My EEE tells me which characters I use most

After a handful of months my EEE shows clearly which characters I use most.
That is to say: E, R, T, I, O, A, S, L, C, N, M and "SPACE".

How I figured out? The keyboard is worn. But not in an unpleasant sense!
It's just that the keys were slightly rugged and now in the center are completely sleek.

Asus Survey

I own an ASUS netbook and I am quite satisfied. I also wrote about specific problems related to performance and Java and RAM and those things you should be supposed to do with a netbook but are painstakingly slow. However, things improved since I bought 2 GB of RAM.

Anyway... I'm a rather satisfied ASUS customer and I received a survey request.

"""Thank you for registering your Asus product. We are holding our 2010 Asus laptop current usage survey."""

So I decided to do the survey. Ok... I start answering all the questions; then I tried to submit the whole thing.

The system does not allow me to send the survey if all the questions weren't answered. Which is idiotic: I did not fill in some question on purpose. I did not want to answer or I did not know how to answer. But I have to provide an answer nonetheless. And of course, that is a fucking random answer.

For example, they insist asking me questions on how I would like my next touch sensitive ASUS laptop when I just answered I do not want any bloody touch screen and touch whatever laptop. I have an iPad for that. And they keep asking where would I use the laptop I told them I would not buy. WTF!

At the end, after giving some random answers (if your analysts and web designers can't do their job and you get answers without value, the problem is yours, not mine), the survey could not be submitted without providing my personal details. And I'm not seeing the point.

I am doing you a favor ASUS. You don't have to bother me this way: no survey from me at this conditions. Of course, ASUS can do well without my survey. But I think I'm not the only one with position similar to this. By the way, I considered the idea of filling the survey because I'm a satisfied customer. I was more than willing to spend time to answer properly and reflect on the answers. Instead, the survey really annoyed me.

Portable pleasure

This spring, I got convinced I needed a netbook. Essentially, I'm a satisfied Apple user (mostly). However, I needed a portable machine to work with. Work means coding. No code, no work. Moreover, I was curious of the new Windows 7 operating system and I also wanted to check Linux progresses as a desktop OS. I don't consider myself an Apple zealot: no Apple netbook, does not mean no netbook at all. I think Virtual Machines are a great tool. However, I don't really relate with virtual os's. I don't customize them. I just use them in order to perform some given tasks (e.g., testing). I thought that using Linux and Windows as primary operating systems when I only had the netbook was a great way to try them. I was pretty sure I could work with Linux (and I was confident I could overcome every installation issue that would have faced). I bought an Asus EEE 1005PE with 14h of autonomy declared. Other specs were completely uninteresting to me. CPU, RAM. I didn't give a fuck. If I need power, I've got a Mac Pro. If I need portable power, I have a Mac Book Pro. The EEE has plenty of HD space, and comes already partitioned (which means installing Linux is easy and you retain the EEE auto-reinstal clean windows capabilities). Should I need more ram, I could buy it. Ubuntu 10.4 is a pleasant surprise: I have never seen such a nice DE in a non Apple OS. The desktop is nice, the apps work great. NetworkManager does not suck anymore, some Ubuntu specific apps are very nice. It is rather pleasurable to work with (even if I don't use the netbook remix variant). Of course, some apps are completely lacking. However, I need it to code, write docs, email, browse... chat. Good. Windows was both a nice surprise and a disappointment. Compared to other MS OS's it is a nice surprise. It is fast, small, easy to use. Compared to what I read about Windows 7 it is a delusion: I think that Ubuntu is way nicer. However, I need some MS applications and that's it. With a little bit of work I installed everything I needed and I have got a nice working system. Unfortunately, Windows seems to slow down progressively and I don't understand why (I stopped installing stuff, I don't think that could be the cause). Hardware support is excellent both with Windows and with Ubuntu. Battery life lasts longer with Windows. I think about 12 hours of effective light work, wireless on. Ubuntu is probably around 9, which is sufficient for my goals.

Location:Via Montebello,Parma,Italy

The power of the power of the power...

Though I really don’t particularly like writing about hardware in my blog, I provide some updates on my current hardware situation. Some years ago, I wrote a short series of blog posts about my iMac. That was a first series machine and I criticized lack of support for scientific software. This is partly related to GMP not being too much collaborative (as it appears they did not have intel macs, bac in the day).

Of course those problems have been entirely solved quite soon. I suppose that by the end of the year they were no more and the faster intel chips were just the right choice for everyone. A couple of years after those events I bought a MacBook Pro 15” laptop and that became my main work machine. Among the things I really liked best about the intel processor (and all the lovely virtualization software packets out there) was that I could run Linux in a virtual machine. Since I did not stop working on a certain “almost-linux-only” project, that was really good (and saved me from ugly partitioning). Although I had a Parallels license (which I used on the iMac), I preferred to use the simpler VirtualBox. Back in the day, Parallels did not support Linux exceptionally well and I could just live with the free VB. And that is the machine I used (along with the iMac) for my M.Sc. dissertation.

4 years after i first turned it on, my iMac blew off. Well, not literally. I suppose I can fix it, however, I chose to buy a new Mac. This time it is a MacPro. Essentially, I hated that if I thrashed my iMac (because of other damages) I could not save the monitor. So I chose a monitor-less computer. Essentially the thing is powerful. It is extremely evident when encoding my CDs into mp3’s. I don’t do much video editing.

Nonetheless, Parallels is completely capable of sucking all the resources. I had to stop using it, since the MP became useless. I suppose it may be related to having only 3 GB, even though the iMac had only 2. If I will need a virtualization software, I suppose I’ll go with VMWare or VirtualBox. But… that is not the last machine I bought.