PuppEee 4.3X RC2

It happened again... just as I was about to write up a review of the latest beta, the first release candidate rolled out. And then, as I got halfway through the review, the second release candidate came out. The third one is probably just around the corner... It's amazing how quickly the developer of this nice little distro works.

Overall, I'm (still) extremely impressed by how much have been shoehorned into such a small package. Not only does PuppEee give you a full distro in a bit more than 120Mb, but it's stuffed to the gills with tools for browsing, social networking, productivity and much, much more.

I really like the fact that the last beta and the RC gives you the option to pick and choose between not only x-servers, but also windows managers and desktops. Right now I'm running it with LxLaucher on top of FLWM under Xvesa - about as lightweight and usable as I need. And if I want to switch desktop, windows manager or even X-server, I don't even have to reboot any more. All that's needed is to restart the X-server and you're home free. Most impressive.

The selection of internet aware apps should cover most users needs well - in addition to the obvious browser and email client (Chrome and Claws, respectively), PuppEee offers a website mirroring tool, a FTP client, pidgin and much more - pretty much anything a modern internet user can need.

Productivity tools are also well catered for, with AbiWord and Gnumeric as the two big office tools on top of a host of text editors and other applications. For those in a more artistic line of work, a full range of image editors, managers and viewers - a very nice change from RC1 to RC2 is the added ability to view djvu-files. It's not like I have a lot of them, but more than a few I had been limited to viewing at my desktop until now. Two small applets that will come in handy for me is the Expense Tracker and/or the HomeBank finance management applet - either should be useful in keeping track of my money when I go to Sudan for a year.

But all is not work - the selection of games and multimedia software is pretty staggering by itself - a nice range from solitaire to arcade, and enough players, editors and mixers to keep a video freak and an audiophile happy. Me? I'll settle for a nice game of Space Invaders and watching some movies, thank you.

And don't even mention utilities - this distro is packed full. One I really like is Startmount; it lets you specify which drives should be mounted at start up, and what (if any) software that should be opened as you boot.

Now, a full, or even partial, list of all the installed software would take too long in this post (not to say I wont post one later), but for now, lets talk desktops, window managers and x-servers.

The RC2 offers four choices as far as desktops (file managers) goes; ROX Filer (the default) which acts much like any other computer desktop, Netbook Launcer (as far as I know, a tweaked LxLauncher and also my current favourite) which organizes everything into useful tabs for easy access, and PCManFM which I haven't tried. The fourth choice is 'None', which I'm slightly worried about trying... I'm sure it's safe though. PCManFM looks quite interesting, but I've gravitated towards the Netbook Launcher since I like that style on the smaller screen. Although, it may be that I'm just lazy and like getting my software on a silver platter.

For the actual windows management, you'll get three choices - IceWM (the same as the default Xandros uses on my Eee) which acts pretty normal, FLWM (my current favourite) which plays nicer on the small screen by placing the title bar on the left side of the windows) and OpenBox which to me looks very much like IceWM. To me the second choice makes the most sense - on a small widescreen such as the Eee (in particular the 70X series), horizontal real estate is more plentiful than vertical real estate. FLWM lets you conserve the later by using the former.

For the x-server you get the normal choice of two; X-org, which is heavier and more capable, or X-vesa which is lighter and loads faster. Choose the former if you need accelerated graphics or OpenGL, while the later is good if you care about boot times.

Some screen shots:

 This is the Netbook Launcher desktop coupled with FLWM - showing the contents of the Internet tab.

This is the Rox Filer desktop coupled with FLWM - again showing how to get to the Internet applications.

Running the Evice document viewer under FLWM - note the titlebar and max/min/close buttons along the left side of the window.

This is the Netbook Launcher desktop coupled with IceWM - showing the contents of the Internet tab. Note how the bar at the bottom of the screen don't hide under the launcher, eating precious vertical pixels.

This is the Rox Filer desktop coupled with IceWM - again showing how to get to the Internet applications. This is how PuppEee will look out-of-the-box - at least in RC2.

