Choosing A Sub-notebook

My sister has been whining that the Lenovo laptop I got her is too big for her to carry around in college. Since she wanted something just to type word documents, do presentations and chat with, I showed her the Asus Eee PC models, and she loved them.

The available models were 7", 8.9" and 10" and luckily they sell these in Kuwait - Hawalli area - Ibn Khaldoun street. I took her so that she can see and relate to the sizes. The 10" was "big" so the debate was whether it's 7" or 8.9".

The difference between the 7" & 8.9" is the screen size and the disk capacity, but the dimensions of both are the same!

Linux or Windows?
Now, for a sub-notebook, you have very limited resources: 512MB-1GB of RAM, 8-30GB of disk space. And the choice of the Operating System makes a VERY big difference.

If you choose to go with the Windows model, you get Windows only, without Office and without an Anti-virus (which is a must). Office 2007 would kill the poor machine, and an anti-virus would make it unbearably slow.

So it's obvious that Linux is the proper choice for such small devices, and guess what? It does come with a set of applications pre-installed, including OpenOffice.org from which you can save as MS Word 2003 format, or export to PDF.

This doesn't apply to Asus only. For any device with limited resources (sub-notebook, PDA, tablet, Smartphone, Embedded devices) I hardly see how Windows would ever be a feasible solution.

Javascript Menu Fall Behind Flash: Fixed!

I used to face a problem before when browsing websites with flash animations under a menu, when the mouse goes over a menu item, the sub-menu drops behind the flash animation, and I can't click anything.

I thought it was caused by poor design of the website, where they could've used the Z-Index property in Cascading Style Sheets.

According to this page, z-index wouldn't even solve it, and the problem was actually caused by Flash Player 9 on Linux (only).

I grabbed a copy of Flash Player 10 and installed it, and now everything works as it should!

I run Kubuntu 8.04 and installed the package manually. Download the ".deb" package then run this command:

sudo dpkg --install install_flash_player_10_linux.deb

After the installation is over, restart firefox and the new flash player will be loaded.

Linksys WAP54G Access Point

I got a Linksys WAP54G AP and wanted to configure it for the first time.

The place where I want to deploy this AP has no DHCP server, and each PC has its own IP address assigned manually. This AP would replace a previous malfunctioning Linksys AP (same model).

Took the AP out of its package, hooked it with power and connected the supplied network cable to a PC, only to find out that the software that comes on the CD is telling me that I should connect it to a switch/router!

1) What if I want to deploy ONLY wireless using an ACCESS POINT?! NOT ALLOWED? MUST I HAVE A SWITCH? HMMM????

2) Their crap "auto-configure zomg pink ponies emo" software is for Windows only, and the manual on the "CD" (50 lines under "CD") is just the "quick" startup guide.

I had to drive back from Salmiya to industrial Ardhiya just to get to my office and download the FULL MANUAL, which is 2.2MB ONLY. COULDN'T YOU INCLUDE THAT IN THE CD??????!!!!!!

The "secret" default IP of the AP is: 192.168.1.245 -- I assumed it was 192.168.1.1, 192.168.0.1, 192.168.1.254, but NOOOO Linksys has to screw you up somehow...

Oh, and in the manual, they say that the default user is "admin" and password is "admin" -- only that doesn't work. You just need the password, and leave the user blank.

While reading, a phrase almost pushed me in a time wormhole: "Launch Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator." -- Netscape???!!! ........

After deploying the crappy NEW AP, the signal was "Very Good" only... and sometimes the AP doesn't even show up and the connection gets dropped...

From now on I shall call these: LimpSys!

Model: WAP54G
Version: 3.1
Serial Number: MDG30Gxxxxxx and MDG30Hxxxxxx