A Small Report, Episode IV

Well, the last three weeks are just a blur. There has been a bunch of things that I've done, yet I have trouble recollecting them. Let's see.

I noticed that the batteries for my old camera (a 2.1M Canon Digital Ixus V) are getting old. The one that best maintains its charge keeps the camera going for fifteen minutes or so. The worst battery has just enough juice for two and half a minute of use, on full charge. So I got a new one, a 12.1M Nikon Coolpix S700, which was on sale for 99€ (a new battery for the Canon would have been around 50€). It's last year's model and probably has less goodies that more recent models, but it got quite favorable reviews when it was new, so it was probably a good deal.

Oh, and I now have a new computer. I went the netbook route and got an Acer Aspire One (Linux/512MB/8GB SSD) on sale for 200€ and also purchased 1GB extra RAM for it for 11€. So far, I'm quite impressed with it--the keyboard is decent (if a bit smallish) and the system runs fairly well. Some thoughts:

• It boots in 15-20 seconds (depending on how you count)! That's pretty impressive, all things considered. On the other hand, it is pretty slow to shut down, maybe they are actually rebooting and hibernating rather than just shutting down? My Ubuntu desktop takes longer to start but is quick to shut down.
• 8GB is actually plenty. (On my desktop, I have about 4GB in use, excluding my home directory.) Unfortunately, the AAO seems to ship with a lot of various... stuff installed by default. I haven't had time to really browse the list of installed software yet, but I thought I saw something about a DHCP server (among other things) when I quickly glanced through it. What is that doing there? Is it somehow essential? There's plenty of those, and once I have time I will go through the list and see what I think can be removed and what can't. Regardless, I have put in an order for a 16GB SDHC just in case (I read that the AAO supports 16GB SDHCs, in spite of Acer's claims to the contrary--and if it turns out it doesn't, I can trade with the 8GB SDHC I purchased for my camera), because I really don't want to risk running out of storage space at some point when I truly would need it.
• Installing the extra RAM is annoyingly difficult--you actually have to take the entire laptop apart in order to fit the memory chip. There is a removable plate on the bottom, but it does not line up with the memory chip slot. In fact, I don't think the plate lines up with anything. Ridiculous... Either way, once the RAM had been added it seemed safe to drop the Swap partition and reclaim 1GB storage space.
• The pre-compiled kernel does not support iptables. What's up with that? Surely Acer must understand that many buyers get the AAO for its portability, and connecting straight to the Internet without a firewall does not seem like a sensible option, especially not if it runs DHCP servers and stuff.

But... yeah. So far, so good. Quite impressive. As I said, I have put in an order for a SDHC card (16GB/40€ rather than the 8GB/17€ I initially had in mind). I also decided to get a soft case for 19€ since I don't have any suitable carrying case for something that small. That totals up to 270€, not too bad for a 1.6GHz netbook with 24GB solid state storage and 1.5GB RAM.

As for the HP laptop... I dunno. HP seems pretty confused at the moment. Initially I only found the tx2590 in stores (now for 800€). Then I found out about the tx2690 from HP's website, but the stats were evidently later pulled. Then the tx2670 appeared on their website, which is now also pulled. You can search for them and find some pages about them that way, but last I checked they are not included in the official lists. So I have no idea when the tx26xx models will appear in stores, and apparently, neither does HP... well, I got the AAO now, so I will play around with it and check back in half a year or so. (I still crave that touch screen. *grin*)

Otherwise... not much has happened. I played some board games twice the last two weeks, and have watched lots of movies, but read quite little, except I have read some of the latest CS book. I have also done some fiddling around with the MediaWiki, including setting up e-mail on the system. What I haven't done is gone to the gym. :-( I really have to make a better effort with that. Perhaps after Christmas...