A return to the norm.

I've paused my intense WoW playing for a short time to write some.

I bought a new netbook, again. I'm ditching the Acer Aspire One for my brand new (plastic still on it, but more on that later) Gateway LT3103u. Picked it up from Best Buy today for the low price of $399.99. Actually, I picked it up yesterday. The unit I purchased had a stuck pixel and the right side of the screen looked as if it had pressure damage. The exchange took 10 minutes though. Very pleasant experience. There were only two units when I went in yesterday, and I've had both of them. I almost feel bad about it. Now no one else can buy one. I'm so selfish.

Not all great though. This unit has a dead pixel too. Fortunately, it isn't a stuck red pixel in the middle like the last one. This time it more subtle. It just looks like a small spec of dust. I don't notice it until I look for it now.

A formal review will come later. But just so I remember later I'll throw some numbers out there.

I've been using the, let's say netbook, all day. I'm at 30% battery and Vista says 55 minutes remaining. I believe it for once. The battery doesn't want to die. I was even playing WoW on it earlier. More on that later too. I was uninstalling all of the bloat and updating for a while earlier too. All on battery. I'd estimate around 3:40-4 hours with WiFi on and brightness at medium. I'll have to do a more scientific test some time. But the battery life so far has blown away my Aspire One with it's 3-cell. And performance-wise...

I'll gush about that later too. Hopefully with some benchmarks.

As I type this I have Hulu in another tab playing an episode of American Dad flawlessly. My Celeron M 1.6GHz laptop can't even do that. My Aspire One couldn't play Hulu at all without stuttering. Color me impressed.

24 hours a day.

I haven't slept in several days. I have no idea why. There is a feeling I get, it's hard to explain.

Not wired, and not tired. Somewhere in between. Not well rested or necessarily alert. I do this a lot, actually, so I'm not shocked. I write here to get things off of my mind, and lately I haven't found the time to write about anything in particular. Whenever I sit down and try to throw something onto the keyboard, my mind goes blank. Like a damn Etch-a-Sketch.

That can be very frustrating. No sleep and a mind full of vague ideas and unfinished thoughts. Some people say this requires medical help. But I say games are my medicine. I've finally figured out why I play games so much. Specifically games that don't require TOO much thought. Racing games, RPGs, FPSs. They all cater to the part of me that wishes I could turn my brain off. To end the constant thinking that happens inside my head. I play racing games because they are time consuming, and require little to no thought, just gut reactions. I play RPGs because questing is like an endless grind where I can sort my head out in peace. FPSs are for when my head is full of stressful things. 

I've got it completely mapped out now. My habits are formed as part of some method of procrastination tied into my NEED to stop the internals of my brain from working too much. Games give me something to occupy the part of my brain that encourages thought, while the other part that does the thinking sorts itself out. And I need a lot of that sorting out. It also gives me a way to somehow CREATE obligations to put before the real ones in my life. 

Depressing much? Not really. Simply an interpretation of myself. People say that's good. If you can't laugh at yourself, you know? Think of it as constructive criticism. Time to go level that warlock some more, heh.

It's quad core from here on out.

And let me tell you why.

I'm a multitasker. I NEED four cores, really. At any given point of my computer usage, which is running near 24/7 (seriously), I have more than 3 programs I'm cycling through constantly. And I'm not talking about browser windows here. Although, I usually keep at least two or three, each with several tabs, open. I'm talking about hard hitting programs. Visual Studio 2008 is running nearly all the time, along with WoW, and VLC playing some video file. Add to that my browsers, Digsby, Steam, and other random programs, and you've got a computer that's utilizing its maximum 4gb of DDR2 on a regular basis.

Why do I do this, you ask? Well, like I said, multitasking. I'm always doing something in WoW, so that one is pretty much a given these days. Whether I'm questing or farming or just chatting, it's always running and I'm always logged in. I keep Visual Studio 2008 open at all times in case I get a bit of inspiration for a project I'm working on. Like my computer, my brain never stops working, so having it close by is essential. And VLC is another given. I like movies. And animated shows. Easy enough.

