Acer Aspire v5-122p Ultra-Thin Touchscreen Notebook

Acer Aspire v5-122p-0825 
Ultra-Thin Touchscreen Notebook

Specs:

CPU: AMD A4-1250 Dual Core @ 1GHz
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 8210
RAM: 4 GB DDR3 Low Voltage (2GB on board + 2 GB SODIMM)
HDD: Western Digital 500GB 5400rpm SATA3
LCD: 11.6" Glossy Widescreen Multitouch LCD
Audio: RealTek HD
Network: Qualcomm Atheros AR95x 802.11 b/g/n + BlueTooth
Peripherals: 83-key non-backlit keyboard, touchpad, 2x USB (1xUSB3, 1xUSB2),  CrystalEye webcam, SD/MicroSD Card-reader
Battery: 3-cell Lithium Ion

Although I own a bevy of tablet- and laptop computers, when I expect to work away from home, I tend to bring my trusty netbook along for the ride. Tablets are wonderful media-consumption devices, but absolutely terrible if you want to do any real work, and laptops just can't compare with the portability and battery life of a a net- or ultra-book. Unfortunately, my 5-year old Dell Inspiron Mini10T - with its limited 1GB RAM and 1GHz Atom processor - was proving incapable of handing the demands of modern operating systems and applications. Don't get me wrong; I loved my little Dell but after waiting five minutes for it to boot MS Windows 7 and load up a single document, I realized it was time for an upgrade.

Netbooks are becoming a rare breed these days, with their niche largely taken over by tablets. What few exist tend to be either underpowered and cheap, or rival laptops in both performance and price, but very little between the two extremes. But - having desktop powerhouses at home - I was more concerned with price than performance and ultimately settled for the Acer Aspire v5-122p.

My demands were simple: I wanted a machine that I could carry around everywhere, and one that would let me get to work almost as soon as I opened it up. A slightly larger screen would be welcome too. Raw power and battery life were secondary concerns.

The Aspire v5 is no powerhouse; my gaming PC is roughly 20 times in every category of the 3DMark benchmark. When it comes to modern games, it is a complete failure; some won't even start and for those that do, the frame-rates are in the single-digits. But it shines for those ordinary, mundane tasks: word-processing, email, surfing the web.

Most impressively is its boot-time, although that might have as much to do with Windows 8.1. Still,

going from pressing the power button to the desktop in less than 30 seconds without an SSD is still an impressive feat. Applications open fairly swiftly as well (9 seconds for LibreOffice, 8 seconds for Firefox*, 7 for Thunderbird). The interface remains snappy throughout, thanks to the dual cores and Windows 8's improved threading. The Aspire v5's performance is in no way jaw-dropping - compared to other PCs, it's average at best, if not a bit pokey - but it is still fast enough that you end up grinding your teeth waiting for it to chug through basic tasks.

The rest of the hardware is fairly mundane. The 500GB hard-drive is spacious enough to hold most of the data you will need "on the go". The Radeon 8210 HD is adequate for apps and playing video (it even handles BluRay-quality movies with aplomb). Audio is handled by RealTek HD integrated audio; the speakers - located on the bottom of the chassis - are surprisingly loud and clear although, due to the size of the netbook - channel separation is difficult to make out. The CrystalEye webcam is nominally HD but - while functional - still outputs grainy, low-res video. The glossy widescreen LCD is a bit dim; adequate for indoor work but difficult to use outside in the sun. It features 10-point multi-touch capabilities though, should you have any desire to smear up your display pointlessly. On the other hand, it has a fairly wide viewing angle so I wasn't constantly struggling to keep my head perfectly centered lest the image appear washed out.

