The Asus eeePC 4G is more than capable of acting as a main computer for individuals that need to stick with something cheap, and don’t have a large need for super intense applications.

That opening sentence describes the experience I had using the eeePC 4G with Windows XP installed as the operating system over the course of 4 days. The minor details I haven’t mentioned yet was that after the first day I installed a USB mouse to make my navigation a little easier. The little touch pad is okay when you’re on the go, but if you’re sitting down at home the last thing you want to do is keep leaning forward to try and use a miniture touch pad that doesn’t always respond. I’m also using a Class 6 8GB SDHC card as a place to store temporary internet files, program files, and the my documents storage location.

As this device is a single core processor clocked at 633mhz stock, I decided to make use of the utility called eeectl that can overclock the processor to what speed it was originally designed for–900mhz. The utility works perfectly without problems, and even gives the user control over the fan & backlighting. There is also a icon that is placed in the system tray near the clock that displays how much of the processor they are clocked at (0-100%), and a tempature is also displayed in the icon animation. On those facts alone this makes eeectl a must have application for the laptop.

The laptop I was using still has the default of 512mb of RAM installed. This should be sufficent for most regular computer users, but as soon as I can it will be upgraded to 2GB for maximum performance. The last time I checked, amazon.com has the price around $51 with a $20 rebate available on the RAM module. Quite a bargin if you ask me!

I wanted to test out an intense application to see how the handling was, and used SecondLife as the test. Surprisingly, the intense network and graphics usage held up like a champ, but were a little choppy at times. The reasons for that would be the video memory, processor, and total ram available. I’m pretty sure that the performance would be great with the 2GB ram module installed, and will further test this out.

Here’s a list of some applications I tested out that worked perfectly like they would on a normal laptop or desktop PC:

• Windows Movie Maker (also used the onboard camera as the capture source)
• Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2
• Skype
• Windows Live
• Windows Media Player 11 (used with media files and also NetFlix.com instant play movies)
• Internet Explorer 6 & 7
• Sandboxie (use this in combination with your browser to prevent spyware or worms–or any rouge applications you might want to run but are not that sure about)

The list really could go on and on. This little guy is capable of competing with the performance of other machines out there! If I would have found my Visual Studio 2005 installation disc I would have gave that a test run too. Although, with that tiny screen I’d have to make extensive use of the pins to hide the toolbars.

Before ending this post I’ll further talk about not using an anti-virus application. There maybe some users that will swear by using them religiously because of the whole mess of things that can attack your pc in numerous ways. These suggestions and information is based off my own experience, so take from it what you will.

Using an anti-virus causes lots of extra activity on the hard drive and in memory that would take a performance hit out of the eeePC that isn’t necessary. By understanding that most systems of today are infected by running rouge applications downloaded through peer-to-peer programs, and web surfing websites that contain ads that exploit your pc to run their spyware, you can use this knowledge to provide a slightly better solution to avoid using the anti-virus apps.

The major application for my demonstration today will be Sandboxie, by using this application you can run your browser in a controlled environment to prevent any nasty bugs from taking over your system, and also provide an outlet to testing applications or toolbars out before you install them. Sandboxie is extremely customizable, and let’s you explore the contents of what the application you’re running in the sandbox created. It has a number of functions, and it’s all for free! This solution alone can keep even clueless web surfers away from nasty malware found on sites like myspace.

If for some reason you end up with malware on your pc, use a program like IceSword to delete the rouge BHO (browser help objects) & startup references that are in your system. There are times when the malware will rewrite those references after you delete them, which will cause you go one more step further with technical know-how to remove them. This simply involves booting up a Hiren’s CD and using the NTFS drivers navigate to the folder and deleting the rouge DLL & EXE file names you found in the IceSword BHO and startup listings.

Hopefully, this gives you a nice starting overview of the eeePC and what it’s capable of. If you have further questions, comments, or would like to know more about a certain feature or function of the eeePC leave a comment.

This song had me laughing tonight, it’s really good. I’m going to add the song with the new podPress plugin, and place the lyrics under the player.

