the contemporary shopping lifestyle

It’s been a little over six months since the ASUS Eee PC captured the imagination of techies all across the globe. The low price point, ultra-portability, and customizability have made it a consumer favorite since it’s arrival. With a rapidly expanding community begging for more (and competition looming) ASUS hasn’t wasted any time announcing the release of the Eee PC 900. And although the 900 model will undoubtedly be popular with consumers, it’s the Eee PC 701 that retails for $399 that I reviewed recently that is still the best ultra-portable device on the market today.

Despite the low price and portability, many Windows-savvy user like myself are wary about using Linux for the first time. I ultimately decided to take the plunge (mostly out of curiosity) but now find myself hooked on the nuances of Linux and have even installed Ubuntu on my home PC. After tweaking with my Eee for hours on end, I have finally come to a set up that enables me to do almost 100% of the work I do on my Windows dual-core laptop.

For anyone looking to get set up quick and rapidly without a bunch of headaches, here’s what I did (with the help of the very awesome EeeUser tutorials):

1. Enable Advanced Desktop Mode.   The Eee comes with a special “easy mode” installed.  Easy mode is great if you just want to boot up and check the web and use the software that the Eee PC comes with, but not much more.  Advanced Desktop Mode puts you in a traditional Windows-like environment with a desktop and a start menu and the ability to customize your computer a bit.
2. Change the taskbar clock format.  Unless of course you like a 24 hour clock.
3. Create more screen space in Firefox.  Since web browsing is likely one of the main things you’ll be doing on the EeePC, this is paramount.  Also make sure to get rid of the Status Bar on the bottom by unchecking view -> status bar.
   
4. Add other software repositories.   The EeePC comes with some great software - Skype, Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, etc - but if you want to experience all of the other great Linux software out there the easiest way to do this is to add the list of four Xandros software repositories from that tutorial.  Doing so will allow you to install almost any available Linux software at the click of a button in the Synaptic Package Manager.  In particular, I wanted to install Bluefish for web development and GIMP for image editing.  Both were easy installs once I added these repositories.

Doing those four steps will take less than an hour but will dramatically increase the potential that your Eee PC has to offer (and also familiarize you a bit with Linux).  If this quick guide alone doesn’t satisfy you, the Wiki over on EeeUser has step by step instructions for almost any other task you might want to attempt.

Continuing our series of electronics cleaning videos, the video below demonstrates a simple and effective cleaning routine that can be performed in minutes using a can of Stoner Gust, Plexus Plastic Polish, Cleaner, & Protectant, and a high quality Microfiber Towel. If you’re anything like us, you use your laptop everywhere: at home, at work, while you’re eating lunch, and at the coffee shop. When you aren’t using it, it’s being lugged around in a laptop bag or idling on your desk. Over time your screen will become covered in dust and smudges, and your keyboard will be filled with debris. Do this routine at least once a week to protect your laptop and keep it in brand new condition.

“Can I subscribe to it via RSS? If not, there’s no way I’ll read it.”

Those words are echoed by the millions of web surfers that receive their daily news through a RSS reader. Why do they feel so strongly about this technology? Quite simply, RSS simplifies your information retrieval and enables you to read and consume more in less time. You receive only the content that you want and aren’t bothered by the rest.

What is RSS?
Previously referred to as Rich Site Summary, RSS 2.0 stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS is a standard publishing XML (extensible markup language) format used by most websites and blogs to syndicate their content. The key word being standard. Because a RSS feed requires the same information from everyone - a title, a link, and a description - it can be aggregated and viewed uniformly regardless of the source. A feed from the New York Times is essentially formatted the same as a feed from your local newspaper, both of which are formatted the same as someone’s personal blog. There are other optional elements, but the key to RSS lies in the simple required elements.

How do I find RSS feeds?
You’ve probably seen RSS feeds before and not even realized it. Almost every site that publishes regularly updated news has a feed available to its readers. RSS feeds are usually marked with an orange icon like the one below, but can also be linked to with some combination of the words XML, news feeds, or RSS.

For example, here is where you can find the RSS feed on ESPN.com:

And on FoxNews.com:

What should I use to read RSS feeds?
RSS feeds can be read using a feed reader. Odds are you already have one and you don’t realize it. Here are some of the more common products people use to read feeds:

• Google Reader - web based
• My Yahoo - web based
• Bloglines - web based
• Internet Explorer 7 - browser
• Mozilla Firefox - browser
• Mozilla Thunderbird - email software
• Microsoft Outlook 2007 - email software
• FeedReader - desktop software
• Google Desktop - desktop software
• Windows Vista Sidebar Widgets - desktop software

How do I subscribe to RSS feeds?
Once you know the web address of the feed (usually found by clicking the icon) you just copy and paste it into your feed reader and you’re subscribed.  Your feed reader will automatically update with new news as it comes in!

I don’t get it - why is it better than bookmarking a bunch of sites?
I didn’t get it either at first. The primary reason that RSS saves you time is that the content comes to you instead of you going out and getting the content.

Before RSS, I had to scan through a list of bookmarks, click through to see the site I wanted to visit, wait for the site to load, and navigate through the content I didn’t want…just to click to read an article.  Each article on each site is formatted differently, many stretched to several pages and many cluttered with ads.  Without realizing it you waste a lot of time because of these things.

