My Netbook with Splashtop
Friday, January 23rd, 2009 by solAs I’ve said many times, Splashtop is perfect for Netbooks. I can recall the very first time I saw the very first netbook, the EeePC. I wondered if it would ever take off. I think it is safe to say that it has taken off and inspired a huge market. Recently I’ve been using the Lenovo S10 a lot because Splashtop is available on it and because it is definitely one of the very best netbooks out there. I travel around a lot. I spend a lot of time in coffee shops and between a couple offices so I’m a great target for a netbook. Also, I have embraced web apps which makes a netbook even easier to use. I’ve been working on how to really configure my netbook to suit my needs. Here’s what I’ve done:
Made sure that when I get into Splashtop it has all my “stuff”
1. Setup wifi in my favorite coffee shops (and work) and saved the location
2. Put all my Music and Photos (mostly music) on a 16GB SD Card
3. Under Tools/When Splashtop Browser Starts - set it to “show my windows and tabs from last time”
4. Went to the Configuration Panel and had the bottom dock auto hide
5. Setup my chat accounts in pigeon and my Skype to remember me.
Web applications I use - because I auto-populate my tabs these generally all open up upon starting the Splashtop Browser.
1. Gmail - Gmail is my favorite webmail application, so easy!
2. Peoplebrowsr - this is my web-based Twitter Client - a must for anyone who uses Twitter
3. 12seconds.tv - I utilize this video community a lot - the integrated webcam makes it awesome
4. Zoho for documents - Sometimes I also use Google Docs.
5. Blip.fm - I’ve really been enjoying this site for music and I also regularly utilize Pandora. Of course I use our built in music player to listen to music off of my SD Card.
These 5 generally cover what I’m doing when I first start my machine.
From there, I’m all over the place using Google Reader to check my news feeds, I read Engadget religiously, I’m all over Hulu whenever my boss isn’t looking when I have time and I’m not working hard and I check Woot at least once a day.
Several people have wondered about the real utility of netbooks. For many people it is their 2nd (or 3rd) machine. It’s interesting that people tend to create a bond with their machine. Your mobile phone, for instance, becomes an important part of your life. Will netbooks also serve that role? For me, spending the time to configure my netbook and think about how I use it has made all the difference. Next up I have to figure out which stickers I want to put on it.