![\"A](\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/41bgArtpguL._SL500_AA280_.jpg\" "\\"Sylvania's")
<\/a>I’ve got the selection narrowed down to four possibilities. Irritatingly, I cannot seem to find Linux-based netbooks in retail outlets thus far. I tend to prefer to get things like this retail, so that if I start them up and find they’re defective (or if they die in the first few days), I can just take it back and exchange it, rather than calling some call-center halfway around the globe, sitting on hold for an hour, dealing with some schmuck going through the “did you plug it in? Did you turn it on?” script, finally getting an RMA#, and then paying to ship the thing back and being without a computer for 2-4 weeks until the replacement arrives.<\/p>\nCurrently, my first choice is the Sylvania G Meso Linux version<\/a>, which seems to be a very good value and is well-supported by Linux – plus for a computer that I have to order, I should be able to get it shipped quickly. My second and third choices would be either a Dell Mini 9 or HP Mini 1110NR. Those give me more customization options (and the HP keyboard is perhaps one of the most usable “small netbook” ones), but Dell and HP would take almost 2 weeks after taking my money to finally get the thing assembled and sent to me.<\/p>\n The last option would be to go to Wal-Mart® or similar cheap-electronics place and get an Acer Aspire One crippled with a “Windows XP Home” OS, and take it home in a lead-lined box until it can be overwritten with a real OS (and then perhaps argue with Acer about getting a refund for the unused and unwanted Windows license.<\/a>).<\/p>\n Some people probably think I’m insane for wanting a tiny little netbook (and I do specifically want the smallest netbook I can reasonably use – I’ll actually take the 8.9″ version over the 10″ version) to replace a laptop. Thing is, Intel Atom 270N-based netbooks should be somewhat better-performing than my old full-size laptop with its old “Turion 64 ML-30” processor (same clock speed as the Atom, with less than half the bus speed and an order of magnitude higher power consumption…) and will have a much better-supported graphics chipset. My view of Google Earth might be a bit more constrained than on my big 1280×768 giganto-laptop screen, but it ought to be smoother…<\/p>\n Anybody have any suggestions? The actual distribution of Linux that it comes with is essentially irrelevant, as I’ll almost certainly replace it with either Gentoo (if it has a large, standard hard drive) or Arch (if it has a solid-state drive).<\/p>\n Another Asterisk post to follow, later, too. Keep watching…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Minister of Domestic Affairs has given the go-ahead to find myself a netbook to take the place of my gigantic beast of an aging laptop. Now I just have to figure out which one to go for. I’ve got the selection narrowed down to four possibilities. Irritatingly, I cannot seem to find Linux-based netbooks … Continue reading I ♥ the Minister of Domestic Affairs<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,4,13,40,10,58],"tags":[455,458,452,457,453,37,451,454,456,580],"class_list":["post-390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-nerdity","category-feedback-solicitation","category-me-me-me","category-neogeography","category-nerd-culture","category-want","tag-acer","tag-arch","tag-dell","tag-gentoo","tag-hp","tag-linux","tag-netbook","tag-sylvania","tag-ubuntu","tag-want"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=390"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":392,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390\/revisions\/392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}