The entire computer weighs in at a barely noticeable 3.3 pounds. Made of thin plastic, the chassis does feel a bit frail, and I worry it might not stand up to excessive wear. It features a 3-cell Lithium Ion battery with a 3-hour life. The battery is non-removable, although it can be extended with the addition of an optional second battery ($99). The case features only a minimum of ports: two USB  ports, a slot for an SD/MicroSD card-reader, a headphone jack and a port for a proprietary expansion dongle. The dongle that comes with the laptop only has a VGA port, but a more robust dongle adds an additional USB port and an Ethernet jack ($35). I do sort of miss having an integrated Ethernet jack since I like to use my netbooks to troubleshoot routers - which is best done when wired - but I can understand why it was dropped from newer machines. Anyway, the dongle does allow me to have the best of both worlds, even if it is a bit of a kludge.

The power button is somewhat inconveniently located on the side of the computer. The widely-spaced 83-key keyboard is somewhat reminiscent of the chiclet keyboards of years past, but is surprisingly useable (still, I recommend interested buyers stop by a store and see how it feels first; it is definitely a love-it or hate-it thing). Like most ultra-small laptops, the touchpad is far too inconveniently located and I strongly recommend getting a wireless mouse and disabling it entirely.

The Aspire v5-122p comes preloaded with Windows 8.1, which is only slightly less horrid than Windows 8.0. Unfortunately, driver support for older versions of Windows is difficult to come by. On the other hand, with the use of software such as Classic Shell and Windows Update Notifier (not to mention third-party applications such as Irfanview for images, SumatraPDF for e-books and LibreOffice for word-processing), the dreadful and unintuitive "Modern" interface can be practically obliterated, leaving you with a Win7 or WinXP look, if you so desire. The machine comes pre-installed with the usual useless bloatware, including McAfee Antivirus, Norton Online Backup, a 30-day trial for Microsoft Office 2013 and a host of mostly useless Acer apps (all of which utilize the "Modern" app interface and were thus immediately banished from this machine). Disappointingly, the Skydrive desktop app no longer works with Windows 8.1, so - unless you use your MS Live ID to log-in to your PC - you will be forced to use your web-browser to access Microsoft's cloud storage (I just installed Dropbox instead).

This little ultra-thin netbook is not exceptional piece of hardware in any area, but it is servicable computer. Extremely lightweight, it is easy to carry around anywhere, and its fast boot-time means you can jump right into your workflow with a minimum of wait. It is also fairly inexpensive - I picked up mine for just over $300 - so it won't set you back too much. If you need a portable computer to  complement your primary desktop or laptop, it isn't a bad choice so long as you understand its limits. It's a great machine for surfing the web or doing a quick bit of writing or programming on the road, but if you are interested in gaming or work with CPU-intensive programs you are going to want to look somewhere else.

* without any extensions. With my normal complement of 20 extensions, including Adblock and Ghostery, Firefox takes up to 25 seconds to load. Blame the extensions, not the CPU.

iPad

Remember back when you were a kid and you were the first to get that hot new toy all the other kids lusted after? Instant popularity was yours as soon as you walked into the classroom; everyone wanted to see it, touch it, play with it, ask you about it. If you walk into the office with an Apple iPad, the exact same thing happens. Unfortunately, fame thus received as fleeting as it was in your youth, and soon enough you are just an average schmoe again, except with a useless plastic toy to your name. The Apple iPad is like that too.

I received an iPad as a gift. I'd like to say -especially after my scathing preview a few months back- that had I not gotten the tablet as a present I never would have owned one, but in all honesty I cannot. Likely I would have waited a year before I bought it, but the allure of tablet computing is difficult for a geek to resist, even those of us who recognize the platform's disadvantages ahead of time. Nonetheless, despite having nothing more invested in the product than appreciation towards the person who had gifted it to me, I endeavored to find utility for the device. For the past two weeks, it has gone almost everywhere I have gone, and where I might otherwise have used a computer or hand-held, I used the iPad. Surely somewhere in all those tasks the iPad would prove its worth.

