Acer Aspire One D150 + Windows 7 Ultimate: 6 months on ...

I've spent the last year or so hopping from one operating system to another in a quest to find what works best (for me) on netbooks in general and specifically on the Acer Aspire One(AAO) D150 that I bought in May 2009. That journey took me from the default (as it was then) Windows XP build, through a number of Linux Distributions, to Windows 7 RC, and now to Windows 7 Ultimate.

The thing that is most telling is that I haven't changed my installed operating system in 6 months.

Right from the first boot (half the time taken to book Windows XP) it was obvious that Windows 7 was a different prospect to it's predecessors. It is well thought out, robust, friendly, not a resource drain (despite a number of posts and articles recently trying to imply the opposite). Simple things like the integrated device driver database now mean you can plug in any common USB device - that printer in clients office that you have never used before - and be able to use it straight away, no drivers to download, no reboot required.

Windows 7 has worked so well that I am comfortably sat in my office writing this post with my AAO plugged into an external mouse, keyboard and monitor and having a very comfortable and productive experience. These peripherals aren't essentials either - my AAO has been a more-or-less constant companion since I bought it and I would estimate it gets 12+ hours use just about every day.

Don't think that I only use it to surf and handle my email: I'm launching my new communications agency on the 18th March (PH Digital Communications - take a look at http://www.ph-digital.co.uk) and the brand design, 3D animation, Flash and website programming including some AR (augmented reality work) were all done on my netbook. My installed software ranges from the expected (Firefox, Thunderbird, Skype, Sky Player, MS Office) through to the more exotic (Flash 8, Flash CS4, Adobe Creative Suite CS2, Dreamweaver, Blender, Second Life amongst others).

I've made only one hardware change to the netbook - I've swapped it's 1GB standard RAM module for the maximum 2GB, but that's it.

Will I need a more powerful computer? Yes - I'll undoubtedly need a more powerful desktop for animation rendering and larger scale 3D work, and I have an old desktop configured as a server, backup and printer host. Will I trade my netbook up for a laptop? Not in the near future. My AAO has served me flawlessly through buiness presentations and anything I have needed to do whilst out on business and it's 6 hour battery life has been a great help. All from a computer that a grand total of about £300. The extreme portability coupled with enough power and the broad features and stability makes this a winning solution for my needs.

Jolicloud - may just become the best Linux for your netbook?

I've been waiting to write this for about 6 months, since I first heard of Jolicloud, a revolutionary new linux based OS for netbooks.

The fact that Jolicloud is based on Ubuntu stands it in good stead already. But Joliclouds developers have invested a significant ammount of effort in changing the way the the OS approaches applications and - the clue is in the name - takes a more cloud computing friendly approach to their deployment.

Installing the alpha was completed in about 25 minutes from a 2GB USB stick and was a very simple process. Clear instructions were provided on the site for both creating the USB and running the installation. The installation is also familiar - it's the same as the standard Ubuntu installer and making the same choices delivers an installation.

So what's the difference? Well, Jolicloud is designed to take a much more web-based / cloud computing approach to delivering applications and services to your netbook. After the install has completed, you have only a relatively basic set of applications in place, and, on first inspection no obvious way to add them (Synaptic doesn't appear in the application menu as it normally would) ... then you follow the instructions and log into the Jolicloud and it all starts to make sense.

This is where the key difference between Jolicloud and other Linux distributions shows up. Synaptic is now replaced by a much more visual and interactive menu that includes updates, application installation as well as including notifications, profile management and (in the future) community elements. It's this that helps to make Jolicloud such an interesting package.

Where have I go to now? Well. I have the usual Firefox / Mozilla / OpenOffice combination installed. In addition, I have Wine and Winedoors (the latter had to be downloaded and installed manually), and running on that I have Flash 8, Dreamweaver 8 and Photoshop CS2. The only thing that I needed to install by hand with Synaptic was Rhythmn Box. A music player is available, but just wasn't what I wanted. I think the key point of this is that should you need to do something by hand, you can, and it doesn't break everything.

