I has Windows 7

[SnakeCharmer]

Pretty much all the customs are a clean reinstall of windows which they recommend using Easy Transfer to migrate/backup your windows settings.

Suuuuuuweeet!

[Kitsune]

Isn't XP going to stick around for awhile though.. since it seems to be the preferred OS for netbooks..?


Still haven't used 7, but my overall impression of Vista is that it isn't even that different from XP. And I wonder why they don't just put Vista Basic (sans Aero or some shit?) on netbooks.

edit: oh wait, I'm reading there will be a Win7 starter edition designed for netbooks. nvm

Yes, my dream of running Windows 7 Ultimate on a netbook will have to remain nothing by a sweet fancy, borne on the wind.  Oh wait...



WHAT NOW, MOTHERFUCKER?

 

Don't mind me, I'm just nerdgasming over the arrival of my new toy.  And the subsequent hacking the hell out of its hardware and software to make it a mean little Win7 machine.  Like a midget with a knife.  It'll cut you, man.  Three ways.

And once Snow Leopard is out, I'm putting that in for a dual-boot.  Left ten gigs unpartitioned for it.  Gonna be sweeeet.

(Sidenote for OS nerds: Dell's Mini 9 (and the above pictured Vostro A90, which is identical except for cosmetics) is the only netbook that has yet been made to run OS X natively without any missing drivers or features.  If you're gonna stick it to the man and play with Apple's OS without the hardware tax, that's a good computer to do it with.  The only downside being that Dell ships them with only 1 gig of RAM and a crappy slow solid state hard drive.  You'll need to replace both at around $130 from Newegg, total, before it's ready to rock with 2 gigs RAM and 32 gigs HD.)

[Kitsune]

And just to really put the cherry on top of my corporate rebellion sundae, I just tethered my phone to the netbook over bluetooth to use as an access point.  Guess what, Verizon?  I'm a fucking Alltel customer, and my phone isn't crippled like the crap you sell.  Enjoy my using your bandwidth without paying you to un-cripple my phone!

[schild]

I've been looking at Netbooks. I will not get one until someone makes one with a less than crappy graphics processor. I don't mean great, just passable would be fine. Integrated Intel shit is right the hell out though.

[Trippy]

There's only one right now that fits that criteria: the Lenovo Ideapad S12.

[schild]

Yep, and I fully intend on ordering one the day they're available as both of my laptops are totally dead.

[Kitsune]

Better graphics chips are nasty little battery-gobblers; I doubt you'll find anything above 'barely passable' for a long while.  The Intel chip in my Vostro is sufficient for Aero's 3D tricks and video playback, and that's good enough for my needs.  It's not like I was planning on gaming on a 1024x600 screen and teensy keyboard in the near future.

[schild]

This isn't about games. It's about video playback. I mean, some games would be nice. Maybe recording from some emulators at a lower res.

[Trippy]

The 9400M is decent enough for some games as well. It's a "real" GPU unlike the POS Intel ones. However the shared RAM architecture limits its performance compared to dedicated memory mobile GPUs.

[schild]

I'll just wait for the S12 with Ion. It's supposed to come out in a couple weeks anyway, afaik.

[stray]

Hmm, a netbook with hdmi, and that could at least output 720p or even 1080 would be nice. I thought there might have been something like that already. But then, I'd want faster storage, optical drive, etc, etc.. Yeah, fuck it. I doubt that's happening. Best to go with a slim notebook.

[Teleku]

Yeah, it sounds like a laptop.  The entire point of a netbook is you just browse the internet and maybe type up some papers on it.  Thats it.  If you want to do anything else with it, buy a notebook.

[Sky]

Kitsune, let me know how it goes setting that up with 10.6. My fiancee is ready to pull the trigger on a laptop, but we want something that boots OSX and doesn't cost $$$.

[Trippy]

The 9400M is decent enough for some games as well. It's a "real" GPU unlike the POS Intel ones. However the shared RAM architecture limits its performance compared to dedicated memory mobile GPUs.

I'll just wait for the S12 with Ion. It's supposed to come out in a couple weeks anyway, afaik.

The Ion has the 9400M.

[Kitsune]

Yeah, it sounds like a laptop.  The entire point of a netbook is you just browse the internet and maybe type up some papers on it.  Thats it.  If you want to do anything else with it, buy a notebook.

Netbooks are definitely not great performers.  But then, neither are most laptops.  My mother got one of those bazillion-dollar Sony 10" laptops about two years ago, and my netbook is roughly equivalent in power, while costing less than a fifth the price of her laptop.

The Vostro takes 24 seconds to boot to the logon prompt from the time I hit the power button.  I played a 640x480 anime episode off a USB drive without any hitches in video or audio playback, even in full screen mode.  Where I DO encounter hitching is in trying to play HD Youtube, as those videos are handled solely by the CPU with no GPU acceleration to take any of the load.  Non-HD Youtube videos are fine.  I don't know whether the Ion platform would handle HD Youtube any better than my crappy Intel GPU, though.

Kitsune, let me know how it goes setting that up with 10.6. My fiancee is ready to pull the trigger on a laptop, but we want something that boots OSX and doesn't cost $$$.

Will do.  People are already banging on the test versions of 10.6 to get it running.  Success is limited at present, but rumor's that 10.6 only takes around 2.5 gigs of storage space, which will be nice.