The ability to have all that crap open is not entirely why I feel a quad core is necessary, however. It's the speed at which I can access each individual program. Alt-tabbing needs to be instant and stutter free. Lag kills me. Waiting for something to render in a window is unacceptable, especially if it's in RAM. When I alt-tab to VS2008, it needs to pop up instantly. On my Phenom, it does. On my Athlon X2 box, it doesn't.

Don't get my wrong, my Athlon X2 box (the one I just built and made a custom case for) is plenty quick. It plays games very well, but it isn't a workhorse like this one. I don't leave many programs running on that box, simply because it can't handle that many things. Partially the 2gb of RAM to blame there. I have noticed that recently I've WANTED to stay at school simply so I could keep using my Phenom box that's parked on my desk here instead of the Athlon X2 box at home. Even though my Athlon box has a better graphics card.

Therefore, I have to agree with nearly all internet tech writers for once.

Once you go quad core, you can't go back.

Let's for a moment.

Discuss brilliant, but stupidly simple ideas. Like the steering wheel. Or the toaster. Or this. What? That's such a good idea it's ridiculous! Many times my friend's with iPhones or iPod Touches will come over and whip it out to play a game or play some jamz. The slightly annoying problem rears its head when mostly playing games with sound. Your hand covers the sound output holes. And if you need your thumb on that side to push buttons, your hand will most definitely cover the holes and muffle the sound. This ingeniously simple device redirects the sound towards you, rather than off to the side.

Now, I don't have an iPhone or iPod Touch, obviously, but this idea is just too much for me to handle. You could really make some money making a part like this. I'd buy one for sure, especially so cheap for such a useful part.

Now to discuss some more pressing matters: Mobile Software. Windows Mobile 6.5 has been generating some buzz lately, a lot of it positive. But there are some negative spouts as well. Like the one on Engadget I read earlier, from my phone actually. I almost agree with the editorial. Although, I am really excited to see SOME kind of update for Windows Mobile. I mean, my phone, in it's current state, is perfectly usable via touchscreen. Especially because it has nearly no hardware buttons. I can navigate all around the WinMo environment using one hand and one thumb very easily. I never have a problem hitting the close button, or the start bar, or even scroll bars in explorer. Maybe my fingers are just more accurate than most ;P. I'm using a custom rom with TouchFlo 2D, and it's perfect. I have a launcher already, a la the honeycomb, that I rarely use. All my apps are accessible from scrolling on the bottom bar. Home, Messaging, Internet, Music, Maps, Launcher, etc.

The only thing that disappoints about my phone right now, is the on screen keyboard. It is usable in keypad mode, where T9 is used extensively, but it could use some work. I want a bigger keyboard, and possibly landscape mode. In its current form, TouchFlo 2D can't go landscape, so I'd have to disable it to use landscape at all. So I'm stuck in portrait view, and with portrait oriented keyboards. I can turn on the qwerty keyboard, but then I'd have to use my stylus, or be very careful (still with mistakes). I want a landscape keyboard that has vibration feedback. The one implemented in the port of Android to the Touch was nearly perfect. When it came up via a hardware button, it flipped the screen and engulfed everything except a small line at the top so you could see what you were typing. Something like that. The Touch is so small, it can be used in landscape mode very easily with one thumb or two. When I was using Android a lot, my typing was very fast and accurate. I could tap out messages in a flash, and posting to Twitter or whatever was a snap. I want something that could pop up via a hardware button, maybe the center select on my Touch (I never use it), and switch to landscape mode. Then when the keyboard is turned off, back to portrait. It sounds so simple, but my programming skills on a mobile platform are well below where they need to be for that. I'll get to work right away though.

