Tag Archives: Netbook
Turn your Old Netbook into a New Chromebook
Want a Chromebook but don’t have $500 to replace your current Netbook? Or do you live outside the United States like myself and can’t get one yet? Well how about turning your old Netbook into a Chromebook following a few simple steps! Recently, I borrowed my friend’s old Acer Aspire One A150 since he didn’t have a use for it and I wanted to give Chrome OS a spin since I haven’t tried it in a while. This article is going to show the simple procedure you need to do in order to Install Chrome OS on your Netbook.
What you’ll need
1 x Netbook
1 x USB Stick which is larger than 4GB
It is worth noting that a Netbook with an Atom processor inside is recommended but not necessary as well as having 1GB+ of RAM. Again this isn’t required since Chrome OS is so lightweight but it will give you a nice smooth experience when using Chrome OS and a very fast boot time!
Download & Install Chrome OS
Go ahead and grab the Daily USB image of Chrome OS Vanilla builds from the Chrome OS Hero Hexxeh, you can get a daily image from his site by clicking here (The top build is the latest). Once downloaded extract the .img inside the .tar.gz file using 7-Zip or a similar program. (Windows user’s might have to extract the .tar.gz then extract the .tar file inside in order to access the .img file). Now insert your USB stick and format it this should only take a few seconds. In order to transfer the Chrome OS .img file onto your USB stick using an .Img Writer, Windows users can use the Win32DiskImager which is available to download from here. Mac and Linux users can use the DD command.
Once that has finished you now have a bootable USB stick running Chrome OS!
Booting Chrome OS
All you need to do now is stick your bootable USB Stick into your Netbook and make sure you have set your USB stick to have the first priority in your BIOS menu. Once you have done that simply sit back and wait for Chrome OS to boot to the Installation screen. From here you can either test Chrome OS to see if it’s right for you and your Netbook by following the setup steps, this will install Chrome OS on your USB and will not effect any files on your hard disk.
Installing Chrome OS
Once you feel ready for Chrome OS make sure to back up any important files on your Netbook and then press Ctrl + ALT + T in order to access the Chrome OS command line. From here you just need to simply type in the command “install” when you get to the password prompt just type in the phrase “facepunch” then begin the installation phase by pressing "the “y” key on your keyboard.
Warning: This will wipe your data from your Netbook’s hard drive. I am not responsible for any data lost due to you not backing up your data accordingly.
The installation procedure should only take a couple of minutes to do, so just sit back and wait. Once that’s done follow the instructions on screen by typing in the phrase “exit” this will return you back to the Chrome interface. Then you will need to sign out by pressing the “Tool” button and then selecting the “Sign out” option. Now that you have returned to the Log In screen click the Shut Down button in the bottom right hand corner of the screen in order to turn off your Netbook. Remove your USB stick then power your Netbook back on again making sure to give your Hard Drive boot priority from the BIOS Menu like you did with your USB Stick previously. Come out of BIOS and Chrome OS should start to boot within 20-40 seconds depending on the specs of your Netbook.
Finishing up
Hopefully if all has gone smoothly with the installation you now have the set up screen sitting on your Netbook. Congratulations! Simple follow these steps and you have now saved yourself $500 from not needing to buy a brand new netbook! Enjoy having Chrome OS as your Netbook Operating System! Pretty simple? Make sure to help your Friends and Family by speeding up their Internet browsing experience on their Netbook by telling them and even installing Chrome OS on their Netbook.
5 Reasons for why you SHOULD be using Chrome OS on your Netbook
Chrome OS is Google’s answer to a Netbook’s Operating System, while it’s still currently in development, it’s almost ready for prime time later this year. To get you interested in the Google Chrome OS, I’ve made a list of 5 selling points, Chrome OS has when used on a Netbook.
1. It’s Fast
Chrome OS is simple just the Google Chrome Internet Browser. Nothing Else. Sure, there are a few other background services that are required to use the Browser first, but what you won’t need to do in order to use Chrome OS is sit at your machine for ages while other programs load up along side the browser. Once Chrome has loaded you’re away! The whole world wide web at your fingers.
Don’t think that a month or two down the line after heavy usage is going to slow it down either. Once installed on your machine, Chrome OS requires no extra huge programs eating up your system’s resources.
2. It’s Lightweight
Chrome OS is designed to be used on Netbook hardware, this means that it requires no more than 1GB of RAM and will feel extremely fast even on a small Intel Atom processor!
