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Just whipped up a new wallpaper for my A1, feel free to download and share (CC BY-SA). I have not tested it myself yet though, but it should fit right in.
Remember to remove that ugly search-bar before switching as it really doesn’t work well with any other wallpaper than the default. If you like the default one, there are also some mods on that available here.
All my previous posts tagged “aspire one” (and related) can be found here.
Cheers,
Tags: a1, aspire one, change, wallpaper
My colleague Johan brought in a new UMPC to the office today. He’s helping the distributor (a friend of his) getting an Ubuntu based linux distribution working on it as a private project, so he has it for testing purposes.
The name of the unit is “Posh-Book” (view link in IE…) and I must say it’s a bit out there. Remember me bragging about being able to handle a pink sleeve for my A1, well, I’m not sure I could carry something described as “posh”. Hehe 
In all other aspects it seems to be quite competent both in hardware and design. It ships with a 10″ screen, VIA C7®-M 1.6GHz Processor (NaNo), 1 GB memory and a 2.5″ 120GB SATA drive. One cool thing is that it’s operating system specification read “GNU Linux operating systems (MS Windows Compatible)”, that is GNU first and MS second
For me, the processor being a VIA is a plus as I love everything that’s not entirely standard. On the downside it has been described as a bit hungrier for power and therefor shortening battery life.
Even though it carries a 10″ screen it’s resolution is set to 1024×600, same as Aspire One (9″ screen) and others. It’s weight is estimated by the manufacturer to around 1.3kg, including a three cell li-on battery which is estimated to deliver 2.5 hours of power. No HSDPA/3G module is built-in, so if you’re in need of such solutions you’ll still have to carry your 3G-dongle.
Something I liked was the color of the keyboard that broke of cleanly from the white shell. They orange notations on the keys looked ok IRL as well.
The unit will ship in two different versions, and the number of available USB ports is one of the thing that differs. This is the P102 model I’m guessing as it only had 2 USB ports. See the full spec. for more info.
The keyboard worked quite OK and it passed the “I can write ‘Daniel’ without breaking any fingers”-test. Not a very scientific test, but it worked out OK for me in the past when selecting a netbook
And finally some pics comparing my A1 to the Posh:
New toys are fun to look at… Too bad I didn’t get to break it open, that would have made my day complete
Cheers,
Tags: a1, aspire one, comparison, netbook, posh-book, review, umpc
Photo: Mountainbread on Flickr.
… including their internal IP-numbers, usernames and passwords.
I sent an e-mail three days ago to marketing@linpus.com (only contact adress on their website), info@acercomputer.se (listed as Swedish contact on Acers site), support@acercomputer.se and security@acer.com about this advicing them to change their passwords and take other necessary steps that might be needed to secure their environment.
All bounced except marketing@linpus.com from which I have yet to receive an answer.
Not so nice for them but it’s funny reading.
From the beginning of the file:
ls -a
rm .AME/ .bash_history .cache/ .dbus/ .gsynaptics/ .lftp/ .PIMDS/ .update-notifier/ -rf
ls
Yeah… doing that do not remove the current sessions history. Sorry guys
Out of 982 lines in the file, 423 are “ls” variants and 51 “lftp”:
¤¤¤¤¤¤¤@¤¤¤:~/$ wc -l linpus_roots_bash_history.txt
982 linpus_roots_bash_history.txt
¤¤¤¤¤¤¤@¤¤¤:~/$ grep ls linpus_roots_bash_history.txt | wc -l
423
¤¤¤¤¤¤¤@¤¤¤:~/$ grep ftp linpus_roots_bash_history.txt | wc -l
51
I found this after doing a restore of the unit so it might be that this file is only on the restore image. I have no way of checking this, so if anyone that has not restored their unit feels like checking this please do so and then give me your results in the comments section.
Also, if someone has the official security contact for Acer I would appreciate that.
Cheers,
Tags: .bash_history, a1, acer, aspire one, linpus
My wallpaper…
Got tired of the standard wallpaper and made my own. Feel free to download it in 1024×600 and use it on your A1.
Also, found out how to remove the ugly search bar from the desktop:
* Press Alt+F2 and type “xterm”.
* Write “su -” and type your root password.
