Even though I've been busy that doesn;t mean that my work has stopped cropping up on the Intertubes. Here's a smattering of stories that have appeared around the traps.

Hydrapinion

• Staying Social on Holidays
• Facebook Lite Trims the Fat
• Why Social Media Will Prevail
• Twitter Rules the US Open
• Has Twitter Jumped the Shark?

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald
This is one of favourite stories: Computer dream sees light of day

I've also had stories appear in the latest issues of APC, Australian Macworld and AusCam but for those you'll need to hit the nearest newsstand.

In the second half of the next month I'll be launching, with my buddy Nick at Sproog Publishing, an all new magazine that's 100% focussed on the whole netbook scene.

Netbook Mojo will cover the latest news, products and accessories. Lots of folks buy their netbooks as they're cheap and offer enough computing power for most tasks. What I've found is that those buying a Linux-based netbook are using that operating system for the first time so we'll be doing some "How To" stories to guide Linux newbies.

In the run into launch mode, I'm looking for your input. What sort of magazine do you want? You can let me know by either

1. leaving feeback to this post


2. following Netbook Mojo on Twitter


3. sending an email to editor@netbookmojo.com

So, are you going to get your Mojo on?

From Ars Technica.

a look at some analysis form NPD on recent computer sales should make Apple's point of view crystal clear. For the month of June, slightly more than 9 out of every 10 dollars spent on a computer over $1,000 went to Apple.

So, while only one in ten computers sold in the USA were Macs, most of the money went Apple's way.

Seems like good business to me.

I'm not going to say anything. Just watch this an be totally amazed.

We don't often think about routers as being computers but they actually are. They have memory, processors and run an operating system. That operating system typically takes that comes into one port (usually the port labelled as "WAN") and routes to the other, numbered ports. All of this requires some smarts so that the traffic comes and goes between the correct LAN ports. That's what the router software manages.

Router software does a bunch of other stuff like manage communications standards, provide a firewall, keep all your wireless traffic protected by implementing encryption and a whole bunch of other stuff.

The Problem

My LAN is not the usual home setup with a single router. As you'd know from the story of how I built my office I require two routers so that both the house and office have wired and wireless LAN access.

The first Linksys WRT310N has been running in the house for some time. It's connected to the cable modem and has worked flawlessly. I reviewed this unit for APC a while ago and I reckon it's a great router.

Until recently, I'd been using a Belkin N1 Vision. It's been OK but I find that it loses wireless connectivity from time to time. Also, I found that some of my shared devices, like my Thecus NAS became invisible unless I restarted the N1 Vision. I've updated the firmware but every week or so the router needed to be restarted. Incidentally, the reason I stuck with the N1 Vision was that it was super easy to use as a second router. It had a single checkbox that converted it from a router to an access point.

When setting up a LAN with two routers you can do one of two things; run each router as a seperate LAN or create one LAN that uses both devices. If you run them as two LANs it makes the job of sharing resources like printers and files far trickier. A single LAN is usually easier to use but you need to make sure that either you have only one DHCP server (a DHCP server gives each device on the LAN it's own unique address), set up both routers to use DHCP but with non-overlapping address ranges or use manual addressing for each device on the LAN (not impossible but a pain to maintain).

I decided that I wanted to use my original WRT310N as a true router, doing DHCP, and the second router configured to just act as an access point, with no intelligence.

The problem was that short of a bunch of complex manual configuration the second WRT310N couldn't be set up as a simple access point. That's what lead me to DD-WRT.

The Solution

My buddy Wayne is a full on Linux user and loves using open source solutions whenever he can find them. He put me on to DD-WRT some time ago.

According to the DD-WRT wiki:

DD-WRT is a third party developed firmware released under the terms of the GPL for many ieee802.11a/b/g/h/n wireless routers based on a Broadcom or Atheros chip reference design.

Installation was dead simple. All I needed to do was download the firmware and then use the default Linksys firmware to update the router's firmware with DD-WRT. There's a compatibility list so you can check if your router can be given the DD-WRT treatment. The whole process took just a few minutes.

What you find is that the DD-WRT does everything that the original Linksys firmware does. However, it adds a a whole bunch of other options.

For example, making the WRT310N into a simple access point and disabling its routing capability only required that I set a couple options. In my case I simply set the Internet connection to "Disabled" (I know that's counterintuitive but it works), give the router a new IP address (so that it's not the same as the main router), disable the DHCP server and then set the WAN port to take the incoming connection from the main router.

A full list of all DD-WRT's features can be found here.

Once all that was set, I restarted the router (following the instructions) and tested basic connectivity. I was able to connect to the Internet and see resources on my LAN. I then set up wireless with WPA2 and my preferred SSID so that wireless was secured. Another restart and I confirmed that all was working perfectly.