 

 Code Monkey [3:07m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Code Monkey get up get coffee
Code Monkey go to job
Code Monkey have boring meeting
With boring manager Rob
Rob say Code Monkey very dilligent
But his output stink
His code not “functional” or “elegant”
What do Code Monkey think?
Code Monkey think maybe manager want to write god damned login page himself
Code Monkey not say it out loud
Code Monkey not crazy, just proud

Code Monkey like Fritos
Code Monkey like Tab and Mountain Dew
Code Monkey very simple man
With big warm fuzzy secret heart:
Code Monkey like you

Code Monkey hang around at front desk
Tell you sweater look nice
Code Monkey offer buy you soda
Bring you cup, bring you ice
You say no thank you for the soda cause
Soda make you fat
Anyway you busy with the telephone
No time for chat
Code Monkey have long walk back to cubicle he sit down pretend to work
Code Monkey not thinking so straight
Code Monkey not feeling so great

Code Monkey like Fritos
Code Monkey like Tab and Mountain Dew
Code Monkey very simple man
With big warm fuzzy secret heart:
Code Monkey like you
Code Monkey like you a lot

Code Monkey have every reason
To get out this place
Code Monkey just keep on working
See your soft pretty face
Much rather wake up, eat a coffee cake
Take bath, take nap
This job “fulfilling in creative way”
Such a load of crap
Code Monkey think someday he have everything even pretty girl like you
Code Monkey just waiting for now
Code Monkey say someday, somehow

Code Monkey like Fritos
Code Monkey like Tab and Mountain Dew
Code Monkey very simple man
With big warm fuzzy secret heart:
Code Monkey like you

If you like this song and want to support the creator, then check out his website for information and great songs!

I’ve watched most of the videos at http://www.windowsclient.net and came to the realization that lots of what they show is near useless. From my experience in different programming communities is that lots of the newer programmers aren’t as creative as the older ones because they learn from videos like those, and then bug the hell out of people in those user groups for the necessary meat and potatoes.

Once I get Camtasia installed to this computer, I’d really like to take a crack at a video tutorial or two. I’m almost guessing in my mind that creating the complex videos that users would benefit from take a lot of planning and time to produce. We’ll see what happens, and what video topic ideas I can think of.

It’s great when Friday finally rolls around. Last week at this time I took Friday off and booked a king jacuzzi suite at a lake front resort on an island. Probably at this exact moment I was relaxing in the jacuzzi feeling so great to be a programmer and have the money to afford such a nice day. As always Monday came around too quickly and I was back at the grind again this week.

One of the crazier things that happened toward the end of the week is that one of the clients almost decided they wanted to combine two seperate companies into one database. It would have been a disaster for them if they decided to. Luckily, the right people and legal advisors stepped in and showed them how it would complicate and cause problems for everyone. Coming up this Monday is a meeting to talk about how they will conduct business now that they have two seperate companies. My boss is a way better speaker than myself, so he’s going to be a huge help when it comes to explaining to one particular manager how it will all operate. I’m too technical and complex for my own good sometimes.

Have any of you used the Infragistics NetAdvantage controls? I’ve had them for a few months now and they are the best thing I could have suggested buying. Their controls have so many features that clients wants and it’s more than easy to get something up and running. Even on my lunch break Friday I managed to whip up a demonstration for a client that does dynamic reporting based upon filters the user creates and can save or load back into the application. Infragistics does have some problems with documentation, but usually if you can’t find the reference in the help file someone has already asked on their forum.

Okay, enough rambling for now, I’m going to go and reply back to some comments I received. Thanks everyone that has commented on my posts before!

I bought an eeePC 4G about a month ago. Since I purchased it I had the chance to play around with OpenOffice that came installed on it. After I realized all the capability the office suite has curiosity got the best of me and I was on a mission to test out how good it was on the Windows platform.

This morning I installed the entire package to a server for testing and went through each of the applications. I’m just amazed at the features and look of the entire thing. There was a little bit of lag when it came to working with Base, that was the only issue I’ve witnessed during my testing.

When it comes to small businesses this would be the perfect solution, and a great money maker for small IT firms. Small businesses benefit by not having to buy the office product and all the licenses that go with it, plus you get a ton of great features you find in the bigger name products. One of the important features in OpenOffice is the PDF export. Most of the clients we have purchased Adobe Acrobat or downloaded a virtual print driver like PDF995. When it came to the IT firms that handle clients, any work done to install this office suite would be straight profit. Pretty good situation for both sides of the fence.

…The staff in this building have just managed to fill an entire file server, guess it’s time to get back to work.

This past weekend I bought a book called Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes On the Cosmos written by Seth Lloyd. The main idea behind the book is that the universe on the quantum level is made up of bits. For example, an atom can be a 0, 1, or even both unlike traditional binary we understand from computers. With these bits could the universe be a massive quantum computer that dynamically computes itself? That’s very question is dicussed throughout the book.

