Asus Eee PC 1000H analog audio ports

I ran into an odd problem earlier this week. I had a scheduled conference call to attend that used Microsoft LiveMeeting. This seemed like a good opportunity to install the LiveMeeting on my netbook (an Asus Eee PC 1000H). After all, I carry my netbook with me almost all the time these days. So, it seemed like a good idea to install LiveMeeting despite my desire to keep the netbook as app-clutter free as possible.

LiveMeeting itself worked fine on the netbook. It even seemed to deal with the 600 pixel deep display properly (which surprised me to be honest). The problem was I could barely hear the audio portion of the presentation on the 1000H's built-in speakers. I recalled reading about the low audio volume on the Asus before buying it but had not really tested its audio except to make sure some kind of sound came out after it was delivered back in August. I had other things to do during the hour-long presentation and I didn't want to be chained down to the netbook during that time. So, I plugged in a set of Logitech powered speakers that has decent volume levels. Unfortunately, this didn't help either. It looks like the low volume output issue also applies to the headphone output.

This issue can affect other netbook apps too. For example, if you give a presentation that includes audio output, the 1000H's audio might be too low to hear even when plugged into an amplifier and external speakers.

So, if you buy a netbook for the purpose of making a lot of presentations with it, you might want to check how loud that particular netbook's audio output is if your presentation frequently have audio-visual components.

YouTube video courtesy of much0J

I noted this item over on the Liliputing blog...

Turn your netbook into a Playstation Portable display

This hack lets you display games running on a Sony PSP on a netbook like the Eee PC. It takes a bit of work to do this though. You will also need to install an app called Remote Joy Lite and do a little USB cabling to make this all happen. You can watch this process in the video below.

YouTube video courtesy of badashah23

I was somewhat (OK, very) surprised to see the Asus Eee PC 8G in the Toys-R-Us insert in my local paper yesterday. The 8G (8 GB flash storage) was the model that followed the original 4G (4GB flash storage) Asus Eee PC. So, it does not have the faster Atom processor installed.

The $299.99 product in the add runs Windows XP while the $269.99 model runs Linux. I was very happy to see the Linux model available at Toys-R-Us. I wonder if the Linux model's slightly lower price might encourage some people (parents) to buy it instead of the Windows XP version?

One of the netbook app segments I have not discussed at all here are Linux-based games and edu-tainment apps that might be a good fit for Linux netbooks. I noted the other week that Costco had Acer Aspire One netbooks in their physical store/warehouse. With mainstream retailers like Costco and Toy-R-Us selling netbooks, we all need to really pay attention to apps that run well on the netbooks' reduced resources (especially screen size).

Microsoft opened its new online store at...

store.microsoft.com

You can read the details on Trevin Chow's blog (Microsoft Senior Program Manager)...

Introducing the Microsoft Store US

You can find a number of Microsoft hardware and software products in the store. But, you will not find Windows Mobile apps. Why? It is because Microsoft does not have any applications for Windows Mobile in their product line. They used to have a number of apps for Windows Mobile. Most were bundled with their desktop counterparts: Pocket Streets came as part of Streets & Trips. Pocket Money used to come pre-installed on the device. They also had two Windows CE game collections back in the Handheld PC days. But all of these apps disappeared.

Trevin's blog item does have an interesting nod to netbooks though when he says:

Lastly, in a world where lighter weight laptops, such as netbooks, are becoming more common, ESD [Electronic Software Distribution] makes things easier when an optical drive isn’t easily accessible. The first thing I do when I setup a new machine at home, is to run Windows update, and download all the freeware I use such as 7-zip. By extending ESD to Microsoft software, we’re able to increase convenience across the board for a variety of customers, regardless of whether they are using a speedy desktop gaming PC, or the latest netbook.

I'm not sure I want to rotate my netbook display 90 degress to get a portrait view, but if you want to do that, you can read a discussion of a freeware app to do just that in TeleRead...

EeeRotate: Portrait-mode reading on the Eee PCs and other notebooks

The free utility is found here...

EeeRotate 1.1

This would be more useful to me if we had a tablet computer the size and price of a netbook. Tablet PCs and UMPCs never became popular is because they are expensive and slow. You can be one or the other but not both.

I think I'm on a single person crusade (just call me Todd Quixote) to get app and web designers to start designing and re-designing their products to fit in a 600 pixel high screen. But, so be it...

Yesterday, while at my favorite local center of technology (Costco), I noticed they had a kiosk for the Acer Aspire One netbook. This model cost $359.99 for a model with 1GB RAM, 120GB hard drive, and a 2-year limited warranty.