Running the Evice document viewer under IceWM - note the titlebar and max/min/close buttons along the top of the window, eating pixels.

Overall, a very decent little Linux, and well suited for running on your Eee. I'm not sure I can recommend it as the only OS you need, but right now it's of three I boot, and the one I prefer for surfing and other web-work.

RAM upgrade

Thanks to a kind soul at the EeeUser forums, I got my hands on a 1Gb PC2-6400 RAM chip. Now, despite the fact that my Eee originally shipped with PC2-5300 RAM, I was 99% sure based on posts in the forums that the faster RAM should work - the MoBo would simply down clock it to suit.

Long story short... yeah, it works. Works wonderfully! Xandros is moving quicker than before, WinXP is trotting along at an almost acceptable rate (keeping in mind that I run it of a USB stick, and PupEee... well, PupEee was so snappy to begin with it's hard to say if there is any improvement.

Having armed myself with a screwdriver and a pot of coffee, I prepared my Eee for brain surgery:

Above is a screen shot from Xandros before the upgrade, showing the available RAM - this is what I've seen since I got the Eee almost two years ago.

The envelope with the new-to-me RAM. Securely wrapped, capable of withstanding what the postal service dished out, it arrived in pristine condition.

My Eee on the operating table, brain case opened, just before the lobotomy.

Just carefully insert the orbitoclast behind the eye socket and swing it medially and laterally to separate the frontal lobes from the... eh... wrong handbook. Sorry... where was I.. yes; undo the two hatches on either side and carefully lift the RAM chip out of the socket.

 

There you have it - one Eee with a terminal lack of memory... but no worries, in a few minutes the patient will feel a lot better.

New memory module inserted... all that was needed at this point was a light and even preasure on the two upper corners to make the module snap in like...

...this. The patient is about to be sutured up and brought out of anaesthesia.

No worries - this wont even leave a scar - unlike my every day treatment of my Eee. If you look carefully, you can see a scratch on the RAM cover.

A quick peek at the BIOS - yeah, looks gooood. Should be smooth sailing from here on in.

Recreated the same screen shot as above - except the RAM is twice as high!

Problem with PupEee

I've been playing with the latest beta of PupEee 4.31 for a bit, with the intent to do a 'proper' review, but I have hit a problem.

Or rather, I have not. Apart from a vague desire to replace Pidgin with xChat, there is nothing that don't work as I expect it to. In fact, pretty much everything works better on the small screen of my 4G than I expected.

Booting is fast too, after I switched from Xorg to Xvesa my Eee now boots PupEee of a slooow SD card in about 30 seconds, and only takes 8-10 seconds after that to have a stable connection to my home WiFi - both is actually ever so slightly faster than the Xandros install I have on the SSD!

The offered suite of software may not be engulfing enough for everyones taste, but it covers the basics and covers it well. Connectivity is well covered by Chrome for web, Claw for email and Pidgin for IM. Creativity and office work is taken care of by AbiWord, Gnumeric, mtPaint and InkScapeLite. For those wanting to plan ahead there is the Osmo personal organiser, and if all you wish to do is to lay back and watch a movie gxine seems to handle pretty much every codec I've tried so far.

And that's just the stuff on the desktop - once you start going through the menu the choices simply multiply. Not bad at all for a distro weighting in at about 100 Mb.

PupEee 4.31 Beta 6

Go grab it - just replace the old files on your USB stick or SD card, delete eee-435.sfs and boot up.
First boot takes a little longer than normal, but the second one is nice and quick again. Not much has changed, according to post #109 in this thread, but it looks a little slicker and nothing seems broken.

PupEee 4.31 Beta 5

I've been running the latest beta of PupEee 4.31 for two days now, and I am impressed.

In addition to cleaning out the last leftovers from SeaMonkey, the most noticeable and useful change is the fact that eee-control now is accessible from a quick launch icon on the task bar. One stop shopping for most eee-specific settings, including over-clocking if you like to burn your battery faster.

Other useful additions include a battery meter and CPU temperature gauge on the task bar... almost makes my install of pwidgets redundant, but the eye candy is soo pretty...

