Yeah, my netbook is still useful

Back in 2009, my wife picked up a Compaq Mini 110c for me. While that 10.1” netbook with its low-power and underpowered Intel Atom CPU is about as trendy as a pet rock these days, I still use the thing like crazy.

Why? It’s a lot easier to lug around than my 17” laptop and is pretty darned convenient. I don’t always need the power of my big ol’ laptop with its four-core CPU and 8 gigabytes of RAM, so the Compaq is great for traveling, surfing on the Internet and a heck of a lot of other things.

Anyone looking for a cheap, portable computer could do a lot worse than a Mini 110c (or just about any netbook, for that matter). Those are so out of favor that it’s not hard to pick one up on eBay for about $100, but you’ll need to do a little work to make it the truly useful machine it can be.

Here we go:

* Dump Windows. Most netbooks came with Windows XP or Windows 7 Starter. They both suck for netbooks because those underpowered netbooks simply struggle with Windows when it comes to handling complex tasks.

A lightweight Linux distro is a much better choice for a netbook. I’m a fan of Linux Mint with the Xfce desktop, but your mileage may vary. A couple of the many great things about Linux is that the distros are free, so you can try out as many as you like until you find one that suits you.

* Max out that RAM. My Compaq came standard with 1 gigabyte of ram, but will support up to 2 gigabytes. I spent about $40 on that upgrade and the speed boost was well worth it.

* Get a six-cell battery. My Compaq came with a three-cell battery that was quite small and only lasted about three hours with regular use. Doubling up to a six-cell battery cost about $20. That’s another worthwhile investment.

So, you can spend around $100 for a netbook, drop another $60 or so for some upgrades, spend some time learning Linux and you’ll have yourself a great, general purpose computer.

Having said all of that, let me put in a plug or two for the Compaq/HP Mini 110 series. The track pads are weird (buttons on the sides of the track pad rather than on the bottom as God intended), but the keyboards are great. Also, I’ve worked on a few netbooks over the years for friends and have learned one thing – the Mini 110 is easier than most to actually open and work on when things go wrong. That’s worth a lot for those of us who value a cheap computer that is easy to fix with cheap parts.

Oh, one more thing – forget about the models with a 16 gigabyte solid state drive. Go for the 160 gigabyte standard hard drive. You’ll be glad you did.

Come on, eBay

Over the past decade or so, I’ve had a lot of dealings with eBay. I’ve bought a lot of items and have sold a lot on the Internet’s largest auction site and have managed to compile a 100 percent user rating after 289 completed transactions.

My experience with eBay has largely been pleasant. I’ve bought a lot of items that just aren’t much sold around here (mainly vintage video games) and have sold quite a few items I had lying around that turned out to be worth a buck or two. In short, I’ve been a fan of eBay for years and love the notion that the site caters to those of us who might collect things that are out of the ordinary and hard to find locally.

Over the past couple of months, however, my eBay experiences have been less than pleasant. Perhaps I’m snakebit and unlucky at times, but things seem to be going wrong over there.

Let me explain. Back at the first of December, my son kept hinting that he’d love to have the Xbox 360 that’s been in our living room since 2009 back in his room. I figured that request was reasonable, so I decided to pick up an Xbox 360 Elite for the living room and give him the faithful, old 360 that’s entertained us for a few years. So, I used the “buy it now” feature on eBay and picked up one for a good price.

The seller said he didn’t have it anymore, cancelled the transaction and refunded my money. Fine. I bought another 360 Elite and the same thing happened – the seller didn’t have the item anymore so he cancelled the transaction and refunded my money. The third time proved to be a charm and I was able to finally get someone to take my cash and send me a 360 Elite.

Two weeks ago, I bought a Sega Genesis game for a few dollars and that transaction was cancelled, too. Why? Of course, the seller no longer had the item. Around the same time, I sold the Samsung Galaxy S4 on eBay for $420 and the buyer didn’t pay me. I contacted the buyer and agreed to give him another week to pay. I opened a “non-paying buyer” ticket on eBay last night since I’ve not gotten my money.

Here’s the main problem I’ve had with all of these cancelled transactions – they were all with people who had high user ratings on eBay. It would seem the site’s attempts to self-police its users has fallen short. It’s irritating to buy items and find out later they are no longer available and it’s infuriating to see an auction go a week, end and then have to deal with a buyer that doesn’t have the cash to complete the deal.

