I took a break today from playing with Linux on my Eee PC to play with Linux on my Toshiba A135-4527 laptop. I don’t know if it was a recent Windows update or what, but for the past few days I’ve been getting horrible glitches whenever I try to play or record audio. At first […]
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Eee PC: Running Ubuntu from a flash drive
Well, my foray into the world of Puppy Linux was short and sweet. But since I couldn’t get the audio drivers working, I decided to move on. The folks at Pendrivelinux.com have some incredibly simple tutorials for loading Knoppix, Slax, DSL, Gentoo, and Ubuntu onto USB flash drives. Since I’ve spent some time with Ubuntu […]
Puppy Linux on the Eee PC
With all this talk of people installing Mac OS X, Windows XP, and even Windows Vista on the Eee PC, I figured I had to get in on some of this alternate OS action. But I don’t have a USB DVD drive, and more importantly, I don’t really want to mess with the Xandros operating […]
Restore factory settings Eee PC vs. my Vista laptop
Wow. I’ve forgotten how much work it can be to restore a Windows PC to factory default settings. In the two weeks since I brought home my Eee PC, I’ve done a complete system restore about 3 or 4 times. This is the price you pay for running through a ton of experiments. Sometimes it […]
Adding in-line spell checking to OpenOffice.org on the Eee PC
For some reason the Eee PC ships with OpenOffice 2.3 preloaded instead of the more current OpenOffice.org 2.3. Since I don’t really need to do much more than basic word processing, that doesn’t concern me much. But I have noticed that there’s no in-line spell checking. You know, the thing that underlines spelling errors in […]
Adding power management to the Eee PC
Update: It’s not particularly clear that mucking with the Eee PC’s clock speed actually does anything to improve battery life. So consider everything that comes below to be an intellectual exercise. Original Post: The Asus Eee PC uses a relatively low power 900 MHz Celeron processor to help cut down on costs and to help […]
Zoom H2 and Zoom H4 now OS X Leopard compatible
I’m a Windows/Linux guy myself these days, and my Zoom H4 works great with both operating systems. But apparently Zoom H2 and H4 digital audio recorders didn’t play too nicely with the latest operating system update from Apple. Well, for a few minutes anyway. Zoom has issued updated firmware for both recorders and now all […]
How to run Audacity 1.3 beta on an Eee PC
I was so excited to get Audacity installed on my Eee PC the other day, that I didn’t notice at first that I’d installed Audacity 1.2.6. What I really wanted was Audacity 1.3.3 beta or at the very least 1.3 beta. What’s the difference? Well, there are a bunch of improvements in the 1.3 line, […]
Sony PCM-D50 audio recorder release pushed back
So I went ahead and pre-ordered a Sony PCM-D50 flash audio recorder from Sweetwater a week or two back when I saw that the company planned to ship them out the same day they receive their stock. And that was supposed to be November 2nd. Well, that was last week and I haven’t heard a […]
Dealing with large program windows on the Eee PC
One problem with the Asus Eee PC’s non-standard 800 x 480 pixel screen is that some applications just don’t fit on the screen. For example, sometimes when you go to add programs using the Synaptic Package Manager, the “OK” button will actually pop up below the taskbar, where you can’t easily get to it. Or […]
Eee PC + Zoom H4 = mobile recording studio
Sure, I was able to install Audacity on my Eee PC, but what good is an audio editor without an audio input devices? I figured if worse came to worse, I could always pop the SD card out of my Zoom H4 audio recorder, throw it in the Eee PC’s SD card slot and edit […]
Eee PC + external monitor = awesome
So it turns out that not only can you use that little VGA port on the Eee PC to display an 800 x 480 desktop on an external monitor, you can go all the way up to 1280 x 1024, and possibly beyond. Since my monitor won’t support resolutions higher than that, I can’t promise […]
Eee PC: Enabling Full Desktop Mode
When Asus first announced it was developing the Eee PC, the company said there would be two ways to use the device. First was an innovative new “easy mode” that would replace the typical start menu with six easy to use tabs labeled internet, work, learn, play, settings, and favorites. And for more advanced users, […]
Add a start menu to the Eee PC and customize it
One of the best and worst things about the Eee PC is its “easy mode” user interface. In easy mode, you have no start menu, and little ability to access some of the Eee PC’s more advanced features (unless you know your way around a terminal, which you can pull up by hitting Ctrl+Alt+T). If […]