Overall the most important improvement of PupEee 4.32 over previous versions is the change to Chrome and pwireless2 - those two changes alone is worth the trouble of upgrading.

PupEee 4.31 is discussed in this thread at EeeUser.com, has it's own forum here, and can be downloaded from this site.

Above: Beta 5, with eee-control, powertop and chrome running

Below: The various functions on the task bar

More PupEee stuff

One of the things I discovered that I really like under PupEee is the multiple workspaces - it's almost as good as having a multi-monitor setup. In one workspace i can have my browser and IM running, in the other I can open AbiWord and get some typing done - all without cluttering the narrow task bar too much. And I can simply change between the two with a simple key-combo.

Never saw the utility of running multiple work spaces when I'm fiddling with Linux on my desktop, but on a pocket-able computer with a small screen it's a godsend.

PupEee 4.31 Beta 3

Recently i find that I do more and more of my 'serious' work under PupEee - PupEee 4.31 beta 3 to be exact. There is a number of reasons for this, firstly the rather impressive boot time (30 sec from I pick the SD card in the boot menu until the desktop is usable, 41 sec until my WiFi is connected). The change from SeaMonkey to Chrome as the browser certainly helps too - SM never felt like a modern browser to me, and since I don't download mail to my Eee the loss of the built in email client is no loss at all.

I also like that 4.31 - or at least the betas - is not downloaded as ISO files, but rather as separate files. This means that updating the beta is as simple as replacing one squash file (.sfs) with a new one and the distro is updated.

Pretty much the only addition I've done to the basic distro is adding pwidgets - useful little widgets sitting along the side of the screen giving me the basic info on the status of my Eee.

PupEee in a very '60 style

A somewhat calmer PupEee

Not much has happened

Not too much has happened since the last post - my Eee simply works as it should.

The RunCore SSD I won is working wonderfully - from a subjective point of view it serves up files faster, and it consumes less power while doing it as well. For now it works as my repository of movies while I'm at work, but Really Soon Now™ I'll try to put a WinXP install on it - hopefully it'll be somewhat faster than the USB stick I'm currently running WinXP from.

The other piece of news is that I've updated from PupEee 4.2 to the 4.3 Beta - not much have changed apart from the connection manager, and that works much, much better than it used to. It also seems to boot somewhat faster, but I have no hard numbers to back that up. Next step will be to install an up to date FireFox on it and I'm set.

Initial review RunCore 2.5 Inch Pro IV SATA SSD

I've gotten a lucky break, and won a RunCore 2.5 Inch Pro IV SATA SSD from MyDigitalDiscount. It arrived just the other day, and this morning I finally had the time to unpack it and form my first impressions.

Initial assessment was very favorable - the packaging is sturdy, yet not impossible to open. Thank you for not using a f---ing blister pack runCore!

Opening the package simply acts to assert that my initial assessment indeed was correct - this is a very well thought out and put together piece of kit. You'll get the following:
- the 2.5" SSD
- a aluminum enclosure to allow you to use it as an external drive
- two screwdrivers
- a USB cable
- two stickers for bragging rights

In the package I received from MDD I also found a nice RunCore tshirt, but somehow I don't think thats part of the standard kit.

Since my beloved 701 4G does not come with room or connectors for a second SSD, my plan is to use the RunCore as an external drive for now. Later - when I'm done traveling abroad - it will end up either as the primary drive in a newer Eee or as the system drive in my desktop. This means that it'll for now have to live in the enclosure.

The enclosure consists of two aluminum half shells, held together by a plastic hoop piece. Inside the hoop there is just enough room for the drive and the supplied PCB - but a snug fit here is good since it means there is no way the drive will disconnect from the PCB and cause problems. Once the hoop was in place, it was a simple matter to fix the alluminum shell to the hoop with the supplied screws and the smaller of the two screwdrivers.

This is the one point where the kit fails somewhat - the smallest screwdriver is a little large for the very tiny screws that comes with the enclosure, meaning you risk stripping the heads if you're not careful. A very minor niggle, but the only one I found so far.


