As I have discussed in the previous few posts, my family now is the proud owner of an Asus Eee 4G PC. This is used primarily by my youngest son, but has proved to be quite popular with all the family. However as we said in my last post the Eee 4G PC comes with only 4GB of solid state storage, and since the majority of that is used by the operating system there is not much room for other content. In the previous post I looked at adding extra storage via a SDHC memory card but in this post I thought I would look at external hard drives.

Eee External hard drive

As the external hard drive is designed to be used with an Eee PC, I really wanted one that would fit well with the “small is good” theme that the Eee stands for. So any external hard drive had to be as small as possible, but still provide a good amount of storage, look good and work easily with the Linux operating system installed on the Eee.

After searching around I manage to find something that seems to fit the bill. Take a look at the
Passport Essential from Western Digital which is neat looking, small enough to fit into a shirt pocket, and has plenty of storage space. As it is a USB drive it will be supported by Linux and should therefore work fine with the Eee.

Check Linux compatibility

This last point is an important point that one needs to be careful off when buying equipment for a Linux PC. Thanks to the Linux community most devices will be supported by Linux, even if the vendor does not provide drivers. However this takes time and so when buying for Linux and especially for new devices it pays to do some research on the Internet first. In this case although the manufacturer does not state that it supports Linux, a quick search of the Internet shows that a number of people haved confirmed the Passport Essential working with the Eee.

Do have an Eee PC? Do you use an external hard drive?

We now have an Asus Eee 4G PC in the family. We are still very happy with the Eee 4G PC sub notebook and would recommend it to anyone looking for a starter computer for a child or for something small, capable and very easy to carry around. The Eee 4G is limited on the storage side though as it has no conventional disk drive and coming with 4GB of solid state storage only.

Limited storage

The solid state storage is nice and robust, but a significant amount of the 4GB is used up by the Linux operating system leaving only about 1.5 GB for user content. Now for my son’s homework and other text files this would probably be fine for the foreseeable future, however he already wants to store some music and digital images on the computer. My wife also uses the Eee a lot and so we are shortly going to have to think about additional storage.

Interface and storage options

Fortunately the Eee 4G PC comes with plenty of interfaces. There is the wired and wireless networking, a good number of USB sockets and a media card reader that excepts SD and SDHC cards. So there are plenty of options to access external storage. The Eee can always access a shared drive on our home desktop PC which also acts as our server, but this of course is only usable when at home. One approach that I have been looking at is to maximise the use of the SD card slot. I investigated and found this very useful SanDisk 4GB Extreme III SDHC Memory Card & Card Reader, which I think is just the ticket for an Eee owner. Why the card reader as well as the card? Well this would make it easy to transfer content from the Eee to other computers who don’t have card readers.

I have also looked at external hard drives for the Eee, which I will cover in the next post.

Have you got an Asus Eee 4G PC? What do you use for external storage?

I was taking a short cut through an electrical goods shop at a shopping mall last weekend and was intrigued to see a very large group of people crowded around something in the area where the shop sells its laptops. When I went over to have a look at what all the fuss was about, I found one of the sales assistants demonstrating the Asus Eee 4G PC. The Eee had finally arrived in the Emirates and was causing quite a stir.

Asus Eee 4G

I returned later on the way home to have a play and to show it to my wife. I have to admit to being a little underwhelmed at first. I think the small size of the screen was the main cause of this, however the Eee obviously worked fine and after playing with it for a while it was obvious that screen size was not really an issue. The demonstration model was logged on to the store WiFi and using Firefox I was able to view and use websites effectively. OpenOffice is preinstalled and opened quickly and easily and worked well and did not appear to tax the processor at all. The keyboard while on the small side for adult hands was perfectly usable and for kids would be fine.

Reactions to the Eee 4G

My wife was completely smitten and was immediately talking about buying one for our seven year old as his first computer, and if he didn’t want for some reason it, she would love to have it! This sort of reaction is probably one of the main reasons why the Eee has become so popular and remember this is before the exceptional price is discussed. It is a very powerful combination and the price was a tipping point for my wife and we bought one on the spot.

Eee 4G user experience

After a few days of having it at home, the experience with the Eee has been really good. I configured the system, the WiFi for the home network and installed our printer in minutes. My son is overjoyed with it and my wife uses it for email and surfing once he has gone to bed. I don’t think either of them has noticed it is not using Windows, the only comment I have had about the interface is how nice and easy to use it is. So my conclusion is that the Asus Eee 4G lives up to its reputation as a fun, easy to use and cheap ultra sub notebook.

