I really am disappointed that the rainbow stickers don’t work, though…I was really looking forward to having a reminder of my vintage Apple roots.  The very first computer I used was an Apple ][, which was a part of my family from the time I was about 3 or 4 until we got an IBM PC when I was 15.  I may look into getting a custom skin or decal with the rainbow Apple down the road.

Thankfully, I was prepared for the possibility that the rainbow sticker wouldn’t work (I was mostly concerned about size) and also ordered two of the gorgeous chrome decals from DecalsPlanet.  I had seen pictures of both a black and a white mini with the chrome decal and it looked so cool I had to get some for myself.  Now my Mini and my iPhone are practically twins! I love how shiny the chrome sticker is, and it covers the Dell logo completely.  Transformation to MacBook Mini is complete!

So it’s Dell Mini Eve and it feels like tomorrow is Christmas Day. Instead of hanging my stocking with care, I pored I over the user forums at My Dell Mini and created a boot disk to install OS X using my WD Passport drive. My new Built NY case is sitting at the office waiting, and hopefully I should receive my Apple decals in the next few days.

I love starting off a weekend with a brand new toy to play with! I am SO freaking excited. I just hope it arrives earlier in the day as opposed to later. Updates and an unboxing to come…

So far, I’ve decided on a Hoodie Laptop Case by Built NY.  I really love the way their cases are made, and I was pleased to find out that they finally make a netbook-sized case.  When I was looking for one for my Eee PC, they didn’t have one.  I got mine in the surprisingly cute and girly Microdots pattern for less than $30 shipped from Amazon.  It is made to fit laptops sized 7″-10″ and features a sturdy EVA plastic shell on the underside and stretchy, protective neoprene on the top.  There is also a pocket on the back (separated by the hard shell) for cords, cables, or other accessories.  I think it will be the perfect case to carry the Mini in alone or inside one of my many purses or bags.  I think I will get the matching portable hard drive case for my Western Digital Passport 250GB drive.

I am considering getting a travel-sized Bluetooth mouse to use with my Kensington USB Bluetooth Micro Adapter.  I bought it to use with my Eee PC, and since I so rarely use Bluetooth I thought it would be dumb to spend extra on my Mini 9 when I already have a perfectly good receiver.  I want something that is really compact, attractive, and not too expensive.  So far I’m looking at the Logitech V470 in white.  It’s a bit more than I’d like to pay, but I really like the look of it, and it has gotten good reviews across the board.  It is something I could use on any one of my computers, too, which is an extra bonus.  When I was doing some design work last weekend at my mother-in-law’s house, I was really wishing that I had a Bluetooth mouse.  Photoshop + trackpad = crappy.

And, since I’m going to Hackintosh my Mini 9 and load up OS X on it, I thought that this awesome vintage Apple decal would be the perfect decoration!  I’m going to cover the Dell logo with it and shock everyone with my adorable MacBook Mini.  I think the rainbow will look great on the white case of the Mini.  I grew up with the Apple ][ line of computers and have always preferred the rainbow Apple logo to any other logo since then.  It’s bright and cheerful, and it takes me back to a time when a green-on-black monitor and giant floppy disks made me happier than just about anything in the world.

Do you have any accessory recommendations?  Like the decal? Which mouse would you get?  Talk back in the comments.

Honestly, if I had known how the netbook craze would blow up, I probably would have held off on the Eee 701 to see what else was introduced before I threw down the cash.  It’s not that I am really unhappy with my Eee, but as the newer netbooks have been introduced, it quickly became apparent that maybe it wasn’t the best fit for me.  The size is perfect–it’s really the kind of laptop I can just toss in my bag and go.  But for a power user like me, it’s a bit underpowered and the screen is too small.  If I relegate it to just surfing the web or writing the occasional post or bit of my novel while I’m out and about, it’s great…but now that I’ve seen what some of the newer netbooks can do, I want more.  I’d also like more storage, a slightly bigger keyboard, and better screen resolution.  Oh, and having a hackintosh netbook wouldn’t be so bad…I want my MacBook Tiny!

I feel a little disloyal to my pretty pink Eee PC, but I am hoping it will be going to a good home very soon where someone can appreciate it.  Next week, I will be ordering a Dell Mini 9 and I cannot WAIT to receive it.  Eee PC, you’ve been great, but it’s time for us to go our separate ways.

It is frustrating, considering the only place I run Windows is at the office. At home I run nothing but OS X and Ubuntu. So, as an experiment, I installed Windows XP on my Asus eeePC 701 about a month ago to see if it made it any more useful to me.