The drive was recognized both by my Eee and my desktop with no trouble. It has some software on it to help you migrate an exiting installation, but that is Windows Only... but a Linux user can manage much the same with a few simple commands in the terminal.


Since I havn't had much time to play around with it et, I can't say much for it's speed and such yet - but I can say as much that it's faster than ye old external drive for moving between directories, pulling up movies and playing them.
And now: pictures!

Hints, tips and tricks part six

Yet again, more hints, tips and tricks I've picked up so far:

I can't get out of Advanced Mode / I can't get back to Easy Mode

• The "brute force and ignorance" way is to do a F9 Restore - however this will lose all your changes and settings.
• A subtler way is to run the personalization applet - open a console and use the command /opt/xandros/bin/password_dialog This ought to give you the option to choose between Easy Mode and Advanced Mode as your Login Mode.
• Or you can replace the startsimple.sh and startfull.sh scripts with unmodified copies. This should as far as I understand make the Eee boot into Easy Mode with the option of using the shut down dialog to go to advanced mode. You can find unmodified copies of the two scripts right here.

I want (software) to start when my Eee boots

• Open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+t), type sudo kwrite /etc/alternatives/x-session-manager and hit enter.
• Add (software) & to the end of the file. In other words, if you want FireFox to start when your Eee boots, add firefox & to the end of the file.
• Save the file, exit KWrite, and exit the console by typing exit and hit enter.
• Reboot and enjoy.

Hints, tips and tricks, part five

Still more tips and tricks I've picked up while owning my Eee:

 

Forgotten super user password

• The superuser password is the same as the one you set as you powered on your Eee the first time and went through the first run wizard.
• If you can't recall it, set a new one with sudo passwd user
• The easiest way to change the username is to delete the hidden file /home/user/.firstrundone and restart. You will go back through the First Run Wizard where you can re/set your username, password and locale.
• If you want to delete that file, but cant log in on your Eee (since you forgotten the password), you can start your Eee in Rescue Mode, or boot from a USB stick using a Live Distro like PupEee or BrowserLinux.

Enable Advanced Mode, aka Full Desktop

• Download pimpmyeee.sh from this location to /home/user/
• Open the File Manager, rightclick on the file you just downloaded and rename to pimpmyeee.sh (in other words, delete the version mumber from the file name).
• Open a console (Ctrl+Alt+t) and type chmod +x pimpmyeee.sh and press enter. This will make the script executable.
• Type sh pimpmyeee.sh, and press enter. This will run the script.
• Select 'Enable extra repositories' by pressing the coresponding key and press enter. Magic will happen.
• Select 'Enable full desktop' by pressing the corresponding key and press enter again. More magic takes place.
• Exit pimpmyeee, and close the console by typeing exit and pressing enter.
• You should now have the option to go to the advanced desktop on the shut down menu, and you might also have the option to set your login mode to Full Desktop Mode with the Personalization app on the Settings tab.

Review of the Sony Reader PRS-505

I've bought a used PSR-505, and I must say that it promises a lot and delivers it too.

Lets start from the outside. The cover, which is made from a synthetic leatherlike material, is both sturdy and easy to keep clean. Compare this to the cover that came with the Kindle 1, which I know from first hand experience gets really funky with finger grease after a while, or the Kindle 2 which comes with no cover. The 505's cover is securely fastened to the - for lack of a better term - spine of the reader, and includes magnetic stripes to help keep the 'book' closed. It also opens completely flat - meaning I can keep the Reader open on the table and still have my hands free. Now, try that with a paperback... =)

The device itself is clean, uncluttered and oozes of build quality. Not only is the casing in brushed aluminium, the keys have virtually no movement in any other direction than down (ie; no rattling keys). All keys also have smooth travel and solid feedback - you know when you pushed a button on this device. The screen - 6" diagonally, just like the more well known Kindle 1 and 2 - is clear and very, very easy to read under most conditions. More on that in a bit, lets first return to the buttons and their uses.

