netbook – Page 2 – Graves On SOHO Technology

Hulu, VoIP, Hospitals & Ineffective Network Filtering

This past weekend it happens that I spent a day at Memorial Hermann Northwest Hospital. The why is a long story and not especially important for the moment. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the facility has an open guest Wifi network. That allowed me to do some work, blogging, etc while I was there.

A little later in the day we were moved to a room without a TV. Since we were going to be waiting a while I pulled out the Mini 2140 and logged into Hulu so that we could watch some TV. We watched last weeks episode of Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles.

Living With The HP Mini 2140

April 5, 2009
Michael Graves
Computing

As I make my way back from SFO for the 8th time in as many weeks I’m given to consider what good company my little netbook has become. It’s been my traveling companion for a relatively short 4 weeks and I’m still coming to graps its utility. It can’t possbly replace my laptop or desktop. After all, I’m in the TV graphics business and there’s just no replacing a high resolution display for some activities.

Yet, here I am on another flight and the little netbook is my solace. Even in a regretably coach class seat I’m able to listen to music, catch up on by backlogged RSS feeds and write blog posts. It’s as close to ideal as I could have hoped for.

Mini Me Makes The Cut: One Week with the HP 2140 Netbook

March 15, 2009
Michael Graves
Computing

It’s been a little over a week since I laid hands on my little HP netbook. I must say that the little device has caused me to reconsider some of my computing needs, but in general I’m happy to have it in my travels.

In the past weeks work in SFO I carried it around with me as I moved through my customers facility, essentially using it as an electronic notepad. In that role it’s outstanding. The battery life using the 6 cell battery at well over 7 hours, is superb. It boots and hibernates quickly. It’s light, quiet and unimposing.

Seeking Opinions: Netbooks

January 18, 2009
Michael Graves
Computing, Travel

I suspect that there is a netbook in my near-term future. My travel to and from Toronto last week reinforced this sense. At three hours that flight is about as long as you’d want to be on a 50 seat regional jet. Such is the reality of air travel these days. Smaller aircraft are being used on longer flights so that they can still offer a few flights a day on less traveled routes. While really do like my HP NX8510p notebook it’s just too large to be useful in small spaces, like on a regional jet.

Further, a lot of the stuff that I’m doing these days is “in-the-cloud” as they say. So many of my activities don’t require major applications installed on the platform before me. It would seem that a netbook with some reasonable amount of local storage would make some sense for me. I’m not sure I’d go for one with inboard 3G ‘net access. They seem to costly at the moment.

Tim Higgins over at Small Net Builder has been in a protracted search for a netbook. He’s actually taken delivery of three different models;