I haven’t read to far into the book yet, but the theory and ideas discussed so far are very interesting to me. If you’re a programmer with a creative imagination about science topics you’ll love this book. My brain is beginning to fill with thoughts and opinions on the subject, so as I read through it I might post up some thoughts.

Two days ago I made some major updates to a dispatch application that I’m designing for a place that transports elderly and handicapped people. Everything tested out fine on the machines here at work, and I pushed out the updates. Later on in the day I called the CEO of that company and spoke for a while about what updates I made. The next day I was scheduled for a meeting at their location.

Being overly happy like Microsoft, I come striding in there expecting the place to be semi productive. I ended up leaving that place with a page full of bug fixes and possible improvements. As of today I have 70% of that list complete. It drives you nuts when you feel so confident about something and it ends up taking you a step or two back.

Here’s one of the bugs that still makes no sense to me (even though it’s now fixed):

This type of SQL statement works perfectly fine on my development machine, and it has the same exact database setup as the client’s server, but this doesn’t work for whatever reason. I racked my brain for at least 30-45 minutes trying to figure out if the servers had a different configuration and whether the statement was malformed. What ended up working was breaking the previous statement down into two.

I figure this weird problem will make no sense to you either, but who knows I might have not been understanding something correctly.

>-Edit-<

Now that I just posted that it occured to me how I should have formatted the statement.

No idea why, but I always forget about the IN keyword with SQL.

Since I started my professional career as an Application Developer I’ve noticed one major thing has changed. That being the amount of hobby coding I used to do. There were times when I’d sit at my desk at home and program lots of (what I call) useless little tools and applications. The innovation and creativity of those applications was amazing.

Now that I’m working as a programmer it’s rare that I put out that kind of innovation anymore. In this field it seems like all I have time for is the normal standards for going about certain tasks so that the client can receive software and updates in a timely manner. There are times when I get so extremely bored while on the job that I give a little time to myself for hobby coding, but it’s such a small amount of time that it results in nothing spectacular.

Has anyone else experienced this?

I was reading over a post made by Bruce over at the MSDN blogs about the process that Microsoft goes through before releasing a product. You can find a copy of that posting here. The kind of process they use for product development reminds me of the one we learned about at the university, but as expected each business out there does things differently. Where I work I am the only application developer. Meaning, there is no one else in this entire place that knows how to program computers, actually 98% of the rest of the people here are engineers of some sort.

The development process that I use is sort of like the following:

• Meet with the client to discuss the application they’d like to have. Most of the specs I get at this meeting allow me to create an early demo of the program to be built. I also try to take in enough knowledge of what the client business does so that when designing the application I can make their workflow easier to handle.
• During development I’ll test each portion of the application as it’s being created to check for any possible bugs. I’ll also keep in contact with the client to clear up features and specs.
• Once a nice portion of the demo is complete I insert a custom made update module I created into the application and hand it over to the client for inspection. At this point they can begin using the custom application while I continue to develop and create new updates for it. Even if a product isn’t completely finish there’s something about actually seeing progress that clients like.
• With the program now in the clients hands they normally suggest changes and some possible bug fixes. This cycle can continue until the product has been completed.

One cool thing about the updates is it gets the client used to idea of using a supported product and are more likely to sign a maintenance contract. This will keep a steady flow of cash coming in while you maintain the product as needed. It always feels like they never run out of ideas for improvements.

I can imagine that every business out there uses different product development models. Even though I have always believed the previous sentence, I never really understood why some of what you learn at the university about programming (or most likely any other major) is static in nature. There should be focus on the different ways things are done so students have a better understanding of what’s going on when they get out there in the work force.

Today at work I spent a nice portion of my time working out the bugs of a schedule editing routine for the dispatch system I’m creating for a client (written in C#).  It’s hard to go back and debug these applications when the source code becomes so large. The major bug that had me wasting hours trying to find was causing the last transportation destination to become the destination that was before it, if that makes any sense to you? It ended up being the order that the data was written to the form. Most of my fields are autocomplete to help speed up the scheduling process. For whatever reason, in the destination section if I filled in the name first it defaulted back to the previous destination. I had the idea to try writting to the address field before the name field. Surprisingly, that’s all it needed to work.

I pushed out the update after some testing, and for tomorrow I told that client to abuse the application to see if they can make it break while scheduling. I’m feeling doubtful that they will actually crash it, but people always seem to find a way to break anything.