The main buttons for changing pages are on right side of the device, naturally falling under my thumb as I hold the Reader as I would any other book with two hands. The secondary buttons for turning the pages are in the bottom left corner - right under my thumb as I hold the Reader in my left hand only. Or you can simply use the numbered keys along the right side of the screen to enter a page number directly. The centre of the right hand wheel works as an enter key, while the arrows around the wheel lets you navigate around pages too large to be shown at the Readers screen.

Flanking the wheels are three more buttons - zoom, bookmark and menu. The former lets you select from three levels of zoom, while the later brings up the devices various menu screens. To get to the top level, one have to hit the button multiple times - from reading a book it takes four clicks to get to the top. More on the menu system in a bit - first lets briefly mention the bookmarks.

Bookmarks is one function I didn't find much mention of in the various mainstream reviews of the unit, but one that strikes me as particularly useful - simply put it lets you place a dogs ear at the page you're currently at. These bookmarks can later be returned to, either in each individual book or - and this is the clincher - on a library wide basis. Imagine the uses for this when you got a Reader filled with technical documents, textbooks or various job documents!

The menu system takes a little getting used to, but once the basis is understood you can easily navigate it. The various options are presented lined up with the numbered buttons, and all you have to do to select any option is to press the related button. If you find yourself in a place you don't want to be - for instance you selected books by title, but meant to select books by author - all you need to do is to tap the Menu button to go back up.

Now, the important part of any eBook reader is it's screen... and the screen on the PRS-505 is very impressive. Granted, it takes half a second to update, and it 'only' displays 8 shades of grey, but compare that to a regular pocketbook; it'll take you about half a second to turn a page, and most illustrations are no better (and often worse) than they appear on the Readers screen. You can't read it in darkness as you can the screen of the Eee, but you can read it in full sunlight... in fact, I find the eInk display on the Reader as easy to read as a regular book.

The Reader also have two slots for memory cards - SD / SDHC and Sonys own MemoryStick DUO. While I havn't played around with that feature much yet, I've to say that the Reader not only reads my cameras SD card, but displays the photos in this blogpost beautiful.

Off course, no review of a device such as the Reader would be complete without a look at it's 'puter-side software. And I'm forced to say... despite how much the Reader shines, the eBook Library is somwhat... lacking. Not only is it somewhat clunky as far as importing files goes, but the fact that it insists on dumping everything into 'books' for me to manually go through to add to 'collections' later is somewhat unforgiving... also, the lack of being able to drag a valid book file from my file manager into the Library is counter-intuitive from what I have gotten to expect from software over the last fifteen or so years.

Despite the failings of the PC software, I can wholeheartedly recommend the 505. It simply rocks!

The 505 masquerading as a slim, leather bound book. Sharpie for size reference.

The opened book. Note how the screen is white - not black - when the Reader is off. All the controls can bee seen in this photo.

Close up text at the lowest level of magnification. Notice how sharp the eInk is, even in low light conditions.

Hints, tips and tricks, part four

Over the last year and a half I've learned a few things about the standard Xandros installation, and made notes of some of them. I've decided to tidy up my notes, and share the answer to some of the more common questions asked on the EeeUser Forums here on my woefully infrequent blog:

Install FBreader on a 2G, or any other Eee that don't have it as standard

This is based on http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:install_thunderbird_on_2g

• Change the repositories to point at 701 rather than 700 - this could be done either through Synaptic (sudo synaptic), Settings, Repositories, or else by running: sudo kwrite /etc/apt/sources.list Make the modifcation, then saving (Ctrl+o, Enter), then exiting (Ctrl+x)
• Press “Reload” in Synaptic, or, type into a terminal (Alt+Ctrl+t): sudo apt-get update If you get an error message, try the next steps anyway. The error message may not be critical.
• Staying in terminal, download and install FBreader: sudo apt-get install FBReader
• Type exit and press enter to exit terminal.
• To run FBReader, either type FBReader in a terminal, or use Launcher Tools to create an icon.
• Once you have verified that it runs, change your repositories back - same procedure as stated in the first step.

I get f u n n y   l o o k i n g text in fireFox (or other application)

• Ty hitting Shift+Space - you may have to hit it twice.
• The culprit is SCIM - Smart Common Input Metod - which is there to allow you to enter chinese text... you may want to remove it (see last weeks post for how).

