The 1000HE is a 10″ netbook with the latest Intel Atom N280 processor, 1GB (can be replaced with 2GB if necessary) of RAM, a 160GB hard drive and all the other bells and whistles you’d expect from a computer these days.

The netbook comes with Windows XP Home Edition installed and that works well. The N280 isn’t a power horse, though, and it will start to struggle a little when you open Flash-intensive sites, like online newspapers tend to be. I didn’t test video, but some reviews I’ve read say that most video formats should work OK, except for 1080p HD video where it’s likely that you will experience some frame dropping.

A major selling point for the 1000HE is the advertised battery life of 9.5 hours. I’m not really sure if 9.5 is realistic, mainly because I’ve not had the computer turned on for that long yet. But since I started using it on Saturday, I’ve only plugged in the charger once. The 9.5 hours of battery life are also dependent on how good the power saving features of the operating system is and I’ve installed Ubuntu in favor of XP. According to what I’ve read on the all-knowing interweb, battery usage with Ubuntu tends to be higher than when using XP. But if I’m able to use the 1000HE for at least 8 hours straight at normal use without the need for an external power source, that’s more than enough for me.

Some people have problems with netbooks because they tend to have rather small keyboards. So far I’ve not had any issues with the 1000HE’s keyboard, but I’ve got small girly hands, so that might be the reason why it didn’t take long adjust my writing style to it. Noise, or rather the lack of, is important to many people. As for fan noise, the 1000HE is very quiet under normal use, the fan is almost impossible to hear. I’ve not tried to run CPU intensive operations to really get it going, though.

At 1.45Kg (3.20lbs) and with the dimensions of 266mm (W) x 191.2mm (D) x 28.5mm~ 38mm (H), the netbook should be quite portable. Exactly how portable I don’t know, because I haven’t brought it with me outside of the apartment yet. But it’s portable enough to be used when laying on the couch and sitting by the dinner table. Like most laptops are, too, I guess.

Of course there are a couple of things that could have been better, but I suspect that they are related to me using Linux and not XP. Flash, for instance is a nightmare, at least Flash video streaming. Even though the CPU load is not too high, there is a constant audio/video sync problem and that makes Flash video more or less useless. The built in web camera also struggles in Linux, with a crappy frame rate. In XP it worked much better. The final thing that is not working very well on Linux is the audio level. Even at maximum volume, the audio from the speakers is hard to hear in a semi-noisy environment, like when the TV is on. It was a little better when using headphones.

But all in all, the Asus Eee PC 1000HE is a great choice if you’re looking for an ultra-portable computer for basic everyday nerd tasks.

Then why am I’m referring to the sun? The reason why I’m rambling on about the sun is that yesterday we saw the first real hot summer day here in Oslo – at least the first one I’ve noticed. Despite being a nerd, I like the sun – since it’s one of the main reason we’re able to stay alive and stuff – so I took the opportunity to take a walk downtown to buy something we all need from time to time: New socks. Exciting!

But I also spent a little money on a little something I’ve been meaning to get for a long, long time. Over the three last years, I’ve been slowly buying speakers for my 5.1 surround system. First two great Dali Blue 5005 front speakers, then two budget Proson rear speakers, a Dali Concept Center and now my surround system is finally complete with a marvelous Dali Concept Sub. It’s really a great piece of Danish engineering – you can’t really tell it’s there until you turn it off and a lot of the dynamics in the sound suddenly disappears. It’s present in the audio without dominating it, but it’s still able to deliver that extra “omph” when necessary.

No, I have no idea what I’m talking about, but I like to pretend I do.

This is what you’ll get:

• Xbox 360 console with 20GB harddrive, wireless controller, headset with microphone and all the cables you need to hook the console up to your TV and stereo.
• Xbox 360 Wireless Racing Wheel with force feedback. Supports both the Xbox and the PC platform.
• Xbox 360 Memory Unit (64 MB)
• Xbox 360 Quick Charge Kit with one rechargeable battery that’ll fit in both the racing wheel and the wireless controller.

You’ll also get these 14 high quality games:

• Guitar Hero III: Legends Of Rock (with guitar – this game is bought at Platekompaniet and still sealed, so you can go to the store and exchange it for something else if you want to).
• Battlefield 2 Modern Combat
• Need for Speed ProStreet
• Need for Speed Carbon
• Kane & Lynch Dead Men
• NASCAR 08
• Test Drive Unlimited
• Project Gotham Racing 3
• Project Gotham Racing 4
• Command & Conquer Tiberium Wars
• Saints Row
• Forza 2 Motorsport
• Colin McRae Dirt
• The Orange Box

All this is yours for a mere 6995 NOK! That’s over 500 NOK off the price I’m advertising elsewhere on the interweb. Why? Special price for you, my friend.