Another problem I have is with the internet experience on my phone at the moment. Opera Mobile 9.5 is perfect for viewing Google Reader or Gmail. In fact, it even handles clicking links very well. I was browsing my Twitter feed earlier, and I clicked on that Engadget article above. It loaded the entire page, comments and all, in under 35 seconds on EDGE. Not the image, that took longer, but the readable parts. I couldn't do anything except pan around the unzoomed screen while loading, however. I think, soon in the future, popular sites like those will be forced to make mobile versions that can seamlessly integrate with their feeds and such. Or make the feeds much nicer. Some feeds I have on Reader display like a Twitter feed. You know, less than a paragraph, with no picture. So I have to open another window just to read the rest of the article. I should make a wishlist of things I want in a phone. It'd probably be too long to list.

I've been holding this in for too long.

A talk (with myself) about cell phones and multimedia gadgets.

For starters, I own several mp3 players and several cell phones, and several PDAs. I have a Sprint HTC Touch (vogue) as my current phone/PDA. I use my 30GB 1st gen Zune as a media player in a sort-of desktop mount, a Creative MuVo n200 512MB as my "portable" mp3 player, and now a mini-notebook! In the past, I have owned: a Nokia candybar style phone, a LG flip style phone, a Moto C290, and a Samsung m500 phone. As for mp3 players, what I have now is what I've had. I technically "had" a 30GB 6th gen (the video series?) iPod, but more on that below. As for PDAs I've had a Casio Casseopeia BE-300, and a newer HP model.

First, music players. I love my Zune. Every bit of the hardware. It has survived for a very long time, and it is scratch-less and every button still "clicks" with authority. No dead pixels, great battery life, excellent sound quality. Simple design, fantastic software (on the device itself, I don't much care for the desktop Zune software). I bought it after using my brother's iPod 30GB for an extended period of time. Notice what I did there? I bought the Zune AFTER using the iPod? Yes. I said it. My brother had no use for the iPod whatsoever, he simply bought it to be cool and whip it out in public. A black one, very sexy piece might I add.

Here's what I DON'T like about it. The controls. Ever try to use that wheel while moving? Running on a treadmill, bicycling, driving(!..)? It's difficult. And yes, I spent almost 3 months with it, so don't say "Oh silly dude you gotta get used to it." No. I was perfectly used to it. Using it sitting down, or lying down was no problem. Even walking at a very slow pace was doable with some mistakes. What else? After like a week of usage by my brother, it was FULL of scratches. Because he didn't keep it in a case. In his school bag, in a desk drawer, on a table, not even a slip cover. In fact, the scratches are so bad it's almost not worth putting video on the bitch, which is another story. Use iTunes on a regular basis without a Mac? Yeah, it's bad, I know. Shit, I'd rather use Windows Media Player 9 than iTunes. And that shit WAS bad. Converting a video? Good luck. Converting audio? Good luck? Got audio spread out across a HD? Good luck, hope it doesn't kill your directories. Yeah, there are settings for all of these things, but not easily defined settings. Settings you have to set AFTER it scans and starts replacing directories. This is unfair though, I haven't used iTunes in a long time, probably a year or so now.

I want simple. If I HAVE to use your software, let it be good software. Talking to you too, Zune team. Zune is pretty, and decently quick and unbloated, but it has flaws too. I find it a bit nicer on the eyes, and a bit easier to get where I'm going, but it's still flawed. Which is why when I want to quickly swap files on a device, I use my Creative MuVo n200. Shows up as a flash device, drag and drop. Windows Explorer simplicity. Great battery life and audio quality too. It has customizable EQ, take that Zune and (old)iPod. And it's TINY. Which is why I use it almost daily for my walk back from class. It holds enough music to last me a day, and the battery hasn't been replaced in months. Probably because I only use it at 20-30 minutes at a time though. Still. It's easy to use with one hand, I can't fuck up with a dumbass click wheel while I'm walking, and it's very easy to read backlit screen shows exactly what I want to see. No big ass album art, no dumb ID3 info like when it was produced. You think I care about that shit when I'm trying to pick a song? No, because I've already got it organized into folders with albums and artists. Simple. Plus, the screen is tiny, and only displays text most of the time. Ah, simplicity really is bliss for my mp3 player.

