I am still having a few minor issues getting used to the smaller keyboard. I also have not installed Open Office yet so I am instead taking advantage of the installed copy of Word. I’m not sure how long Word will continue to work for me because every time I start Word it asks me for a registration key. I’m sure the key is in my documentation but I’m simply too lazy to look for it right now.
Since Word is currently working well enough for me (even though I have no idea where any of the tools are) I’m going to go ahead and write up the next few posts using Word.
In fact, while preparing to write this particular post I was clicking on the “New Document” option when I saw an option to create a new “blog post”. I did not know that Word had added some blogging tools.
I started to use the tool but stopped when it started asking me about how to publish the post. I’m not connected 24/7 to the Internet with this little machine so I do most of my work offline. Because of this I’ll be writing my posts offline and then copying them to the blog later.
Battery life has been decent. I have the three cell battery and it appears to last about 2.5 – 3 hours on a full charge with the wireless turned on. In fact I just reached in front and hit the wireless switch while checking on the estimated battery life:
Wi-Fi on = 2:46 hours / 95%
Wi-Fi off = 3:47 hours / 94%
When using the front mounted switch to turn the Wi-Fi on and off a one line message in green appears at the bottom of the screen. This message can be hard to read because it is displayed right above the status bar on XP.
Another thing I have noticed (now that I have had a chance to use this machine somewhere quiet) is the fan noise. It’s not as loud as the fan on a full size laptop but it does generate a low level buzzing noise. It almost sounds like the hard drive is doing something but it is the fan. I’m not sure if the fan is monitoring the CPU temp or if it just runs all the time.
I have also been having a few issues with selecting text using the mouse pad. I normally turn off the tap feature on a touch pad but I’m leaving it on for ease of use issues. The placement of the mouse buttons to the left and right of the touch pad are taking some getting used to.
That’s all I have for today.