Hi list, I know that some of you have an Efika Smartbook (http://www.genesi-usa.com/products/smartbook) and am interested in your opinions on it. I'm looking to getting one myself, but only if there are positive experiences with it. My normal usage of such a netbook would be some browsing, emailing and some development (mainly with vim) while traveling. I assume that the 10" display is just big enough for it (a 7" EeePC is a little too small). Things I'd like some information on: - Will XFCE run without major issues? - How is the keyboard, are the keys (much) smaller than a standard laptop keyboard? - Is the display good readable when sitting outside, possibly in the sun? - Any other pros/cons you can think of.

On 05/15/2011 12:07 PM, Niels de Vos wrote: > Hi list, > > I know that some of you have an Efika Smartbook > (http://www.genesi-usa.com/products/smartbook) and am interested in > your opinions on it. I'm looking to getting one myself, but only if > there are positive experiences with it. > > My normal usage of such a netbook would be some browsing, emailing and > some development (mainly with vim) while traveling. I assume that the > 10" display is just big enough for it (a 7" EeePC is a little too > small). I really like mine. The only outstanding issue I have with mine is that the video acceleration falls way, way short of expectations on video playback. Other than that, it's great. Another thing you may be interested in is that you can actually fit a 1280x720 screen into it (it comes with 1024x600 as standard). I have a replacement screen on my shelf to do this at some point, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. My main disappointment is that this isn't available as an option when buying one, which inevitably means you end up with a spare 1024x600 screen that you will never use again.

On 05/15/2011 12:07 PM, Niels de Vos wrote: > Hi list, > > I know that some of you have an Efika Smartbook > (http://www.genesi-usa.com/products/smartbook) and am interested in > your opinions on it. I'm looking to getting one myself, but only if > there are positive experiences with it. > > My normal usage of such a netbook would be some browsing, emailing and > some development (mainly with vim) while traveling. I assume that the > 10" display is just big enough for it (a 7" EeePC is a little too > small). I really like mine. The only outstanding issue I have with mine is that the video acceleration falls way, way short of expectations on video playback. Other than that, it's great. Another thing you may be interested in is that you can actually fit a 1280x720 screen into it (it comes with 1024x600 as standard). I have a replacement screen on my shelf to do this at some point, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. My main disappointment is that this isn't available as an option when buying one, which inevitably means you end up with a spare 1024x600 screen that you will never use again. > - How is the keyboard, are the keys (much) smaller than a standard > laptop keyboard? It is the same as on any 10in netbook. > - Is the display good readable when sitting outside, possibly in the sun? It is on the par with any other similar netbook, the same screen is used in a lot of them. But as I said, my recommendation would be to upgrade it with a 1280x720 panel.

On Sun, May 15, 2011 at 5:08 PM, Gordan Bobic<gordan(a)bobich.net> wrote: > On 05/15/2011 12:43 PM, Gordan Bobic wrote: >> On 05/15/2011 12:07 PM, Niels de Vos wrote: >>> Hi list, >>> >>> I know that some of you have an Efika Smartbook >>> (http://www.genesi-usa.com/products/smartbook) and am interested in >>> your opinions on it. I'm looking to getting one myself, but only if >>> there are positive experiences with it. >> > >>> My normal usage of such a netbook would be some browsing, emailing and >>> some development (mainly with vim) while traveling. I assume that the >>> 10" display is just big enough for it (a 7" EeePC is a little too >>> small). >> >> I really like mine. The only outstanding issue I have with mine is that >> the video acceleration falls way, way short of expectations on video >> playback. Other than that, it's great. >> >> Another thing you may be interested in is that you can actually fit a >> 1280x720 screen into it (it comes with 1024x600 as standard). I have a >> replacement screen on my shelf to do this at some point, but I haven't >> gotten around to it yet. My main disappointment is that this isn't >> available as an option when buying one, which inevitably means you end >> up with a spare 1024x600 screen that you will never use again. >> >>> - How is the keyboard, are the keys (much) smaller than a standard >>> laptop keyboard? >> >> It is the same as on any 10in netbook. >> >>> - Is the display good readable when sitting outside, possibly in the sun? >> >> It is on the par with any other similar netbook, the same screen is used >> in a lot of them. But as I said, my recommendation would be to upgrade >> it with a 1280x720 panel. > > And just to show I'm taking my own advice on this, I finally got around > to replacing the screen with a 1280x720 panel. The process is incredibly > easy to do, much easier than on other laptops. It took under 10 minutes, > start to finish. The clips that sandwich the screen panel in are quite > loose, so you don't have to leave nasty gauge marks on the bezel to get > them apart after you take the screws out. And as the guys from Genesi > reassured me it all "just works"! I now have a 1280x720 Efika, and as an > added bonus, I now have a matte screen rather than a glossy one, so I > can even use it outside in the sun. :) > > I have taken pictures and will put together a post detailing the > procedure, along with the exact screen panel to use for the upgrade. Sounds great! Looking forward for the details :) Thanks for sharing, Niels

