VMWare produce various pieces of software that allows you to run a virtual machine and in the case of VMWare Workstation for example, this allows you to run Windows inside a Linux Box or the other way around. IN effect then it allows many different operating systems to run without you have to reformat your machine every time. At the other end of the scale is VMWare vSphere Hypervisor ESXi – this is a bare metal (i.e. wipes your hard drive) installation and allows many virtual machines to run at the same time on a headerless (no monitor) box – often servers. I thought I would take an existing desktop machine and see how this ran – let is begin my journey into ESXi.
Posts tagged acer
Netbook Battery life
Netbooks are often seen as not only been very portable but lasting longer then the equivalent laptop and one of the reasons I bought one all them years ago was to save me from having to carry out a normal sized laptop which never seen to last the stated life span on battery. Recently I choose to install Jolicloud onto my said netbook and while I was there, I wanted to see just how long it might last me on battery power – the results were a lot less then I expected.
Fedora 13 vs Linux Mint 10 RC
I have a desktop machine which I use purely for Linux, the specifications are Core 2 Duo 1.83GHz, 5GIG Ram, 80Gig Hard Drive, 19″ Widescreen TFT and nVidia 7600GT Graphics card. The on-board network has failed and it has an Intel gigbit server card installed (which Windows 7 will not recognise) and a PCI 54G Wireless Card. I had tested Fedora 13 on VMWare and liked the look of it – I set about wiping the present Ubuntu 10.10 and wanted to use Fedora instead on this machine – this is were it started to go wrong..
Acer Aspire E700 NAS Box
As per my other post abut NAS Drives – yesterday I took it upon myself to build a NAS box from parts I already had and thus save myself spending any money. The goal if you recall was to have a system that was able to be upgraded in space later such as adding 1TB or larger Harddrives as needs arose. This journey took a while to get everything ready and was the end result worth the effort involved?
Acer Revo R3600
Are Netbooks for you?
In 2009 there was a big movement in providing a cut down laptop which featured a 8.9” Screen, Intel Atom Processor and even some running from Solid state drives. The goal of these were highly portable computers that you could just chuck in your bag with long battery life and of course cheaper then a full blown laptop. Many people looked at these and fancied buying one thinking they could use them while out and about seen as they were so light and small but do they suit every need? Let us break it down.
Acer Aspire One – Hackintosh
I bought this little Netbook some time back now, it was an impulse buy and the goal was to have a small netbook to take around various sites to SSH into Server and for this it worked great. It came with 512MB ram (cheapest one with a proper HD) and I have installed Ubuntu, Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 through it’s life. I thought I would give it a go at OSX – why not right?
Complete Machine rebuild
The Acer Desktop was small and was prone to getting very hot inside which caused the CPU Fan to jump from 998RPM to 4500+ RPM which meant it sounded like an Aircraft taking off. You could argue that UK does not get Hot that much but the room were the computer are was very hot indeed – even with Desktop Fans blowing onto me – it was still like living in a Sauna.
Noisy Desktop Computers

The iMac was quiet no matter what and this has a 2.8GHz CPU and built into the confines of a monitor. Laptops by there very design are quiet for most part but desktop Machine’s for some reason are too noisy. I see them in the shops and they seem very quiet but the environment is not a library – so easy to be fooled. I have seen (or rather heard) an HP machine which was so quiet, you would be mistaken that it was actually on until you work out the inside is low powered crap.
Living with the Acer Aspire One
When I bought this netbook, after looking into it – I did wonder if I had actually bought the wrong one, meaning one with 1 GIG ram for example. After much digging around, I learned the max ram is only 1.5gig it seems – so the 1 GIG Model would have 512MB Stick as well as onboard and as I already had such an Item, I saved myself some money.
I Did follow a gide of sorts to get Ubuntu on there and for most part it worked well enough but there ws a few niggles such as not all web sites seeing the camera or telling me it was in use as well as the internal Mic been disabled. If the machine went to sleep (Closing the lid) it disabled the sound. I choose to move across to Windows on this thing. My task was to somehow run Ultimate Boot CD so I could make a ghost image of Ubuntu and swap back later if required. I eventually gave up on trying to make a bootable USB stick and instead ripped apart a IDE Harddrive to stick a CD ROM on there and allow me to boot and get the image done as well as Install Windows XP Pro.
My View is that the Linux you get with it is way too limited and Ubuntu just does not work as well as could be expected – maybe another Linux (Fedora) might work better. Windows Works very well, you can see the speed go downhill but this is mainly for installing apps and the lag on the Webcam can be seen also. My Guess is with AntiVirus running in the background and the slow CPU – this makes sense BUT WIndows is much more usable then anything else. My Plan is to use it as a portable streaming machine of sorts – maybe I might use another USB Webcam though. I think the machine is fast enough, the screen is workable at the given 1024×600 and the gloosy looks suits well along with the very low weight. If you have a main machine and fancy a netbook for on the move – I would say go and buy one.




