a record of thoughts

I had to wait a week before writing about the latest addition in my network — the ASUS Eee Box. If I may, I would say that the Eee Box is ASUS’ answer to Apple’s Mini PC; only smaller. The unit weighs 3lbs and is 1-inch thick (8.8x7x1) only. It comes with two mounts — one is for desktop mount and the other is a wall mount or like what ASUS advertises, the unit is mounted behind an LCD monitor to get the effect of “no box PC”. The box comes with wired keyboard and mouse. Of course if you chose the wireless route, you can do so because the machine already comes with wireless adapter (and antenna for range maximization). Knowing me, this featureis of course disabled. The machine is also very quiet and does not take up so much power consumption. The Box is also DVI ready so if your monitor has DVI, that would be great. For an average user, it won’t be a difficult computing because the Box is pre-installed with Windows XP Home Edition.

The Box!!!

Why did I have to purchase this gadget? For one, I wanted to test it and it’s cheap enough to experiment with. I plan to install other *NIX flavored OS in it instead of Windows. I also needed a PC that can serve MySQL database and it shouldn’t take space in my workspace and won’t consume so much power. Eee Box is the perfect specimen. The Box has been running since I bought it an a few restarts were executed because of Windows’ unfailing releases of bug fixes (don’t they get tired of this why not release a less buggy software instead).

I only recommend the  Box to an average user. Average I mean a user who only does: web browsing, chat, email, music, photos, occasional videos, word processing. I don’t prefer this to a hardcore user who may wish to do audio-visual editing and multi-tasking applications although it’s hyper-threading. However, it’s enough for daily computing.

Because ASUS Eee PC S101 is coming out next week! I’ve held MacBook Air and it’s as heavy as my EeeBox. My 701 with cover on is still lighter than MacBook Air. In UMPC standards, that’s like a desktop heavy. For $1000 less, I would go with a thinner and lighter S101. Though it comes with Microsoft’s Windows XP Home, I can always install another OS that I favor. What I love with the Eee series is boot time. Not much of a wait time when booting (on/off).

I can buy 3 S101s with one MacBook Air.

To create a database and give a user privilege to that database:

mysql> CREATE DATABASE temp;
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON temp.* TO 'bob'@'EEEPC'
    -> IDENTIFIED BY 'alice'
    -> WITH GRANT OPTION;

The privilege is full for Bob for all tables contained in the database called temp. Here, I explicitly defined the user’s host. That means Bob can only access the server if he used my Eee-PC. Even local access for Bob is not allowed because I did not add ‘bob’@'localhost’ in the GRANT command.

I borrowed my father’s notebook computer so that I can watch high quality video while I’m lying down on my bed. It’s running on Vista that I stripped off of every silly things Microsoft added. Anyway, I installed an MSNM and during the installation I was asked if I wanted to install the Writer which can be used to jot down offline entries for a blog. I wanted to try, so I installed the software. Here I am on my first entry using Windows Live Writer.

For a Windows user, it’s a great piece of software. Especially for me; I sometimes write my entries while on the ferry. I don’t have Windows in my Eee PC so I had to install an offline instance of WordPress in it. With Windows Live Writer, it’s pretty straightforward. No web server or database engine to run, just let MS do the work for you. I must admit, it may be one of a few software that I like from MS.

I’m already praising the software even before saving and publishing this entry. So here we go…

I’ve been out of Eee PC news for a while, so I decided to check on what ASUStek has in store for us. They have a 10.0″ beauty in the 1000H 80G model. I strongly recommend the unit for Windows-slave users because it has a gigabyte of RAM and 80GB hard drive running on Genuine Windows XP Home. It’s not a solid state drive before you get your hopes too high. The model I’m speaking of is using a regular hard drive which explains the minimal cost at huge storage space. Nonetheless, there’s a model sporting a 20GB SSD if you’re interested. The unit weighs 3.2lbs which is not bad. It’s a decent replacement for MacBooks that cost ridiculously high, Toshibas, or Sonys. The battery life is estimated to run at about 7.5 hours. That’s excellent provided the weight. It has Bluetooth capability in addition to WiFi. The webcam is stil mediocre, but it’s not an important peripheral for me.

I’m still not replacing my 701.

I noted here that I constantly encounter WiFi problems. After searching the web, many have said that Linux is not WiFi friendly. I guess it could be true, but I’m not converting my Eee PC to Windows. I agree that hardware drivers are very tricky when it comes to Linux and I suspect it’s causing my troubles (the connection status is forever stuck in PENDING). Well, yesterday I slightly  cleaned up my drivespace and my troubles seem to have went away. However, it’s still too early to conclude. If it really is true, maybe the system is unable to connect because it has no space to store data. I’ll be monitoring this in the next two weeks.

Asustek will be releasing the second generation of its Easy to learn, Easy to work, Easy to play PC ultra-mobile notebook on May 12 in the US at a starting price of $549 (12GB SSD on WinXP). The 900 will sport an 8.9″ viewable screen – just an inch and three quarters more than its predecessor – at 1024×600 resolution. It’s increase in size does not affect the overall weight of the UMPC. It weights about 2.18 lbs and a few millimeters larger than the 701. A few more enhancements were made by Asustek to further the gap from evolving UMPCs that are joining the competition. (more…)