kindleFire.jpg

A Quick Look at the Kindle Fire

No, I haven’t bought a Kindle Fire yet. Good grief folks, you know I never rush out and buy first gen things! However, my friend Rich (blog | twitter | G+) recently bought one and offered to let me play with it for a week or so while he’s busy working and writing. I, of …

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7” Eee Screen Resolution Tip

I have a “classic” old Asus Eee 701 4G netbook that I like to dust off from time to time and monkey with. The size is definitely ultra-portable, and so is the keyboard which is, to be honest, why I don’t use it more often.. The biggest challenge with this thing though is screen resolution …

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system-sweeper

Another Tool for the Cleaning Toolbox

Like many who are responsible for curing the PCs of friends and family, I’ve been leaning on the 1-2 combo punch of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (free) and SUPERAntiSpyware (also free) for the past year or so. Between the two of them — and judicious use of Safe Mode scanning — I’ve been able to cure most …

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Living with Win7 Starter Edition

Several weeks ago I received a little Toshiba netbook (model NB255). Last year’s model, but sporting the dual-core Atom N455 processor, 250 GB drive — and I upgraded the RAM to 2 GB before even leaving the store. Stunning how many netbooks with 1GB RAM that can’t be upgraded! It also has the 6 cell …

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Revisiting Unity

Back in the Ubuntu 10.10 era I decided to have a look at this new Ubuntu Unity thing that all the cool kids were blogging about. At first glance it looked like just the thing for netbooks. My resulting blog post on the topic was so incredibly negative that I ended up deleting the post …

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A Quick Look at the Kindle Fire7” Eee Screen Resolution TipAnother Tool for the Cleaning ToolboxLiving with Win7 Starter EditionRevisiting Unity

Nov
25

A Quick Look at the Kindle Fire

kindleFireNo, I haven’t bought a Kindle Fire yet. Good grief folks, you know I never rush out and buy first gen things! However, my friend Rich (blog | twitter | G+) recently bought one and offered to let me play with it for a week or so while he’s busy working and writing. I, of course, accepted his kind offer.

I have been using the new Kindle Fire for 5 days now and first impressions are quite positive. I especially dig the size. At 7” it works well for casual and one-handed usage. I initially thought it would be too small but for most purposes it actually works just fine. Especially for book reading.

Granted, a bigger screen would be nice for web browsing… The tabbed browser is nice but the experience isn’t a whole lot improved over browsing on my phone. Certainly serviceable but a lot of zooming and panning.

I’ve read reviews that say the Fire is slow and “jerky” but I haven’t run into any of that yet. Scrolling is always fast and smooth — arguably too fast when scrolling through recently used items on the home screen. I frequently go flying right by the one I want!

I’ve done some Netflix streaming on it and find it is a great way to watch back episodes of shows. Alone. Not great for multiple viewers but that’s not a big concern for me right now. Not going to lie… If I had a Wi-Fi signal at the gym I’d use this on the stationary bikes and ellipticals just to watch shows.

Not having access to the full Android Market is a bummer. Amazon’s market is growing, but the full market has more – and seems to get updates faster too. Some big gaps there that are a bit disappointing. Sure, I’ve read there are “side load” options but should we have to?

Will I buy one for myself? Hard to say… I have multiple laptops and a pretty nice little Android phone. This fits somewhere in between them in a niche I’m not completely sure I need to fill. However, if I was going to break down and buy an electronic book reader, I’d look long and hard that the Fire. Kind of like an “E-Reader with benefits.” Especially if I was also willing to shell out for Netflix and/or Amazon Prime.

It certainly is getting used a lot between myself, the wife and the kids.

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Jul
30

7” Eee Screen Resolution Tip

I have a “classic” old Asus Eee 701 4G netbook that I like to dust off from time to time and monkey with. The size is definitely ultra-portable, and so is the keyboard which is, to be honest, why I don’t use it more often..

The biggest challenge with this thing though is screen resolution (well, and a 4GB SSD drive gets tight!). To that end, I did a bit of research and believe I finally have a solution that I’m happy with. Linux only though, Ubuntu NBR 10.04 in my case.

I’ve created two little scripts that both feature xrandr. The first is named “big” and contains one line:

xrandr --output LVDS1 --scale 1.28x1.28

The second is called “small” and looks rather similar:

xrandr --output LVDS1 --scale 1.00x1.00

I just keep ‘em in my home directory, but I did use the menu editor to add them to Accessories and then, from there, short-cuts up to Favorites for quick one-click access.

Big just makes things bigger. Basically scales the display from the default 800×480 to 1024×614’ish. I might squint a bit, but this is a much more usable resolution! Small just resets it back to the default.

Note, if you don’t want to squint, you could try the panning route instead. Try a script named “big-pan” with the following:

xrandr --output LVDS1 –panning 1024x600

Now stuff stays the original size, but you can pan around to get more effective screen size.

I have not had much luck combining scaling and scanning. Yet.