My Zune, on the other hand, has found a nice little niche in my life. It sits on my desk, resting on a set of small desktop speakers I bought from Woot.com a very long time ago. It sits vertically for music, horizontally for video, and the screen is great. It plays episodes or movies I've thrown on it so I can fullscreen my more important shit on my real desktop (games or homework, usually games). I like playing WoW or CS:S or L4D at 1440 x 900, or 1680 x 1050. It plays video next to my big monitor for several hours unplugged. But since it's right next to my computer, it's usually plugged in anyway. Like I said, a niche. Most people think it's a good idea, and I love it.

When it comes to these new fangled devices like the iPod Touch, I laugh. I see kids of ages no older than my young sister (who's 9) running around with them. Really, is that necessary? Do they even know how to use one? I could teach my sister how to operate one, but she still wouldn't know what to do with it. Play some music? Great. Watch some video? Sure. Well, no. She uses my dad's 15" laptop for video and music, but still. Would she use the powerful web browser (when it's not crashing..)? Would she use the push email functions? Would she use the calendar? The other nice features it has as a semi-powerful PDA? No. Maybe some games. She could get by using my MuVo 512MB for her audio. Hell, an iPod Classic would set her right. The point is, it isn't necessary. Kids don't want them for all the features. They want them for the wow factor, the cool factor, the fart apps. Hell, I know people MY age who still brag about completely useless apps on theirs. My brother, actually, wants an iPod Touch. The same kid who bought an iPod before to be cool, who bought a "Juke" phone to be cool, and who wants a Blackberry. To be cool. Right. So I ask him, what would you do with an iPod Touch? He responds, play music on the bus home from school. The 20 minute bus ride? Mind you, he has a cell phone, the Juke, that is MADE to play music (although it does it terribly). No, he wants it to be cool. So people will at school will look at him and go, "Hey you got an iPhone, cool. Even my friends still do that when someone in the "group" gets one. But when I got my Touch BEFORE the iPhone came out, and it did all kinds of cool shit like finger navigation, fluid animations, the TouchCube, no one cared. Well, because I didn't call everyone I know or text everyone I know. I got a text a while back from someone I haven't spoken to in a long time, it was to inform me that they had gotten an iPhone, and that this was their first message on it. They sent it to every person on their contact list. REALLY? Has social life and social acceptance stooped THAT low?

It has.

Moving on. PDAs and cell phones. My first PDA was a Casio Casseopeia BE-300. It was a mouthful back then too. I used it for its calendar, its scheduling, its note taking, to doodle in class, for music, video, SimCity 2000 etc. I used it for a lot, and I took it everywhere. I was only like 13 too. But I used it, to its fullest extent mostly. My parents didn't care that I was buying a PDA at that time, because at that time I also had 3 computers in my room, 4 game consoles, and 3 handhelds. I also knew how to rip DVDs and had compiled a distro of Gentoo on an old box I had lying around from scratch on a 56k line. I wasn't an average 13 year old kid. To put it lightly. It finally died it 2005 when the battery gave out. And since I had only purchased the device for $99, it was senseless to buy a new battery for $60. So a few months later I invested in an HP something-can't-remember-the-crazy-model-number. I paid just under $200 for it. And having a job then, no one cared then either how I spent my money. It was great. Did everything the BE-300 did, but with a newer OS, twice the ram, twice the processing power, and in a sleek sexy case. With WiFi. During my first semester at college, I used it constantly. Set all my homework as tasks, set up my calendar to reflect my classes, and bought a big SD card and filled it with media. Then along came the "smartphone" revolution. Stuff starting coming out that made me wish I had a do it all device. At the time I was using an old Nokia candybar style phone. I yearned for a PDA that could make calls. I sold the HP PDA just three months after buying it, and after my semester was over.

