Blame it on co-teacher Iyra. :D

We've been talking about getting laptops for the past year since the other faculty members already had theirs. She got her Compaq Presario (B1200?) during the enlistment period for her thesis work. I've been using my PSP as sort of cue cards for lectures in the form of PDFs or CBRs. I've been harping on getting a netbook / UMPC (Ultra-Mobile PC) / nanobook for basic stuff, eg. surfing, ftp, writing, spreadsheets, email, rss feeds, web stuff, etc. Not really looking for one to accomplish heavy graphics work, I do that at home on a desktop. Never really was heavy into gaming. I wanted something small, light and simple. Something 14, 12-inches or smaller. I did look at the Compaq Presario B1200 for a while, but choose against it since Iyra already has one.

Yugatech has a comparison of 7-inch UMPCs. Based on that plus lotsa trips around the malls and comparisons over the net, I ruled out the Redfox Wizbook, Neo eXplore X1-branded Intel Classmate PC, and Asus EEE.  There's just something about them that didn't seem right for me (Weak processor? Low RAM? The look? It was one of those at one point or another). I narrowed down my choices to the Everex Cloudbook, Astone UMPC CE-260, Deep Blue H1 and HP Mini-Note 2133.

Didn't realize it early on but my choices turned out to have either a VIA C7-M 1.2 Ghz or a VIA Esther 1.0 Ghz  processor. I didn't like the space between LCD and the keyboard of the Cloudbook and the Astone. The Mini-Note is priced too high for me at the moment (It's higher than PhP25k... Maybe next time?). So I got the Deep Blue H1 (around Php17k).

Specs:

• VIA Esther 1.0 GHz
• 1GB DDR2
• 7.0-inch TFT
• 40GB HD
• 2 x USB 2.0
• 10/100Mbps LAN
• 802.11b/g Wireless
• 1.20 kg
• 0.3 megapixel webcam
• 4-in-1 card reader
• touchpad
• reportedly up to 4½ hours battery life.

OS isn't much of a concern for me since I believe I could change distros if neccessary. The Deep Blue H1 comes with Linpus Linux ver. 9.4 Lite. Sounds wimpy, I know. I'd perfectly understand if the Linux mascot was a cat, but it's a penguin, and it makes him look like a wus (or in this case a pus). But so far things are running fine.




Startup time from power button press till usability takes about 47 to 50 seconds.



Tried doing stuff I would normally do. Linpus has:

• Internet: Firefox (net), Thunderbird (email), Filezilla (ftp), Pidgin (im), Liferea (rss), plus shortcut links to Youtube, Googledocs, Wikipedia, Googlemaps, Windows Live Spaces.
• Productivity: OpenOffice Writer (doc), Calc (spreadsheet) and Impress (presentation), Stardict (dictionary), Linpus Calendar, Text Editor and Calculator
• Media: Tux Paint, Adobe Reader (PDF),  FBReader (ebook), SMPlayer (video), Banshee (mp3), F-Spot (photo), Linpus Image Viewer, Webcam Viewer
• X Windows System Desktop Environment: Default Gnome, can be switched to XFCE

Power-down from onscreen button press with no apps running takes 10 to 11 seconds.

So far so good.

1. Was able to access my accounts on mutiply, youtube, gmail, stickam, etc. without squinting too much. :D
2. Got to test pidgin by chatting with Iyra (who had this inkling that I was online testing this little baby and buzzed me).
3. Opened and edited documents, pdfs, etc
4. Watched a video.

I'm a happy gorilla. :D

The only cons I've encountered so far were:

1. Liferea keeps hanging on me. Maybe importing my long opml rss feed list was too much for it. So that means I may stick to Bloglines in Firefox.
2. Bottom heating up. May be normal but will buy or fabricate a notebook cooler just in case.
   

  Blue... Blue... My world is Blue... :D