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I program and write exclusively on my Aspire these days. Keyboard: I have small fingers, and I actually type faster on the netbook keyboard. The key distances
by SlyShy 17y ago
I program and write exclusively on my Aspire these days.
Keyboard: I have small fingers, and I actually type faster on the netbook keyboard. The key distances are smaller, so I'm moving my fingers les.
Screen: I use a small font (Code Envy R at 10pt) and WMII, so I can fit a lot of code on the screen at once. I can also switch between windows extremely quickly, so it is relatively painless not to have all the code I'm working on, on screen at once.
Battery: I got the six cell battery, because I don't mind the extra weight (unless you have muscular dystrophy what difference does weight really make? It isn't like I have to hold this thing in the air while typing on it. ;) but I do love the seven and a half hour battery life. It also uses close to no power when on suspend (loses maybe 3% over two hours) so I just shut the lid whenever I'm not using it, and a charge lasts me the whole day.
Durability: I've dropped this thing off tables maybe seven times now. It doesn't care. It also spends most of its time in the small compartment of my backpack where it gets jostled all day.
- jacquesm 17y agoWith respect to it being dropped seven times now, do you have an SSD in there or a regular drive?
- SlyShy 17y agoRegular drive. Which made me queasy the first time I dropped it, after being used to the touchy hard drives in previous computers.
- jacquesm 17y agoImpressive. Beware of any errors from that drive, check the smart data to make sure that you're not suffering soft errors that are being corrected now and that will leave you with a dead drive at some point in the future. If the drive was spinning when it fell it all depends on the angle and the strength of the shock, if it was not spinning chances of not having any damage are much better.
- jrockway 17y agoI agree here. My netbook hard drive had errors about 3 days after I started using it, and I didn't ever drop it. SSDs were made for netbooks. I am not sure why vendors even attempt to put hard drives in them. (Actually, I know why. Comparison charts, and money.)
- megamark16 17y agoI'm using an Acer Aspire One too, and I love it! I've written a large majority of my side project, AppRabbit.com, on my netbook, mostly because I needed a separate machine from my work issued laptop for my side project so that I would never be accused of using work resources for my side project. My kids usually commandeer the home desktop for Netflix, but my netbook is all mine.
- wvenable 17y agoI'm also using an Aspire One for coding on my hobby project. I was pretty shocked at how well the device handles Visual Studio and other tasks. I haven't bothered tweaking the font size or anything, it just end up looking at a much smaller window of code at a time.
- Sukotto 17y agoCode Envy R is worth trying... you can get it here: http://damieng.com/fonts/envy-code-r http://damieng.com/fonts/envy-code-r
- iamelgringo 17y agoI spend half my coding time on my netbook when I'm away from my desk, and another half in front of my Workstation with 7k x 2k resolution monitor space. I'm certainly less distracted when I'm in front of my netbook. And, I'm certainly less likely to start noodling around on the internet looking for videos, etc... I also can run Win 7 Ultimate on the Netbook without any problems whatsover. And, by purchasing an extra 6 cell battery the my Aspire One, I have enough battery life to last me from Barcelona to San Francisco on a single charge. It's a beautiful thing. I know the iPad is a beautiful piece of hardware, but when people mention having a computer that they can just have lying around and turn on to surf the web... I already have that. And, it cost me $250.