanwhile, be very careful about trying to install the full desktop. Obviously it works for some people, but I can attest to the fact that it doesn't always work.

  Here's the i730 next to the new i760. It's sort of like putting a boxy old 1950s car up beside a sleek new model. The i730 just looks "old."

Click to enlarge image

Having the number keys on the outside is surprisingly functional. To dial on the i730, you have to either use the software keypad on the screen or slide out the bottom keyboard. I always opted for the software keys, but with the i760, I think I'll be using the handy little number pad.

In the photo above, you can't really tell much difference in size, except of course for the absence of that little stubby antenna that was always getting in the way, getting hung on things in my pocket, etc. The screen sizes are the same (and even though the number pad is convenient, I'd have gladly given it up to have a little more screen real estate).

Here's where the big difference shows up, when you view them from the end with the extended batteries installed:

 
Click to enlarge image

The extended battery on the i730 is a whopper, and sticks way out beyond the back of the phone. The extended battery on the i760 is only a tiny fraction of an inch thicker than the standard battery, so you can comfortably carry it with the bigger battery without even noticing.

You'll also note that there's a cover over the charger port on the i760, whereas the i730 just left it open to the elements (and dust, lint, etc.). You might think the cover would get in the way or break off easily, but it swivels around nicely, and it seems strong - at the Verizon store, the rep demonstrated by holding the phone by the little cover tab only.

A big, big improvement is in the ergonomics of the thing. Hardware buttons are placed in locations where you can actually reach them while holding the phone in one hand, and with the OK button, you no longer have to hit the onscreen X to close or minimize programs (one thing that didn't change from Windows Mobile 2003 to WM6 is that by default, the X only minimizes programs and you have to go into Settings | Memory to close them down. But there's third party software for both operating systems that will change the behavior of the X).

Here's what they both look like with the keyboards open:

Click to enlarge image

It's about ten times easier to type on the wide i760 keyboard in landscape mode than on the cramped little keyboard of the i730.

I won't go into all the software differences here; I'll save that for another day and a more extensive review. Meanwhile, even if it ran the same OS, the i760 would almost be worth the price for the hardware differences alone.

There are some sources on the web stating definitively that you can't add programs to the Eee PC. I can see why - how to do so is not immediately apparent. There is an "Add/Remove Programs" icon on the Settings tab that doesn't seem to do anything. For those who are acquainted only with the graphical interface of Windows or Macs, it does indeed appear at first glance that "what you see is what you get" (and all you get).

However, this is Linux. And you can indeed add software. The secret trick is finding the console, which is buried inside the Tools menu in the File Manager applet (which is on the Work tab). Once you get there, you can type "sudo bash" to gain root access and do all sorts of things, such as editing the configuration file to put a Start button on the taskbar, as I've done:

Click to enlarge image

Asus provide s a couple of servers with software you can download. To get to them, you type (with root access):

nano /etc/apt/sources.list

You can also add other servers to the list. This article, Asus Eee PC Tweak Guide, tells you how to add Gimp, how to add the Start button to the taskbar, and how to install XP on the Eee PC if you decide you don't like dealing with Linux.

DEBRA LITTLEJOHN SHINDER, MCSE, MVP
deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com

We've been waiting for the i760 since last January. Finally, last weekend, our local Verizon store had one - and only one. After checking it out and playing with it for a bit, Tom decided to take the plunge and get it. I'll wait for mine until they get more in next Friday.

After a few curses and moans while trying to get things set up without reading the instructions (you know how men are about that), he's proclaimed it good. I've had a chance to play with it a little and I really like the feel of it, too. It's definitely thinner and lighter than the i730 and much easier to use one-handed with the new key locations. Here's a photo:

 
Click for enlarged image

The phone switches from portrait to landscape mode almost instantly when you open the slider. With the i730, if you want landscape mode, you have to go into the settings and change it, then do the same to change it back. What a pain. The keys on the side slider are actually usable, too. I don't think I ever once used the bottom-mounted keyboard on my i730 in the two years I've had it.

Click for enlarged image

But I do have one complaint: why did Verizon go so cheap on the extras they provided with this phone? With the i730, we got a holster (which admittedly was worse than useless, since it had a habit of falling off and sending the phone crashing to the pavement), a charging cradle with which you could charge both the phone and the extra battery simultaneously, and Sprite Backup software came installed on the phone.

