On Sun, 03 Aug 2008 06:43:37 -0400, Jim wrote:


I picked up an Asus eee Surf 2G the other day. Out of the box, it was
easy to connect to the wireless internet. It came with Open Office which
seems to be quite robust. Most of my data files are in Microsoft Works
and open office wouldn't recognize them without first converting them to
Microsoft Office formats. File Manager is similar to XPs. It had a light
on features media player. I couldn't find a driver for my printer but my
wife's installed easily. There were some quirky issues with the screen,
and touch pad sensitivity, particularly with tapping. There was no
mail/news client so I tried to download and install Thunderbird. I
didn't have any luck with that, even following various installation
methods I found on line. The Linux distribution is a highly customized
version of Xantros and I think Asus messed with it to make it difficult
or impossible to install software. That's not good fore someone who is a
complete newbie to Linux and all of the terminology used in linux is
completely foreign to me. I couldn't even reset the computer to out of
box state as the manual describes. I am going to return this thing on my
way home from camping today.
My question is. Do you think the eee900 is more user friendly in terms
of ability to customize and add software? Is the touch pad any better
than on the 7" version? I need an excuse to try the 9in Asus but my
intuition tells me that I won't be happy with it. I know it can come
with XP and that will eliminate familiarity issues but I would like to
try out linux and break my dependency on Mickysoft.

Getting under the hood of Linux, it's considerably different from
Windows. You might consider a Live CD on your desktop. It will give you
the ability to familiarize yourself with Linux, without the worry about
installing it.

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download