Broken tale of woe, leading to joy

Started out with a Linpus Lite Linux model of the AAone A150. Got on reasonably well with it as a newbie. Expanded it's memory from 512Mb to 1536Mb, got an extended 6600mAhr battery etc etc. Settled down to get used to Linux, and straight away ran into problems. First off was it's inability to see my external USB sound card. Much hunting and reading, and posting on the forum identified the problem, and a halfway house fix was established. Not ideal, but rudimentary, and it seemed to work. Then the machine just would not talk to my external USB based DVD-rewriter. Even a dodgy connection fix, wasn't reliable.

Then woe of woes, the damn thing just died on me, with a completely black unlit screen. :evil: The seller (PCWorld) attempted to say the extra memory was the problem. So memory removed, proved the problem wasn't that, but a dead screen. After much arguing got a credit note to use at any of the group's stores, so promptly went off to Curry's and bought a much needed new washing machine (which had just broken down).

As I didn't want to waste the battery I searched for another AAone, this time in XP flavour (sorry to all my previous Linux helpers here :roll: ) These machines weren't that easy to find in stock anywhere! Got one eventually though. Put everything on it I wanted, Firefox and not IE7 (which uses up too much of the resources), NERO6 (much faster than the bloated v7's or v8's), and various PDA utilities like book readers, divx viewers, etc, etc.

Now I'm not one to push or praise Gate's empire more than anyone else. But the damn stuff does work a heck of a lot more easily and transparently. My external USB card works 'out of the box' no toying around with driver software, and the external DVD-rewriter is just there as it is supposed to be. Now I'm a happy AAone user at last .

Anyone want an 8yr old Gericom (Advent in disguise) laptop ???

 

I agree. I can't understand why one would want to run Linux when you can have XP. To be fair, though, I've never used Linux.

 

As a basic OS for those who want to use the AAO as an appliance to get online, write documents etc., rather than use it as a full computer, the built-in Linux OS is very good. However it's a bit limited if you want to install software, use peripherals etc. This isn't due to Linux itself, it's just the way they designed the Linpus variant that comes preloaded on the AAO. You can "hack" it to make it more flexible, but IMO it's better to just install another distro if you want to use Linux - one that is more up to date and easier to use without hacks.

On my desktop rig, I dualboot Ubuntu and Vista.. and let me tell you, Ubuntu is a completely different thing from Linpus. It recognizes everything inside my computer case and all peripherals like my USB WLAN adapter, printer, external harddrive etc. In fact I have to do more "driver hunting" after a clean install of Vista than I have to do after installing Ubuntu fresh. Vista won't even recognize the WLan adapter without the use of an installation CD. I would run Ubuntu only, but since I play 3D games and use my computer to make music, I still need Vista at the moment. It's not that Vista is bad, I actually like that OS too, but Ubuntu isn't any worse IMO.

Why did I go with XP and not Ubuntu on my One?
-I know how to tweak XP to make it work well and adapt it to the hardware (limited RAM, SSD drive etc.). I just don't know enough about Linux to truly tweak it the way I can do with XP or Vista.
-Even "out of the box", XP is actually more lightweight than Ubuntu, OpenSuse etc.
-Acer only provides drivers for Linpus and Windows which means some features don't work, at least not without effort, under other Linux distro's.

 

Can't say I've ever used Vista at all. Apart from everything I've read about it, being slow, and bloated beyond belief compared to XP. Unless you bought a new machine pre-installed, I'd get rid and put XP back on it (in fact some manufacturers, incl DELL I think, allow you to revert brand new laptops when first turned on!!). Until such time as MS gets it's act together and sorts out Vista properly, and/or the future Windows 7 proves to be faster and as capable I've absolutely no reason to change.

XP works superbly on all my machines, including this little baby. Can't remember the last time one of them crashed . . .

 

I personally bought the 120 gig windows model, quickly installed xp pro, then proceeded to install ubuntu 8.10 with netbook remix. I like the best of both worlds. I agree that xp "just works" but I find that I am one of those people that like to tinker. Linux lets me play. I wish I had a SSD but I would want 64 gig or so, and they are not cost effective (or even available?) gig hard drive worfks great for multiple operating systems.

I have to admit when this whole "netbook" craze hit I laughed, but for 350 bucks (less than what I paid for my last ppc phone) I got a heck of a good little computer.

Each to their own

 

That's the problem with Vista. There's a ton of misinformation, lies and FUD that's being spread about it in blogs, "expert columns", not to mention the outrageous Apple ads, so people just a$$ume it sucks without even trying it first. I was just like that until I actually got a copy of the OS and installed it on my system. It's not a huge upgrade from XP, but it *is* a better OS. If you have a lot of RAM and a good video card, Vista is actually faster than XP. It also doesn't slow down or become unstable over time like XP does.