There's no holster with the i760, you get just a charging cable (if you want the cradle, you have to pay another $39) and there's no Sprite, or any other backup program installed.

Considering that this phone costs $399 and the i730 was $599, I'm not going to gripe too much about the hardware omissions. I'll cough up the forty bucks for a cradle (and they did include an extra, high capacity battery - and this one is almost the same slim size as the standard battery, only a tiny fraction of an inch thicker; the i730's extended battery is quite obese). I didn't want a holster anyway.

But I am not happy about them leaving out Sprite. It's not the $29 price tag; I'd gladly pay an extra $29 for the phone itself. The problem is that if you do a hard reset, the programs you've installed will be lost, including Sprite. With the i730, it was there after the reset and you could quickly restore from your backup. Now you'll have to reinstall it first, which means digging out your product key (if you can find it; otherwise you'll have to buy it all over again). That's an unnecessary inconvenience that annoys me.

Otherwise, though, I think this phone is a winner. My i730 now feels awfully clunky by comparison. I'll be reporting more next week, after I get my own.

  Now I've had a chance to play more with the Eee PC, and have written more about my first impressions in this week's edition of WXPnews, which will be up on the site at www.wxpnews.com on Tuesday.

Here's a photo of the tab-based interface:

You can click to enlarge the images

The Work tab has the Open Office applications:

Bootup takes about 9 seconds (wow, tell that to my Vista laptop). Here's the boot screen:

It goes by so fast, you'd better be quick if you want to press F2 to enter Setup. Here's a look at the BIOS settings:

There's a tiny camera built into the top of the screen, but at first I thought it didn't work, as opening the Webcam application gave me a message that there was no camera found. Playing around in the BIOS, I discovered that it was disabled by default. Once I enabled it, it worked fine.

Actually, everything works fine (except the wireless networking on a WPA v.2 network).

Asus obviously made this computer to be as simple and as "unmessupable" as possible, and I think they succeeded in that goal.

Usually you have to pay a big price for a small laptop. My Sony TX is pretty tiny - just under 3 lbs. It cost $2200. I could have gotten one of the larger Vaio models with equal or better specs for a lot less, but I wanted something that was super compact and light enough to carry around without weighing me down.

Now there's something even smaller - and it only weighs about 2 lbs. and is considerably smaller in dimensions than the Sony. The screen is 7 inches, about the same as most of the Ultra Mobile PCs (UMPCs). And it only costs $399.

I like the UMPC concept but I never did buy one, for a couple of reasons. First, lack of a keyboard. I "think with my fingers" when I'm composing email, articles, etc. Sure, you can attach a USB keyboard to the UMPCs, but that sort of defeats the whole idea of "ultra mobile." The second reason was the price. Most UMPCs cost over $1000. I already have the Sony, and the Pocket PC phone for those times when I don't want to bring a full fledged computer along. Sure, it would be nice to have something in between, but not if I had to shell out another grand for it.

That's why I was intrigued by the Eee PC. It would give me that in-between size at a very affordable price, with a built-in keyboard. So when they became available last week, I put in my order, and it arrived today. And it is indeed as small as I had hoped. Here it is in comparison with the Sony, which is already a very tiny computer:

 

And to put that into even more perspective, here are the Sony and the Eee PC next to our HP 17 inch laptop:

For perhaps the best comparison of all, here they are, stacked on top of one another:

I plugged it in and powered it up, but I hit one problem right off the bat when I tried to connect to my wireless network: it only supports WEP and WPA, not WPA v2. Being security people, we use the latter on our WAPs. So I had to go dig out an Ethernet cable to get on the network.

The keyboard works pretty well to be so small, at least for me. But then I have small hands. Tom couldn't type very well on it with his larger fingers. And the shift keys are small and slightly out of place compared to most keyboards, so I had a little trouble with that, although once I got used to it, it wasn't a big problem.

There's no CD or DVD drive, of course. There's no place to put one. You can plug in an external USB drive. And it does have both Ethernet and modem jacks,  a FireWire (EEE 1392) port, and standard headphone and microphone jacks on the left side. On the right side, there's an external display connector,  two USB 2.0 ports and an SD card slot.