3. It’s Safe
Linux is secretly running behind Chrome OS, so that means you can be reassured that it’s safe and secure. No longer would you need to worry about having a virus scanner constantly scanning your Netbook for those nasty viruses which Windows can catch! That’s right you don’t need ANY virus protection software!
4. It’s User Friendly
If you’ve ever used an internet browser, then you can definitely use Chrome OS, since it’s just that an Internet Browser! It’s a very familiar format, such as all the functions on the top bar, the back button is the first button on the toolbar, the forward button is the next, then you have the address bar. I’m pretty sure this looks similar to the browser you’re using to few this blog post on.
5. It’s free
I’ve saved the best reason for last. Chrome OS would cost you nothing. There is also applications for Chrome OS such as Angry Birds, Google Talk and WordSquared which are all entirely free as well!
So are you tempted yet? Enough talk from me, you can try it out for yourself using the Vanilla builds which can be downloaded here provided daily (6PM GMT) by a user named Hexxeh. Make sure to tell me what you think about Chrome OS! Did you enjoy using it? Was it easy to use? Any improvements would you like to see? Tell me in the comments below!
Me and My Eee – Peppermint OS Ice
Hello everyone and welcome to the latest review from Me and my Eee. Today I’ll be reviewing Peppermint OS Ice Edition. Peppermint OS claims to be light on the processor, so that’s great news for my netbook which is a Eeepc 904HD loaded with a 900MHz CPU. This is also aimed to be a “Cloud” OS so expect a few web-based programs!
So this Linux Distribution sounds perfect for my netbook even more perfect than my favourite, Fedora, Linux distribution. So I hit the download button on their site for Peppermint OS Ice Edition. There are 2 different versions of Peppermint OS. The default one which uses Firefox or the Ice Version which uses Chromium instead. The .iso image of Peppermint OS Ice is under 500mb which is also great considering the more popular Linux distributions are around 700mb such as Ubuntu and Fedora.
Once Perppermint OS finished downloading it was straight to putting the liveCD onto a usb stick using the Universal Linux Installer. I booted from the USB Stick and had a play around using the live session option. It looked like it was based on Linux Mint 9, the latyest version of Linux Mint, which is great since a lot of people gave Linux Mint 9 great reviews on how it performed on a Netbook. It also looks like Peppermint OS is using LXDE as it’s desktop enviroment, which is one of the lightest Desktop Enivroments for Linux.
I continued to have a play around on the Live Session for a few minutes until I decided that I would definately use this as a main OS on my Netbook. The installer was very simple like most GUI Linux Installers, you just enter the similar details such as creating a Username/Password, setting the time and date and also setting up the parition table for your hard drive.
Peppermint OS didn’t take long at all to install, on their websdite it states that the full install size is under 4GB so that’s great news for the owners of older Eeepc’s with small hard drives.
The screenshot above is my current desktop, had to tweak around with te settings a bit since it did look a tad bit ugly, I applied a new walpaper my trusty android wallpaper and also tweaked around with the task bar since the “Panel Preferences” menu has many options to mess around with.
The next thing I did was take a look at what programs were avaible from the Menu panel, like I had said before there is a lot of Web-Apps such as Facebook, Google Docs and YouTube for example and no signs of big programs such as OpenOffice on here.
If you were a fan of Web-based applications Peppermint OS offers you to easily make your own using it’s program called “Ice” and enter in details such as URL, Title and Icons to use for the application.
Obviously there are some programs that are actually installed on here such as Leafpad which is a great text editior and I thought looked so much better than other Linux-based Text Editors such as Gedit and was also a bit easier to navigate around.
If your Netbook has the hard drive space like mine, for example, you can also install applications to save on your hard drive using the Software Centre from Linux Mint 9. Linux Mint’s Software Centre is excellent, it has catagorized each application so it’s easy to navigate through each listing of applications as well as offering users the chance to review each program so it gives other user’s a good overview about the program before they download and try it out themselves.
Conclusion
Peppermint OS ice is definately a great OS. It’s very easy to get to grips with even if you’re a Windows-based user! It’s very fast and very light on my Netbook’s spec, which is perfect for my needs, it’s very quick and snappy. Even though it looks visually a bit ugly it doesn’t take long to give it a “cool” finish. If I had an extra “E” in my out of 5 “E” rating, I’d definately give it to this OS. But unfortunately I only rate it out of 5 so… I’m going to give Peppermint OS Ice edition a very big 5 out of 5 E’s!
EEEEE
So that’s it for now until next time, if you haven’t noticed already I’ve changed the structure of the “Me and My Eee” article this time by removing the sub-headings through the article this should hopefully make my articles flow a lot more. Next time, I’ll be finally giving Windows-based users a run down of the top 10 programs to use on a Netbook so stay tuned for that!
