Sleep Is For The Weak

Over the weekend I acquired a new netbook.  The Acer Aspire One 751h.  It has an 11.6″ screen that does 1366×768 resolution.  The keyboard is a good 95% full size with all the keys in the right places.  The Wifi is an Atheros card so it’s well supported on operating systems not developed in Redmond, WA.  And in general, while not a barn burner, it’s sufficiently fast for how I’ll use it.

It came with Windows XP installed on it.  The very first thing I did was replaced that with a more proper operating system.  Specifically Linux Mint 7.  I’ve been awfully hard on Linux Mint in the past.  Primarily because they use a monolithic start menu product similar to the SLAB in OpenSuse linux, one of the things I hate most about Suse actually.  With the advent of gnome-do I don’t hardly have to use the start menu, so this has become less of an issue.  What Mint does for me is provides the latest Ubuntu release in something other than Poo Brown, with a lot of the “freedom hating” customizations I typically add via the ubuntu-restricted package as a first step.  Generally I could have used Ubuntu, and been quite happy with it on this machine as well, but I wanted a change.

Installing the graphics driver was a bit of a chore.  I had to go to a launchpad site and add their two repos to my sources.  Then add a handful of packages.  When I rebooted I was informed that the driver requires DRM.  A quick Google search later and I found the solution.  Apparently I needed to install Kernel Sources, which the previous instructions appeared to have left out.  Took care of that from the console, restarted and I’ve got XOrg in all it’s 1366×768 glory.  I made a couple of tweaks to the /etc/X11/xorg.conf for stability, restarted one final time, and now the system is stable too.

I plan on using this netbook for a couple of different tasks.  First I intend to use it as my primary Ham Radio computer for FLDIGI and Logging.  Neither of those tasks requires a real high horsepower machine, and this one will do the trick quite nicely.  Second I have an HF station in the car, with a second digital interface.  It might be fun to do a little PSK-31 Mobile on trips while Pami is driving, or while waiting in a parking lot.  It’ll also be nice to have my station log book in an easy to tote around format.  The Netbook is small enough I anticipate taking it with me most places, which means if I make any voice contacts while in the car I should have easy access to my logs there as well.  Finally I am on call about one out of every three weeks.  Work issues us a Dell Vostro A90 (think Mini-9 in all black) along with a Sprint MiFi.  This is a great combination for quick and dirty tasks, but the keyboard is small enough that any amount of real work becomes pretty frustrating quickly.  The larger keyboard on the AA1 is actually a joy to type on.  I’ve typed this entire post using it and don’t feel like an EMACS user yet.

All in all I have high hopes for this little machine.  As I get a few more miles on it I’ll check back and let you know how the extended road test is going.  73!