There are indicator lights on the front, for battery, "hard drive" (actually solid state memory, but it's the standard hard disk icon) and wireless. At the top of the screen, there's a built in web cam.

The interface is simple - almost too simple. It's apparently based on KDE but I haven't been able to find out how to get to the command line. It uses a tab-based set of menus and has quite a few applications installed, which I'll review in more detail tomorrow.
NOTE/UPDATE: See my later post for how to invoke the console, gain root access, etc.

I guess I'm just amazed that it's really this small and it works, for this price. It's not fast, but it's not any slower than my Sony with Vista Business when Aero is turned on.

It might make a good first computer for a kid, although I don't know how tough it is. But with all solid state storage, it should be less fragile than computers with hard drives.

It would make a great little system for someone who only needs to do a little email and web surfing on the road. I'll be writing more about it after I get a chance to check it out more thoroughly. Meanwhile, my first impression is that it's worth the price.

DEBRA LITTLEJOHN SHINDER, MCSE, MVP
deb@shinder.net   www.debshinder.com

Congres has passed and the president has signed a new law dramatically labled "the Internet Tax Freedom Act Amendment of 2007." It's not quite as good as it sounds, though. The new law will extend the ban on Internet taxes for another seven years. What it does is prohibit state and local governments from imposing access taxes on Internet access services, and also on independent email and instant messaging services.

What it doesn't do is prohibit sales taxes on Internet service or on purchases of goods sold over the Internet, which you're already paying (sorry about that). Nor does it affect folks in those states that were "grandfathered in" by imposing taxes on 'Net access prior to the passage of the original ban. Oh well.

To go along with the new Nikon, I've gotten a few essential accessories and boy, do they ever make life easier. First I ordered a nice Velbon tripod. That's to keep from making more photos like this:

That's a handheld time exposure taken in the dark, of the cars on the bridge going over the lake behind our house. Of course, I knew it was going to blur, and I actually rather like the abstract look. Hey, I've seen worse in museums. Maybe I'll enlarge and frame it.

Another handy little device is the IR remote control. When it arrived, I was surprised at how tiny it is:

It does the job, though, and it fits into a little case that attaches to the camera strap so you always have it when you need it, and you don't even notice it the rest of the time. Very nice for preventing camera shake when using the tripod or for taking self portraits.

Now here's a question: why does Nikon make this fantastic remote for their inexpensive D40/D40x SLRs, but with the semi-pro models like the nifty new D300, you have to use an old fashioned cable release?

There are still a couple of things I want to get. I have the SB-400 external flash and I can bounce it off the ceiling or use a homemade reflector card, but I'm thinking of getting a diffuser for it. And I have the 18-200mm VR lens, which is great, as well as a 50mm fast f/1.4 prime lens, but I wouldn't mind having the 105mm f/2.8 macro lens for real closeups. At $750, though, I just can't justify the price. If/when I get a Micro-Nikkor, it'll probably be the 60mm f/2.8 at half the price. It doesn't autofocus with the D40 (but then who uses AF with macro shots, anyway?).

I'd love to have a super telephoto, too - but the 400mm and up Nikkors make that 105 macro look cheap. I did run across this Opteka 500mm mirror lens for Nikon at such an incredibly low price that I'm tempted to buy it just to see if it works at all. I certainly wouldn't expect the kind of photo quality you get from a refractive lens or from Nikkor optics, but the idea of paying $75 instead of several thousand is pretty attractive. Maybe I'll give it a try.

Well, I was planning to upgrade my old kitchen Mac to Leopard and give it a try. I was all ready to click the Submit Order button at Amazon (where it costs $20 less than at the Apple Store). But alas, I just found out that the nifty new OS X won't run on my G3-based iMac.

Remember how all those folks bitched and moaned and called Microsoft evil because Vista wouldn't run on their existing hardware? And Microsoft didn't even sell the hardware so they didn't profit from people having to buy new computers. Apple, of course, does profit from forcing you to buy a whole new system. Oh, but that's okay, I guess.

I was looking forward to a chance to delve more deeply into Leopard's features, but I don't want to go out and buy a new Mac so Tom can threaten to throw it in the pool as he does with this one every time he tries to use it. So I guess the only cats we'll have around our house are the Siamese and tabby.

deb@shinder.net