On Cyber Monday I purchased that Acer Notebook from Amazon for $318. It arrived Thursday night. By chance, while searching for a suitable USB external DVD/CDROM drive I noticed that it was now selling for $430.
I previously downloaded AVG 2011 and CCleaner. Yesterday I got around to setting it up. Its setup was nearly identical to that of a Kubuntu installation -- asked for a name, a password, the time zone, and off it went. When the desktop appeared it was filled with bloat-ware. Uninstalling McAfee from the control panel did not remove all ifs components. Microsoft works, the student edition of Office 2007, Norton, McAfee, Yahoo, Trojans, trackers and what-not, and some junk I am not familiar, with were removed. It took well over an hour to do (and redo) that task, whack-a-mole style as little bits and pieces kept popping up even after they were "uninstalled" by the control panel.
I installed CCLeaner (which is still worth its weight in Gold) and AVG 2011. AVG was a bitter disappointment. It has turned into what I used the 8.x and previous versions to remove -- bloatware that intrudes itself into every part of your display and your activities -- all in the name of "security". Reminds me of the TSA. AVG has become NAG-WARE and the kitchen sink. IF you ever install AVG DO NOT use its "PCAnalyzer"'s "one time free use". AVG gives you NO way to remove or deactivate it. I reverted it to its free AV use only, but I will uninstall it when I find another AV product. CCLeaner is BETTER than PCAnalyzer, and doesn't intrude. I reverted to Win7's Defender FireWall, which worked well enough on XP.
With all the crap removed (and no longer stealing CPU cycles) the Windows 7 Starter is a light and sprite OS. From reading the Amazon reviews by folks who bought the Windows 7 Home premium upgrade, the only thing they got was themes, wallpaper and a couple other trivial extras, so the "upgrade" isn't really worth it.
The Acer Aspire One 521 has a 10.1 inch screen, with 1 GB of RAM riding the 1.6 Ghz CPU. It is a peppy little Netbook. The 32 bit version of Win7 OS is installed but the 521 is supposed to be a 64 bit box. The Acer Aspire One 521 is easily as usable as this dual core, 3GB 1.6GHz CPU Sony with a 16 inch screen, and cost only 1/3rd as much. After a couple hours use the 10.1 inch wasn't even noticed. On my 16 inch Sony many apps take up no more screen real estate than they do when full screen on the Acer. The keyboard is "93% the size of a regular keyboard", and after a couple hours is just as easy to type on as the regular keyboard. So far I have used it on battery for 3 hours and the battery monitor shows half the charge remaining. Three hours isn't enough time to determine how durable the 521 is, but it looks and feels well built. Only time will tell if the insides are as good as the outsides.
But, the main reason why I am posting this message is because of what I see as the striking similarity between Win 7 Starter and Kubuntu with KDE 4.5.x. The icons in the system tray look identical. The panel layout is essentially identical, including the time. Swap the KGear with a Windows flag button and you'd have Win7 Starter. "Pin to the Taskbar" is the same as "Add to panel' What Windows 7 calls "Gadgets" KDE calls "Widgets". Win7 uses a rectangular panel to display thumbnails of the gadgets, KDE uses a ribbon to display thumbnails of widgets. However, Win7 doesn't have a driver for my Samsung ML-1210 laser printer connected at 192.168.1.99:9000. But, the real differences appear when you click on the Windows flag button. KDE's default menu structure is only vaguely similar to Windows and, IMO, KDE's is better, even though I don't use it. I restored the classic menu. On Win7 I haven't been able, yet, to find a way to revert to the classic menu. KDE 4 was released while VISTA was crashing and burning, but the 4.5 version was released after Win7, so I suspect that the look and feel of the system tray was copied from Win7. Looking at the two screens side by side the only give-away is the Windows flag button where the KGear is.
This Acer doesn't come with a DVD/CDROM so I have one coming from Amazon. Rather than partition the HD I am going to try the WUBI installation of Kubuntu Maverick, if it is available. I'll let you know how it goes.
