Posts by Phill Gilbert

Top-secret Android handset surfaces on YouTube

@madra

Fantastic. Even more, I love it when people correct other people's grammar while swearing about it. Everyone knows that swearing is a lack of self-expression. Nice one.

Which is the best 5Mp cameraphone?

'best' is a relative...

It's a general misconception that higher resolution (Megapixels) provides a better quality image. To a certain point this is true, but one you get into 4+ MP, it only makes a difference if you're going to be blowing-up your pictures.

If you want to take good pictures on your phone, then you need a phone with a good camera lens - you could have a 7MP camera on your phone, but with a rubbish lens, your photos will also be rubbish. Alternatively, just selotape a decent camera to the back of your phone.

Eee PC: better with Windows?

XP on the EEE? Oh, so you're scared of change...

"The drain on the Eee PC is much higher - ironic given its low-power screen LED backlight and lack of a hard drive"

When was the last time you heard your hard disk spinning when your laptop was in standby? Oh, you probably haven't, so that won't make any difference. And when was the screen last on when you left your laptop in standby? Again, I'd imagine never...

"[with Windows] It takes the Eee PC about 22s to recover from hibernation, about 45s to start up from scratch"

Oh, that sounds great, after a few months that'll be 1:30 to boot and after 6-7 months that'll be 2 minutes to boot. Compared to the original OS's time of 12-15s, that seems a little poor.

Now I've tried Linux (Mandrake) in the past, much to no avail, until about a year ago when I installed Ubuntu on my PC. Then about 11 months ago I removed Windows. There's nothing I could do in Windows that I now can't do in Linux. Granted, I don't play a lot of games on my PC, but Ubuntu does have some native 3D games. Now I'm a bit of a geek (it's been said) and playing about with a new OS is all good fun to me, but with Ubuntu, you really don't need to worry about being a die-hard Linux fan, you just want to have to put a little effort in. If you don't want to put any effort in, then it's too late; you're a corporate sell-out already.

Asus Eee PC 4G sub-sub-notebook

Not using Xandros...?

Be careful if you're installing an OS other than the default one; because the EEE PC runs on an SSD it suffers from limited write cycles. I believe the pre-installed OS features a wear-levelling filesystem which helps to improve the lifetime of the SSD, but if you install one that doesn't, you can kiss the lifetime of your SSD goodbye!

You could put in a SDHC card and install your alternative OS on to that, install the bootloader (grub/lilo/ntloader) on to the SSD and tell it to boot from the SHDC. That way you're ruining your SDHC (relatively inexpensive) rather than the SSD (really expensive) and you can take it out for security if you wanted to.

Not that I won't try to install Xubuntu+Beryl on it, of course...

Asus: 'no plans' for 10in Eee PC

When to use?

If you ride a motorbike (like I do) you really don't want to be lugging around a 3kg notebook everywhere you go. For example, if I take my notebook with me it takes about 20mph off the top speed of my bike. And makes my shoulders ache. And people laugh at me.

The EEE PC is exactly what I've been waiting for; it looks good, it's cheap, it runs Linux, it's small and it's light. And I'll be able to walk after the 30 minute ride to work...

I'm waiting for mine now, actually...