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Asus Eee PC… Tomorrow?

Ok, if the local Best Buy has an Asus Eee PC tomorrow, I’ll get one. I’ve done a whole lot of reading this week, and for the price, and what you get, it’s a good match for what I need.

As I mentioned, I want a very portable device, that does not cost too much, and lets me connect to the net and do basic things. Even if I pay $400 for an Eee PC, a new MacBook would cost more than twice that, be more than twice as heavy, and probably break. Don’t get me wrong, I love my iMac, and all the other Macs around me, but I’m comfortable with Linux, and a portable internet appliance is just what I need. If Apple could make an under $500 small laptop (think Mac-mini + iBook) they’d probably sell a zillion of them, but until then, Asus is the one to watch.

Still, there are questions… If the system gets mucked-up, can you do a reinstall? Can it do it over the net somehow? Does it come with install disks? It has no optical drive, so would you need a USB optical drive? Could you backup the entire system to a USB device or SD card for re-install? What can you install on the Eee PC? On the internal storage versus an SD card or USB stick? Apache? MySQL? PHP? Is gcc on there? Can you easily add it? Many of these questions don’t have answers yet, but might in the next week or so.

I ended up calling Best Buy yesterday and asking about the Eee PC, and they suggested calling back on the 1st or 2nd, since Thursday and Friday are when new shipments come in. I’d prefer to just go buy one rather than order online, but if that’s not an option (I’ve read somewhere that Best Buy may not be selling them now?) I’ll figure something else out…


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Asus Eee PC

I’m interested in the Asus Eee PC. Very interested. In fact, if I can get one before the end of the year for around $300, I probably will.

Since the iBook died, and the Wallstreet is pretty much useless, I’ve been thinking about what I’d like (and what I need) in a mobile computing device. Since I manage servers, and really need to access the net at various unknown times, and on occasion need something to take with me, I first looked at the Nokia 770. I saw this device when it was released, but didn’t really look too closely because of the price. Once the N800 came out, the 770 dropped in price and I looked a bit more closely. Technology moves fast, so when the N810 came out, the price on the N800 dropped and I considered that over the 770. I still think they are great devices, and I’m a big Nokia fan, but I’m not sure any of these would suit my needs.

Asus Eee PC

At BarCampMilwaukee2 I had heard Matt and Blake talk about the Asus Eee PC. Once I looked at it, it looked sweet! Since Matt and I are both victims of Apple lack of quality in building laptops that last, it seems we are both looking at the Eee PC as a small, cheap alternative to a traditional laptop.

Yes, I did say cheap. While I’d love a MacBook or MacBook Pro, I cannot easily justify the cost. I work on desktop machines most of the time, probably 95% of the time, but for that 5% where I would really like to be mobile, I can justify $200-$500. That amount won’t even get a used/reliable Mac laptop.

I’m still waiting for reviews to roll in, but so far, things are looking good. This may be the first new non-Apple computer I’ve bought in the last 10 years or so.


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Uninterruptable Power Supply

Last weekend one of my uninterruptable power supplies started beeping. It stopped after a few hours, but I wondered if maybe I needed to replace the battery or something. (One of them is just 2 years old, the other is 7+ years old!)

Well, we just lost power, and they both seemed to hold up well for the few minutes of blackout. Whew… The home linux server now says: uptime 211 days, 13 hours, 57 minutes

Of course Emma was playing Animal Crossing and lost some data. Hmmm, maybe we need a UPS for the GameCube.

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Desktop Linux (is back!)

More appropriately, I’m back using Linux on the desktop. (A subject that was written about in many posts, many years ago…)

So today was my first full day using Debian as a desktop OS and it went pretty well. I still prefer Mac OS X for the desktop, but Linux still beats the hell out of Windows. My editor (yes, I am still using jEdit) worked quite well. In fact, it probably works better on Linux than on Mac OS X. Firefox (er, Iceweasel) is my browser of choice, and Gaim is, um, not Adium but it will work. And terminal is tabbed, like iTerm, so that’s good.

I don’t have to worry about audio/video stuff since I’m just doing development (and my iBook is always handy) but I’m guessing I may have to fire up The Gimp at some point…

Luckily, for my main tools (web, email, editor, terminal, etc.) I’ve typically stuck with things that are open-source and cross-platform. Firefox over Safari, jEdit over TextMate, and so on. This has allowed me to be put in front of a Windows machine, a Mac, or even a Linux box, and been able to use familiar tools. It also helps since I typically use 3 or 4 different Macs, so licensing isn’t a big concern.

Don’t get me wrong… If I had a choice, I would have chose to have a machine running OS X. Not because of the eye-candy or the (supposed) sex appeal, but because my productivity would be so much higher. I’m just an OS X user, having used it daily for the last 6 years or so…

I will miss Interarchy for file transfers though! Any recommended clients for Linux?




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Linksys NSLU2 versus ????

We put a Linksys NSLU2 in place about 4 months ago with two 500GB drives attached. One drive is meant to mirror the other for backup purposes. (See Small Business – Server & Backup)

Things have not been perfect. At least a few times in the last month I’ve had to reboot the NSLU2 because it could not be seen on the network. In most cases pulling out the power cord, plugging it back in, and powering on the device solves things, but really, should we have to do that? Shouldn’t the thing just work?

NSLU2 We’ve also had some weird permission problems. We’re a Mac-shop, and most of the files don’t really rely on having their unixy-permissions correct, but some do, like the files that go onto the web sites. A file on my Mac set to -rw-r–r– gets copied to the NSLU2 and is then set to -rwx——. This is bad bad bad! If we try to upload files directly to a web site, or even to our Macs, and then to a web site, they can’t be viewed, as the permissions are hosed.

I’m also not happy about the fact that we can’t plug the NSLU2’s drives into a Mac and get to the files. I’ve tried using Mac OS X Ext2 Filesystem but it didn’t work. This means if the NSLU2 dies, we would have to get another one to get to the files.

I think the NSLU2 is a nice little device for the hacker to play with, or maybe for a home network of Windows machines, or even Macs, where file permissions don’t matter, but I’m just not sure it can cut it for a small business.

AirPort Extreme

I know other companies make NAS devices that may fit our needs, but looking at the Apple AirPort Extreme, it just might fit the bill. It probably doesn’t have some of the nice features of the NSLU2, but we could easily add a USB hub and our external drives and be up and running. I trust Apple hardware to be reliable, easy to use, and work seamlessly with our Macs. The price is about double the NSLU2, but it may be worth it.

We have two other options right now. We could install Linux on the NSLU2 and see if that fixes the problems. My reservation there is that NSLU2-Linux is a hacker project and I’m not sure what we’d lose/gain by switching what is running on the NSLU2.

The second option would be to take an old iMac running Mac OS X and attach the drives to it. This should take care of our permission problems, and also make it easy to attach the drives to any other Mac as needed. The downside here is that the iMac is older and since it would have to be running all the time it could fail. It also does not have some of the features of the NSLU2, but I can probably add them with a few cron jobs and Perl-fu.

So right now we may stick it out with the NSLU2 as is, but I’m always looking for better solutions.