eee: last.fm machine

[crschmidt]

EeePC has really nice little speakers. It appears as if I'm going to have the office to myself for most of the day today, so I'm using it to play music from last.fm (which I've never used before). It's quite nice to have a little laptop with all the 'non-work' things on it, like IRC, friends page, music, so that it doesn't distract quite so much from working.

Comments

[winterknight.livejournal.com]

I was eyeing an EeePC for me. Where'd you get yours? :)

[crschmidt.livejournal.com]

http://www.rcsnet.com/www_site/product.cfm?prd=4G%2DGALAXYBLACK

A couple notes that are probably especially relevant to you: the keyboard is small. Very small. Small enough that your hands/arms will be in a different location than they usually are -- and a couple of times while using it, I've gotten twinges in arms, which is obviously a problem. (In all cases, I've put down the computer and walked away for an hour, and never had any problems when I've come back: it's just a different position than I would usually use a computer in.

I think you use speech recog stuff a lot now, iirc: this is probably too slow/small to run much of that.

For me, I absolutely adore it. I can't do any *real* work on it because the screen is too small for map-based web development, but it's great for word processing, and it's speedy, light, and cute.

[winterknight.livejournal.com]

How is it as an e-book reader, in terms of the screen? It seems great for web browsing, which is good, too. I see it does Skype, also, which is always a nice thought. I don't *write* when I'm out of the house, so a ton of typing isn't too likely. I do like to read, get to the internet, take notes, watch movies.

I definitely use Dragon, but if I need Dragon, I'm not leaving the house or even bed. :) I have my nice little IBM T43 for that.

[crschmidt.livejournal.com]

The screen is pretty small, and it's not trivial to rotate it (at least, nothing that I've seen so far makes it trivial), so you're reading that way. I have no problem using it for keeping up on my friends page: I don't know if I'd want to read a novel on it, because it's just not quite 'right' for that. Also, compared to the OLPC/XO, it doesn't have the fancy screen that still works in daylight, so it's not so good for sitting in a park and reading an ebook of some kind that way.

Movies work great (and as I pointed out, the speakers are quite nice): I've been watching Torchwood on it, and had no problems. A friend is planning to use it for his kids on a road trip to watch movies. Personally, I think that more than one person watching something on it would feel a bit cramped, but it works okay.

Unfortunately, there's not really any good way to know if the reading you want to do it is going to be okay without trying it, I don't think: got any local friends with one? :)

(You're not local to NYC, are you? I'm going to be there for a couple days next week, but I seem to recall you being somewhere in the middle of nowhere, not near a city, so I don't think that you're close enough to make a meetup to check it out reasonable.)