[Trippy]

The 9400M supports hardware decoding of H.264 (YouTube's HD format) and also VC-1 and MPEG-2. That's why the ION platform supports 1080P playback even with an Atom CPU.

[Kitsune]

Better video playback < OS X compatibility for my needs.  My whole purpose in buying a netbook (when I already own a perfectly good Macbook) was to have an ultra-portable computer that would fit in my toolbox and let me have a reliable platform for running diagnostics on customers' networks.  Something where, even if they're totally boned, I can still be getting online to access patches, anti-virus programs, etc.  Enough of my customers own at least one mac for it to be valuable for me to be able to run OS X on the toolbox computer, as troubleshooting a misbehaving mac on a network can be a pain when all the Windows computers are reporting no problems; is it a compatibility issue, or is the mac just busted?

On a side note, that's a big part of why I desperately want to punch the "tee hee, macs just work!" crowd square in the face.  I've spent nightmarish afternoons struggling to get a mac to work on a network, only to find buried in a corner of Apple's tech support forums: '10.5.2 breaks network file sharing with PCs.  No fix is available, hopefully 10.5.3 fixes it next month'.  Well that's fucking great.  Every now and again Apple will break the crap out of something vaguely important, and without another mac handy to test the function, it can be a bitch and a half to track down the cause.  At least when Microsoft breaks the crap out of something, there are usually other Windows machines handy nearby to try to replicate the issue.

[Trippy]

While I don't know if Mac OS X would work on an ION machine it does support the 9400M on which ION is based (the Mac Mini and a number of Mac notebooks all use the 9400M). Even though I've been talking about the 9400M as if it's just a mobile GPU it's actually a combination of GPU and chipset (memory controller, system I/O, etc.) so OS X provides driver support for all that stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody hacks something together that let's a hacked version of OS X run on an ION machine.

[fuser]

http://windows7sins.org/

FSF is so silly at times, cannot wait for the footage from boston 

[schild]

http://windows7sins.org/

FSF is so silly at times, cannot wait for the footage from boston  

Goddaaaaaaaaaamn, that is some terrible propaganda.

If you donate $25 dollars, we'll send 50 more letters, donate $100 we'll send 200 letters and so on.

For $100, you can upgrade to Windows 7.

[Kitsune]

Holy shit, it's the Linux version of timecube.

[stray]

Damn, won't load for me now. Now that's a sin  

[Yegolev]

Goddaaaaaaaaaamn, that is some terrible propaganda.

Yes, open source sucks.

I find it ironic that the site doesn't work with javascript disabled.  I'm crying lockin!

[Kitsune]

A lot of open source's suck comes from being made by teams consisting entirely of nerds with no artists.  The UI of things like Gimp, Open Office, and most Linux distros makes me feel like a midget is vomiting in my eyes.  Yay free and all, but if I can't figure out how to wade through the UI to do what I want with it, it's worthless to me.  If some of the development teams would just grab a decent graphic designer, it would be so much better.  Hell, grab a kid making nice Winamp skins.  Sure, your version of Linux will look like the inside of a riced-out Kia, but at least it'll be usable.

[Prospero]

I finally got my main box upgraded to Win7. So far so good; it seems stable and the few apps I've put on so far seem happy. My only complaint is they couldn't be bothered to add one new screensaver after 10 years.

[schild]

I finally got my main box upgraded to Win7. So far so good; it seems stable and the few apps I've put on so far seem happy. My only complaint is they couldn't be bothered to add one new screensaver after 10 years.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Desktop-Enhancements/Screensavers/ToasterClone.shtml

[fuser]

http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article142017.ece

Comedy GOLD! 

[Sheepherder]

Ehh, the FSF could be worse.  The fucktards who think Apple is any better than Microsoft piss me off more.

[Yegolev]

HAY FUCKERS USE THAT EFFORT TO SOLVE REAL PROBLEMS

[schild]

HAY FUCKERS USE THAT EFFORT TO SOLVE REAL PROBLEMS

Open Source people are the new hippie stoners.

[stray]

Pretty hippy-ish least when it comes to the smaller apps. Most of the large projects may as well be considered to have commercial sensibilities though, since they're basically run by committee (with a lot of corporate contributors).

The FSF however.. is not that type of commitee. They're weird. I'm thinking more of all of the Sun folks working on OpenOffice.

[MrHat]

Speaking of the 9400M, I'm fairly certain I've been playing League of Legends w/ it for the last week or so.

Also, looking briefly at that S12, after adding what you need to it to get it to work like you want, its likely to be like $700.  For another hundred or so, you could get my macbook and throw win 7 on it.

[Engels]

I have been seriously tempted to get the 13 inch mac book air and putting windows 7 on it (since I don't really use OSX and can't see the appeal), simply because it has many qualities that look great. Dedicated graphics, SSD drive, ultra light, very slick looking, etc. Then I rean into this article:

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/08/06/0420237/Windows-Drains-MacBooks-Battery-Whos-To-Blame

That put a stop to that fantasy.

[stray]

What exactly do you want to do with it? Shit, if you like the hardware, get it. It's not like OS X would cockblock you out of doing work. Or would it?

[fuser]

SSD drive

We're heading off on a weird angle but the first gen air's SSD's were crap performance. Speaking of which is there any TRIM support on the drives controller/firmware?