Accessibility of netbooks

[Terry D. Cudney]

Hi Gene,

   thanks for your reply!

   Several people have subsequently commented about the option of 6- or 9-cell batteries for this model. If you have a second battery, are they easily swapped on this model? without disassembling anything?

   Previously, I believe, you said that you used debootstrap to do the installation. Just wondering why you had to do this, since debian can be installed directly from a usb stick on a regular i386 or a64, at least. Is there any reason you couldn't install debian on this little Acer directly from usb?

   You mentioned boot options in CMOS to boot from a usb stick... Is there any option to boot from an SD (or CF) drive on there?

   Still looking at the possibilities...


   Thanks,

   --terry

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 08:25:56AM -0500, Gene Collins wrote:
> Hi Terry.  Well, this laptop has no fan, so it can't be loud.  The two
> things I'm not happy with are battery life, only about two hours, even
> when both cpus are throttled back to 800 mhz, and the fact that you have
> to completely disassemble the machine in order to expand the memory. 
> Other than those two minor inconveneiences, I love the machine. 
> Obviously I wish it had a serial port for a hardware synth, but then I
> knew before I bought it that it didn't.  What turned me on to this
> little box was that a friend of mine had one.  Of course he isn't
> running linux, but I liked the look of it.  And when Staples had one on
> for 300 bucks, I couldn't say no.
> 
> I'm thinking about disabling the touch pad by taking the driver out of
> the kernel, because it works to well.  It's awfully easy to accidently
> tap the touch pad with your thumb while you are typing, and have the
> mouse move you to somewhare you didn't intend in gnome, but for the most
> part, it just involves learning not to touch the touch pad.
> 
> The bottom line is as I said, that I have a dual boot laptop, running
> both windows xp and linux, and both the text console and gnome
> environments are working just fine.  I particularly like the fact that
> my laptop hotkeys work under gnome, and the two built-in sd drives are
> nice.  The keyboard is small, but useable.  I'd give the box 9 out of
> 10.  Hope this helps, have a good one.
> 
> Gene
> 
> >
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: Adam Myrow <myrowa at bellsouth.net>
> >Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2009 3:23 PM
> >To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
> >Subject: Re: Accessibility of netbooks
> >
> >On Sat, 18 Apr 2009, Kerry Hoath wrote:
> >
> >> Also you should update the journal commit time to reduce wear on the flash 
> >> disk, this can be done with ext3 by adding
> >> commit=30 to the mount options for the root fs, or by installing laptop-tool
> s 
> >> which can take care of this.
> >
> >I thought it was a good idea to format a flash disk as EXT2 rather than 
> >EXT3, in order to minumize the wear.  As I understand it, the technology 
> >has a very limited life span compared to modern hard drives.  This is the 
> >big thing that is keeping solid-state drives from replacing hard drives. 
> >Once this is solved, I believe that all computers will eventually go to 
> >some sort of solid-state drive.  You eliminate moving parts, and I would 
> >think, should be able to eventually get tremendous speed out of such 
> >devices.
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-- 
Name:	Terry D. Cudney
Phone:	705-812-4949
SIP: 8978 at ekiga.net
E-mail:	terry at octothorp.org

Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like...
having a peeing sectionin a swimming pool.

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