I did a custom nLite installation of XP so that I could get rid of absolutely anything I didn’t need–this took my installation size wayyy down to just at a gig. When you’re dealing with a 4GB SSD drive, you have to make sure that Windows doesn’t eat up your entire partition! It took a while to install, but when I booted–it was FAST. It booted faster than any normal Windows installation I have ever worked with. I barely had time to blink before I was already on my desktop.

I installed a handful of programs–Firefox, Skype, Microsoft Office (on the SD card to save some space), iTunes (just because), Foxit Reader, and a ClearType utility (a must for making text on the small screen sharp!). At first I was impressed by the performance…but after a week or so with XP on the machine, I started to change my tune.

In my opinion, Windows is not meant for the sub-notebook. Some of the things that have turned me off:

1. Windows and Windows programs can be giant resource hogs. I’ve never had trouble with Skype, not even with video calls, on the eeePC running Ubuntu. But last night I was testing Skype video calling in Windows, and my processor was maxing out at 100%. I’ve also noticed that other programs are not very snappy if I’ve had the computer on for awhile. It’s really zippy after a reboot, but I don’t want to have to constantly reboot my machine to get good performance. I’ve even noticed that my wireless signal is not as solid under Windows–watching anything on hulu.com causes massive amounts of buffering, and I had an utterly crappy voice connection on Skype.
2. Windows is not as smart as Ubuntu. Ubuntu Hardy Heron knows enough to resize many screens for the smaller eeePC. I had trouble with lots of programs trailing off the screen in Windows, with no handy key+mouse combination to move them around. The Move command just flat wouldn’t work because Windows didn’t want to put the screen where I wanted it to go. It has made using the eeePC frustrating for anything more than checking my email and the occasional IM conversation.
3. I just don’t feel good about using Windows anymore. I use it at work because I have to, but I find myself pining for some of the programs on OS X or Ubuntu. I wish I could use the same nice shortcuts and time-saving programs (Oh Quicksilver, I love you so! You, too, Gnome-Do.), and I just think Windows is visually unappealing, even when it’s skinned. Plus, I got a little addicted to the giant treasure trove of open-source software for Linux. It’s like Christmas!

It’s great to be able to watch Netflix streaming or have iTunes on my eeePC, but I’ve discovered that I don’t think it’s worth it. XP is dragging my little laptop down. Maybe if Windows came out with an OS specifically tailored to the sub-notebook or UMPC, I’d bite. I know that Origami is supposed to take the Windows OS and “optimize” it for use on a UMPC, but that’s not the same thing as having an OS JUST for the UMPC and sub-notebook devices.

It’s back to Ubuntu for me as soon as I can install it!

I have been busy the past couple weeks, so I just upgraded to 10.5.4 over the weekend.  I’m happy to report that iCal is now functional!  It opens very quickly and everything is just as it should be, syncing up with my Google Calendar via BusySync.  I’m so happy to have it working again, especially since it’s so nice to see my appointments and deadlines on my 19″ wide screen LCD when I’m working at home!

Moral of the story?  I’ll be backing up my Mac very, very soon (using Amazon S3 and Jungle Disk of course!) just in case any future updates don’t install correctly.

I’d heard reports of the new update borking people’s wireless Time Machine backups, and even totally crashing their machine, but I haven’t heard of iCal breaking yet. I know there were some significant iCal updates in the 10.5.3 upgrade, so I’m hoping that my upgrade wasn’t messed up. I had heard that the download for the upgrade would be in the 420 MB range, and mine only downloaded 198 MB. So now I’m totally paranoid that it didn’t do a full upgrade!

I haven’t backed up my Mac yet. I know, I know, bad, irresponsible computer geek. I just signed up for Amazon S3 (which I’ve been using with JungleDisk on the eeePC) but I haven’t set it to back up the Mac yet. I should probably do that, then tackle the iCal issue. I really don’t want to have to rebuild this Mac from scratch.

I spent a LOT of time last night updating my address book. I printed my contacts from GMail and updated Address Book accordingly, then I totally deleted my Google Contacts in anticipation of a nice, clean sync. Then I start downloading the update, which took a long time considering it was 198 MB. While I was waiting, I did a little surfing only to discover that the Google Calendar sync option was only for iPhone and iPod Touch users. ARGH! I was really annoyed.

Thankfully, Lifehacker also posted a workaround for non-iPhone users that allows you to access the sync function, although supposedly it may break after a couple of syncs.  I followed the directions and STILL got no love, so by that time I was steaming mad. Why should non-iPhone users be locked out of such a useful feature? Almost everyone I know uses GMail, not just the few of my friends who currently rock the iPhone.