Small review of chargers

Recently I bought two new things for my Eee; a charger that lets me recharge a battery outside my Eee, and a carcharger. I bought both of these from Clove.co.uk, but I've seen the same models for sale elsewhere on the 'net - including MDD. Both Clove and MDD also have the same devices for the newer Eees - the main difference is the voltage and the number of pins on the charger.

The little charger is a tiny device - a mere 45 X 18 X 32 mm. It's designed with little 'legs' that stops you from inserting it the wrong way in the battery, thus protecting you from all sort of electrical mayhem, while the build quailty is high enought that the small and admitedly lightweight charger feels very sturdy. It seems to charge the battery at the same speed as when I charge the battery in my Eee, but off course I have no hard evidence to back this up.

The charger is equiped with a light that glows green when the charger is powered by the wallwart with no battery in, red when it's charging a battery and green again when the battery is full. The light is my one complain about this chager too - the green LED is always on, even while the battery is charging, and from certain angles the green light will drown out the red. Off course, just moving my head slightly breaks the illusion, allowing me to see the red light.

The carcharger is a fair bit bulkier, ut then it has to incorporate a lot more - after all it'll happily accept anything from 10V to 18V and churn out reasonable clean 9.5V. The build quality of the carcharger is higher than I expected after being exposed to other chargers to plug into the car previously, so it came as a pleasant suprice. The contact springs on the sides of the body is strong, minimizing any risk of it working itself loose while driving.

My Eee sees perfectly happy running of the carcharger, and it also works great alongside the small charger to top off my battery while I'm paying attention to the road. If I later decides to invest in a GPS reciver and use my Eee to navigate, the carcharger will become an indisposable part of that setup.

Overall, a good investment.

And now, the photos!

Just slot the thing on.

The little legs on the chargers means you cannot plug it in the wrong way around.

This is my large battery, but it shows how small the charger is.

The carcharger - note the red 10A fuze.

As it sits in my car - you can just make out the green LED on the top letting me know it's juiced up.

Normally I will keep the battery somewhere safer, but for the sake of the photo I simply placed it on the seat.

Red means it's acharging, but...

...from certain angles it looks green.

Hints, tricks and tips for the Eee, part three

Over the last year and a half I've learned a few things about the standard Xandros installation, and made notes of some of them. I've decided to tidy up my notes, and share the answer to some of the more common questions asked on the EeeUser Forums here on my woefully infrequent blog:

I have sound issues

• Run alsamixer from a console to check your settings

I want to delete unwanted software from Xandros to gain more space

• Disable UnionFS / aufs per the EeeUser wiki
• Remove unwanted software with either:
• Synaptic (open terminal, run 'sudo synaptic', see helpfile)
• Apt-get (open terminal, run 'apt-get -h' to see help, basic command is 'sudo apt-get remove (packagename)', may or may not play nice with dependancies)
• Aptitude (open terminal, run 'sudo aptitude remove (packagename)', should behave with dependancies)
• Optional, but if you want to gain space: Resize partitions to reclaim space.
• Optional, but needed to be able to F9 restore: Restore UnionFS / aufs.

Hints, tricks and tips for the Eee, part two

Over the last year and a half I've learned a few things about the standard Xandros installation, and made notes of some of them. I've decided to tidy up my notes, and share the answer to some of the more common questions asked on the EeeUser Forums here on my woefully infrequent blog:

I can't find the restore DVD

• Buy it from AsusParts.eu
• There is a downloadable 701 ISO here and a 901 ISO here, but some reports seems to indicate that does not contain everything - specificity the windows software to make a bootable USB stick. The WinXP booting tools, including the ones we are talking about, and if not in your particular iso are to be found here. Choose: eeepc, eeepc series, eeepc 4G/XP, search and go to utilities, asus usb flash utility. You can also make the restore USB on Linux.
• You may also want to look into the XEPC Upgrade Disk, an updated and cleaned up distrubution.

