Re-thinking my mobile tech

Right now, I carry an iPhone, an Asus EeePC netbook (running Ubuntu 10.04 NBR) on a daily work day basis. When I travel, I carry the iPhone and usually the EeePC. I also own a 13″ Toshiba laptop that I dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 7, but I only use the Toshiba only for teaching and presentations. My thought process is: Should I sell both the Toshiba and the netbook and get a thinner, lighter laptop? Just sell the...

Rick Answers his Email Videocast – 053

The summer has kept me busy and I let a few too many question stack up (remember that you can make a small donation when asking your question to get priority). I answered all the questions you asked the last 2 weeks in these two videos. The first video contains questions from Doris, Henry, Andrew, Jean, John, Rae Ann, Craig, Janet, Maurice, Leo, Ryan, Shirley, Jason, Donna, Jeannie, Dave, and Scott. They asked questions about...

Google entering the Operating System world with Ch...

Before I left for my monthly users group meeting this morning, I caught a quick glimpse of Google’s announcement to enter the world of operating systems on Twitter. Most folks in the tech business figured it would be a natural leap for Google to work towards their own operating system, especially after the release of their Chrome browser last year. I couldn’t wait to return home and participate in the techno...

An unfortunate event – Linux losing to Micro...

Netbooks are the class of laptops that have screens measuring from 7″ to 10″, have no CD or DVD-ROM and use a specially designed low power processor. Initially, these small and inexpensive laptops were released with different versions of Linux on them and they ran fast and ran well. Microsoft saw a huge potential loss in their market share and quickly used their muscle to interject themselves and Windows XP into...

Acer Aspire One Netbook

Today, I had my first opportunity to get some hands-on time with Acer’s entry into the netbook craze, the Acer Aspire One. The young lady I helped bought a blue Aspire One on Black Friday for just over $300. Sporting a 120GB hard drive, an extremely nice 8.9″ screen, 1 GB of RAM, and Windows XP, this little unit was very impressive to look at and use. After some discussion with me, she decided that she...

Netbooks are NOT made for Windows XP or Vista

One year ago, ASUS started a fire storm of new computers that now go by the name of netbooks with the release of their EeePC.  I wrote about this subject just a few months ago, but with the holidays approaching and netbooks are high on gift giver’s radar screens so I want to explore netbooks a little more in depth. Netbooks make attractive gift giving ideas for a few reasons: They are inexpensive; usually cost...

Lazy computer users

Over the past few days, the tech news sites and blogs have carried a story centered on a quote from a NetBook (tiny laptop) manufacturer stating that the company receives 4X the returns of Linux based systems versus Windows systems. The more often I saw this headline and read the articles, the more irritated I became. Computers are still in their infancy compared to much of the technology we use today. Americans have had...

New Dell Mini laptops

Dell has joined Everex, Acer, HP, Sony, and the ground breaking Asus Eee PC in the arena of the netbook. Netbooks are small laptops with a screen of 9″ or smaller and a weight of less than 2.5 pounds. They all run on either a form of Linux or Windows XP. The Dell Inspiron Mini (click the picture above to buy or read more about them) is Dell’s entry into this increasingly crowded and popular market. Remember that...

Asus started a whole new trend

I just returned from visiting my brother and his new baby and traveled, again, with only my phone and my Asus Eee PC. As usual, the little laptop did not disappoint. I was able to keep up with email, work with my spreadsheets and word processing documents and do other web research as well. All from a little marvel that cost less than $400 and weighs less than 2 pounds. Asus was the first to release a successful mini-laptop...