After I recovered from my righteous anger, I exported my Address Book to Google-friendly CSV using the handy little tool A to G, then imported it into my Google Contacts. It worked just fine, and so I went about the business of syncing my Windows Mobile phone via Missing Sync.

Lo and behold, I get a bunch of conflicts when my contacts try to sync to the phone–Google Contacts conflicts! Apparently the Google Contacts sync is tied to Sync Services, so when I tried to sync my phone, it went ahead to sync my contacts to my Google account. Double ARGH!! I wish I’d known that before I imported all my contacts and then had to work through 134 conflicts.

So, seriously, Apple. I know you want people to buy the iPhone, especially with 2.0 right around the corner. I was briefly a convert to the iPhone kool-aid, before I realized that it didn’t offer a robust enough feature set for my needs. It’s a beautiful, well-done device, but let’s face it–not everyone’s going to own one. So why lock down such a universally appealing feature? I call weak sauce.

I wanted to make sure that I always had access to my schedule and tasks on the eeePC, and that any changes or additions I made on my calendar there would be reflected across all my devices. So I set out in search of the perfect Ubuntu solution for my eeePC, and this is what I ended up with:

1) Thunderbird + Lightning – I already used Mozilla Thunderbird for my email needs, and had tried its partner Sunbird (the separate calendar tool) with little luck. I just can’t stand having separate programs on such a small device. I don’t want to have to move to another window or virtual desktop to go between my mail, calendar and tasks. So, I decided to try the Thunderbird calendar plugin Lightning to bring the calendar functionality of Sunbird right to Thunderbird.

Right away, I liked Lightning better than Sunbird. Sunbird never seemed to work quite right for me–the views were all off and it froze up on me a lot. I really liked having it integrated into Thunderbird, which I always have open on my second virtual desktop.

However, due to the limitations of the eeePC’s smaller screen, I had to adjust things so that I would have the best possible layout. Thankfully, one of my favorite extensions for Firefox on the eeePC is also available for Thunderbird–Tiny Menu consolidates the menu bar into one small drop-down menu. Once I had Tiny Menu installed, I re-arranged the toolbars until I had all the icons I needed for email, calendar, and tasks on one row. That freed up a lot of visual space and made Lightning much more usable for me.

2) Google Calendar – GCal is the syncing conduit for all my devices. There is no “perfect” solution, but thanks to GCal I feel like my system comes pretty close. I really appreciate that they open up their API so that people can create syncing solutions that make it simple to keep everything updated.

3) Provider for Google Calendar – Once I had Lightning all set up, I had to figure out a way to get it to sync with GCal. The expandability of Thunderbird and Lightning once again saved the day, and I installed the Thunderbird add-on Provider for Google Calendar. It requires Sunbird or Lightning to be installed, and enables bi-directional sync between the calendar program and GCal. It works effortlessly for me.

4) Provider for Remember the Milk – The one fault with Google Calendar is that it doesn’t have an integrated task list. However, there is a fabulous web-based task manager called Remember the Milk that fills the gap nicely. It has also offered up its API so that people can create great applications that interface with the web tool. Thunderbird add-on Provider for Remember the Milk allows you to sync tasks in Lightning with your task list in Remember the Milk. It’s not perfect–things like tags don’t carry over, for instance, but it is more than functional for what I need. I look forward to further development that will hopefully do things like sync tags in the future.

So far the only problem I’ve had is a recurring appointment not showing up correctly. Otherwise, it’s worked flawlessly with GCal and my other devices. How do you keep your life in sync? Talk back in the comments.

Sadly, I’ve been unable to run it on the eeePC because turning on Compiz turns OFF my ability to drag windows off the top of the screen. This is a big deal on the eeePC’s small screen, because sometimes dialog windows are too long to fit on the screen, and I will have to alt+drag them up so that I can get to all of the choices.

Thankfully, the eeeuser wiki has come to my rescue once again.  Someone posted a very simple line of code that you can pop in the terminal and voila! Dragging windows beyond the top of the screen is enabled in Compiz.

gconftool-2 –set /apps/compiz/plugins/move/allscreens/options/constrain_y –type bool 0

It is important to NOT issue the command as a root user (sudo), but that is the only caveat I’ve found. I am so happy to be able to show off the amazing Compiz effects on my eeePC, and now I can finally use Emerald Theme Manager to make my desktop look awesome!