Got me a netbook

I picked up one of those e-machines netbooks at ChinaMart a few weeks ago for a fairly decent price, in my opinion. Now, I've been tweaking and building hardware since the 8088 days, back when you had to have mad soldering skillz to install a memory "upgrade" in a Tandy and then try to hack the OS to actually USE it, but I never messed around with laptops much. I figured that a laptop was a nice toy if you could get one for a hundred bucks or so, but I never had the time nor the cash to mess with them.

When Wally had these netbooks for 2 and a quarter, I figured I could blow my Christmas money on it, and if I didn't like the damn thing, I could sell it or give it to one of the kids or something.

Surprise. I actually LIKE this little thing. It's small enough to not feel like you're lugging something around, and big enough to actually see, unlike the old Axim I had a few years ago.

Not that there aren't some issues. The backspace key is WAY too small, and the silly touchpad thing is a pain sometimes, but all in all it's pretty usable. I'm typing this on the netbook right now, sitting on the couch next to the 15 month old.

Here, however, is the kicker. I have never been a Microsoft fan, preferring to deny the greedy bastages any of my cash and use various forms of Linux. Right now I have Ubuntu Netbook Remix and Linux Mint on the machine alongside Windows 7 "Starter". Both Linuces work very well on this machine, and I'm impressed with the way the Ubuntu menu is laid out. Both found my wireless network without a hitch, which has been my sore point with Linux until now.

Windows 7 "Starter" also works, It runs fairly fast, much faster than I ever saw Vista run on any machine. It also found my wireless network, no problem. The problem came when I wanted to, of all things, change my background.

I. Can't. Change. The. Effing. BACKGROUND.

If you want to do 90 percent of the things you were able to do with XP, you have to buy an upgrade for at least 80 bucks.

Music?

Bwahahahaha!

I knew M$ was greedy, but gimme a break.

I'm about to wipe the "recovery partition" and get rid of this fake "windows" altogether.

Other than that, this is a nice machine. It'll be even better when I get the 2 gigs to put in it.