Today's project was ripping Ubuntu 11.10 out of my old Asus Eee netbook and putting Lubuntu 12.04 in its place. This was done out of necessity, post upgrade from Ubuntu 10 my netbook was running very slowly. It would chug along doing just about anything; opening Chromium (linux version of Chrome) took about fifteen seconds and once it was open it was slow and laggy. Lubuntu is positively snappy in comparison. I do notice some screen lag and it sucks and running video. Then again, it sucked running video even before I switched the OS from XP to Hexxeh's Chromium Lime.
I think if I could get a Chromium OS running on this again then it would probably be superior in speed to Lubuntu, in both boot up time and how smoothly it runs; but I haven't been able to get a chromium OS running on this thing in quite a while. I might take another crack at running chromium off of a USB drive though.
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My Kindle is truly awesome. I have the Kindle 4 (non-touch, ad supported) version. I love it, it's the best thing since sliced bread and it's thin enough that it could probably slice bread too. It's light, at just under 6 oz (awesome for backpacking), holds over a thousand books (awesome for backpacking), and can last about 30 hours of consistent use on a single charge (awesome for backpacking). In short, the Kindle 4 is awesome for backpacking, but it's also just an upgrade from reading a regular book in general.
What do I mean by that? Well, for starters lets talk about the spatial and volumetric requirements for storing your previously read books within your home. You'll need at least one bookcase, in which books will start to pile up as you've read them. You can pull them down easily enough if you want to read them again, but after you reach a certain threshold in sheer book numbers you need to start pairing down the books you actively try to display so that your favorite books are the ones that you can easily access. When it comes time to move, down come all of those books into boxes which have to be packed and labeled and carried, adding weight and increasing your burden.
Now. With the Kindle, all of your books are either stored on the device or in Amazon's cloud. That means your two hundred books, instead of weighing close to a hundred pounds and being spread over fifteen or twenty boxes, are now stored in a 6 oz piece of electronics which you can slip in the small pocket of your backpack on the way out of the door. Want to show off your book collection? Just organize your collection on your kindle the same way you would on your bookshelf; throw the crap books back onto the cloud and organize your favorites into folders. Leave your kindle on your reading table and suggest to guests that they can read anything on it at their leisure.
Using a Kindle is an upgrade in the terms of the actual act of reading itself. The screen stays a consistent color and reduces eye strain because it lacks properties which produce glare. Try reading in direct sunlight with your smartphone to see what I mean. It's easier to hold in one hand and to flip pages with due to its light weight and ambidextrous page turning buttons (easily reached with the thumb when holding the Kindle).
One more thing; when I was out and about previously I would take the paperback I was currently reading with me to work on during lulls or downtime. If I polished that book off then I was reduced to twiddling my thumbs or looking for reading material afterwards. Now I just keep all of my books I want to read on the Kindle, so that if I happen to polish one off my next book is right there waiting for me.
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