Conclusions

Ultimately, my decision to look at alternate firmware for the WRT310N was driven by the lack of a specific function in my router - a simple way to make the router into an access point. Many people tend to equate free software with poor quality.

DD-WRT is a great example of open source software and how free doesn't have to equal junk. DD-WRT takes a great product, the Linksys WRT310N, and expands its functionality significantly.

It's not often that there are two big netbook announcements in one day. After all, the whole netbook/mini-notebook phenomenon is a pretty new trend and, Apple's CEO Steve Jobs says, the market is still nascent.

However, Asus today announced its new $1300AUD Eee PC 1004DN. What makes this Eee PC different from the others? Well, it's the first to market with an optical drive which, in my mind, further blurs the line between netbooks and sub-notebooks. The first netbook, in my view, was the Toshiba Libretto that was around in the late 1990s. The rest of the Eee PC 1004DN spec sheet reads similarly to most other 10" units although allow casing over the LCD and Express Card slot give it a slick look and plenty of flexibility.

The other big news came in parts. Firstly, I received a press release from Microsoft announcing that they'd been selected for the roll-out of "mini-laptops" into schools in New South Wales. This is part of initiative to get a computer into the hands of another 200,000 teachers and students. The release pre-empted one that came later from Lenovo. Lenovo completed the story, telling the world that they'll be supplying 220,000 IdeaPad S10e as part of Digital Education Revolution program.

So, not a bad day for the netbook market. A new model that's probably more a notebook than a netbook and Lenovo scores a huge sale (with Microsoft coming along for the ride).

For the February issue of PC Update, I wrote a story on Windows 7 where I tested it with four different systems.

The final word - Windows 7 shows a lot of promise and looks to address many of the problems faced by adopters of Vista. If the focus from this point is on stability and performance rather than adding new features, we could see Windows 7 help restore Microsoft's ailing reputation.

The full story can be read here.

This interesting story at Computerworld UK came to via @sascha_p through Twitter. There are some very tasty nuggets of information in the story that looks at data collected via a PriceGrabber.com Consumer Behavior Report.

It seems that the emerging (or "nascent" in Apple's words) netbook category has manufacturers in a "race to the bottom", according to a Sony representative, and that traditional notebook sales are being cannabalised.

I know many netbook owners (I have a couple of them myself) and no a single one of them uses the netbook as their main computer. However, it has in some cases brought them into the notebook market. For example, some folks have a desktip system and would like a notebook. Until recently, that meant an investment of several hundred dollars just for an entry level unit. Now, they can buy an entry level Eee PC for about $330AUD. In that sense, they actually making the mobile computer market larger.

However, in these depressed economic times, many are skipping on the current round of laptop replacements and are either hanging on to older hardware or replacing with a netbook.

Are you contemplating a new notebook? Is a decent netbook in your calculations?

Over at Hydrapinion I've mused on what I do to avoid my data becoming fragmented while I'm out of the office.

The problem is, when I'm away from the office for more than a few hours, something that happens practically every day, the information I have on my laptop and the information back home are out of sync.

 Data • Mobility

For a bunch of reasons the Eee PC ships with either Windows XP (I'm sure Microsoft's still annoyed at that) or a customised version of Debian Linux. Both work reasonably well although my experience is that Linux doesn't seem to suffer from the same performance degradation as XP over time. Personally, I've ditched both default operating system options, preferring to run Ubuntu for the Eee.

As part of a story I've penned for PC Update, I've been playing with the beta release of Windows 7 (Build 7000). I expected to run into some hurdles with my Asus Eee PC 900 as the installation requires about 9GB of contiguous disk space. My Eee PC 900 has a total of 12GB but it's split between 4GB and 8GB disks. Interestingly, the installation actually failed but then restarted and succeeded. I'd seen this with previous versions of Windows but it seems that the installer is smart enough to start over but skip the problematic files.

I expected to encounter all sorts of issues with with the PC. However, Windows 7 lacked the correct video drivers meaning that I was initially stuck with standard VGA. This was something of a surprise as the video chipset is an older one but perhaps Microsoft is sending a message about support for older computers. Resolving the video driver issue was easy enough as the Windows XP driver seems to work perfectly.

The wireless networking worked without any messing about. In fact, the only hardware that didn't work with the Eee PC was the integrated webcam. However, to be fair, the main problem was that Asus made the appropriate Windows XP driver hard to find.

To get Windows 7 running nicely I needed to make a few tweaks. Windows 7, by default, offers to manage the best balance between performance and appearance options. However, I found the Eee PC a little sluggish but by turning off many of Windows 7's interface animations there was a significant boost in performance.

The Eee PC took about 2.5 minutes to start up and be usable. Launching Internet Explorer took about five seconds although, once it it was loaded it performed quite well. The Eee PC 900 running Windows 7 was by no means unusable and on a par with Windows XP, the OS that shipped with this particular Eee PC.