I went without for a long time, but trading phones in between. I bought a Motorola c290 TracFone model, because my parents would not add text messaging to our plan. So I got my own. Three or four months of that got old really quick, because I began using the TracFone as more than just a text device. I had planned on using my parent's planned Nokia for voice, they were cool with that. I started using the TracFone for all my calling and text. People don't like keeping track of two numbers, trust me. I'd get texts on my parent's phone, and calls on my TracFone. It was hard to keep up with myself. And it started to get expensive. So I found a SWEET deal on a Sprint plan. The SERO (Sprint Employee Referral) plan. Unlimited data, unlimited text, 500 anytime, free nights and weekends, for 30 a month. I could do that. That's the plan I'm on now, and I love it (don't care what anyone says about Sprint, I love them, but that's for another time). I bought a Samsung m500 dumbphone just to hold me over until I could scrape together the cash to buy my new wet-dream inducing piece of tech: the HTC Touch.

I bought it, unlocked, Sprint branded, for just under $400 with overnight shipping. A steal when it came out. I painlessly transfered my number to it via Sprint's tech support, and set to revolving my life around it. It had it all, finally. Windows Mobile 6, TouchFlo, and all the processing power I could want in a mobile device. No one had it either, so I felt good about my purchase. You didn't see every idiot kid in the mall walking around with one. I didn't blast it out in public and wave it around either. It was a device to satisfy MY lust, not the masses around me. Then the iPhone came out. The 1st gen, without 3G. Not too many people I knew bought one. Just one or two Apple fanboys. Then the 3Gs came out and they cried. And everyone ELSE bought one. It quickly became the phone to have. So now, when I pull my phone out in a hallway, it gets trounced by the 30+ iPhones in the 20ft around me. People look at it and go, "what is that?" I say, "HTC Touch." They go, "It looks new, why didn't you get an iPhone?" They're right, my device does look new. It looks BRAND new, actually. And I've had it for well over a year now as my daily cell phone/PDA. Not a scratch, not a blemish, and it has a plastic screen. Why didn't I get an iPhone? Well, explain to me ONE thing the iPhone can do that mine can't. Multi-touch? No thanks, I like using my phone with one hand. Games? Please. You got Age of Empires on that iPhone? How about SimCity 2000? Oh. You do. Right. Nevermind. How about a browser? Safari? Opera Mobile doesn't crash every twenty seconds, thank you. And I speak about this from experience, not just internet wisdom. A close friend has one, and when he comes over he is always bragging about the thing, then Safari crashes and I'm like, "what happened...." and he makes an excuse like "the site was buggy" or "my battery is dying." And I laugh inside. Calendar? Got a really good one, thanks. Text and picture messaging? Those too. Push email? Got that too, and I can do Gmail natively. I mean, really. I have GPS too. You got me on the accelerometer. You win there. Because I like moving my phone around in my hand in fast motions and miss that on mine.

Seriously, there is no hate here. I like the iPhones I've used. The UI is polished, the screen is fantastic. However, whenever someone calls me, I can always tell they're on an iPhone. That nasty echo that seems to accompany all callers using one. And I can't blame that on my phone, because all other phones sound great. I like the 3D graphics it boasts, and the touch capabilities are amazing. I dislike mutli-touch, though. I can't seem to understand how you'd WANT to use your phone with two hands when browsing a site or viewing a photo. All the gestures on my phone are one fingerable. Zooming on a photo is a cirle around the place I want to zoom on. ON a website it's double tapping an area. I don't know, I just don't see the allure. The iPhone (or iPod Touch) seem to big for my hands, and too big for most other people's hands. I don't know about other people, but I use my phone by holding it in my palm, and using my thumb to do everything. It makes it very convenient and easy to do while I'm walking, or even just sitting there. I've tried that with a friend's iPhone, and dropped it. Several times. They left my house quite annoyed that I dropped their new symbol of coolness on a bed from 3 inches up 5 times in 10 minutes.