> I know that some of you have an Efika Smartbook > (http://www.genesi-usa.com/products/smartbook) and am interested in > your opinions on it. I'm looking to getting one myself, but only if > there are positive experiences with it. and they have a shop in Germany: http://www.genesi-europe.com/store/eu/

On Sunday, May 15, 2011 06:07:02 AM Niels de Vos wrote: > Hi list, > > I know that some of you have an Efika Smartbook > (http://www.genesi-usa.com/products/smartbook) and am interested in > your opinions on it. I'm looking to getting one myself, but only if > there are positive experiences with it. > > My normal usage of such a netbook would be some browsing, emailing and > some development (mainly with vim) while traveling. I assume that the > 10" display is just big enough for it (a 7" EeePC is a little too > small). > > Things I'd like some information on: > - Will XFCE run without major issues? > - How is the keyboard, are the keys (much) smaller than a standard > laptop keyboard? > - Is the display good readable when sitting outside, possibly in the sun? > - Any other pros/cons you can think of. It works well i use my smartbook everyday. http://ausil.us/smartbook/smartbook-rootfs-f13.tar.bz2 http://ausil.us/smartbook/boot.tar.bz2 its all setup to run from a sdcard.  1st partition gets the contents on the boot tarball and should be ext3 the second partition gets the contents of the rootfs.  it is the fedora xfce spin contents.   it pretty easy to transfer to the internal storage. overall im pretty happy with it.

I know that some of you have an Efika Smartbook (http://www.genesi-usa.com/products/smartbook) and am interested in your opinions on it. I'm looking to getting one myself, but only if there are positive experiences with it.

On Sun, May 15, 2011 at 9:49 PM, Jon Masters <jcm(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote: > On Sun, 2011-05-15 at 12:07 +0100, Niels de Vos wrote: > >> I know that some of you have an Efika Smartbook >> (http://www.genesi-usa.com/products/smartbook) and am interested in >> your opinions on it. I'm looking to getting one myself, but only if >> there are positive experiences with it. > > I run mine with XFCE just fine. We need a standard kernel package, but > we'll be looking into that in due course. For now, only problem with > stock (older) kernel I'm using is lack of resume. I have an external USB > to VGA adapter I want to get working soon for presentations. > > Using in the garden/Starbucks/outdoors is fine. > > Jon. I've seen suspend/resume mentioned a few times on here as not working (I'm assuming Fedora); I'm not if you need a specific pm utils version, but all you should need to do is add a config file with the following in it: SUSPEND_MODULES="ehci_hcd" SLEEP_MODULES="ehci_hcd" The big reason is that everything is on the USB bus, so when it comes back from suspend, it re-probes everything. (Assuming you're building with the latest kernel sources in Gitorious, you'll want the usb portions to be modules, assuming you aren't using the mx51_efikamx_defconfig ) I've no person experience with building a kernel on Fedora, but hopefully that helps someone out :)