Windows 7, at least in the current beta release, shows great promise. It seems slim enough to install and performance is certainly OK. If Microsoft can resist the urge to add more features and concentrate on stability then Windows 7 might end up being an excellent option as a mobile operating system.

In researching what will be one of many stories on Windows 7 I'm sure I'll write over the next few months, I've been installing the beta version of Windows 7 (Build 7000) on just about any PC I can get my hands on. One of my test systems is an Eee PC 900.

Just to make sure we're all on the same page here, the pertinent specifications of the Eee PC 900 are:

Display: 8.9" Display running at 1024 x 600
CPU: Intel® Celeron M353 clocked at 900MHz
Networking: WLAN Built-in 802.11b/g and RJ45 10/100 Mbps
RAM: 1GB of DDR II
Storage: 4GB and 8GB disks and SD/MMC slot
Webcam: 1.3MP

As you can tell, this is not going to be a Windows powerhouse. In fact, the Windows Experience Index (a measure of how well a system will run Windows 7) gives a score of just 1.0 - the lowest score. It's worth noting that this score is a reflection of the system's "weakest" component. in the Eee PC 900's case the integrated graphics card pulled the score down.

The Eee PC actually fails to meet one of Windows 7's minimum requirements - available disk space. To install Windows 7 you'll need 9GB of free, contiguous disk space. The Eee PC 900 has a total of 12GB but that's spilt into two separate disks of 4GB and 8BG. However, I was still able to complete the installation with about 1GB of space left on the larger disk. The installation did fail on the first attempt but when I started it over it was able to complete. I had the same experience on another system so it seems that the installer is smart enough to skip over problematic stages.

Once Windows 7 was installed (about an hour using an external DVD drive), it booted up perfectly. It's worth noting that Microsoft has really managed to get the installation process right. Other than some localisation information, I was able to walk away from the installation and come back once it had completed. There weren't any "Click to Restart" dialogs or other such nonsense.

I wasn't all that surprised to find that the Eee PC 900's display was limited to plain VGA after the installation. Clearly, Microsoft hasn't included every possible hardware driver. However, on the Eee and other systems, i;ve found that Windows Vista and XP drivers work just fine. The only potential "gotcha" is that the driver installers provided by manufacturers may not work. in that case, run them in compatibility mode for XP or Vista and they should be fine. I ran the Eee's driver installer in XP compatibility mode and it worked well. You won't get the full Aero experience but I'm not sure that it's worth the overhead in any case.

Using Windows 7 on the Eee PC was surprisingly good. I had low expectations but found that even with some antivirus software installed the system was reasonably responsive. However, I'd strongly suggest that anyone using Windows 7 on such an underpowered system go into the Performance Setting and manage those settings yourself rather than letting Windows work it out for you. I disabled almost every visual enhancement other than "Use visual styles on windows and buttons". This made a significant improvement to the Eee PC's overall zippiness.

Wireless networking worked without any problems although my impression is that wireless range is a little weaker under Windows 7 than XP or Ubuntu. As radio strength can be controlled by software it may be that a driver update will fix this. However, the difference wasn't huge and certainly didn't impact my testing. It was just that places that had a solid five bars of signal now drifted between four and five bars.

I've not been able to get the webcam working yet. It needs a driver but I can't find my Eee PC CD at the moment and I could find the driver on the Asus website. I suspect that once I find a driver it'll be fine. Perhaps someone's sorted that out. If you have, leave me a comment or use Twitter to let me know.

Finally, I've noticed that the power management side of things still needs some work and that the suspend/resume functionality is a little broken. It's not a showstopper for me as the Eee PC isn't a main system for me (my MacBook Air is my principal mobile computer).

What I'd like to see in a future release of Windows 7 is a "netbook" installation. I know that would add a step to the installation process but being able to leave off stuff like the games and some of the accessories would slim the installation back leaving more hard disk free. Also, I suspect that I'll be able to eek out further performance gains by playing with the service that launch automatically. I'm not too fussed about the driver issues - this is Beta 1 so it's not surprising that it's not 100% complete.

If your Eee PC 900 (or better - I don't recommend Windows 7 for an Eee PC 700) isn't a critical working machine for you and you can spare the bandwidth, installing Windows 7 certainly won't hurt your system.

I recently penned a story for PC Update - the magazine published to Members of the world's second largest PC user group, The Melbourne PC User Group.

The story is a review of a couple of members of the Eee PC family; the Eee Box and Eee PC 1000h.

We can see the Eee Box finding a place in many homes and small offices. Given the $429 purchase price, a home network with two or three Eee Boxes and a decent NAS for centralised storage would be a very functional arrangement. However, if you crave lots of grunt for playing the latest games then the Eee Box B202 is not suitable.

When it comes to the Eee PC 1000h, it's a more difficult recommendation. It's a very good unit but there's a lot of competition in the laptop market around that price-point.

You can read the whole article here.

 Eee Box • Eee PC