I've been running for over a week now, and it's all good. It's easy, even for an Alpha, I haven't yet found something that doesn't work. I like it, and by the time this has reached a final release I suspect Ubuntu 9.04 is going to face a serious challenge (if not and outright winner) in the netbook market.

Windows vs. Linux on netbooks ... some mixed results

Well, I've done a number of tests around this and I have to say that I get very mixed result and it seems for a number of reasons. So what I'm going to do here is explain case-by-case what happened.

Case 1 - Business users:
In one of the companies that I work for we trialled a pair of EeePC 901s running linux as a cheap, long battery-life portable solution for getting people to work on trains without needing to carry a laptop and it's assorted clutter around. This worked reasonably well, but the thing that stopped it being a success was that the Linux OS stopped the users (non-techy, account managers) from feeling comfortable with the EeePCs ... they didn't treat them as laptops, but more like mobile phones or PDAs - as though they were inherently less capable than an equivalent Windows based laptop. So we installed Windows XP on both and immediately found that the users opinions changed and we started having problems getting them back.

Case 2 - Domestic user:
My wife changed jobs recently and needed a computer to take with her so she could make use of the time she would be spending on the train. So I installed Windows 7 RC on my EeePC 900 as my wife had expressed some negative opinions about using Linux (and we've heard a lot about Windows 7 being less demanding than Vista) and the end result was essentially useable. Boot times looked good (45 seconds for a login prompt, +50 seconds to get to desktop and able to start an application) but the problems came with the time taken to get out of sleep mode (several minutes) or to shut down (over 5 minutes). The following evening I replaced Windows 7 with Ubuntu 9.04 and the EeePC 900 went from dead-weight to useful (and incidentally, my wife has been getting on just fine with Linux).

What do I make of this? People like netbooks because despite lower performance and smaller size they offer increased portability and a superior user experience to a 3G phone or MID. The OS is still a key component to this user experience and the simple familiarity of Windows can make up for the other issues and present a viable proposition .... except Ubuntu 9.04 has rasied the bar on this, with much improved performance vs. Windows and a much slicker user experience. The gap between the two propositions (Windows and Linux) is diminishing and I hope to see this close further with some of the up-coming Linux releases - Fedora 11 and Jolicloud being two that I'm particularly interested in.

Netbook + Windows XP = Still the most usable combination?

I hate to be writing this. As you may have spotted from the rest of my blog, I love Linux and I own an EeePC 900. OK. I've tried a number of distributions and I have come to a conclusion that I don't actually like: Install Windows XP. Because in the end, it is just easier, and you'll be more productive because more of the software that you want to use will work.

It is a sad state of affairs really. We all know that Windows XP isn't all that - let's face it, we're talkign about an OS that has some fundamental flaws. But what it offers, and what I really hope that the Linux community will soon provide is true ease of use.

For example, I have a 3G usb modem that I can use while travelling. The device has a memory stick built in that contains the drivers - for both Windows and Linux. The Windows drivers install first time and work, the Linux drivers won't install properly and don't provide any feedback on why.

I don't actually want to use Windows XP - it feels like a step backwards. It just happens to work better. I'm hoping that JoliCloud will provide a real alternative ... then theres Windows 7 ...

Windows XP on Netbooks ... Just say 'no'!

Even I have had a breif go with Windows XP on a netbook. But it's just wrong. The whole point of a netbook was to be small, cheap, robust, portable ... not something that is inherrent with Windows XP.

This article http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/06/microsoft-boasts-that-96-of-netbooks-now-run-windows/ explains how Microsoft is feeling pleased with themselves about their market saturation. If the numbers are true, then it's a pity. The linux community offers a belief in it's own product and a clarity of vision that has long been missing from Microsoft.

So the question is: why have XP on all these netbooks? Because of one simple fact: Windows XP make things easy. There are no hurdles to overcome, no difficulties in achieving simple or complex tasks. Downloaded software just installs and works. The drivers for the hardware always exist.

That is the one thing that the Linux community needs to learn from Microsoft - make it easy. I shouldn't have to do *anything* from the command line to make something work.