Recycled Eee PC pic from the last post. I have been eying the netbooks hard lately and I can say I honestly would like to have one... but I don't NEED one, so I am getting my head around the electronics I already have and making the most of them. I do have some "stuff" - the original half gig iPod Shuffle, the original iPod Touch, and my Vista-laced Aspire laptop.The laptop got worked over last weekend. I had an out of body experience where I found myself booting into the factory restore program and wiped the hard drive clean. From there, I had an update fest, then an uninstall fest, and then it was time to put "me" in. And what do I install?
Firefox - a great, secure web browser.
Avast antivirus, free for home use.
Spybot Search & Destroy - spyware detection at it's finest.
OpenOffice - the (mostly) compatible Office program suite.
Irfan View - the image viewer. Batch resizing, minor tweaks, and a fast image viewer.
Also am playing with Artweaver - a Photoshop like graphics program. So far its looking very good.
I then installed iTunes 8 (have to to use the iPod Touch), and then I got the update to the Touch (2.1). So far, I have not experienced the "Vista Blue Screen Of Death" that others are complaining about - lucky me. My favorite Touch apps are Stanza (textfile reader), Wikipanion (Wikipedia interface), Vexed (sliding blocks game - had it on the Palm, Pocket PC, and there is a Windows version, as well - great game), Wifinder (wifi sniffer), iSpades (card game - got into it in Germany) and a simple solitaire game. Add my music, the YouTube player, and a few videos I have, and you have a great little traveler that can keep you entertained and informed.
Interestingly, Notepad - the Windows text editor that has been there since Windows 3.X, finally can handle files greater than 32k in size. Not sure - might have been able to do that for a long time - I have always used Editpad Lite for textfiles because the tabbed interface is spot on to how I work. Used it for years.
Gas - just as a point - here in NC the gas went from $3.65 to $3.99 as I was riding past. Stopped just as they were getting ready to jack the price. I have heard that the gas price is now up to $5.49 (7 hours later). Hmmm...