Now I just open up Google reader.  There’s a list on the left hand side of every feed I subscribe to and nothing else - so I get only the information I want.  If I don’t want MLB news from Yahoo Sports but I do want NBA news, I can just subscribe to the NBA feed.  If I want Atlanta Hawks news and news from no other team, I can just subscribe to the Hawks feed.  When I click on a story to read it, there are no formatting differences because the information is uniformly displayed in the feed reader.  I can either view headlines by site or by topic: it’s easy to switch views and scan all unread news in a particular category in a matter of seconds. For example, I can view all of today’s news from my favorite sports sites all at once without being cluttered with headlines from other sites or other teams that I don’t want to see.

You save so much time you’ll never want to go back.  More than anything else, you just need to try it out and realize for yourself why it’s better.  Try it for a week and you won’t ever want to look at another news website for the rest of your life!

What else can RSS be used for?
As RSS matures as a technology more and more uses are being created.  For example, two of Pure Adapt’s sites (the parent company of Tastefully Driven) utilize RSS in unique ways.  Music-Alerts allow you to create a feed of your favorite artists and be notified when they have a new album coming out.  iPrioritize allows you to create to-do lists and subscribe to the updated list via RSS (great for collaboration and sharing - you can be notified as someone updates the status of a task).  The new video site Hulu.com enables users to receive RSS updates when episodes of their favorite shows and movies are added to the site.

How do I use RSS on Tastefully Driven?
You can subscribe to the feed for this blog by clicking the ‘Blog RSS Feed’ icon on the right hand side of our blog.  You can also use RSS to track forum topics.  Each forum has a ‘Forum RSS Feed’ icon, while each topic has a ‘Topic RSS Feed’ icon.  If you really want a customized experience, you can click the ‘add this topic to favorites’ link on the topics you want to be notified on, and then subscribe to your personal RSS feed of your favorites by visiting the ‘Forum Favorites’ link under your ‘My Account’ page.

About three weeks ago I decided to take the plunge on one of the wildly popular ASUS eee PC. It’s not the fastest. It doesn’t have the best resolution. It has a tiny keyboard. But man oh man, the ASUS eee PC is one amazing little portable device.

First things first, you have to know where I was coming from when I made this purchase. My partners and I are all highly mobile (meaning we work in a lot of different places) and over the next few months will be able to run the majority of our business via the web with web apps (so no bulky software necessary). I have one powerhouse laptop that I use for everything and sometimes I get sick of carrying my huge laptop bag everywhere I go. I wanted to have the option for more portability at least 50% of the time. I also wanted to reduce the wear and tear on my existing laptop - packing it up and moving it around five times a day as I travel from home to work to a wifi spot to dinner and back home can not be good for it…specifically the hard drive.

After reading about fifty reviews (all positive) I pulled the trigger on the $399 Eee PC 4G. Here’s just a sample of what other impressed bloggers have recently said:

If your looking for a portable web browsing machine or something just to have with you that can do most computer tasks, this is great. It’s doesn’t have the power for games, high res photo editing, or video editing, so it’s not going to replace a desktop. But at 2lbs, it’s so light to carry everywhere that you can keep with you always. And the 3 hour battery life is really nice as well. I wholly recommend this computer.

- Phil from Phe-roo!

It really is a rugged, go-anywhere device and fits numerous places a laptop won’t go (eg. glove compartments, drawers, handbags, large coat pockets)

- EirePreneur

What you’re paying for is a sub-$500 AUD ultraportable, 7 inch notebook, that weighs less than a carton of milk and can perform almost anything its much bigger kindred can do with relative ease.

Good luck trying to get the same thing for the same price.

That alone is enough to make anyone give it a second glance. For anyone else, it’s enough to head out right now and get one for yourself.

- Footsteps in the Mirror Blog

Posts like those are the types of comments that would sway anyone on the fence.

It weighs a mere 2lbs, has a solid state hard drive, and is about half the size of my current Toshiba Satellite laptop with a 15 inch screen:

After using it for a few weeks, here’s how I break it down:

The Cons:

• Wacky screen resolution of 800 x 480 takes some getting used to, although you can make adjustments to make the viewable area much larger.
• Despite USB support for most devices, USB mobile broadband cards seem difficult/impossible to use without an intricate understanding of Linux, or without installing XP (which in my opinion would slow the device down too much). The other option - connecting to the web via a bluetooth connection to your cell phone - seems nearly as difficult based upon what I’ve read. That leaves you with just wi-fi for connecting to the web…not exactly ideal for an ultra-portable like this.
• Battery life of only 4.5 hours seems kind of weak for a device that you’re never going to use plugged in. 6 hours+ would be nice.
• Sometimes it lags a bit when loading several browser tabs or programs…but this can be taken care of by upgrading the 512 MB of RAM to 1 GB.

The Pros:

• The screen is vibrant and crisp. The colors just jump off the screen.
• It boots up in less than 10 seconds!
• It comes with every piece of software I need pre-installed: most notably Skype, Firefox, Thunderbird, and Open Office. Every app works fantastic: Firefox in particular provides a great web browsing experience that nearly equals what you’d expect from a full-size Windows laptop.
• With a little help from EeeUser.com, just about anything is possible: I have never used Linux before and I was able to follow step-by-step instructions to install Advanced Desktop Mode and make more screen space available in Firefox.
• The keyboard is phenomenal. It was always one of the ‘cons’ when I read other reviews, but for the size it is fantastic. I am able to type at the same speed I do on my full size laptop after a few minutes of adjusting (I am 6 ft 1 in and weigh 180 lbs, so it’s not like I’m a tiny guy). Sure, some of the non-letter keys are in wacky spots, but what do you expect from a keyboard that’s 40% of the size of a normal one?

I can absolutely say that you can not go wrong with this computer if you do your research and understand what you’re getting: for under $400 you’re picking up an innovative little computer that works great as an ultra-mobile backup laptop.