Do you have an Eee? What do you think of it?

Webcams are now standard on a significant proportion of the laptops available on the market. But what do you do if you have an older laptop or have just purchased one without a Webcam? The answer of course is to invest in a standalone webcam.

We have had two new recent additions to the growing family of laptops that cohabit our house. Both of these came equipped with a webcam. Sadly we also had one of the older generation pass away, but I guess that is the circle of laptop life. OK, so now I am at risk of sounding like I’ve escaped from a Disney cartoon, but it has been quite interesting to look at the evolution of this family over the last few years. The old laptop that finally passed on, had a CD drive, two PCMCIA card sockets and only a solitary USB socket. The latest addition has a DVD RW drive, four USB drives, a media card reader, a webcam and significantly more processing power and memory. I would guess there is about 7 year age gap between them and USB has become the connection interface of choice.

But I digress, as a family we have never really used webcams. VoIP applications like Skype might have pushed us that way, but the use of Skype in the U.A.E is not really that reliable. However having them available on the new laptops have prompted a surge in use, so much so that we are now looking at equipping our older laptops with one. I have investigated whats available and have found a few that interest me, the pick of the bunch is probably Microsoft’s LifeCam NX-6000 which is small, light and has a good image resolution for a webcam.

Do you have a webcam to recommend?

I thought I would return to the theme of hot laptops which we discussed in a recent post. Most modern laptops will run hot, and will become uncomfortably so if actually used on your lap! But why do laptops heat up and is there anything we can do to minimise this effect?

So why do laptops heat up?
All the major components of a computer will generate, to varying degrees, some heat during their operation. So the power supply, the battery, the motherboard circuits, the disk drive, the CPU and graphic cards chips all will, when running, generate some heat. Some components generate more heat than others though, with the worse offenders probably being the chips. So if these components are fully used, for instance if you’re playing a game or have a lot of different applications running, then things are going to get hot quickly. Also although the processors used in laptops are designed to run cooler that those designed for desktops, the fact that everything is packed in tightly close together means that there is little air space and flow to provide cooling. A fan or fans are provided inside the laptop to cool things down, and this will come on if things start getting hot. You will hear this going if your computer is working hard.

How to keep cool

On most laptops the internal fan exhaust output to expel the hot air is on the underside of the computer. If this is blocked in anyway the internal temperature will rise quickly. This is one potential issue for those using a laptop on their lap, where clothes etc. can easily block these vents. A flat board on which the laptop can rest will help significantly. If using on a desk then there are a number of useful cooling pads for laptops which often provide additional fans to help cool things down. A good example of this is the Belkin laptop cooling stand which gives plenty of room for air flow and provides an additional fan that runs from the USB port of the laptop, reducing wires and meaning that it is potentially portable to some degree.

How do you keep your laptop cool?

Laptops are …… well they are notebook computers that you can use on your lap, hence laptop, easy Huh! Of course, but there is a bit of trouble with this simple logic, have you ever tried using a modern notebook computer on your lap?(I’ll use notebook rather than laptop for the purpose of this post) They can get pretty hot along with just about everything around them! I can vaguely remember reading a news story a few years back about someone you had burnt a rather sensitive part of their anatomy by using a notebook computer on their lap for too long! I don’t know if that is true or not but I can quite believe that it might happen.

In fact I can’t believe anyone could work with a notebook on their laps for any length of time without some sort of protection, especially if there is a lot CPU activity. I am always looking for a magazine or something like that to use as protection and this evening I thought I would look around and see what is available in the market.

Well the answer is not a lot apparently, perhaps a small gap in the market for someone! I did manage to find the Belkin Notebook Cushtop which has a nice and simple design, with nothing to break and all at a reasonable cost.

What do you use to protect you lap from your fiery notebook computer?

I have talked a few times now about the popular sub notebook or mini notebook market which of course was initially started by the highly successful Asus Eee. More and more of the other hardware vendors are waking up to the fact that there is a whole new market out there. Even Microsoft has had to respond by extending the life of Windows XP as Vista is not usually considered capable of running on these machines and it needed to provide some sort of response to the increasing use of Linux in this domain.

However just to buck the trend one notebook does provide a (more expensive) version with Vista as an alternative to the normal Linux that is usually provided. This is the latest addition to the market, the really nice looking HP Compaq 2133 Mini-Note PC with its sleek aluminum case. The external good looks are further supported by a keyboard that makes full use of the limited space, and a 9″ screen that boast a resolution of 1280×768. The notebook provides an impressive list of specifications that you would expect on a standard laptop including a 120 GB hard drive, 1 GB Memory, WiFi, Bluetooth, a network adapter, USB ports and a webcam.