The iPad has a glossy screen

People who have not used an iPad might find this an unduly negative start to a review. After all, the tablet is some impressive hardware. From it's glossy ten-inch screen to its speedy 1 GHz Apple A4 processor, it is stylish and powerful. Advocates point to the more than 100,000 applications available as indications of its flexibility and adaptability to almost every usage scenario. Desktops (and even laptops) are too cumbersome, hand-held devices are too limited; surely a tablet PC is the optimal solution.

But the sad fact is, the iPad is not the solution. It has the technical capability but its form factor is its greatest weakness. True, it can perform most tasks you might otherwise turn to a laptop or desktop computer, but its limitations quickly become evident. Similarly, it has the portability of a hand-held, but -four times larger- not the convenience. It is not the revolutionary new computing  paradigm promised by Apple. It is a toy that, at best, has a few niche applications it might be ideal for but otherwise fails to better its competitors in any way.

The on-screen keyboard

One of the first uses I put the iPad to was e-mail; jumping between offices, I found it necessary to keep in contact with my peers in multiple locations. Normally, I might jot down a few terse messages on my iPhone until I could reach a "proper" computer where I could type out a detailed message, but surely the iPad -with its bigger screen and keyboard- would allow me to write out those longer e-mails on the road. And, true, the capability was there, but after a few messages I found myself reverting to my old habits. The iPad on-screen keyboard is horrid, not only due to its lack of tactile feedback but also for its layout; numbers and commonly-used punctuation are hidden layers deep which greatly impede typing speed. Before too long, e-mail sent from my iPad started to assume the usual Frankensteinian diction common to any e-mail I send from a portable device. As far as e-mail was concerned, I might as well have been using the iPhone; at least that had the advantage in size.

Safari lacks many features

But surely as a web-browser the iPad would be a superior experience to any smartphone? Certainly its smaller screen improved on readability, although I was still frequently zooming in to read anything but the headlines. Fat fingers always made clicking links an exercise in frustration, and the limitations of the browser (no Flash, limited javascript, no add-ons) meant that many websites did not function as expected. Furthermore, the problems with the keyboard again came into effect; these days I do more than simply surf the web and ingest content. I like to give back with stories or comments of my own and typing anything of length on the iPad keyboard is just not an option.

iBook is pretty but not feature-rich

A much touted feature of the iPad was its use as an e-book reader. In this I found some success. The iBook application is gorgeous, although e-book fanatics might find fault with the too-bright screen and fonts. But I found the iPad's form-factor to be uncomfortable for extended periods of reading. It's just a bit too large to comfortably curl up around and -even at only 1.5 pounds- after half an hour of holding the tablet up I started to feel it in my wrist. The Kindle -roughly two-thirds the size of the iPad- is the ideal dimensions for reading e-books; the iPad is not. Nonetheless, there was one area I found the iPad to be superior: reading multiple-column text or PDFs. These are too big for hand-helds and can't be comfortably read on a laptop; the iPad was the perfect platform for this format. Unfortunately, the iPad didn't come with a built-in PDF reader, requiring me to purchase an application separately.

Similarly, the iPad has limited success as a portable media device. It is terrible as a music player; although it has all the features of Apple's iPhone or iPod Touch music players, its form factor completely negates its usability in this area; you can't stick the iPad in your pocket and go out for a brisk jog. On the other hand, it plays videos fairly well and -despite initial worries- I only came across a handful of websites where I could not stream the video from the Internet (Hulu.Com is, of course, the most notable exception). Still, I have to wonder at the utility of this feature; whenever I was traveling, watching video was the last thing I wanted to do, and when I was at home the better option was always to watch the video on the HDTV or big-screen monitor.