If this isn't an indication that netbooks are mainstream, I don't know what is.

So, app and web designers, please take note. There are going to be a lot of netbooks purchased and given this holiday season. Please start redesigning your products to fit in a 1024x600 display. Thanks!

This week's MobileAppsToday App of the Week is a truly multi-platform app that can be used on anything from desktop to a netbook to an iPhone or Windows Mobile smartphone:

Evernote

The simplest description of Evernote is that it is a web service and associated client applications that lets you take notes. But, that doesn't sound very interesting does it? It would take a long time to describe everything Evernote is capable of and can do for you. Perhaps this additional information might help: Evernote lets me take and retrieve notes of anykind (text, audio, photos) on every device I carry (MacBook, Windows notebook, Windows or Linux netbook, iPhone, or Windows Mobile smartphone). It completely eliminates a common problem for people like me (and probably you) who use multiple computers and mobile devices: Finding that important note you wrote down... somewhere. If you use Evernote, the note is in the Evernote cloud and on every computer and mobile device you have. That important note is accessible everywhere.

Although Evernote can be used solely through its SSL encrypted web interface, they also provide software for Windows XP/Vista, Mac OS X, Windows Mobile smartphones, and the iPhone (and iPod touch). This software assists in creating and searching for notes before throwing you to the web interface for note retrieval.

I've been using a free Evernote account since March of this year. It lets me store up to 20,000 notes, 400 mobile photos, 270 web clips, 40 audio notes, and 11 high-res photos. There is also a $5/month (or $45/year) premium account that ups all of those limits way way up.

I have Evernote client software installed on my Windows Vista PC, Mac OS X boxes, Windows Mobile smartphones, and iPod touch/iPhone 3G. The two screenshots above are from my iPod touch. Although they don't have an Android client, I tested their web interface on the T-Mobile G1 and it worked fine (although the text entry box is very very tiny in the web form).

Check out Evernote. You'll probably find some kind of use for it within minutes.

Dynabook illustration from 1972 paper presented at the ACM National Conference in Boston. Image obtained and courtesy of Wikipedia

I know what you're thinking: How can the notebook computer be 40 years old when the first microcomputer didn't emerge until the 1970s. Well, note the word "Concept" in my title line. Wired.com has a great interview with Alan Kay at talking about how this can be at...

The Laptop Celebrates 40 Years

As you can see from one of Kay's own diagrams reproduced above, the Dynabook probably influenced the design and looks more like the fictional Star Trek PADD (Personal Access Display Device) than current notebook or even netbook computers. Actually, now that I look at it again, it looks like a big Blackberry. The Dynabook was originally described as being around 2 pounds. So, it is interesting to read Kay's response to the question of what he thinks of current day netbooks.

Happy Birthday to the notebook/netbook computer (concept)!

I'd rather see Mac OS X Expose-type GUI Control instead of Windows 7's Aero Shake

Long Zheng reported on a Windows 7 feature that is news to me: Aero Shake.

Shake up your Windows 7 with Aero Shake

The title made me think that it was a feature that used hardware accelerometer. However, that isn't the case. Shaking an app's window causes the desktop to minimize other apps. Shaking it again restores the other windows. You can see a video demo in the blog entry. This might be a useful feature on a netbook where you might want to visually focus on a single app on a tiny screen.

However, my feeling is that it may be like the Vista Flip-3D feature that collects all open windows in a stack and lets you flip through them to find the app you are looking for. It seemed cool when I first saw it. But, I never used it in Vista because it was too slow to use. My preference would be Mac OS X Expose-like features for Windows 7. For example, I frequently press F9 to temporarily make all open Mac OS X windows visible in pseudo-thumbnails and then select the window/app I want to work with (see the screen shot above for an example of Expose's F9 effect). This seems to make a lot more sense and require less effort than Aero Shake. It would certainly be a useful feature for netbook's running Windows 7.

Based on some recent browser usage data I've seen reported, it looks like I am one of the few people still using the Google Chrome browser. Although I still think Mozilla Firefox is still a better overall browser, Chrome does look a bit faster after the latest update emerged last week. However, I noticed something that comes pretty close to a showstopper on my Asus Eee PC 1000H netbook the other day: Chrome doesn't support vertical scrolling using Asus' multitouch feature on the touchpad. This feature lets you scroll up or down a window by using two fingertips on the touchpad. This feature is supported by Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 3.

Since the web browser is the primary app for many netbook users, this can be a big problem for people like me who have an Asus netbook with this useful multitouch touchpad feature.