It is not all good though, the default configuration of the Linux OS that is installed has not been so well designed for the unit and its intended users as was the case with the Asus Eee. In addition the HP 2133 is powered by the VIA C7-M 1.2GHz CPU instead of the 900Hz Intel Celeron CPU favoured by Asus for the Eee. Unfortunately this may not have been the best move as the few reviews I have read do say that notebook does struggle on the performance. Still a really nice looking piece of kit, and if you are want a small neat machine for email and browsing the HP 2133 may be a neat option.

When you slip the rest of the family and visit a computer store for some window shopping, what is it that you usually gravitate towards? Browsing through the latest 3D graphics cards and games even when your poor desktop is way below the minimum specs? Or perhaps it is reviewing the latest WiFi kit for that wireless network you have been thinking of installing for years now? Well for me it is laptops, and I will always browse along the line comparing features.

This is of course the point at which a sales person may well come along and offer to help and sometimes I will indulge is a spot of salesman baiting. You know asking difficult questions and seeking opinions and watching them squirm. Actually this is a great way to identify the people who really know what they are talking about, which might come in handy in future when you do need advice.

Anyway back to the laptops. What I am doing as I look at the different computers is essentially looking for the best specifications for the smallest price. Basically I am looking for a good all round PC that has a good CPU, a good sized hard drive and plenty of memory and all for a reasonable price. Something like the Acer Aspire 5920-3A2G16Mi Notebook would fit the bill, with a 1.66GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of memory and a great screen. A PC that can handle just about anything and for a very reasonable price.

Which laptop is your favourite all rounder?

I was out looking for computer bags with my son over the weekend. We have just bought him his first laptop for him to use both at home and school and to stop the endless fights with his brothers over access to a computer! So we needed a bag that could take not only his new computer but also all the school books that he has to carry around with him during the day.

He actually seems to carry around a huge amount of stuff on a daily basis, which can be quite heavy and once we add a laptop to all that, it’s going to be heavier still. I actually can’t remember having to carry that much stuff around with me when I was a school, but it was a long time ago and perhaps my memory has dimmed. One result of all this is that any bag we buy will have to have very durable straps and have significant reinforcing where the straps are attached to the bag.

I starting my search by doing a bit of online research, looking for ideas and potential backups in case we didn’t find anything worth buying while walking around the huge Dubai Malls. After checking out a few of the more specialised websites and hitting Pricegrabber I decided that something like this highly rated Targus Metro Notebook Backpack would do just fine. This bag looks good has a good number of compartments and pockets and according to reviews has a very good strong construction.

So off we went and we actually found an almost identical Targus backpack, which seemed to be very well built, had the right number of separate compartments and most important of all was acceptable to the lad in question!

Have you seen any expectational or outstanding examples of a computer bag recently?

I have talked a number of times in the past about the highly successful and revolutionary Asus Eee ultra sub notebook. This has a very small form factor (7”), a functional keyboard despite its small size, a reasonably good screen, and runs a customized version of Linux rather than windows and all for a nice small price to match its size. If you’re were looking to find faults or at least things to improve you would probably come up with some of the following;

Increase the size of the screen - the screen really wasn’t that great to use, hampered as it was with an 800 pixel resolution.

Increased Memory - Even on a machine this size 512 Mb of RAM is really not enough these days, more memory would allow you to better use the multiple process ability of Linux.

Increased Storage - The 4 GB of storage was not really enough, especially if you wanted to store a fair amount of digital content, and lets face it, these days who doesn’t.

Well obvious Asus have listened to some of these wishes and have just released the Asus Eee PC 900 which does provide good improvements in all these areas.

Screen - The screen resolution has been improved to a very nice 1,024 x 600, which also means you’ve got a modern type wide screen aspect ratio. The news screen also takes up more of the lid improving the Eee’s overall looks.

Memory - Memory has been increased to 1 GB

Storage - The storage has also had a significant increase with the Linux version having a respectable 20GB of storage. There will also be a Windows XP version with 12GB of storage. Asus decreasing the storage to pay for the XP operating system!

There are a number of other small changes also, such the on-board cam which has been improved to a 1.3 Megapixel unit, while the touchpad features multi-touch capability ala the MacBook Air. All in all the new Asus Eee 900 has improved the capability of the Eee brand, all for a small increase in price. I for one think that price is worth paying! How about you?