Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Testing The Netbook

I got the Acer One the day after Thanksgiving. The first thing I did was give the unit a thorough check to make sure all ports and devices worked properly. Refurbs are usually checked out better than new units from the factory, new units are assumed to be fully working, refurbs are assumed to have problems so they are more thoroughly checked out. Most of these Acer One AO531h refurb units were from AT&T and simply had a bad out of the box webcam but were otherwise fully functional. Then I got all the updates from Acer and ran Windows Update.

Next thing I did was pull the SIM card from my USB Edge modem and install it in the Acer One, chose the generic GSM profile and filled in the APN of my provider (iWireless, on the T-Mobile network) I took it upstairs where I got a decent signal and it hooked right up for me. Eventually I'll be using an outboard 10 dBi colinear antenna and I expect it will really rock then. ( I'll show everyone some antennas I built along with their dimensions down the road in the coming New Year)

Once I made sure everything was updated and working I proceeded to cull out all Trial Programs and Bloatware from Acer/Microsoft. I also got rid of any XP default software I wasn't going to need like most of the games, fax, email (An internet account like Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail works better for Mobile in my opinion) Telnet and shut down a few services I knew weren't needed or I felt were risky (like Telnet). I'm sure there will be other Services I'll be able to disable when I go to streamline and tweak XP.

Next up 'Misadventures in Linux'

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