Top Tips: Using the EEEPC 1000H

I’ve has my EEEPC 1000H for over a week now and I’m so totally enamoured of the small device that it’s become my sole platform for all my computing. Obviously this has involved some adjustments.

1. The keyboard requires considerable patience — at least for someone with my large fingers
2. My fingers are having to learn new positions to try and stop keep brushing the trackpad and moving the cursor to somewhere completely different. This is currently the most frustrating aspect of using the machine.

Some things to try.

• Get a bluetooth mouse
• Try the LXDE desktop and the Xfce4 desktop. They are both tuned for low resource use
• Consider using DevilsPie to reduce the amount of screen space used by removing the title bar and forcing all screens to be full maxiumum, partucurly of your screen is smaller than 10″
• Configure Skype to use the hda sound devices
• Carry a short USB cable for thumb drives etc. Thy can’t always fit in space you have at the side of the netbook
• Get used to using keyboard shortcuts — it mush  easier than using the trackpad
• Try using Vim and it’s plugins rather than  a large IDE
• Try using an alternative email  and PIM program to Evolution. Thunderbird for instance works better on the smaller screen and is faster
• Use multiple desktops and flip between them using <ctrl><alt><arrow> (Gnome default), for instance when referring to other material in the middle of witing an email. It’s an easier way of switching back and forth between two applications that using something like <alt><tab>
• Use the <F11> in Firefox to move into full screen mode (many other applications have a similar feature)
• Do as much as possible by typing at the terminal