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Jul
10

Another Tool for the Cleaning Toolbox

Like many who are responsible for curing the PCs of friends and family, I’ve been leaning on the 1-2 combo punch of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (free) and SUPERAntiSpyware (also free) for the past year or so. Between the two of them — and judicious use of Safe Mode scanning — I’ve been able to cure most ailments that come my way.

[tip: did you know about the SUPERAntiSpyware portable version? I keep a copy on my utility USB stick updated every week or so. Handy!]

On a typical infection each will find things the other doesn’t so I don’t mind running both. Face it: the “good guys” in the fixing business are always behind the “bad guys” in the infecting business. I don’t really expect any one tool to do everything.

But I sure hate it when I still have an infected machine after repeated runs of both apps!

I now have one more tool to add to the mix: Microsoft’s System Sweeper. This is a beta product that I first learned about from the Security Now podcast (episode 303). There are downloads for 32 and 64 bit machines. Just download the proper one, run the installer and it will burn a CD image or create a bootable USB drive for you. Pop that into the infected machine and have it boot from the System Sweeper media.

When it runs you have something that looks a lot like Microsoft’s Security Essentials but it isn’t relying on the infected machine’s Operating System. Face it, Safe Mode is nice but sometimes it just isn’t good enough. Especially when you’re going after root kits! This fixes that problem and doesn’t rely on the victim’s operating system.

In the past month I’ve had System Sweeper finish the job on every machine I’ve tried it on. Brilliant little application and I now have a USB stick dedicated to it. Highly recommended.

 

 

 

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Jun
18

Living with Win7 Starter Edition

Toshiba NB255 NetbookSeveral weeks ago I received a little Toshiba netbook (model NB255). Last year’s model, but sporting the dual-core Atom N455 processor, 250 GB drive — and I upgraded the RAM to 2 GB before even leaving the store. Stunning how many netbooks with 1GB RAM that can’t be upgraded! It also has the 6 cell battery and I’ve ran it for almost 6 hours on a single charge.

I absolutely adore this thing.

I really do. It goes everywhere with me now; I leave all my other “klunky” laptops on their desks now. It is easy to type on, light-weight and I find that I can very easily adapt to the lower 1024×600 resolution when on the go.

I’m still running the Windows 7 Starter edition that it came with (and dual-booting Linux of course). Generally that is fine, but there are a few minor annoyances. However, it certainly gets the job done.

For instance, not being able to change the wallpaper shouldn’t be a big deal, right? But it drove me nuts – mostly because the default is just plain and boring. I found many options and hacks on how to set your own wallpaper and settled on StarterBackgroundChanger. Great little utility that, among other things, lets me setup wallpaper slideshows and such. Highly recommended. Now I’d love to figure out a way to get it to pull pics from a feed like the Bing Dynamic Theme does.

And you know what? Upon reflection that’s really the only thing I “hacked” about Starter edition.

One more beef though: Considering how many IT pros have netbooks (and no, I can’t quantify that statement at all), I was rather disappointed to learn that I can’t install the Remote Server Administration Tools with Win7 Starter Edition. That problem is solved with an “Anytime Upgrade” up to Windows 7 Professional. Granted, that’s $120 which is half of what I paid for this thing! Not gonna happen. I’d install a MSDN version of Pro first :-p

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Jun
10

Revisiting Unity

imageBack in the Ubuntu 10.10 era I decided to have a look at this new Ubuntu Unity thing that all the cool kids were blogging about.

At first glance it looked like just the thing for netbooks. My resulting blog post on the topic was so incredibly negative that I ended up deleting the post and just decided to never speak of Unity again…

Yeah, I wasn’t a big fan. It was really that bad.

I’m glad to say that my opinion has changed. On a whim, I installed Unbuntu 11.10 on my new netbook earlier this week. I don’t recall if it was a conscious decision or not, but I ended up with Unity. So far I’m digging it quite a bit.

What’s changed? Usability.

For instance, adding and removing icons from the launcher is easily accomplished with a right-click. Running apps show up in the launcher. If you’re running something  that you want to keep on the launcher just right-click on it and choose “keep in launcher” – a lot like “Pinning” in Windows 7. Remove items from the launcher from the right-click menu as well.

Want to shuffle things around? Click and hold (or click and drag slightly to the right) and then move and drop it where you want it on the launcher.

Those two things alone are dramatic improvements. If they were possible when I first looked at Unity I sure never figured out how.

After I installed it, many of my “typical” Netbook Setup steps still applied so I was able to quickly get to something I was comfortable with.

Do I love the launcher bar on the left? At first I didn’t think I would like it but it works really well with a widescreen. Even one as small as 1024×600 like the netbook has.

Oh, and speaking of the netbook, the dual-core Atom proc seems work well with Ubuntu 11.04. Not a power-house but not gimpy either. It gets the job done just fine (and I bet the upgrade to 2GB RAM doesn’t hurt!). I’m pleased.

Now if I could just solve the Exchange client thing…

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