Zombieville USA on the iPad is a kick-ass game

Of course, there are always the 100,000 other applications you can use. Some are quite nice, but -again- all are limited by the platform itself. The games tend to be fairly shallow and lack in variety; they are fun for short periods of time but you aren't going to keep at these games for more than fifteen minutes before you tire of them. As for productivity applications, well, do I have to bring up the input limitations again? The keyboard is terrible for anything beyond the shortest of comments and the touch-interface will hardly replace a mouse for accuracy. Nor do the limitations of the OS improve things; no multi-tasking and no easy way to move files on or off the platform mean it will never replace a dedicated workstation.

So what's the final verdict? Well, if you ask me, it's a cute toy, but even its most dedicated fans will have to admit that it just can't replace the computing platforms already available. For all its versatility, users will still want to keep a hand-held device and a dedicated computer around for their day-to-day work. The iPad is too big to replace the former, and too limited in functionality to replace the former. So why should anyone ever buy one?

MS Wireless Desktop 1000

After hooking up a spare desktop computer to my 42" HDTV, I quickly came to the conclusion that I needed a wireless mouse and keyboard to perfect the experience. I have no problem being tethered by wires to a desktop PC when I'm sitting right in front of it, but from the couch six or more feet away wireless is required.

A quick trip to the store and I had a Microsoft Office Desktop 1000 in my hot little hands. The Office Desktop had two things going for it right from the start; it included both a mouse and a keyboard in the package and, even combined, cost less than most other wireless keyboards on the shelf. Microsoft has also earned a reputation for producing some decent peripherals, which was an added bonus.

The box included the keyboard, the mouse, a USB receiver, a CD for the software installation and the usual slim-and-next-to-useless manual and warranty registration cards. Installation was simple; pop in the CD, install the software, plug in the USB receiver and that's it. If I didn't want to use the enhanced functions of the multimedia keys, I could have forwent the software installation.

The keyboard is a solid and not-overly large device. The keys depress nicely and spring back smoothly; typing is easy and comfortable. In addition to the usual 104 keys common to most Windows keyboards, it has a row of multimedia keys above the function keys which can be configured to launch various applications. By default, the first five launch your email client, web-browser, chat-client and media player (these can all be tweaked to launch whatever application you want). The next five have to be manually configured (the first time you press the key you will be prompted with a "hey, what do you want me to do?" dialog box). After that there are the usual start/stop, forward, rewind and stop multimedia keys which most media players honor, and a trio of volume control keys. The latter did not work straight out of the box for me; I had to manually copy a DLL file into my Windows\System32 directory before the buttons functioned as directed. Apparently this was a result of a previous wireless device installation on my computer.

The keyboard also has three additional keys; one key launches the calculator (this cannot be reconfigured), a second toggles an Exposé-like task switcher (ditto) and the final is the Function-Lock key. Unwisely, Microsoft bound each function key to a secondary function (F2, for instance, doubles as an "un-do" key) but this feature is not supported in most applications and, worse, conflicts if programs expect that key to perform its usual function. Fortunately, a quick press of the F-Lock key turns off this uselessness.

The mouse, on the other hand, is lackluster; it's large and not particularly comfortable. It only has three buttons (the usual two and the scroll-wheel doubles as a third), lacking the thumb buttons common to most new mice. The wheel scrolls very roughly and does not tilt.

The wireless receiver is very large; it's bigger than the mouse, in fact. It has three diodes reflecting the Capslock, Numlock and F-Lock status the (venerable Scroll-lock is left without any diode). But for all its size, the receiver is not particularly robust, which leads us to the main failing of these devices: range. Microsoft boasts a six-foot range, and the keyboard and mouse achieve this... barely. Beyond that, you won't receive any signal. Even at four to five feet away from the receiver, you will notice both the keyboard and mouse are twitchy; the mouse cursor won't track smoothly, and you'll have to pound on the keys twice for every letter you want to type. The devices also require general line-of-sight to the receiver to work, so you can't hide the receiver pod out of sight.

 In the end, I was disappointed with this hardware. The keyboard was well designed and offered a number of useful features (although the default configuration was poor) but the extremely limited range, uncomfortable mouse and bulky receiver more than offset the positives. Perhaps used on a office desktop these disadvantages might not be apparent but in a situation where a wireless keyboard is actually necessary it is hard to recommend.

