sandwichesandapples

I decided recently to get a netbook. I don’t have a really portable laptop and I thought a netbook would give me a bit more mobility and encourage me to write.

I did most of my shopping online for the deals and was pretty conflicted about which to go with. A couple of places had great deals on Acer netbooks, the Aspire One. It has a big harddrive, etc, etc. And I always liked the Asus eeePCs that I’d seen. But the Dell Inspiron Mini just looked so cool. A co-worker made the great suggestion that I head over to Best Buy just to try them out.

Getting hands-on with the machines made up my mind instantly: Dell won on hardware, easily. The Inspiron Mini just felt like a computer, not a toy. A very tiny computer, but still a computer.

I also made up my mind about another important point. I wanted a netbook to be a netbook. I didn’t want an 80GB harddrive and all that other crap. I wanted the internet-only machine. The Dell delivered. Also, the Dell could be configured with Ubuntu Linux and I’m doing my best to get away from Microsoft.

The Best Buy salesman clearly did not know how to sell a netbook. The whole appeal is that it’s a small computer with limited functionality. Basically just a browser and a keyboard. But he tried to sell it to me like a traditional machine. Historically, computer salesmen have touted the more, the faster, the smarter. Netbooks aren’t that. The guy actually said to me: “Do you plan to put Microsoft Office on it?”

I said, “Oh God, no.” And he stood there struck dumb for several seconds. “I don’t want Microsoft anywhere near it.”

I was going to order one directly anyway so I could customize it a bit. And then a few days after shopping for one, Dell had a one-day sale on their Inspiron Mini — $199. I went with Ubuntu (natch) and juiced the RAM up to 1GB. But I stuck with the default 4GB harddive.

I got the machine today and it’s very cool. The keyboard is taking quite the adjustment to get used to. And, aggravatingly, I’ve had to un-Dell it. I was a little stunned Dell would put their crap onto a tiny Ubuntu machine, but they obviously can’t leave well enough alone. I immediately removed their Dell Desktop configuration, the damn Yahoo toolbar they’d put in Firefox and then I renamed the icon “web browser” to the proper “Firefox.” (I wonder if Dell made a deal with Microsoft to un-brand Firefox on their Ubuntu machines; I heard that when Dell started selling Ubuntu computers, it ruffled feathers in Redmond.)

And oddly, it doesn’t look like it’s updating in the typical Ubuntu fashion so I’ll keep a close eye to see if Dell has made other concessions to reduce the usability of the OS.

A few years ago, an elementary school, having made the awful decision to switch to Windows machines, was selling off their fleet of Mac iBooks but only to employees and their relatives. They originally tried to get a couple hundred dollars for each iBook but the cheap machines had a huge caveat — they were running OS 9 and would probably need a memory upgrade to run OS X. Also, the batteries sucked. Since upgrades to make it run like a decent laptop would cost me as much as a new machine, I passed. (continue reading…)

I’m really starting to hack and slash at the feeds in my Google Reader. There are just too many items each day that ping pong into my brain that I don’t even need to see. It’s tempting to delete all the feeds and start from scratch. That’s a possible contingency. But for now, I’m taking fairly broad swipes at it.

I just deleted all the feeds for mobile phone news that I’ve been following for a while. They’re all still linked on the blogroll but I won’t be seeing them every day in my Reader. And obviously, I won’t be linking their items in my What I’m Reading section. Whew.

More to come. Or go, as it were.

I’ve been canceling my accounts at social networks that I don’t use. LinkedIn, Behance, Virb, MyNerdGirl, ComicSpace, MySpace — all on the chopping block. I signed up for several just to check them out and then let the account linger. It definitely shows me what services I really need on the web. LinkedIn was the only one I had doubts about because, you know, the career connections! But, hell, I’ve been on it two years or so and never used it so it bit the dust.

So far, I’ve had to email MyNerdGirl and Behance to ask for account cancellations. The others had automated ways to do it. I feel good to be rid of them. It’s a weight off my shoulders to know a little bit of my personal data is off the intertubes.