Speaking of. I dropped my Touch the other day walking into my room, because I was twirling it between my fingers. 4 feet in the air, onto very thin pile carpet. Battery popped out, no damage. Just a "thud." A friend drops his iPhone onto the floor of his car and worries like crazy until he picks it up to find a tiny scratch. Then he goes insane.

So why do people want these things if they're going to worry about them so much, and have to get a 3rd party app to do things? Dunno. Guess only they know. Can't wait for the Palm Pre. Heh. I'm such a whore.

I love technology so much. Speaking of technology, I just turned my desktop here at school into an access point (secured, of course) using my wireless card and wired lan connection. Instant wireless netbooking (can I say that?) in my apartment. Hope they don't cut my connection for "internet sharing," I'll go crazy on them again.

Like Christmas.

You know, when you come home and get a new gadget in the mail. Or from UPS rather. I have been checking my TigerDirect account every 3 hours to see if UPS would update tracking information. It actually said my package was delayed until tomorrow, or today, the 13th. Friday the 13th? Ouch. Anyway, a knock on my door at 3pm corrected my fears.

I opened the package so fast it was amazing. Had it out and charging before the UPS guy was back in his truck.

A few hours later, and I'm hooked. Started out by removing all the excess bloat from the XP install. WinDVD on a netbook? Come on. That's just senseless.

Apparently, my fears of buying a refurb have been dashed. This is a flawless unit. Glossy all around, perfect keyboard and trackpad. Even the screen is flawless. Excited.

I popped in my USB bluetooth dongle, and paired with my BT Mighty Mouse for a perfect harmony of device and peripheral.

And don't worry, I'm downloading another ISO of Windows 7, so that will come shortly. I also plan on stealing that 1GB stick from my old laptop and throwing it in here. And speaking from first hand experience, this is one snappy little machine. At the moment I am typing this in Firefox, with Hulu playing in another tab. The fan is off, so the machine is a tad hot. A bit disappointing, however, is my first glimpse at battery life. I'm at 81% and Windows estimates 1:35 remaining. That's not as great as I'd hoped. Then again I am playing a Flash video and typing, with WiFi on, screen brightness low, and a BT dongle still plugged in. More testing will have to come, especially before I splurge on a 6-cell.

On a lighter note, I was copying some files to the hard drive earlier (WoW), and I discovered that my HD is 160GB, not 120GB. Score. I'm enjoying it so far. It's taken 10 minutes to get used to the keyboard. Except for the delete key, it's shorter than usual, so I keep hitting the = key by accident. No big deal, I'll learn eventually. The trackpad will take some getting used to though. I normally turn tap-to-click off immediately, but with the buttons on the sides, it's difficult. The buttons are also rather hard to press, and they make a very loud "click" like an old IBM model M keyboard. But tap-to-click may be better than I normally treat it. The touchpad is very slick and responds to even the slightest taps, So I'll see. The scrolling is effortless as well. I turned off the pinching and other multitouch gestures. Two finger scrolling would have been nice, but it doesn't seem to be here.

Now I'm at 74% and 1:26 remaining. Sad.

Should I be ashamed?

I bought a mini notebook.

Pause.

Should I be ashamed for going against what I said before? For not necessarily needing something, but wanting something? I guess not, that's the great part about being a consumer in a capitalist society. I can say things and do the opposite. And here's the required bit: I got a great deal!

Really.

I am ashamed, I know.

Now that that's done with. It's an Acer Aspire One. The old 8.9" XP model. The newer 10" D150 is coming out, so I guess places are trying to clear stock. I grabbed one from TigerDirect.com. Honestly, I've never ordered from Tiger before. I love to look at their deals, and I watch ComputerTV on YouTube religiously. But Newegg has always been my store of choice. Oh well, hopefully Newegg won't be mad with me. Hell I spent $400 a month ago at Newegg. That'll distract them.

