[Arm-netbook] My first impressions

[Frans Pop]

VAT: € 10.45; customs handling charge: € 17.00

As others have already said: quite impressed with general look and feel of 
the netbook. Both wired and wireless networking work without problem.
The desktop looks very professional and all applications are nicely 
integrated; the keyboard feels quite good.

The top edge of the "tray" which contains the keyboard is slightly damaged 
near the clips that hold it in place, as is the top edge of a few keys 
near there. Looks like someone was not very gentle while opening it up.

I booted it the first time on battery. That worked (battery monitor showed 
~58% charge). But the touchpad worked unreliably or not at all (a USB 
mouse worked fine) and IIRC the application selection bit at the bottom of 
the desktop did not appear.
After kludging a Dutch plug onto the AC adaptor (using 2 female quick 
disconnects [1] that fit nicely onto the US plug's pins) and running the 
netbook on AC the touchpad worked fine. I wonder if the battery provides 
enough power for the device when it starts going down.

They've kindly provided the passwords to their "linksys" and "midfun" 
wireless networks... Don't understand why one would want a "make password 
visible in plain text" option.

Provided applications are quite nice, but not quite what I'd want:
* was unable to connect to my IMAP server; AFAICT no SSL support
* I played an AVI (a 2005 episode of Doctor Who) on it; fairly good, but 
not great; there were some freezes, probably due to buffer underruns
* while playing the AVI with headphone plugged in there was a fairly loud 
hiss from the internal speaker
* there seems to be some flash support: it loads, but when playing all I 
got was a "DEMO" logo instead of the actual content

Application manager allows to install some additional packages, but 
installation of gnome-games resulted in errors (unrecognized format of SVG 
files) when trying to play them. Missing dependency I guess.

Loads of funny spelling errors (to say nothing about some of the phrases):
- PowerManagaer
- PowerManager Eanble
- FALSH (instead of FLASH)

Cheers,
FJP

[1] http://4x4icon.com/offroad/dome_light_bypass_switch/wn_femdis_vinyl.jpg