Me and My Eee – Eeebuntu 3.0 Review
Introduction
Hello there, welcome to the very first edition of “Me and my Eee” a project I’ve been planning on doing for some time now. (Was even thinking about making a separate blog for it) This project is mainly about my personal reviews on certain topics surrounding the tiny machines called Netbooks. I fell in love with these underpowered machines ever since I laid my eyes on them, they’re great!
These articles aren’t going to be your bog standard review but more of a “Journal” approach to things such as Operating Systems (Yes, I’m an OS Hopper), cool accessories or any awesome Netbook oriented software and games, just so people can have a better idea at what the daily experience is like before they try it out for themselves (I’m sure you don’t want to waste your time and money, do you?) Before I begin I’d like to introduce you to my Eee.
My 904HD Model Eeepc, an Eeepc if you already didn’t know is Asus’ brand of Netbooks. Here are the basic specs of my Netbook:
80GB Hard Drive
900 MHz Intel Celeron Processor
2GB of RAM (Upgraded from 1GB)
Intel 915GM Graphics Card
So as you can see it’s not too bad for your average Netbook. It’s not designed to be a high performance gaming machine but a portable device to read the odd email, play a few classic games, chat and browse the internet. You get the idea. Anyway on with the show!
My Experience
So this is Eeeubuntu 3.0, based off of Ubuntu 8.04 but more directed at Netbook users, if you don’t know already Ubuntu is one of the most Linux Distributions available to download for free. I’ve used Eeeubuntu 3.0 for a while in the past before and have recently reinstalled it since I’m in need of a Windows 7 product key. So it’s was sort of Substitute for the time being… Well that’s what I thought until I actually started to mess around with it for an hour of two.
Once I installed it (In a matter of minutes) I decided to have a little play around with it, just customizing a few things and just giving it my personal touch and of course doing what I like to do best, optimize and remove crap from the OS in order to give it a faster boot time and of course make it more responsive when actually using the Operating System.
The above screenshot is what my desktop currently looks like, First thing first was too change the background image to a cute “Netbook Resolution Optimized” image (1024×600) of Lego Stars Wars… On Bikes! I did a few more cool things like implement the Aero Snap features from Windows 7 into Eeeubuntu 3.0 using this guide.
After I’ve finished designing it to my liking and installing the essential programs for my daily usage such as Google Chrome and LAMPP, a Linux version of the software XAMPP, I gave it a quick reboot, 45 Seconds on battery mode, not bad at all really, it’s tolerable. There is definitely more stuff to take out to reduce that boot time too, I just did the usual things like stop any unwanted start-up programs, removed the boot splash screen, etc.
The Pros
Eeeubuntu 3.0 is definitely worth getting over the standard version of Ubuntu, my personal reason behind this is that the pre-installed software that comes with Eeeubuntu 3.0 is so much better for me, personally, than what comes with the bog standard Ubuntu, such as aMSN, a Linux Client for Windows Live Messenger, the interface is very similar to the official client, especially if you download the MSN Version 7 skin. It also comes with a pre-installed application that gives you control over various hardware inside your netbook by a single click of a button! Such as CPU Scaling, Enabling/Disabling hardware such as WiFi and Webcam which is very useful when you’re on battery power and you want to save every last bit of energy.
Another little bit that I love about this OS is that the developers have made a dock to launch all your favourite applications straight from your desktop using just one single GNOME panel, this is such a great idea since it means you won’t have to download any fancy programs such as Avant Window Navigator.
The Cons
The only major con is that it’s quite old now, a few of the repositories are now dead, but don’t worry there is a forth version currently in development, you can download it by going to their site at: www.eeebuntu.org
Conclusion:
If you want a clean, simple and yes USEFUL Linux Distribution for your everyday netbook needs then this is perfect! Especially if you don’t have the time to customize a standard Ubuntu installation in order to make it friendlier for a Netbook.
I’m going to give Eeeubuntu 3.0 a perfect 5 E’s out of Five!
EEEEE
Not bad for the first OS to be reviewed! Let’s see if other Operating Systems can live up to Eeeubuntu 3.0!
And that’s all from me today, folks! Sorry it’s a bit of a mismatched review, but hey give me a break it’s my very first review ;] Hopefully the articles will get a better structure once I get writing more. Tomorrow, I’ll hopefully be downloading the latest Ubuntu Beta and see how that performs on a Netbook and hopefully have a review up next weekend. But until then…
OVER AND OUT!
