review

Posted by Harlem

Shownotes

Here is the 3rd podcast of the new year (2008) for those who have been following. This week we/I took a look at the ASUS EEE PC and gave a small, but, I believe a semi-thorough review of this tiny little PC with a lot of heart.
To summarize, I started off with a review of some of the features of the machine and went in depth into the startup and boot up process. I didn't mention this in the podcast but I did a little test of my own to see what the boot time was compared to Vista. And to my surprise, the boot up procedure of the ASUS was roughly 30 second from pushing the start button. Now this varied according to God knows what as I started it up 3 consecutive times in a row and got some minor fluctuations in times. The second time I booted it up I saw that it took roughly 10s longer but by the third time it was back down to the original startup time of 28s. The shutdown took on average 18s without a lot of fluctuation in the process. Other than that I give you a sneak peak at the user interface and some of the delightful things you can do with this PC. I tested the 4GB model but they will soon be out if they aren't aleady with a 8GB model. One thing for sure this little machine can use is a little bigger drive but then again it would add to the price. Overall, I gave it two thumbs up. Meanwhile, we talked about the latest happenings in Ubuntuland and Peter threw in a tech tip and script that he has been using to tweet on the command line. Pretty interesting stuff overall with a dash of new music for your enjoyment. Below is a list of the pictures and the various links that we talked about on the show. Cheers!
 
Inkscape - Interpolate ASUS Preps $500 iMac Killer
Nokia buys Trolltech
KDE to do Windows and OSX
Jamie from Mythbusters digs Ubuntu French National Police to Get Ubuntu
Shift Linux from Neowin
Command Line Twitter Client Script
Zen Twitter post from Productive Linux
Jamies Doppelganger LOLCAT
[gallery=1] <<<<<< Harlem edit this

Listen Now!

MP3: 

Episode 54

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MP3 File: 

AsusReviewandTips.mp3

Hosts and Guests: 

Harlem and Peter

File Size: 

29 M

Length: 

60:27 Minutes

 

Ogg File

Ogg Vorbis: 
Hosts and Guests: 

Harlem and Peter

File Size: 

23 M

Length: 

60:27 Minutes

 
Posted by Harlem

Shownotes

Welcome - Hello and welcome back, thank you for joining me this week. I have a book review that you may find informative. on this weeks podcast. The book is called Beginning Ubuntu Linux by Keir Thomas and published by Apress. Enjoy! Yes, I know. I inadvertently called WINE a Windows emulator. Which it is not. It is an application compatibility layer! W.I.N.E. = WINE Is Not an Emulator. A thousand apologies to the maintainers of WINE. For those of you who are new, this podcast is dedicated to helping new users get comfortable with ubuntu and Linux in general as well as give information to potential users in order to help them get over their fears of switching to a new operating system.
 
News
 
1. Killing the 5 Myths against Linux - http://www.reallylinux.com/docs/myths.html
Myth #1 - Linux is hard to install Especially if I am not sure I want to keep it, but just try it out. Of course not true, Ubuntu is very easy to install take some of us less than 20 minutes. Also, many of the Linux distro's have a live cd where you can try before you write anything to your hard drive.
Myth #2 - Linux is free and therefore unsupported. If you have been on the forums you understand that there is a huge amount of information. From "how to's", support from Linux veterans, and general information. All provided for the end user free of charge. Canonical also offers professional service plans mainly for the business to business market. As a side note, when I installed ubuntu on my laptop, my main source for technical support were ubuntu forums and Google.
Myth # 3 - Linux is for techies and does not have an interface like windows. I could see where this is true. My only brush with linux was at a college and back then it was the old DOS style text interface that ran batch files to run programs. But Linux users have had excellent GUI's for years and they rival both Windows and OSX interfaces. Here is just a few examples of the many options that are available to linux users: Gnome, KDE, Xfce, Enlightment, Fluxbox. There are I'm told many more.
Myth #4 - There is not much software developed for Linux available. Possible. In terms of sheer magnitude maybe, but in terms of quality, is up for argument. I agree that the gold standards are MSOffice and Adobe Photoshop. And there may be other pieces of software that you just can't live without. For instance, I use Quicken for my personal finances, musicians might use Audition for tracking, and web designers might use Dreamweaver. But all is not lost...see the next Myth!
Myth #5 - I have to give up all my windows software. No yet! WINE, which is a "compatibilty layer" for Linux will allow certain Windows programs to run in a Linux environment. I hear that Cedega and Crossover are also options that allow Windows programs to run under Linux although for a fee. I haven't given this a try yet but I think I may do this for a future podcast. Hmmm...
2. Ubuntu live cd with Flash 9 that works!!! Here is the Link.
3. Free Linux and UNIX books
4. Edgy eft is coming soon here is some looks at the GUI and a link to the site on ubuntu.com devoted to edgy

Listen Now!

MP3: 

Episode 9

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Hosts and Guests: 

Harlem

File Size: 

18 M

Length: 

36:40 Minutes

 

Ogg File

Ogg Vorbis: 
Hosts and Guests: 

Harlem

File Size: 

26 M

Length: 

36:40 Minutes