Westinghouse TX-42F810G 42" HDTV

Last month I bought myself a TV.

Unless you know me personally, you won't realize what a big deal this is. I haven't owned a TV in about ten years and prior to that my TV was a tiny, rarely used 12" CRT.  But watching TV was not a major component of my life and when it finally died I didn't worry myself about it. I installed a TV tuner card into my computer, just in case, but on the whole I was much happier without having to worry about who won on American Idol. I admit, in some respects I became this guy.

But when I saw the Westinghouse TX-42F810G 42" LCD HDTV for $400, I knew I had to buy it.

Having not owned -nor wanted to own- a TV for a decade, I had not kept up with the technology of flat-screen TVs. But even to my uneducated eye, I could tell that this TV was not particularly good. Sure, it boasted 1080p resolution and had a good number of connections (although only 2 HDMI ports), but its contrast ration (a pathetic 4000:1) was abysmal (most televisions offer ten times that) and its response time was average at best. It also featured the odd choice of rear-facing speakers and it was obvious even from the brightly-lit video playing on the floor model that it had problems displaying true blacks.

But it was 42", and even with tax and a 3-year store warranty the whole thing came to less than $500.

At home, its deficiencies became even more obvious; this TV does not have a great display. It's terrible with non-HD content and even with higher-quality images there is a lot of pixellation. The image is often dark and muddy as well, due to the lack of acceptable contrast. And those rear-mounted speakers? They aren't loud to begin with and much of their power is pushed out in the wrong direction.

So, this is not a good TV. But I love it anyway.

Okay, that's mostly because it is so big. Did I mention my last TV was only 12"? Heck, my computer monitor is half that size; watching anything on a 42" display is an awesome experience even if the quality is only a few notches above standard definition TV.  Plus, it also helps that I still don't watch much actual TV; its primary use is for watching DVDs (usually with the lights down, which not only enhances the experience but also minimizes the effect of the poor contrast ratio) and playing games on my aging XBox (the high-contrast cartoon-like visuals also disguise the screen's deficiencies). For these purposes, the TV works fine.

Ultimately, I'd have a hard time recommending this TV to anyone who wasn't in the same situation I was; it's probably better to spend two or three hundred dollars more and get a decent 32" plasma; the Westinghouse TX-42F810G is going to disappoint the average viewer. But I'm an edge case and for my limited needs it suits my purposes.

Apple iPad

So, today's the Big Day. The day when Apple changes everything. The day that they announced... the iPad.

I have mixed feelings about Apple products. On the one hand, I'm a fan of their design quality; Apple puts a lot of thought into making their products work well. I remember the first time I opened a G3 PowerMac case and being impressed by how well everything fit together and the ease with which Apple made it possible to upgrade and maintain the system. On the other hand, Apple often has a "our way or the highway" attitude that -as a PC user that is used to being able to configure my machine to fit my needs- I find absolutely infuriating. Couple this with their premium price and (undeservedly) smug attitude and it's no wonder I stick with PCs.

Still, I can't help but admire their hardware design and I don't turn up my nose if I can get my hands on it. Heck, my home network's file-server is a tricked out MacMini (albeit running Ubuntu, of course)!

So I have to admit I'm drooling a little bit at the thought of owning an iPad. Odds are, I'll grab one of the 16GB Wireless iPads when they come out in a couple of months. But when friends ask me what I'll use it for, I must admit I'm immediately taken aback.

The first thing that comes to mind is movies; the bright 9.7" LCD screen seems perfect for this, and it would be great to have a portable movie-player with decent battery life (Apple claims 10 hours). Of course, I can watch movies on my laptop or netbook too (or even my PSP or iTouch) but either the screens are too small or the form factor gets in the way. Having a nice flat 10" display seems perfect for portable video.

