img_0356.JPGMy MacBook is off to see the doctor and probably won’t be back for at least a week. It developed a faulty fan and started to sound like a playing card rattling against the spokes of a bicycle. Luckily I invested in the AppleCare plan, so the repair will be free. But I’m still left without my main machine.

That leaves my Eee PC. How to make it usable in the interim? The first thing I did was hook it up to my 23" LG display and it is running just fine at 1280×1024. Using the trackpad isn’t much fun, so I found a Logitech cordless mouse. The Eee PC doesn’t have Bluetooth, so I’m using one that is connected to a wireless USB receiver. The nice thing about this unit is that you can scroll left and right by pushing the scroll wheel in those directions. I don’t need it with my big monitor, but it is definitely useful when using the machine by itself, as sideways scrolling is often needed with the small screen. The photo, by the way, I took with my little Canon and then I pulled it off the SD card onto the desktop by using a USB card reader.

The keyboard issue

Now, what to do about the keyboard. I am the proud owner of two old IBM buckling spring keyboards. They are one of my most treasured possessions. I took one out and connected it to a USB to PS2 adapter and it works just fine on the little machine. I would never attempt doing much typing on that tiny keyboard. As a matter of fact, I love this old keyboard so much that when the MacBook comes back I’m going to see if I can use it with that. The Apple keyboard has all sorts of special keys so I’m a bit skeptical.

The monitor, by the way, is showing the Mobipocket program, to which I added two new ebooks I bought from Fictionwise to take advantage of their sale. DRM’ed, unfortunately. I bought "The Hellenistic Age – a Short History" and "Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe". I will be able to read both of these books on the Eee PC or on my Palm TX.

So far the Eee PC is holding up fine and it will be interesting to spend a week with it. By the way, speaking of technology I did a review of the new Netflix Roku streaming media machine over on Palm Addict. It’s a bit off topic to publish here, but if any of you are interested you can find the review at: http://palmaddict.typepad.com/palmaddicts/2008/05/gadget-report-1.html
and I’ll be happy to answer any questions about it here.

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