the blog speed hasn’t been as rapid lately due to the fact that my laptop died, but that should soon change in a matter of days.
i was so excited over ordering the mini that i actually used two-day shipping via ups, something i never usually do when i order online. it’s scheduled to arrive monday. once i get home from school @ 5pm, i will be spending a couple hours formatting the entire thing and installing XP, installing my piggyback shell program astonshell to replace the entire explorer setup that xp uses, installing all of the programs i need, installing my php server, setting up my wallpapers, setting up my astonshell theme, setting up my wifi, setting up my bluetooth, blah blah blah blah blah.
but once all of that is set up, i should have plenty of wifi access from my room to start blogging on my regular schedule again. i know i have access to my brother’s laptop or the desktop in my library, but there’s nothing like being able to blog from the comfort and privacy of your own room and not having to worry about taking up other people’s spaces.
now i don’t expect to do a whole lot of graphic-intensive work on the thing. the most i’ll ever be able to do is some photoshop design work and touchups for when i’m on the go and travelling, but for the most part, most of that graphic stuff will be taken care of on my hackintosh. i am fully aware of this laptop’s capabilities and while i do plan to abuse the abilities of the hp mini to some extent, i know that the thing cannot handle certain games and programs. you will find the following installed though:
- astonshell
- photoshop
- illustrator
- flash cs3 (a little iffy on whether this thing will run smoothly or not)
- wampserver
- dreamweaver
- notepad++
- open office
- watchtower library 2007
- all of my audio/video codecs
- winamp
- itunes
- magiciso
- alcohol 120%
- starcraft: broodwars (this thing can play it)
- call of duty 4 (the hp mini can also play this, at the lowest settings)
- madden 2008 (hoping for the best here)
some of those programs may be pushing it, but i’m hoping for the best. i also have a couple of hardware hack plans for the hp mini. i do want to install the pirated gps software by garmin which also requires a hard-wired gps receiving unit to be soldered to the motherboard. i don’t see that as a big task though. much better than spending another $400 on a gps unit.
the other idea is converting the hp mini’s screen to a touchscreen/tablet. now with the asus eeepc, that wasn’t a problem at all. with the hp, it’s a problem. i know there is no room to fit the module of the glass anywhere inside. so that sucks.
but i guess that’s all i really wanted to say. i will be carrying this thing around more often, especially out in service (not literally of course). the hub isn’t being used as much as i want it to (yet) until i officially present it this coming friday so i will have my own personal “offline” version to keep track of the territories i give out. i’m especially glad that i found one in stock just in time for district!