So I’m now in possession of a Galaxy Black ASUS eee pc. This is a little baby notebook that’s solid state (no moving hard drive). It really is small enough to fit in my purse. The keys are about 3/4 normal size (as a guess) and we’ll see how well I do typing on them. It’s not a replacement for my laptop or desktop machines but rather something to carry around, make notes on and write quick tidbits on.
The first thing I found was that the WiFi doesn’t like the advanced encryption of my wireless network at home. It had no problem finding it, just could not get an IP. Oh well, I’m not willing to sacrifice my network security (nor reset all the machines) so I just won’t use that at home.
It boots really quickly and is running Xandros Linux. This gives it an almost Windows-like UI and it was easy to find applications like Open Office and such. After a quick tour of pushing buttons, I set is aside to charge while I read the information.
Hmm – I could install Windows XP on it, if so desired. I think for now I’ll stick with Xandros and see what happens.
The first real issues rears its head – I’m a dedicated Dvorak touch-typist. I don’t need the keyboard’s keycaps to be laid out in Dvorak but I want the keys mapped to a Dvorak layout. This is easy in Windows because I’ve done it so many times but it took me a small session with Google to find the command for Xandros. The command works but I’d have to enter it each time I start up the eee and that seems like a pita.
What would really be great is to have a shortcut to execute the command to set the keyboard map to US and one for Dvorak, then set the default to Dvorak.
Easier said than done. Guess I’ll poke at that later tonight and see if I can figure it all out.