One of the things that has made eBay so effective over the years is that transactions tend to go smoothly. Buyers and sellers close transactions with little trouble. Should the day arrive when that is no longer the case, then what use is eBay?

My situation may be unusual, but I hope the folks at eBay are doing what they can to make sure that buyers and sellers both will hold up their ends of transactions.

Got Linux?

That's right, Linux fans – a new version of Ubuntu is due out today (April 25).

If you already have Ubuntu, your system should tell you when the update is available. If not, launch the update manager in Ubuntu and it will search for the new operating system for you.

If you simply want to switch to Ubuntu, head over to Ubuntu.com, hit the download tab and follow the directions. Bear in mind that you can have Ubuntu running alongside your current operating system or you can put it on a USB drive or DVD so you can test drive it instead of installing it on your system.

Bear in mind that 13.04 isn’t a radical update – the primary focus appears to be on making the OS run faster. Also, the ever evolving Unity GUI will receive some enhancements, too.

Have fun!

Screw you, Apple

You know, I haven’t updated this blog in some time. Why not? I haven’t been irritated enough to rant about anything lately.

Now, I’m not talking about the decidedly heavy social issues of the day, our rotten federal government or the general mess that our nation has been drudging through since the dawn of the 21st century. No, it’s more fun to rant about trivial things that annoy the living hell out of me.

The iPhone 4S is the gift that keeps on giving in that regard. I hate this phone more than I thought it was possible to hate an inanimate object, but the iPhone 4S is so obnoxious that it feels more like a prank than a device that’s supposed to be convenient. It has proven to be a consistently awful phone and one has to question a lot of moves it made after Steve Jobs died. Remember what Apple was like without Jobs in the mid-1980s to mid-1990s? The company went from one of the world’s leading technology companies to one that churned out junk. Folks, they’re heading back down that path again. Jobs was Apple and the company isn’t worth two damns without him.

Let me explain. Back in August 2010, I got an iPhone 4. That thing was a brick. It was reliable as all get out in spite of the fact that I’m hard on cell phones and tend to tear them up fairly quickly.

In February 2012, I moved on to the iPhone 4S and that was a mistake. By September, the 4S was having problems connecting to either WiFi or cellular networks. No, the phone had to be completely reset several times a day in order to restore connectivity (and that’s annoying). I took it to the local Apple Store in Little Rock and those folks did a clean reinstall of the OS. That didn’t fix the problem and the Apple Store decided to replace the 4S with a new one in December.

Problem solved, right? Nope. Within a couple of months, my new 4S developed a new problem – the sound likes to cut out from time to time. Yes, it’s silent for a few minutes then starts working again for one unknown reason or another.

If my original 4S was garbage and its replacement is garbage, it’s not too hard to conclude that Apple has some serious quality control issues with its phones. Is the new, Jobs-free Apple utilizing cheaper Chinese slave labor to build these things? It’s hard to tell, really.

The point here is this. Apple has gone, once again, from an international technology innovator to one that is cranking out substandard garbage. Without Jobs, the company is one that is simply resting on its laurels.

I’m curious about whether the iPhone 5 is as much of a disaster as the 4S, but it’s hard to get a straight answer on that. People tend to be zealots about Apple products and zealots are rarely objective.

I’m due a new phone in a couple of months, so it seems my time in the Apple camp is rapidly coming to an end. My tablet is Android, so it makes sense to grab an Android-powered phone, too.

Dump that iPhone 4 for a 4S? Save your money.

One of the great things about my job is that I can get a new smartphone whenever I’m due one under my contract with AT&T.

I was due a new phone last week, so I headed to my favorite AT&T retailer and swapped my iPhone 4 for the shiny, new 4S. Was it worth it? Well, that depends. If you’re still toting an iPhone 3G and are due an upgrade, the 4S is well worth investigating. If you have an iPhone 4, however, save your money. If you’re sick of the iPhone 4 and you’re desperate for something new, it might be worth your while to see what’s available in the Android camp.

Is the iPhone 4S a bad phone? Not at all. However, it’s so similar to my iPhone 4 that I’m reminded of a story in The Onion (the best parody site running, of course) about Arby’s apologizing for releasing the a sandwich that was merely the same old roast beef thing with a few strips of bacon slapped on it. It was technically a new sandwich, see, but it was more than a bit uninspired.

