Small Is Beautiful

Welcome fellow geeks. For this, my Forces of Geek debut column, I've decided to merge a product review with my New Year's resolution. But first, a brief personal introduction. I'll be writing the weekly Geek Tech column for Forces of Geek. I'm 33 years old, and my Geek Tech path began in the early 80's when my parents bought me a Texas Instruments computer. A bit later, I moved up to a Tandy 1000 SL, and then in 1994 I got my first Mac. Since 1994 I've been a hardcore Mac fanboy. But in the past year, I've developed a Linux crush. I still love my Mac, and it's the center of my computing lifestyle. But lately I've been flirting with Linux, and I've come to realize that some operating system diversity in my life is a good thing. Which, as you'll see, in a skewed way, brings me to my New Year's resolution.

My New Year's resolution for 2009 is minimalism. Minimalism is not something that one often sees associated with anything that falls under the "geek" umbrella. Usually "geek" obsessions lead to collections of some sort: toys, video games, etc. The Deep Space Nine DVD box set that I recently splurged on is a personal testament to this. But it's a different purchase that I made a few months ago which has changed the way I view personal technology.

My favorite tech purchase of 2008 is my $499 Asus EEE 1000 netbook. I've had it for several months, and lately I've been using it almost just as much as my 20" iMac. Seriously. Of course, adding a 3rd computer to my life doesn't exactly constitute minimalism, but hopefully I'll be able to make my point. So let's get to it. First, the specs. My Asus EEE 1000 laptop has 2GB of RAM and a 1.6 ghz Intel Atom processor. It shipped with 1GB of RAM, but I upgraded it to 2GB, which is the max. It's has a nice, bright 10" screen, and it has a display port for hooking up an external monitor. The case is black, sleek and virtually weightless. It's so light that when I'm wearing my laptop bag, it doesn't even feel like I have a laptop in it. Internally it has an 8GB solid state hard drive, as well as a 32GB SDHC card. Additionally, it has another SD card slot, this one external, that I'm not even using yet.

It shipped with Xandros, a Linux distribution, which I promptly removed because I didn't like the feel of it. After experimenting with other Linux distros, such as Ubuntu and CrunchBang, I've settled on Linux Mint. I should point out here that the EEE does not ship with an optical (CD/DVD) drive, so I purchased an external USB DVDRW drive so that I could more easily install a different OS. You can order a EEE with Windows XP. But I would encourage anyone who has computer skills that are above average, or simply likes to tinker, to experiment with Linux. Linux Mint is a great place to start. Maybe a brief explanation of Linux is in order. Linux is an operating system like Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows. Linux is free. There's a variety of Linux distributions that are all free to download. The most popular is Ubuntu. I'm running Linux Mint on my EEE. Mint is derived from Ubuntu. It has everything the average computer user needs. It looks great, runs great, and it's pretty easy to find your away around the OS and do what you need to do. I installed Mint on my EEE's internal 8GB SSD hard drive, and mapped my home directory to the 32GB SDHC card. To get all the EEE hardware working under Linux, I had to install a custom Linux kernel. Sounds scary, I know, but this was actually very easy to do via array.org. As I said, if you are not afraid to tinker, if you have some above average computer skills, and if you are truly into Geek Tech, I highly recommend trying Linux. Another benefit of Linux that I should point out is that it's low on system resource requirements. Meaning it runs clean and fast on hardware that isn't super powerful, but is cheap. My EEE has an 1.6ghz Intel Atom CPU, and Linux Mint runs great on it. Including glossy, fancy desktop effects and animations that rival OS X. Of course, my EEE can't do everything. I still need my super powerful iMac running OS X for pro audio music production. I've also got my entire music library in iTunes, and my photos in iPhoto on my iMac. I love my Mac. I love OS X. But my EEE running Mint is fantastic. The usefulness of my EEE has taught me that sometimes less is more. I can't do everything with it, but I can do what I need to do most of the time. It's light. It's low on power consumption. It's ultra portable. It's inexpensive. It's fun to use.

If you would have told me 2 years ago that I would be happy with a non-Apple 10" laptop for many of my basic computing needs, I would have thought that was totally nuts. But here I am. Totally satisfied with my slick EEE netbook running Linux. I love my EEE, and I'm not the only one. Asus have sold 4 million of them already. For me personally, I want 2009 to be about embracing simplicity and minimalism in my life. My EEE is a great starting point. As I said earlier, adding a 3rd computer alongside my iMac and my home file server (running Ubuntu Linux by the way) might not exactly seem minimalist. But it's the experience of using the Asus EEE and the fun I've been having with it that has illuminated the possibilities of embracing simplicity. Small is beautiful.