Because of the size of the bundle it’s preferable that you can come pick up everything in the Oslo area, but I can of course ship worldwide at the buyer’s expense.

Grab it now before it’s too late!

There is one challenge left, though: Because of the fuse box right next to the router, quite a lot of network capacity is lost because of interference. In the living room the download speed ranges from 3 to 5 megabits per second – it doesn’t matter if I connect to the wireless repeater in the living room or the router in the hallway – right next to the router in the hallway the download speed is between 10 and 13 megabits per second.

Right now I consider it a small annoyance because what matters is that I have a wireless repeater bridge that works. It might be possible to move the router so that the fuse box is not interfering that much with the signal and it might even be some tweaks I can activate in the dd-wrt firmware that will help.

Since I struggled for so long to get it to work, the remainder of this post will contain a guide of sorts on how you can set up a wireless repeater bridge yourself. Yes, it’s going to be technical.

What is a wireless repeater bridge anyway? It’s a setup that will enable you to expand a wireless network, allowing wireless clients to connect to all access points you use to expand the network and at the same time allowing ethernet clients to connect to the ethernet ports of the access points if any.

Consider the following network “diagram” that shows what a wireless repeater bridge can do for you:

internet <---> router <-------------> repeater <---> Xbox
              (hallway)             (living room)
                /|\                     /|\
                 |                       |
          wireless client           wireless client

Personally I had two devices in the living room without a wireless network card and setting one of them up with a wireless network card with WPA encryption would be a lot of work. The devices is the VBOX, a Debian Mini-ITX box with no PCI slot and I can only imagine how much work it would be to get a USB dongle wireless network device to work properly with WPA encryption. I’ve tried in Ubuntu and it was a total nightmare I never really recovered from.

I had two devices I wanted to use for the new network setup, a Linksys WRT54GL and a Linksys WAP54G. Linksys will tell you that you can set up a wireless repeater bridge with these two devices, but don’t get fooled: You will not be able to set up a wireless repeater bridge with any encryption that matters. WPA personal will not work, for instance, so in terms of network security, they’re useless.

But with dd-wrt installed, they are just what you want. From this point on, I will assume that you have two devices with dd-wrt version 2.4 RC3. I will not tell you how to install dd-wrt because there is plenty of detailed information on the dd-wrt site that tells you how to do that. If you are using another version than 2.4 RC3 on your devices, you might also be able to use the below configuration, but you’re on your own. I also assume that you are able to connect to and log in to both of them.

If you see a setting that is not listed, leave it at its default value. Sometimes the value listed below might be the default value. Whenever you are done with the settings on a page, click “Apply Settings”. This will save the settings and apply them. Some of the changes might cause the device to reboot.

On the wireless router, in my case the Linksys WRT54GL, use the following configuration.

Setup -> Basic Setup:

Local IP Adress: 192.168.1.1

DHCP Server: Enable

Wireless -> Basic Settings

Wireless mode: AP

Wireless Network Name (SSID): A name identifying your network, for instance “wireless1″ (without the quotes of course).

Wireless -> Wireless Security

Security Mode: WPA Personal

WPA Algorithms: TKIP+AES

WPA Shared Key: The long password you can think of and remember

The wireless security settings are really something you should decide on yourself, the above are only recommendations. But make sure you secure your network with something safer than WEP.

On the wireless repeater side, in my case a Linksys WAP54G, use the following configuration:

Setup -> Basic Setup

Local IP Address: 192.168.1.2

Wireless -> Basic Settings

Wireless Mode: Repeater Bridge

Wireless Network Name: The same one as you used on the router, in our case “wireless1″ (once again without the quotes).

Wireless -> Wireless Security

Use exactly the same wireless security settings as you used on the router.

Now, here’s the trick that I missed out on that kept me having problems for a long time. To get the router and the repeater to communicate, you have to do the following on the repeater:

Security -> Firewall

SPI Firewall: Disable

And that should be it, your wireless repeater bridge should now be up and running. You should be able to connect to the wireless network using the SSID and the network encryption you used in the above configuration.

Good luck! I suspect you’ll need it.

Because of that, I have not been able to run at all since Tuesday, meaning that I have to run four days in a row now to make up for lost time. It’s probably not very efficient exercise since it won’t allow any days off for restitution, but I still feel I have to do it to keep my promise to myself to run every other day.

