I think all the tablets and sub-notebooks got no wired, but wireless!

Member Response
 

Hi,
Painting with a wide brush! Acers' netbooks do have both Ethernet & wireless. I am sure other tablet/netbook manufactures can be found that support Ethernet. Plus most tablets/netbooks do have USB that could be configured with a Ethernet dongle if the drivers & firmware are available for the device.

My Samsung netbook has both Ethernet and wireless.

Thanks all for the comments and advice. :)

Tablets possess a certain mystique and appeal. I want a portable lightweight device for some nominal living room web surfing, sharing videos or photos when visiting family, and ebook reading. A tablet seems to fit those needs.

I admit I know little about tablets or the underlying operating systems. Therefore trust is a big deal for me.

My concern with tablets is an unknown operating system. I'm not keen to the idea of using an operating system and devices sold by Google, which is a data mining company. I left Microsoft behind years ago partly because of "phone home" tactics. Even the file manager phones home. I don't want to return to that. Likewise with Apple and the walled garden. :)

Of the tablet reviews I have read thus far, nobody is addressing security and privacy. Apps, apps, apps. As these devices are presumed to be always connected whenever used, a reasonable presumption, the apps are designed accordingly. I'm not a conspiracy nut, but a touch of paranoia is healthy. How much data mining occurs with tablets and tablet apps? I have no idea and reviewers are not addressing the issue.

Simply put, when I use a tablet the only network traffic I want is the initial connection to my router. Nothing else. Ever. Unless I initiate network traffic. No phone home traffic. Ever.

I looked at the tablet offered by Zareason. Although open source and rootable, the reviews are superficial and compared to other tablets, the device has a sub par video resolution.

I need to know the operating system and apps are working for me and not for everybody else. I'm not interested in providing anybody data. I'm old fashioned that way. :)

Anybody have information about that?

Just recently I have refurbished an old ThinkPad X41 1.5ghz 1gb ram 16gb compact flash as disk drive. And I of course installed Slack 14.0 on it. And I am very happy with the result.

If you have time to look, you can obtain these machines dirt cheap, ussualy they will have dead non-standard hard drives, but otherwise will work just fine. What I've did, was to buy an IDE to CF adapter and a fast CF card (533x or more will do). Then install windows, flash moded bios to remove infamous error 2010 on startup. And then installed Slack 14.0. So now what I have is near perfect netbook:
* great keyboard
* Decent screen resolution (1024x768)
* very thin and lightweight
* Boots and runs faster than any netbook I've seen with atom
* You can get up to 9 hours battery life (depends on what type of battery you use and if you are willing to buy a new battery)
* It's a real ThinkPad

Only disadvantages if compared to a netbook are:
* small drive capacity (I have around 9gb free after Slack install)
* no webcam (I have never ever used this device anyway).

So to sum it up, it can be one of the greatest netbook type machines out there if you are willing to work for it ;)

Note that in the US jail-breaking a tablet is illegal. Most are locked-in to the OS they ship with. I would never recommend getting one.

Member Response
 

Hi,

Care to share where you are getting this information for illegal aspects? Particular device & manufacture but not industry wide.

I could have sworn it was on slashdot a few days ago, but I can't seem to find it, well it's here:
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2012/10/...t-not-tablets/

Seems to me if you "jailbreak" a device by replacing the BIOS and/or OS outright with free - possibly open source - firmware/software, then you are no longer using the original firmwares/softwares and any license restriction no longer applies.

I said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are slaves. For example, if my neighbor has a mind to my cow, he hires a lawyer to prove that he ought to have my cow from me. I must then hire another to defend my right, it being against all rules of law that any man should be allowed to speak for himself.

Now in this case I who am the right owner lie under two great disadvantages. First, my lawyer, being practiced almost from his cradle in defending falsehood, is quite out of his element when he would be an advocate for justice, which as an office unnatural, he always attempts with great awkwardness if not with ill-will. The second disadvantage is that my lawyer must proceed with great caution, or else he will be reprimanded by the judges, and abhorred by his brethren, as one that would lessen the practice of the law. And therefore I have but two methods to preserve my cow. The first is to gain over my adversary’s lawyer with a double fee, who will then betray his client by insinuating that he has justice on his side. The second way is for my lawyer to make my cause appear as unjust as he can by the cow to belong to my adversary: and this, if it be skillfully done will certainly bespeak the favor of the bench.

Now, your Honor is to know that these judges an appointed to decide all controversies of property, as well as for the trial of criminals, and picked out from the most dexterous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy, and having been biased all their lives against truth and equity, are under such a fatal necessity of favoring fraud, perjury, and oppression, that I have known several of them refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty, by doing any thing unbecoming their nature or their office.

It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever has been done before may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities, to justify the most iniquitous opinions; and the judges never fail of directing accordingly.

In pleading they studiously avoid entering into the merits of the cause, but are loud, violent, and tedious in dwelling upon all circumstances which are not to the purpose. For instance, in the case already mentioned, they never desire to know what claim or title my adversary has to my cow; but whether the said cow were red or black, her horns long or short, whether the field I graze her in be round or square, whether she was milked at home or abroad, what diseases she is subject to, and the like; after which they consult precedents, adjourn the cause from time to time, and in ten, twenty, or thirty years, come to an issue.

It is likewise to be observed, that this society has a peculiar cant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply; whereby they have wholly confounded the very essence of truth and falsehood, of right and wrong; so that it will take thirty years to decide whether the field left me by my ancestors for six generations belongs to me, or to a stranger three hundred miles off.

In the trial of persons accused for crimes against the state the method is much more short and commendable: the judge first sends to sound the disposition of those in power, after which he can easily hang or save the criminal, strictly preserving all due forms of law.

Here my master interposing, said it was a pity that creatures endowed with such prodigious abilities of mind as these lawyers, by the description I gave of them, must certainly be, were not rather encouraged to be instructors of others in wisdom and knowledge. In answer to which I assured his Honor that in all points out of their own trade, they were usually the most ignorant and stupid generation among us, the most despicable in common conversation, avowed enemies to all knowledge and learning, and equally to pervert the general reason of mankind in every other subject of discourse, as in that of their own profession.

Lemuel Gulliver explaining to the Houyhnhnms the concept of lawyers, from Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift, 1735

ASUS eeePC here. Mine has a HDD and is pretty much just a netbook sized laptop rather than a netbook so it doesn't have great battery life. But everything else works fine, graphics, touchpad, wifi, sound, camera, etc. Its actually my primary machine now.

I installed Slackware 13.37 on my Dell Inspiron Mini 10v (which uses GMA500) and have not encountered any problems. I do not particularly recommend this machine but it does seem to be generally compatible with Slackware.

Compatible? Yes. Fully supported? No. More info here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Poulsbo

I also have a Dell Mini 10v and agree it runs Slackware fine, but it does not have the GMA 500.
That was the Dell Mini 10 (without a v), I think.

Member Response
 

Hi,
Thanks for the link 'H'.