Yet almost immediately, it also occurs to me 16GB is not really that much space to hold a lot of movies. Oh sure, I could constantly swap a bunch of videos on and off the device but that becomes a bothersome chore (especially if I have to use Apple's god-awful iTunes application). Even 64GB isn't that much if you also intend to use the device for music, books and games. Streaming online video might be feasible... if the iPad supported Flash, which it doesn't.

Reading an e-Books is the second big application. Personally though, I prefer a device with a much smaller form-factor for that purpose. For years, I stuck with the Palm Tungsten E because it fit so comfortably into my hand and because I could carry it anywhere. Later I moved to an iTouch for the same reason. The Sony E-Reader and Amazon Kindle never appealed to me because they were just too large; I can't just stick them in my pocket and go. So I don't expect to use the iPad for reading books either. On the other hand, I can imagine using it to read PDFs of magazines and scanned images of books with photos or diagrams, something that a handheld device is not very good at displaying.  At the same time, it isn't very comfortable reading them on a computer screen either. I have gigabytes of PDFs that I almost never look at because of this. I think the iPad might be perfect for that purpose as well.

Web-access? I don't expect to spring for the 3G model, so this limits where and how often I can access the Internet. But even if the Internet was available everywhere, the joy of the modern Web is that it is collaborative; I don't just read articles but I can contribute my own stories and opinions. This requires me to type and -though the larger on-screen keyboard looks far more usable than the tiny things we have to use with smartphones- the lack of haptics means that typing on the iPad will never be as easy or instinctive as with a real keyboard. Thus, the iPad is relegated to a device you'd use only to do quick checks on your favorite sites or scan your incoming e-mail, a duty smartphones already do very well. But posting something on your blog, or even just typing in your username and password to your favorite sites? That's not something I would want to do often on an iPad; I'd still haul around my netbook for when I needed to do some real surfing. Oh, and then there's that whole "no flash" thing I mentioned above, which breaks about half the websites out there.

Apple also suggested the iPad could be a tremendous game platform. Certainly its larger screen and more powerful processor make it a better fit for "real" games rather than the casual gaming that has dominated the iPhone. But the lack of decent controls  (did you ever try to play an FPS on the iPhone? It's not fun) limit how far this platform can go. Plus, I already have several hundred games for PC and consoles and unless Apple is willing to let me run those games on the iPad (which not very likely seeing as they don't even allow the C64 emulator on the iPhone) I am hardly going to abandon those platforms for the untested iPad.

I guess you could use it as a music player... but no, it's too over-sized and bulky for that. Portable computer to do work on? Again, not with an on-screen keyboard, thank you. Phone (with Skype or Google Voice?)? Get real; can you imagine holding this sucker up to your face? It would make the n-Gage look cool in comparison.


So ultimately, why get an iPad? Well, it's a neat toy and I guess. But is that enough of a reason to buy one? I guess if you are a geek like I am it might be, but I'd be hard pressed to recommend it to the general populace. It hardly seems, despite Apple's hyperbolic claims, like something that is going to revolutionize the world.

Nonetheless, here are some pictures to drool over anyway.

Dell Inspiron Mini 10v

Christmas brought me a new netbook, so now the total count of computers in my house is up to eleven. Although I had no incessant need for an ultra-portable laptop, as the resident geek of the family, I felt it necessary to "do the research" so I could give the family good advice if (when) they come asking about whether they should get a netbook. And anyway, I never turn down the opportunity to play with a new computer!

