Skype Video calls work on Asus Eee PC

I haven’t tried this personally (yet) but there is a nice how-to over at LaptopMag.com that details how to install Skype 2.0 on the Asus Eee PC and make video calls with it.

While we have Skype 2.0 support on the Zonbu, the Zonbu hardware currently lacks any built-in camera. More annoyingly, the Logitech family of Quickcams (one of the most popular) does not currently work either. As I’ve noted for months, this is a key area Zonbu needs to progress rapidly.

You can read the LaptopMag.com post here: http://www.laptopmag.com/features/Skype-with-Your-Webcam-on-the-Eee-PC.htm

-Mr. Zonbu

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The Beauty on the Zonbu Laptop

The Beauty told me at lunch today that she is finding the Zonbu fine for daily use but finds it very slow to boot and that after multiple hibernations it doesn’t always come back.  She then presented me with the laptop, after 20 minutes of waiting, trying to recover from hibernation.

Definitely a few things to work on.  But so far, no major complaints.   Well except for the wireless not persisting on reboot (part of the reason for the hibernation constantly), and the printer insisting on being re-installed each time it is powered on.

-Mr. Zonbu

My Asus 3e PC has arrived…

My Asus 3e PC unit has arrived.  In fact it arrived at my tropical island lair looking like a forklift skid had been driven clean through the shipping box.  Said skid then severely maimed the box the Asus unit was in, but managed to miss the unit itself, thankfully.

I’ll do a full review in a few days, but a few frist impressions:

-Very nice build quality, looks and feels expensive and well put together

-It’s small, very small, but stylish (mine is black) and you can tell it was put together by people who have been building laptops for a long time and keep a list of what works and what doesn’t for port layout etc

-The touchpad properly supports double tapping

-Keyboard is too small for my regular sized man hands

-It had a nice little “first run” wizard, but didn’t seem to save my WiFi encryption key (however I was able to easily pull it off a flash key

-Screen is nice but 800 x 480 quickly becomes a problem, but its perfect for quick “on the go” tasks

Just the fax, Ma’am

Mrs. Zonbu had some feedback for me this morning – there are almost no templates included with the OpenOffice install on the Zonbu. In particular, she wanted a stock fax cover sheet for something she was doing, and none were to be found.

I had a quick look and there is an official template package available, and I think it should be embellished and included.

You can find the package here:

Zonbu Releases 7.1066 upgrade

A new release is out. The changes are listed below. It looks like a significant and important release, with many applications being moved to the newest versions, including the instant messenger, Skype, Firefox, Gimp (Image Workshop), F-Spot and more!

Version 7.1066 – released 2007-12-16

New features

• New Public Feature
• Vector Drawing software: Inkscape
• Sleep for Desktop Mini
• Desktop Clock widget: Cairo-Clock

Improvements

• Improved login and network configuration controls
• Firefox upgraded to version 2.0.0.11

Beauty: Evolution needs to Evolve to make her happy

We’ve hit our first stumbling block.

Evolution, it the form shipped with the Zonbu, does not include the signature of the respondent (at the top) when you reply to a message. Oddly, while it top posts the text, the signature is at the very bottom of the message chain.

Say what you will about top posting, the reality is that Outlook puts it at the top with the message. For better or worse, that is what people generally expect when they are average windows users.

Someone has finally written a patch for Evolution that gives you the option of turning on this feature (which apparently makes certain geek skin crawl). I, like many others, welcome the feature. Without it, it would literally stop me from switching away from Outlook.  And by the way, my signature starts with two -‘s and I’ve been using e-mail since the Vax.  Never forget that being right, and doing the right thing, are often not the same.

Here is some background on the fix:

Beauty & The Geek Part II: XP to Zonbu laptop, moving the data

As promised, I took a few hours this afternoon and migrated my wife from her XP/Acer Celeron laptop to the Zonbu laptop. This post is all about how to move the critical user data from XP over to the Zonbu OS Linux desktop.

It was not quite as easy as I would have liked, but it was still relatively quick and painless.

The Zonbu website, under applications, makes the following claim:

Full-featured Email and Calendar program — recommended by About.com, “Evolution looks and feels like Outlook, and it has great email features.” Get up and running in moments with the Zonbu data import/export wizard, and transfer all your email history from Outlook or Outlook Express.

I was never able to find such an Import wizard.

Searching the online documentation yielded no reference to import and/or Outlook. I ended up falling back to Google. As Outlook (for e-mail and contacts) is the principal thing my wife was using, other than her web browser, it ws especially important that all of her Outlook content (some 175M) was moved over.

So how did things go?

Tip: Zonbu Keyboard Shortcuts

A recent post in the Zonbu support forms brought to light the extensive keyboard shortcuts available to us as Zonbu users:

Most of the shortcuts are either Windows or XFCE shortcuts. If neither of these work, the shortcut probably does not exist. Here, the XFCE default shortcut Ctrl-Alt-D does what you want.

The offical list is here: http://www.xfce.org/documentation/4.2/manuals/xfwm4#keyboard_shortcuts but we have several customizations.

You can review and edit system keyboard shortcuts in Control Panel > Advanced > Keyboard > Shortcuts — assuming you know how you would create the effect of the shortcut in command line… which is why it’s hidden in the advanced control panels…

I wanted to pass it along for anyone who missed it.

Thanks Aymeric.

-Mr. Zonbu

Zonbu Laptop wireless inconsistent at boot up

I’ve had a bit more time to use my Zonbu laptop and I’ve noticed that the WiFi seems to be a bit inconsistent, and in a way that will be a problem for non-technical users.
The last few times when I’ve booted it, it has not activated the WiFi by default.  I boot, open Firefox and get the “unable to locate page” error.

I then have to run the Networking tool from the Control Panel option on the menu and go through the various steps, and then it seems to work fine.  However, after I reboot, I have to do things all over again.  The only saving grace is that it is remembering my encryption key.

At one point I was pretty sure it was saving the wireless settings on reboot.  Now that I say that, I think that was on the original software load and I have since been upgraded, so perhaps it broke.  Has anyone else seen this?

-Mr. Zonbu

Zonbu’s new “Public” folder

Maybe I’m just slow, but how do I let others access the files that I put in my new “Public” folder on the desktop?

Is there a web address where they go? A secret incantation they need to utter?

Was I in the restroom when the instruction was given to the rest of the class, or has the documentation not caught up with the product yet?

-Mr. Zonbu