Electron Hut: Kyle Bedell’s Blog

Hey folks, I’m selling my OpenMoko Neo1973 developer’s kit up on eBay. Take a look!

So I’m working over at the Bentley Design and Usability Center for my spring internship. Since I don’t really have a background in Human Factors (I only started the program last week), they’ve been teaching me how to operate all of the lab equipment and how to conduct some of the different services they offer. I’ll cover what I’m allowed to tell you in future entries, but I did learn about one cool service we offer (even if not many folks use it). It’s called a card sort. Have you ever wondered how developers decide which options to stick under which menus? Like putting “Save” under “File”? If you do it the correct way, you use a card sort. They come in both open and closed formats. With a closed card sort, you give a user (or lots of users) a few cards with the menu titles on them, and then hand them a big stack of menu options. They then place the options under whatever menu headings seem “right” to them. An open sort works mostly in the same manner, except you give users a bunch of blank cards and a pen instead of some predetermined menu headings and let them make their own menus.

Doing this manually is a huge pain in the butt, but there are online services and software programs available now to allow you to easily send out sorts to various people, collect their inputs, and tabulate the results. The downside with the impersonal method is that you lose valuable verbal feedback and any insights you may have gathered from a participant’s thought process. You can sort of alleviate this with a sort of pre-scheduled “web conference” where everyone does their sorts at the same time with a moderator present and types any feedback into a chat window for future use.

Just one of the neat things Human Factors has to offer!

I picked up a “Galaxy Black” Asus EEE 4G for Christmas. Originally designed to hit the magic $199 price point (this didn’t happen), the EEE is designed to be a low-cost laptop aimed at beginning and casual computer users. In fact, it’s been so successful that the EEE is Asus’s bestselling product ever.

Packing modified hardware from 2001/2002, my model is equipped with the following:

900MHz Intel Celeron-M @ 630MHz
Intel 910GMLE Express chipset
7″ WVGA (800×480) LCD Screen
512MB DDR-667 RAM (upgraded to 1GB)
4GB Solid-State Disk (soldered to the motherboard)
Intel GMA900 Graphics
10/100 Ethernet and 802.11b/g Wireless LAN
SD(HC) Card slot
3 USB 2.0 ports
1/8″ Audio Out/In jacks
VGA Out
Stereo speakers (mounted on screen sides)
Microphone
0.3MP Webcam (mounted on top of screen)

Here are some shots of the hardware itself. Note that the battery cleverly doubles as a sort of ’stand’ to prop the machine up at a positive tilt.

The EEE’s build quality is better than I would have expected from a $399 machine. Although its body contains a minimum of metal, the plastic feels sturdy enough.

The buldge on top of the image there is the battery. Directly below that is the RAM / Mini-PCI access slot. Ignore the “WARRANTY IS VOID IF REMOVED” sticker over one of the screw holes; Asus has stated that it is perfectly alright to add RAM to your machine without voiding the warranty. The numerous slits are for ventilation purposes.

Not much to see from the front…

Front the left, the SD(HC) card slot, two USB 2.0 ports, VGA out, and a Kensington lock slot.

Just the power adapter’s port on the right side.

From the left, 10/100 Ethernet, a blocked-off modem port (not available on my model), a USB 2.0 port, and the microphone and stereo jacks.

There’s a substantial amount of ‘bezel’ around the screen; those are actually the speakers. Note the small size of the keyboard and the touchpad (more on that later). The indicator lights on the bottom right are for power, SSD activity, and wireless respectively.

The cramped keyboard layout of the EEE was mostly unavoidable, but it doesn’t take long to learn to type on it. Some of the key placements are a bit funky, especially the right-size Shift. I wouldn’t go writing a novel on this machine, but it certainly works for note taking purposes.

The screen is of decent quality; it’s only 7 inches, and sports a “Wide VGA” resolution of 800×480. It’s also one of the new LED-backlit types. I still can’t seem to figure out why Asus didn’t go with a much more ’standard’ 800×600 panel instead.

Now for the OS! The EEE is unique in that it comes prepackaged with a variant of Xandros Linux, specially modified with a simplistic icon-based UI. It’s organized into ‘tabs’ to make applications easy to find. Rather than attempt to reinvent the wheel, you can browse through eeeuser’s Flickr gallery if you’d like to see some shots of the Xandros interface. I forged ahead (since ASUS supplies Windows XP drivers for the hardware) and slapped a copy of Windows XP Professional SP2 on my machine. After some pagefile tweaking and a bit of hacking to get Windows to recognize my SD card as a “permanent” drive (so I can install application to it), I was in business!

(Matt thinks this was blasphemous, by the way.)

Performance is fairly snappy for underclocked five-year-old hardware. While you won’t be editing your next high definition film’s footage on this machine, it’s excellent for some light browsing, office work, and playing older games (especially SCUMM titles). Where the EEE truly excels is in the communications department. Its camera and mic setup makes it a great Skype machine (Skype actually comes preinstalled on the Xandros OS) and it works just fine for instant messaging.

Other than that, there’s not much to say. The 802.11b/g card in the EEE is one of the best I’ve used; not only does it connect more quickly than my ThinkPad X61, it maintains its connection in places the ThinkPad can’t even see the access point in my house. Battery life is decent; I get around 3-3.5 hours with maximum brightness and the wireless enabled. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. I’ll put up a reply and edit this post.

I have this problem…

I find myself more or less worrying constantly about things that are either totally unimportant, silly, or whose state/outcome is fixed and can’t be changed. I present the following examples:

The day before I started my two-week winter break job, my primary concern was not the work I’d be doing, being able to see my coworkers again, or waking up at 4:45am to catch the train. No, it was “I hope security knows I’m coming, because it would be really embarrassing to hold up the line while they figured out who I am and what I’m doing here.” Of course, I did end up holding the line up, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d predicted. Even though I know the brain is naturally miserable at predicting outcomes (try reading Dan Gilbert’s “Stumbling on Happiness” for more information) and experience has taught me that it’s usually never as bad as I think it will be, most of my predictions are just as full of doom and gloom as the previous ones.

I know that I have a strong and deep relationship with Katt (my fiancee), both in my heart and my head, but there’s always this nagging feeling in the back of my head that worries constantly about how she’ll feel if I “mess up” somehow or that she thinks I’m boring, etc, etc. I find myself apologizing all the time for mostly “imagined” slights and such. There’s nothing to worry about, but I find myself worrying anyway.

I don’t know why I feel so insecure about everything. Some sort of serious inferiority complex or something…