What kind of deal, you ask? Well, a good one. $252 shipped. Atom N270, 1GB DDR2, 120GB HD, 8.9" LED-LCD, White, what more could I want? How about a 3-cell battery (I'll get a 6-cell soon)? How about a refurb? Ouch. The way I see it is, if it's been factory reconditioned, it's probably okay enough for me. My Zune was a refurb, and it's still holding up great. I'm watching a video on it right now, actually. Bought this thing for $80 a long time ago. I've bought used items on eBay before, great experiences. My iBook G3 was used, and a year old. It came to me in flawless cosmetic condition with a near brand new battery. So if a factory reconditioned it to be resold, it's probably in good condition, if it was even used before. I'm just trying to make myself feel better about buying a refurbished item. It usually works.

Hopefully it will make a nice companion for those classes that don't have computers, or my time spent waiting for the classes that do have them. Already have a bluetooth usb dongle and a mouse waiting for it. Also a GB of fresh RAM for it. Before it turns on it'll be maxed out at 1.5GB. Remember that GB I bought for my aging laptop? I feel it will see more use in the netb--mini notebook. Should be in by this weekend. I can't wait.

To justify this further to myself, I'll compare my latest acquisition to my aging Acer laptop. My current laptop is an Acer Travelmate 2420. Celeron 1.6Ghz (1MB L2, 90nm), 256MB DDR2 (stock, now has 1.25GB), 40GB PATA HD, Intel GMA900 graphics with 128MB shared VRAM (max), 14.1" LCD, 1.6" thick. When I bought it, it was a very svelt, compact laptop for the money. At the time I believe was $429 plus $60 for the extra RAM. It slipped into my school bag nicely, and served as a daily machine while away at school for a semester. And when I say daily I mean I carried it to school every day in a school bag NOT made for laptops in any way. It has weathered all of that, and today it still chugs on. At the moment it serves virtually no purpose.

As a side note, I tested Windows 7 on it, and it ran decently. About as snappy as XP, but with more bugs. I couldn't watch any flash-based media in full screen or it would lock up and require a hard reset. Any other video at all, streaming from another computer or local, would do the same thing in WMP and VLC (lock and require a hard reset). Other than that, it browsed the web the same and did everything else I asked of it. But I put XP Pro back on it, the full screen Hulu and YouTube issues annoyed me. Actually there's one purpose it serves, a media player while I'm working on my desktops (when they can't be used to do the same).

Some things the old lap rig can't do. It can't play HD YouTube or 480p Hulu, only basic streams (and HQ on YouTube). It struggles playing DVD's occasionally (no exaggeration either). It has less than an hour of battery life after a full charge, but that's its old age. And with batteries costing a hundred bucks for 2 hours of charge, it wouldn't be worth it to fix. Yeah, even brand new it only managed 2 hours with wifi on and screen brightness at low to medium simply browsing. I'm told this 3-cell on the Aspire One will do that no problem. That really isn't a problem though, because I'll rarely be away from an outlet for more than an hour if I'm using it away from home.

So lets see. Atom 1.6Ghz vs Celeron 1.6Ghz. Atom has Hyper Threading, and runs on 45nm chip. Should be a close one. 1.5GB to 1.25GB? Easy. 120GB vs 40GB. Also nice. Intel GMA950 vs GMA900? Like putting a civic with exhaust against a stock civic, neither are going to go anywhere very fast, but one will be louder about it. By the way, not hating on civics here, just using them as a readily available comparison. The 8.9" LCD may be a hassle, but I've never had trouble reading small screens. Hell I use my HTC Touch to read my RSS feeds all day, every day.

Expect pictures soon. And a review. And Windows 7 testing, you know that.