Last night I was pricing up a replacement either as a netbook or as a motherboard and build up a system of my own when I stumbled on a bauer netbook through argos on Ebay of all places. It said refurbished and looks like it does the job, Intel Atom processor etc all for £163.98. So I snapped it up and I’ll see how it shapes up when it arrives

There’s plenty of reviews about these devices floating around so you don’t need me to tell you if its worth buying. Needless to say you can guess the answer quite quickly.

Another worthy mention is PC World who had one waiting for me and a handy 10% off without too much pressing. Many thanks

‘Can you reserve me one at the store nearest where I am going to be?’

‘Yes’ says the oppo ‘ For 24 hours’

‘Unfortunately I’m not going to be there until Saturday’ I say ‘ Can you hold it until then. It just needs a note on it saying when I’ll be picking it up’.

‘Sorry, computer says no’ replies the increasingly ambivalent oppo

‘Where does that leave me, bearing in mind you lot have caused this’ Says the slightly irate customer (ex customer?)

‘You’ll have to ring back Friday’ she says

‘What happens if there isn’t one there?’ I ask

‘Dunno’ she says ‘ They’ll phone you if there isn’t one’

‘Can I have there number to check on Saturday morning, the store is 300 miles away from me’

‘Sorry, they don’t have phones’

‘Thanks’ I say. Without Pee Cee and without any trust in another company that could have easily done something nice like’ Don’t worry sir, we’ll deliver one to you by Friday morning. I’m very sorry for our muck up and here have a ‘Yorkie’ bar for being patient with us, we do actually have your money after all’. Still thats progress in the online world……lesson learnt, the smaller the outlet the more likely they are of wanting to keep you as a customer.

Humbug!

It came with XP pre-installed which was a bit of a bummer as I like my Ubuntu. Seeing as I had no choice and really it’s for my wife I thought it should stay as a XP machine. This means that it it can potentialy run Ham Radio Deluxe, something thats been missing out of my life since I went all Linux

So I tried it very breifly with PSK31 and it worked a treat. Although the screen is minute there is just enough room to make a QSO. Yes a bigger screeen will do the job nicely but for the time being it’s just what the doctor ordered.

Software installed

Open Office – Of course, remove the nasty MS works and install possible the best open source app in the world…save only

Firefox3 – need I say more

BBC iPlayer – Never thought I would use it until I went away for a week

Good Sync – Snychronising Pen drives, web site….the lot

Poor show PC World, for the slow turn arouond and waiting for you to reply to emails. big hurrah for not even questioning that this is a geneine return. lets hope the next one is a fully happy bunny

The trouble with mine is that the sod just doesn’t want to start up sometimes and so back to PC it must go. I contacted their customer support during the week who said they’d get back to me in 5 working days. Sorry did I say customer support. Not a good start!

Checking through a few forums might have highlighted a bios problem so I’ll be interested to see what they come up with. Hopefully it’ll be a quick fix and I’ll be on my way. Just have to wait and see!

Unfortunately it has come with the Tech Guy’s back up utility on it which doesn’t always let the little monkey turn on. up pops the advent splash screen and then a little clunk can be heard at it turns itself off. Try it a couple of times and it can do it again or turn itself on. I think that I’ll mention it to PC World tomorrow to see if it’s a known issue. More on that later, I’m sure.

Apart from that really small problem the keyboard is ace for short amount of typing, you just have to be more accurate when aiming for keys. The screen is great and the processor is speedy enough for most things. Video playback is spot on as well, what more could you ask for?

Top 3 are still the eeepc 901, msi wind and acer one. All of them are about the same for my purposes. I have some network storage so don’t need a large hard disk but I do need a good screen and good battery life.

The other problem is windows or linux? Whilst I’m staying with Ubuntu for the duration with the desktop, I’m not able to use Ham Radio Deluxe with linux or log onto our corporate server so I may have to by the linux version as they tend to have the better specs and install XP from my currently redundant disc’s.

It’s unlikely that the rest of the day will pass without more news on the tech sites. So I’ll be keeping google reader open and running

Front runner at the moment is the MSI wind although now that Dell and Acer seem to be having a go it’ll be interesting to see if ASUS start to drop their prices now that there are so many that compete on a very level and highly competetive playing field.

Just goes to show that the manufacturers are still a bit behind in what the markey actually wants to have as they’ve all missed the boat so far.