Resurrecting the Netbook
I have had an ASUS netbook sat in the bottom of my messenger bag for the last year. I think it's been powered up once, and because it booted into a Windows partition (it has Windows and Linux on it)it immediately crawled into Windows Update hell, and became unuseable for the best part of an hour as it continually downloaded updates, installed them, and forced reboots.
I've had enough of it. I'm installing Lubuntu on it this eveningthe lightweight Ubuntu derivative that doesn't crawl on crappy hardware (and believe me, netbooks are crappy). I'm half tempted to install one of the more esoteric Linux distributions, but can't really be bothered to deal with the inevitable hours of tinkering to make the various buttons on the netbook work correctly (netbooks are famously non-standard).
The half-assed idea is to use the netbook for blogging. Instead of sitting on my own in the study (read: junk room) on an evening, I will sit in the lounge with the netbook. I'll also carry the netbook around with me as much as I can, so I can sit in the cafes I never visit, and pretend to be a writer. I can't use the Macbook for blogging because it's so old the battery dies before you've really even booted it up (although I guess I could sit next to a power outlet, as I am now). No the netbook has a new batteryone that cost a fraction the cost of a Macbook battery, and that lasts five or six hours on a charge.
While writing this, the netbook is chugging it's way through the installer. In a few moments I will instruct it to delete Windows, and do a fresh install. Fingers crossed