It did have problems when it launched in late 2006, and it also lacked drivers for a lot of things. All that is behind it now however. SP1 fixed all the major bugs within the OS itself and hardware manufacturers have gotten their act together when it comes to Vista drivers.

As a matter of fact, Windows7 will be based on Vista, and look and behave similar to Vista. If Vista was such a horrible OS, don't you think Microsoft would have started from scratch instead of just tweaking Vista? All Vista needs really is a new image and brand name.

 

The problem Vista has is that it got a bad rap from problems that it had in the beginning. Because of this and the fact that XP is a solid OS, people have been hesitant to make the change. I personally like Vista and as said, if you have good video and memory, the OS is quite fast.

Microsoft has continued to give peole a choice by continuing to offer XP. They had the same exacty problem in the beginning when XP came out but eventually overcame it by making XP the only choice available and people eventually accepted the change. People in general do not like change and will resist it until the time they are shown that the alternative is good. People can say whatever they like, but MS does put out a good OS even if there are the occasional problems (to be expected).

Actually, even though I really like XP, I have had more problems in the past with XP crashing than I ever have with Vista. Just my experience. People say that MS has a monopoly on the market and we just have to accept what they throw at us. The truth is, YOU DO, for the most part. So you can either go with some other OS like Linux and deal with the inherit problems of support or just accept it and move on.

 

Hi, I dont think the linux OS aint that bad as I have owned the one only about 2 weeks. I managed in my first 2 hours of using the AAO (my only experience of linux before this was about 20 mins use on a test setup), I managed to get it connected to my home network, setup my Epson R220 printer which is being shared across the network as it is connected to my primary desktop PC, unlock the advance mode, install and setup VLC and installed wine.

Also I have got my AAO to see my primary PC HDD and be able to view and access the files across the network using fusesmb and it works flawless. I suppose I find linux not to bad to use as when I started back on PC's I was used to using DOS 5 and 6.2 and windows 3.1 when it came out. So I am/was use to creating batch files and editing sys files just to get squeeze enough XMS / conventional memory to run games/programs that only used the 640k memory and not the extra ram.

Those were the good old days and probably anyone who is in their early / middle 20's who have only ever been brought up using a WIMP (windows Icons and mouse pointers) interface wont be fimilar with command line and stuff, unless they are managing / working on networks.

Just my view and opinion on linux and why some people might fail to use it even though they are very, very good at using windows OS and getting it to do what they want.

Anthony

 

LOL! (about the washing machine). Computer problems are almost always resolved with a similar pattern, at first one's heart sinks; but, in the end, one usually comes out stronger as as result. You are much better off with XP imho.

 

Re: XP history etc etc

Thanks for all the comments and stories. It has been fascinating to read the different viewpoints.
Back a few years ago the only reason I moved to XP (from Win98se) was to get the NTFS file system, which allowed files bigger than 4Gb. I was/am into video-editing (though probably not on the AAone), and it quickly became necessary. Otherwise I was limited to about 12minutes of video at a time to work on. Along came XP, and it has been very stable for me. I still consider my main machine has some silly numbers attached to it (4Gb ram, approx 2.3Tb of disk storage across 6 disks), but it's necessary to store the video files whilst editing, and to provide some redundancy!

Yes I've tinkered in the past, and seriously mucked things up too. Worst ever was accidentally formatting and losing a RAID array. There have been one or two complete re-installs from scratch as well. So yes, observing it over time does show that XP can become larger. Hence one reason I would always reccomend using something like a 'Registry Mechanic' style of tool to help you keep your system clean of all the things that can clog it up over time.

Time moves on and I upgrade, hardware and software as it needs to be at the time. So I guess it's inevitable that Vista or Windows 7, or 8 etc, will eventually become used here. But, given how good XP has been for me, probably not until 3-5 years after it stops being sold, and hence later stops being supported. I'm not resistant to change, just what I perceive as change for the sake of it. I still use s/w written 10+ years ago that works perfectly well for me (that millenium bug - what rubbish . . .) But I guess this is a subject for a whole new discussion thread :- who's got the oldest s/w still running perfectly happily, and why haven't they changed? Am I the only one who doesn't see the point of a new version of MS Office every year or two, when I'm likely never to use more than a single percent or two of what it might be able to do?

After all that, the main reason I bought my AAone? Portabilty, small size,and functionality as a netbook in my wireless household.