I previously downloaded AVG 2011 and CCleaner. Yesterday I got around to setting it up. Its setup was nearly identical to that of a Kubuntu installation -- asked for a name, a password, the time zone, and off it went. When the desktop appeared it was filled with bloat-ware. Uninstalling McAfee from the control panel did not remove all ifs components. Microsoft works, the student edition of Office 2007, Norton, McAfee, Yahoo, Trojans, trackers and what-not, and some junk I am not familiar, with were removed. It took well over an hour to do (and redo) that task, whack-a-mole style as little bits and pieces kept popping up even after they were "uninstalled" by the control panel.
I installed CCLeaner (which is still worth its weight in Gold) and AVG 2011. AVG was a bitter disappointment. It has turned into what I used the 8.x and previous versions to remove -- bloatware that intrudes itself into every part of your display and your activities -- all in the name of "security". Reminds me of the TSA. AVG has become NAG-WARE and the kitchen sink. IF you ever install AVG DO NOT use its "PCAnalyzer"'s "one time free use". AVG gives you NO way to remove or deactivate it. I reverted it to its free AV use only, but I will uninstall it when I find another AV product. CCLeaner is BETTER than PCAnalyzer, and doesn't intrude. I reverted to Win7's Defender FireWall, which worked well enough on XP.
With all the crap removed (and no longer stealing CPU cycles) the Windows 7 Starter is a light and sprite OS. From reading the Amazon reviews by folks who bought the Windows 7 Home premium upgrade, the only thing they got was themes, wallpaper and a couple other trivial extras, so the "upgrade" isn't really worth it.
The Acer Aspire One 521 has a 10.1 inch screen, with 1 GB of RAM riding the 1.6 Ghz CPU. It is a peppy little Netbook. The 32 bit version of Win7 OS is installed but the 521 is supposed to be a 64 bit box. The Acer Aspire One 521 is easily as usable as this dual core, 3GB 1.6GHz CPU Sony with a 16 inch screen, and cost only 1/3rd as much. After a couple hours use the 10.1 inch wasn't even noticed. On my 16 inch Sony many apps take up no more screen real estate than they do when full screen on the Acer. The keyboard is "93% the size of a regular keyboard", and after a couple hours is just as easy to type on as the regular keyboard. So far I have used it on battery for 3 hours and the battery monitor shows half the charge remaining. Three hours isn't enough time to determine how durable the 521 is, but it looks and feels well built. Only time will tell if the insides are as good as the outsides.
But, the main reason why I am posting this message is because of what I see as the striking similarity between Win 7 Starter and Kubuntu with KDE 4.5.x. The icons in the system tray look identical. The panel layout is essentially identical, including the time. Swap the KGear with a Windows flag button and you'd have Win7 Starter. "Pin to the Taskbar" is the same as "Add to panel' What Windows 7 calls "Gadgets" KDE calls "Widgets". Win7 uses a rectangular panel to display thumbnails of the gadgets, KDE uses a ribbon to display thumbnails of widgets. However, Win7 doesn't have a driver for my Samsung ML-1210 laser printer connected at 192.168.1.99:9000. But, the real differences appear when you click on the Windows flag button. KDE's default menu structure is only vaguely similar to Windows and, IMO, KDE's is better, even though I don't use it. I restored the classic menu. On Win7 I haven't been able, yet, to find a way to revert to the classic menu. KDE 4 was released while VISTA was crashing and burning, but the 4.5 version was released after Win7, so I suspect that the look and feel of the system tray was copied from Win7. Looking at the two screens side by side the only give-away is the Windows flag button where the KGear is.
This Acer doesn't come with a DVD/CDROM so I have one coming from Amazon. Rather than partition the HD I am going to try the WUBI installation of Kubuntu Maverick, if it is available. I'll let you know how it goes.
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