Screaming Penguin

I am immobilized this weekend (nothing serious, just have to stay off my feet for a few days, doctors orders), so I decided it would be a good time to work on some GWT/AppEngine hacking. Enter my need for a good portable computer (don't want to sit at the desk). My long lived first gen Intel Mac has been acting up lately (can't really complain though, as it worked well for 3+ years or so, and I used the hell out of it) so I decided to just finally pull the trigger and grab an eeePC - so far I love it. I grabbed the 1005HAB model at my local retailer (Atom, 160GB non solid state, 10 inch) , because I was in a hurry (normally would order online), and because they had an open box deal for $239 (reg $299). First I formatted it and installed Ubuntu (the XP license it came with might get used at some point, but not now). I will try Snow Leopard on it in the future - but Ubuntu is my OS of choice nowadays (really, about the only thing I outright miss on the mac is Omnigraffle anyway). I went with plain Jaunty, and it worked fine out of the box, with the exception of networking, which was easy enough to fix (http://www.jfwhome.com/2009/08/06/perfect-ubuntu-jaunty-on-the-asus-eeep...). I didn't go with eeebuntu or easy peasy because I am just comfortable with regular Ubuntu, and prefer the regular desktop - even on the small screen (may check out netbook oriented variants more later). All my peripherals work, and did so the first time out without hassle. I am posting from this machine now. So far, great, but I will follow up with another post (and more detail) once I have used this thing for a while - we will see if it and I still get along after a few days of slinging code. ;)