My Eee PC was a fun little toy, but by no means reliable. Often it would fail to boot, or window borders would not appear, or the task bar would not load. Connecting to a new WiFi network would usually mean I would have to switch its WiFi connectively on and off a few times until it found the network. It had bugger all storage space and running more than a couple of programs at a time would leave it creaking. And, of course, it ran horrible, horrible Linux; such a 90s operating system.

So, I was thinking of getting a replacement when a generous offer arrived in my inbox. A £400 laptop, of reasonable spec running Vista Home Premium for £20 a month. This included a 3.5G modem and 3GB/month transfer. How could I turn down such an offer?

I have really enjoyed these past couple of days having a functional laptop that does everything I ask from it. It runs MS Office, my favourite blogging client (Windows Live Writer) and Trillian. I can sit in front of the television surfing away or chatting on IRC; I feel less bound to the dim and dingy computer room.

After my last frenzy of installing applications on my Eee PC 700 2G Surf, I decided I wanted an RSS reader as well. I first tried RSSOwl, which is a Java application so it required the Java package installing. I found instructions to do that here. Sadly RSSOwl was total pants, so I deleted it. I left Java installed (even though it uses up a lot of SSD space) so I could run Java from inside the browser and other things I might install.

Then I decided to install the default Eee PC RSS reader, Akregator, which is included with the 4G version but not with the 2G Eee PC. If you followed the instructions to change the Eee PC 700 repositories to the 701 repositories it will show up when you load Synaptic package manager. This uses approximately a megabyte of SSD space so is small enough to install without any worries. It is also an excellent RSS reader. Its only failing that it doesn't seem to support Atom feeds. Works fine with all the RSS feeds I have thrown at it, though, and it has good controls for deleting old news so it doesn't fill up too much of your SSD.

Akregator sadly doesn't automatically install itself on the Launch menu of Full Desktop Mode: you can either run it using a terminal, the run command option on the Launch menu, or add it to the Launch menu manually. Do do this you right-click on the sub-menu of the Launch menu where you want it to live, 'Internet' would seem a good choice, and choose "Edit menu". The menu editor will appear, if you have the 'Internet' menu selected right-click on it and choose "New Item". You can name the RSS reader anything you like, but "Akregator RSS" or something similar would make sense, the description and comment don't matter. The command is "akregator" (all lower case, without the quotes, obviously) and the work path is "/usr/bin". If you want an icon you just have to click in the little image box in the top right and a selection of icons will appear, including one for akregator. Easy, eh?

Now I really cannot think of any more software I want to install on the Eee; just as well as I only have 200MB left on the internal SSD. If I decide to install anything else I am tempted to make them Java applications because I can just shove these on the SD card I have installed and use the menu editor as described above to point to the correct location and work path to run the application.

I've been playing more with my Eee PC; I decided to enable the full desktop mode rather than the usual toy interface. There are some very easy instructions for enabling full desktop mode here. However, they didn't work for me because I have an Eee PC 700 2G Surf (all that was in stock when I wanted to buy, and of course I had to buy instantly I'd saved up the cash). There is a simple solution to this, you need to change the repositories the Eee PC searches for when you try to get the required software. This is explained here. It is a simple case of loading the package manager and changing the '700' to '701' in the required places. The instructions say this causes problems with the keyboard but I didn't find that at all. Installing the required packages only uses up a few megabytes of the disk space so you can do it on the 2G model with no problems.

The full desktop mode looks a lot more like a real computer, and it means you can install extra applications and have them appear on the Launch menu. It does require a few more seconds to boot up, but not an onerous period of time. On the Eee PC 700 you will get a icon in the launch menu and on the task bar for Thunderbird Mail Client, but this is not installed on the Eee PC 700 so you can safely delete the icon. I suppose you could try to install Thunderbird, but I haven't looked into this yet so have no idea how to do it or how much disk space it uses up.

More: I didn't try to install Thunderbird, KDE Mail appeared on the package manager screen and I installed that. It works a treat. It is also worth installing AdBlock on your Eee PC so you don't waste time downloading adverts onto your tiny screen. With a decent email application, a good web browser, a blog client, Pidgin instant messenger and Skype on the device it makes it a highly useable computer for those on the go. At the moment I cannot think of any other software I need to install.

I've installed Scribefire on my Eee PC. This is a blogging client that works as a plugin for Firefox, so doesn't have any arcane system requirements that the Eee couldn't live up to. So far it seems very easy to use and has a good editing environment. Now will it manage to post this to my blog...

The Eee PC is a great toy. I've been blogging on the go and surfing the web from the train, boozers and generally anywhere I can find a table. There are really only two problems with it. Firstly, it doesn't support Bluetooth. One might have thought this would be a basic function of a portable device, but Asus clearly disagree. This means I have to connect my mobile phone via a USB cable, which I suppose is not too onerous; it does mean I get faster data transfer rates than Bluetooth when surfing on 3G*. Secondly, the battery life is total rubbish. This especially true of the Surf model I have, which comes with a lower capacity battery than the more well-endowed models. Any wifi use when on batteries shrinks the useable battery life to about two hours. This is pretty poor for a supposedly ultra-portable device. I will buy one of the higher-capacity batteries when they are released.

*Actually my N95 mobile phone when used with T-Mobile's Web'n'Walk plan supports HSPDA aka 3.5G, the faster version of 3G. It makes mobile internet use on the device a total joy. Instructions for connecting an N95 to T-Mobile's data plan can be found here. They are relatively easy but nowhere near as easy as this would be under Windows. Linux really is 90s software. In the instructions it says they have to be used on Advanced mode on the Eee PC but they work just fine under the normal mode of the Eee's OS. You can get a terminal up to type the arcane commands by going into the file manager and pressing Ctrl-T. Make sure you make backups of the various files you need to edit before and after you've edited (with different names for before and after, of course). The command is "sudo cp /etc/ppp/peers/dialup1 /etc/ppp/peers/dialup1.bak" to back up the first file you have to edit. Alter the paths and filenames as appropriate for the second file that needs editing and the after editing backup.

An Eee PC, it will replace my N800 which was always just too much of a toy to be generally useful. The Eee PC has a much better keyboard, and a bigger screen. If you are interested in a review there is one here. The only thing I don't like about it is that it runs Linux, which is generally fine for toys like this, but when one witnesses the arcane instructions required to connect it to my N95 mobile phone for 3G internet access it does become a tad tiresome. Not that I can be bothered to install Windows XP on it...