This weekend I have to get the Linksys mess in order or both VBOX and the Xbox 360 goes offline. Good luck to me. If i fail again, perhaps I’ll just have to put the money on the counter for a D-Link setup instead. I certainly hope not, because the Linksys equipment set me back enough.

If I’m still unable to get the repeater bridge to work properly, I’m stuck with a lousy wireless signal in the living room and both the Xbox 360 and VBOX without an internet connection.

Crap.

Another frustrating thing these days is work. This weekend I have constantly been interrupted by work related stuff and I’m getting really tired of this 24/7 availability bullshit. I also suspect that next week will see some inhumane work load, and that doesn’t help either.

That’s my macro economy commentary.

As for the former, getting a decent haircut, I think I did OK. Not that anyone have noticed. That they haven’t is a bit strange, because I basically look like another guy when I cut my hair. Even though it seldom takes any more than ten to fifteen minutes, getting a hair cut is one of the most boring things I do. I don’t like doing things I find boring, so naturally I don’t do it too often – if I’m not mistaken I’ve had four haircuts over the last twelve months – and when I eventually get a haircut, it’s not that much hair left.

Interesting.

Now for something completely different. I’ve got 6 invites to Pownce. It’s probably one of the most useless sites I’ve ever seen, but I wouldn’t be that surprised if it gets as popular as Facebook. Is that fad over, by the way? Drop a comment if a Pownce invite will make your day.

*It struck me that I always wrote about “my network” and “my apartment” in the previous entries, but it’s strictly our network and our apartment since Gine is also living here now.

I spent most of yesterday trying to set up the new network configuration: A wireless router in the hallway and a wireless repeater connected to a switch in the living room. First I connected my trusty 3COM wireless router to the DSL modem in the hallway and got a basic SMC switch and a Linksys WAP54G wireless access point for the living room. The idea was that the access point should be used as a repeater in the living room, a plan my local hardware pusher also supported.

Connecting the 3COM router to the DSL modem and getting a connection was a breeze. Even if I’m supposed to use a static IP (my new ISP has failed to send me the necessary information), the 3COM router connected using DHCP, got an IP address and internet access. But as soon as I touched the god damn Linksys access point, the trouble started.

I was a bit reluctant to buy the Linksys WAP54G in the first place because we have been using a Linksys access point at work that fails and needs to be restarted once a day. How it’s possible for such a fairly uncomplicated piece of hardware to fail once a day is beyond me. Route this packet here, route that packet there. How hard can it possibly be? Still, it requires a daily restart. Unfortunately, the Linksys was the only AP the store had in stock yesterday.

The Linksys WAP54G has a “repeater”-mode that does exactly what I want. It will pick up the wireless signal of another device and repeat it, at the same time allowing a switch to hook on to the LAN. Excellent, except for one thing: It will only work together with other Linksys equipment. That meant that I had to replace the old 3COM router with a Linksys WRT54GL.

I had to take another trip down town and I bought a Linksys WRT54GL. With the new router I’d spent about the same amount of money getting someone to run a TP cable from the hallway to the living room would cost me. The pro of getting the wireless equipment is that I can take it with me when I eventually move out of the apartment.

Anyway. I connected the WRT54G to the DSL modem and nothing happened. It was not able to connect using DHCP. Even though it was annoying, I was not surprised. Why it didn’t work I have no idea. Since the 3COM router was able to do it, you would guess that the Linksys router should be able to do exactly the same, but that was not the case. I got the 3COM router online again, scribbled down the IP, gateway and DNS information and manually configured the Linksys router, which gave me an internet connection.

Now it was time to get the WAP54G in the living room configured as a repeater. Since both the router and the access point were Linksys equipment now, that operation should be a walk in the park, right? Wrong, wrong, wrong! I’m using WPA encryption on my wireless network because basic WEP can be hacked with paper clips. As it turns out, the WAP54G will not work as a repeater if WPA encryption is used. This, in turn, means that the repeater will not work.

Does Linksys tell you? No. Not on the box, not in the documentation, not anywhere on their website. Did the guy in the store tell me this even if I explained to him exactly what I was going to do? No. Is it fucking annoying? Yes.

In case you found this entry while searching for information regarding Linksys equipment, let me emphasis that WPA encryption will not work with the WPA54G configured as a repeater. You have to use WEP encryption on turn it off completely and both options will give you an unsecured network. This means that the Linksys WAP54G is useless.