The netbook in question is the svelte Dell Inspiron Mini 10v. It's a tiny little thing, weighing in at a little more than two pounds. Like all netbooks, it's powered by the Intel Atom processor, the N270, with a top speed of 1600 MHz (it steps down to 600 MHz to save power when running on battery). Although it only has one physical core, it utilizes Intel's Hyperthreading technology so it appears as if there are two cores. I still get a kick seeing two processor graphs in the task manager.  It has only 1GB of RAM, a standard limitation of netbooks that I would otherwise gripe about except that in this case it doesn't seem to be causing a problem. Typical netbook usage does not require a lot of RAM-hungry applications so 1GB is more than enough to scrape by. The Intel GMA950 onboard-video is less capable; for common desktop applications it is sufficient but even rendering low-quality video from YouTube obviously stressed its capabilities. And forget about games entirely; beyond the simplest of titles, this computer isn't up to the task (although it didn't fare too badly with the nine-year old Uplink, which I inevitably install on every portable just so I can play it in public and freak people out).

The 160GB hard-disk may not sound all that impressive compared to the terrabyte-plus behemoths available in more capable machines, but it is more-than-sufficient to hold all my music and data; it may not be able to hold a lot of video but I'm not going to watch that on this machine anyway. The battery pack is an ungainly mass that protrudes from the bottom of the machine; it doubles as a foot to elevate the screen and offers almost five hours of operation on a single charge (nearly ten if you're careful), but it ruins the slim esthetics of the chassis. The system also boasts additional features such as a webcam (with disappointingly poor resolution), three USB ports, an ethernet jack, a 3-in-1 SD card-reader, Bluetooth and built in 802.11g/n Wi-Fi.

The keyboard is surprisingly comfortable. This was my biggest concern about using a netbook -my hands cramp easily on all but the largest keyboards- but I actually find it easier to type on the Inspiron Mini than on my 15" laptop. It is fairly responsive and has good travel. The touchpad is less useful; it is exceedingly twitchy and difficult to perform simple tasks with it. When I can't plug in a wireless mouse, I rely almost entirely on keyboard shortcuts rather than fight with the touchpad. The screen is suitably bright, but the 1024x600 resolution is very tight; for simple text-editing it is acceptable but work with any application with more than one toolbar -including the web browser- results in a lot of scrolling up and down the pages.


Still, none of these issues are surprising given the form factor of the computer; some sacrifices have to be made to fit everything into a 10"x7" package. I spent more time focusing on the the operating system than concerning myself with the hardware. The Inspiron Mini 10v comes with Windows 7 Starter Edition, which is Microsoft's stripped down version of Windows 7, intended for netbooks and "developing markets". The core of the OS is Windows 7, and shares all its strengths (and, depending on your opinion of these things, all its weaknesses). Originally limited to running only three simultaneous applications, this limitation of Windows 7 Starter Edition was fortunately removed prior to release. Nonetheless, it is missing many of the bells and whistles that makes Windows 7 stand out, including the Aero effects, DVD playback, remote media streaming and -oddly enough- the ability to change the background wallpaper.

The last is such an odd thing to remove from a modern OS that I spent much of my time trying to reclaim the ability (the moreso since the default wallpaper is so bland and unappealing). But Microsoft went all out ensuring that end users would not be able to reclaim this capability that has been standard to operating system for twenty years and I was unable to do so short of installing a third-party tool. Despite all the advantages Windows 7 otherwise brings (stability, security) this lack of so basic a feature makes the OS appear backwards compared to its competitors and Starter is thus a poor advertisment for an otherwise impressive OS.  Ultimately, I expect I will either downgrade to Windows XP or switch over to Ubuntu Linux; certainly I have no intention of paying Microsoft for an upgrade for features that should be standard to the operating system from the get-go.

Despite this, I am relatively satisified with my gift. For an ultra-portable laptop, the Dell Inspiron is very capable little machine. Much to my surprise, I found myself carrying it around everywhere almost immediately; its light weight and small size ensured it was never in the way when I didn't need it and was up to almost any task I'd throw at it (within reason) when I did. It will never replace my full-sized desktop -I'm too spoiled by all that raw horsepower to ever be satisfied with such a paltry CPU- but I already find the netbook  to be a more convenient supplement to the "big machine" than a proper laptop.