* Edit the file “/usr/share/search-bar/start-search_bar.sh” with your tool of choice.
* Comment out all lines that start with “acer-search-desktop”. That is, place a # in front of them, save the file and exit the editor you’re using.
This is how your file should look when you are done:
#!/bin/sh
#resolution=`xrandr |grep \*|awk ‘{print $1}’`
resolution=`xrandr |grep current|awk -F”current” ‘{print $2}’|awk -F”,” ‘{print $1}’|sed ’s/\ //g’`if [ $resolution = "1280x800" ];then
# acer-search-desktop –x=650 –y=90 –width=490 –height=31
elif [ $resolution = "1024x600" ];then
# acer-search-desktop –x=510 –y=65 –width=490 –height=31
elif [ $resolution = "1024x768" ];then
# acer-search-desktop –x=510 –y=80 –width=490 –height=35
else
# acer-search-desktop
fi
Cheers to Heretic Studios for the original instruction!
Loveliness Got the Aspire One in my hands today.
What I did first was to just browse the web, and believe it or not, everything worked. Webradio and everything. Haven’t looked into it that much but it seems like flashplayer and all the usual plugins are already installed upon shipment… It’ll be interesting to investigate the versions of installed software later.
The system creates a non-root user for you with the self-explanatory name “user”. This is a normal user account with no special priv’s and it boots directly into this ID. During first-start install you are also allowed to set the root user password. This can later be used when su’ing to install applications and supporting libraries.
As you might have read erlier this unit ships with Linpus Linux which is a Fedora 8 clone optimized for UMPC’s. This means that it is also optimized for SSD harddrives (minimize wear, maximize performance) and it should perform OK at least. Hard to pinpoint if something feels like a bottleneck in the system right now, as I’m still quite new to it.
The Linpus menu interface is bright, shiny and intuitive but it is very clear that it is not for users that have above average linux skills. I have yet to change the window manager on this one as “Alt+F2″ goes a long way. As mentioned in previous posts I might also turn to the Ubuntu UMPC package once that is out and kicking.
Another thing I mentioned in an earlier post is that I bought an additional memory module (1GB) and that it looked like a pretty advanced manoeuvre… And it really really was.
Oh my god who builds hardware that you have to upgrade like this:
And finally:
I mean… I’m not worthless at hardware but give me a break… The only thing I did not have to do was to solder the god damned module to the motherboard… Ah well… It was an experience at least. Hardest part was to know what to pull and what flip if that makes sense for anyone Maybe I’ll write a more verbose guide than the ones that exist now at a later time.
Moving on, now when the memory module was installed was the A1 any faster? Very much so, actually. Boot time had drastic improvements and I had a less tormenting time browsing Aftonbladet.se (which is filled with all kinds of crappy flash adverts). I also had an easier time handling my gimp as it can be quite hungry sometimes.
And when it comes to gimp and other applications remember that the OS really is Fedora 8 and as such it is very easy to get all base applications installed. Just press “Alt+F2″ and type in “xterm” and press enter and install what you need through yum (remember to “su” first though). The first app to go was of course Fyodor’s NMAP:
# yum install nmap
Yummie… and that’s how hard it is. Another example can then be FileZilla:
# yum install filezilla
Of course you wont see filezilla in the menu so you’ll have to launch it through “Alt+F2″ -> “filezilla” -> [Enter].
Both wired and wireless networking worked fine out of the box (verified wireless on my neighbours WLAN) and the only thing I have to note here is that the user controls for the networking is a bit hard to work with. Not that the functions doesn’t exist or that it is hard to find, but it feels sluggish and the shortcut applet behaves weird sometimes (but I have quite large fingers so it might be that).
The biggest plus though goes to the keyboard that manages to, even though it’s really small, work for my large and ogrish hands. Second gold-star goes to the screen that performs excellent both on AC and off. Played some Tetris on the bus home and it worked fine even though it was quite bright outside.
Ok, that’s all for now More on this wonderful toy later…
And yeah, this is my first blogpost written on the A1!
A1 References:
- Memory upgrade
- User forum
- Hardware forum
- How to ruin a perfectly good Aspire One
Tags: a1, acer, aspire one, linpus, review
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