Netbook achieved.

Finally got myself a netbook.  I've been holding out for one of the touchscreen models hoping I could use it to replace my pen-and-paper note-taking process, which tends to result in lots of paper and little organization.  But the waiting finally got to me, and I found a great deal that will help tide me over, letting me be picky about my eventual choice.

I picked up an Eee PC 900, a pre-Atom version, w/ 512MB RAM, 4GB drive and Linux OS.  I must admit, I didn't play with the pre-installed OS for long, but just long enough to discover it was having issues connecting to my WiFi.  I poked around a bit (It has a Voice Command icon that intrigued me, but I never checked it out), but then installed the new Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

The install was simple, but not without odd issues.  In order to boot off the USB drive, I ended up disabling the internal drive though the BIOS, only to determine that I had to switch the USB stick to a second port; for some reason, the Eee didn't want to boot off the right port closer to the front.

Once I was in the "Live" test of Ubuntu, the first impression was disappointment; the mouse was sluggish and the interface was very laggy.  But once I opened Firefox, it was all very snappy.  Turns out there is a known issue with some of the older netbooks, and there's a new kernel that fixes it.  Information is here.  The fix is just new enough that you have to install it manually, but I suspect it'll be in the repos soon enough.

So now I have a working netbook with a well-supported OS and more free space than the factory-installed system (which dedicates half the drive to a restore partition).  Now my only concern is to figure out how best to make use of it; as a mini-laptop, it's a bit too awkward for note-taking, so it'll serve the role it was designed for; portable, quick-access net device.

The one issue I've neglected to mention thus far is that I've got a bad key.  My "I" key wants to be hitjuuuust right to register, and even then it's probably only 50%.  I alerted ASUS to the issue, but I'm just not sure it would be worth the time and money to ship it off for this.  Though it certainly could have chosen a more convenient key to be flaky on.  Vowels are overrated, anyway.