Ta-Da! (UpdatedX2)

Bought the netbook: Gateway LT2016U with Verizon Wireless' card pre-installed. Blogging on it now.

So far, so good. The Windows update routine was a 2-hour slog, but I passed the time by putting a phone book in my new cell phone. It seems that Verizon Wireless now lacks the capacity to put your old phone book into your new phone at the phone stores...what sort of bulltwaddle is THAT? There is supposed to be some sort of BlueTooth way to do this, but I need some family in the phone book NOW, and the learning curve for that BT transfer might be slow.

 Back to the grind.

BTW, this new mini has a camera in it, so I might just have to make up some avatars for Yours Truly.

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UPDATE: 111809 1015 PST: Got about 95% of what I want on this machine on it. Got a rudimentary phone book into the new cell phone (an LG texter's machine). Tested the webcam, it works. Still getting going with GPS mapping with Google Earth, but GE is running properly, so it must be me that is the hang-up.

One question: there's no disk drive on this machine. Does anyone have a recommendation for a portable, USB CD-ROM disk drive (R/W) that will also read DVD? VZW sells one which looks acceptable for $100, sounds expensive.

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UPDATE: 112009 0913: I bought the Samsung SE-S084 portable disc drive at Newegg for fifty bucks (thanks for the reference, Geoff). It was half the price of the one VZW sells, and that one was a read-only, whereas this one will write to both DVD and CD-ROM disks. It runs right off the laptop's power via a USB port, but if I'm using it a lot, I'll plug it in to the Gomadic USB power supply I just bought also. There's only one problem, though: the shoulder bag I bought to carry the netbook in seemed to have enough extra room to put a 1911A1 in, so I was going to do that, but with the adapters, cables, and the disc drive, there won't be enough room, WAAAAAH!

Comments

[Geoff]

oh, and bitpim for the phonebook. www.bitpim.org

Hope that your phone is supported (gotta love open source!)

[Geoff]

Unsure of quality, but Newegg (who I'm told has great customer service) has a Rosewill CD/DVD burner for about $45.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010100420%201036508673&bop=And&ActiveSearchResult=True&Order=PRICE

Also, just read this yesterday, better buy a protection plan for that netbook: http://www.squaretrade.com/pages/laptop-reliability-1109/