After I updated / changed something, I only get a black screen

• Try Ctrl + (right arrow) up to three times to make sure you havn't booted into one of the other workspaces.
• Try opening a console and use the following command: /usr/bin/startsimple.sh
• If you backed up your simpleui.rc, try restoring it (both described in the wiki). There is also a copy of the original 701 simpleui.rc and the original 901 simpleui.rc on the EeeUser wiki.
• "Brute force and ignorace": F9 Restore.

Hints, tricks and tips for the Eee, part one

Over the last year and a half I've learned a few things about the standard Xandros installation, and made notes of some of them. I've decided to tidy up my notes, and share the answer to some of the more common questions asked on the EeeUser Forums here on my woefully infrequent blog:

How to open the terminal / console

• To open a terminal in Easy Mode: Ctrl+Alt+T / (little house)+t
• To open a terminal in Advanced Mode: (Launch-Applications-System-Console)
• To go to a true terminal, Alt+Ctrl+F1. Each F key is a new terminal, and F7 will take you back to X. NOTE: I can't get this to work myself, neither in Easy nor Advanced mode...

How to add fonts

• Download the font to somewhere on your Eee, or to a usb stick.
• Open a console with Ctrl+Alt+t in Easy Mode, or via the Launch menu (Launch-Applications-System-Console) in Advanced Mode.
• Type sudo kcontrol and press enter. This will open the control panel as a superuser.
• In the control panel, navigate to Display - Theme - Font Installer.
• Click Continue on the dialog box that appears.
• Click the Add Fonts button.
• Navigate to where you got the font downloaded, hightlight it and click Open.
• Close the Control Panel
• In the console, enter exit and press enter.
• Fonts should now be installed and ready to use.

Three weeks abroad with my Eee

For the second time this year (last time was in May), I have spent three weeks away from my desktop - away from home even - with my trusty Eee 701 as my primary (and only) computer.

The experience was about 99.9% positive - the only let down was when I was unable to connect to the free WiFi at Philadelphia International Airport since their malformed verification page expected people to use Internet Explorer. In other places - like at various Bob Evans restaurants and fast food joints - I got around that by using Konqueror, but at PHL that trick just didn't work.

Peoples reaction to the 701 is quite amazing, considering the fact that it's two years since it was released. People came up to me to ask questions and marvel at how small, portable and easy to use it was. An eye-opener for me is the people who admitted to owning a netbook, but found theirs too big to be truly portable... unlike mine.

As before, I find the screen size and resolution to suit my needs perfectly, with just a handful of sites requiring horizontal scrolling. It's also just the right size for watching movies on while on long haul flights. Just fold down the tiny table, plug in headphones, and enjoy the movie of your choice; I brought a nice selection of old SciFi B-movies.

The keyboard is, as before, excellent for both short term and long term typing. Bashing out an email or working on large documents is a breeze, the only niggle is the lack of 'proper' page up and down keys.

The WiFi worked almost too well - picking up free hotspots all over the place as well as a couple of poorly secured networks. Interestingly enough, I saw more hotspots with my Eee running Xandros than others did with large laptops running XP...

On this trip I got to appreciate the universal charger - while I usually have some juicy 230VAC in the outlets I use, I had to charge my Eee from puny 110VAC outlets. It did take more time to fully top off my 6600mAh batteries, but two of those keeps me going all day so it wasn't a big problem.

I also found a near perfect 'go-bag' for my Eee and other sundry items; the Maxpedition Jumbo Versipack. It holds my Eee, the charger, a spare battery, a couple of books, keys, papers, Mp3-player and more... just the thing I need for my next big trip abroad.

And I found yet another use for PupEee - amaze people by booting into a different OS from a tiny card... Kind of a silly trick, but one that shows off the versatility of the Eee quite well.

As for downsides to the Eee... well, the only thing I can think of that I missed is a built in CFcard reader - but blame that on me having an old digital camera and forgetting my USB cable.

And since no post is complete without pictures, here is a fuzzy caterpillar I photographed while travelling.

Photos of Vampire flight!

Went for a little flight today - so I have photos to share. Click on each to make it larger.