Apple is guilty of something marvelously similar with the iPhone 4S. Unlike the Beef ‘N’ Bacon sandwich, however, the 4S is a real, live product that has Apple and its devoted followers absolutely fawning over how great it is. In reality, the 4S is little more than a 4 with a gimmick thrown in and some slightly better specs. The case is the same. The pitifully small 3.5” screen is the same. Typing on the tiny keys on that dinky screen is still miserable.The 4S, in short, looks and acts a lot like a 4 with a few notable exceptions.

You can compare the 4, 4S and 3GS here. A couple of things that stand out about the 4S are a dual-core CPU rather than a single-core one, an 8 megapixel camera as opposed to the 5 megapixel one on the 4 and the ability to record 1080p HD video rather than 720p. The assumed performance boost of the dual core CPU is barely noticeable unless you happen to be playing games with a lot of animation (My Town2, for example, is a lot more comfortable on the 4S than the 4). It may well be that more apps will come out that will take full advantage of the dual core CPU in the near future, but most apps on the market perform about the same on either the 4 or 4S.

The camera resolution is a bit better (as mentioned), but it’s not that much better. The image stabilization on the video camera is a nice improvement but, again, nothing extraordinary.

Apple has also made a point out of the improved battery life on the 4S, but I’ve not noticed any improvement over my 4 with both phones running iOS 5.01. In fact, both the 4 and 4S under iOS 5.01 suck that battery down much quicker than a 4 running iOS 4. Strange.

Ah, and then there’s Siri – the highly-touted voice assistant. It’s a neat gimmick, but it feels out of place on a device made by a company that brags about how its stuff “just works” and claims nothing is released to the public until its refined and better than competing products. Siri has great potential and that may one day be realized, but for now it’s just a gimmick that is in danger of being as useless as FaceTime unless a lot of work is done on it.

Yes, one can voice dial with Siri, but that can be done reliably with an iPhone 4. What is promising is that voice texting works rather well, as does doing tasks such as setting alarms and reminders. One can also ask Siri for bits and pieces of information and launch Web searches just by talking to the voice assistant.

Ah, but Siri isn’t yet complete. For one thing, there are times when the service simply doesn’t work, leaving the user with an obnoxious message from Siri stating that she can’t take requests just now, but can do so later. Also, the database from which Siri draws it’s answers is far from complete.

For examples, let’s say I want to know what movies are playing in my town. Siri can find plenty of theaters 20 miles away in Little Rock, but isn’t aware of the 14-screen theater that’s a couple of miles from my house. The same is true when it comes to restaurants, stores and, well, just about anything else that one might want to find some information on in this little town of 30,000 people. Obviously, some of the functionality of Siri is useless to those of us who don’t live in a city.

Still, Apple may well put in the time and effort to make Siri a truly fantastic feature of the 4S, but I can’t imagine the company is motivated to do so. After all, the iPhone 4S has been out for four months now and there are still shortages in many areas. The 4S is selling like crazy and you just know someone at Apple has to look at profits, consider research and development costs and wonder if it would be wise to invest a lot of cash improving a product that people are lining up in droves to purchase.

So, again, the question remains – is it worth burning an upgrade on an iPhone 4S? If you’ve got an iPhone 4, then probably not. If you want a larger screen and some of the cooler bells and whistles that have been made available over the past year or so, you might do well to look at an Android. If you like your iPhone 4 just fine, it might be a great idea to simply wait until the iPhone 5 is released. There are no solid timetables on when the next iPhone will come out, of course, as Apple tends to float major upgrades on the market when the company damned well feels like it.

On the other hand, bear in mind that iPhones hold their value incredibly well. In fact, I fully expect to get at least $200 – the price my office ponied up for my 4S – when I dump my very good condition iPhone 4 on eBay. So, I’ve got a new phone and the chances are good my office will break even on the deal. Do some research and you’ll discover that Android phones haven’t historically held their value nearly as well.

Of course, if you’re type who has an iPhone 4 and hates change, the 4S is a safe bet. It’s nice and new, but so much like the 4 that you’ll barely notice a difference.

Hands on with the Nook Tablet

Barnes & Noble released the Nook Tablet back in November and it's caused more than a bit of a stir in the "budget" Android tablet market.

Does it live up to the hype? I like mine, but there are some severe limitations to the machine.

Want to read more? Just click here and you're on your way, sports fan!