A possible workaround is to configure the WPA54G as an access point, set the SSID to the same as the router and to configure the wireless security to use exactly the same protocol and password. This will, in some mysterious way, make the WPA54G work as a repeater and it makes it possible to use WPA encryption. But not flawlessly, of course. Every now and then – several times a day in fact – the access point just stops working and have to be – you guessed it – restarted to work again.

Lesson learned: Stay clear of Linksys unless you have a hammer.

• VIA Technologies EPIA-800A motherboard.
• 800MHz VIA Technologies C3 Processor
• 2x 512MB TwinMOS PC133 SDR/CL3 RAM modules
• Sony CRX100E CD-RW drive (24X4X2X)
• 80GB Seagate Barracuda ST380021A
• A GigaByte PCI GN-WP01GS 802.11 b/g wireless card
• I don’t remember the name of the case, so here’s a picture of it. The
  measures are 190mm (W), 270mm (D), 165mm (H):

It’s certainly not a power house, but perfect as a small home server, fileserver, dev box or wherever your imagination takes you. When I lived in a shared apartment we used is as the resident computer and it played happily along when used for surfing, e-mails, writing text documents and other home office related tasks, everything on Windows XP.

The old VBOX can be yours for just NOK 1000; that’s about USD 174 at the time of writing. If you’re located so that you can’t pick it up, you’ll have to pay for P&P and please note that I’m selling it with no operating system installed and that there is no warranty on any of the parts. Please leave a comment if you’re interested.

After I was finally able to configure my RAID setup in Ubuntu, I halted the system to assemble everything. Shock and horror! Just before the screen went black, two large FAILED error messages appeared, informing me that an error had occurred when stopping the RAID arrays. Was I surprised? Not really.

Once again I consulted the Great Interweb Oracle, a.k.a. Google. From what I gathered when reading the Ubuntu forums and bug reports, the posters considered it to be a bug that resulted in the RAID array being dirty on every boot. This, in turn, meant that one of the disks would be rebuilt on every boot. A rather useless RAID setup, in my humble opinion.

With a bug of this magnitude, I decided to jump the Ubuntu-wagon and move to another Linux distro. I went with Debian, which I’m somewhat familiar with. It installed without any trouble, I was even able to configure the RAID setup again without having to go through the mdadm nightmare I had with Ubuntu. When it was installed, Debian started up as expected, but when I halted the system, the same RAID error messages as with Ubuntu appeared.

After banging my head against the living room wall for a few minutes, I once again searched the internet for a feasible explanation. After all, Debian is a server Distro used by lots of servers and most of them are probably configured with RAID. I quickly found someone with the same problem as me and discovered that the error messages are actually not caused by a bug at all. It will never be possible to stop the arrays because they are still mounted when the system tries to stop them.

Even if I had now realized that the error messages I saw when shutting down Ubuntu wasn’t a bug after all, I was confident that my choice to dump Ubuntu in favor of Debian was a very good choice. I would rather use a distro with a community that could give me a reasonable explanation for strange behavior than a community that considered the same strange behavior to be a bug.

Anyway. When Debian was finally installed and everything seemed to functioning more or less as expected, work on placing the second 2.5″ SATA drive in the tiny Morex Cubid 3688 case started. If you’re familiar with the size of a 2.5″ hard drive, you will naturally assume that getting the drive into the case should be a walk in the park.

Wrong.

With the DVD drive, the first hard drive, the motherboard with its huge heatsink and all the cables already installed, I was just not able to get the second drive into the case without using a sledge hammer and that probably would have been a very bad idea. Someone with the right engineering skills and tools – something else than a sledge hammer – probably could have attached the second hard drive in the space below the DVD drive bay and applied some kind of shielding from the DC-DC converter and the power connector but at the same time made sure there was good airflow through the case. I tried all that, but soon realized that I lacked both the skills and the tools – at some point I actually attached the hard drive with double sided tape, but I quickly decided that it was a perfect recipe for a disaster, something I tried to avoid. Yes, I had RAID now, but I saw no reason to provoke a hard drive meltdown.

In the end I removed the DVD drive to make space for the second hard drive. I drilled four holes to attach it, naturally managed to miscalculate and the drive is now only attached with three out of four screws. Not a huge problem. Even tough I will probably never have to use the DVD drive ever again – and if I do, I can just open the case and attach it – it’s still a pity to have to remove it.

After everything was finally in place and the lid closed and secured, I’ve had a lot of fun configuring Debian and installing everything I think I’ll need. Right now VBOX is only hosting this page boring page, hopefully the page will contain some more interesting bits of information soon. A permanent link to VBOX can also be found in the footer of every page now.

So there you have it, folks. This is how I spend my vacation. I build computers.