Got my netbook up and running!

I'm ready for my netbook experiment, and like I promised, at least a blog a day about the whole experience! I think I might actually start TOMORROW. YES, tomorrow. I expected to need more time to make the netbook usable. So how did the setup go?

1. Get netbook from FedEx
2. Take home
3. Start up and setup Windows to test everything works (to rule out hardware problems if Ubuntu doesn't go as planned)
4. Start up off Ubuntu USB key, run install, restart, add wireless driver (I used the B43 driver, NOT the STA as I heard it's more reliable) and run updates, restart, add software to taste (Google Chrome - way faster than Firefox, and Ubuntu Restricted Extras are two good starting places), restart for good measure
5. Copy files over (I just did music, I mainly use Google services)
6. Test, test, test
7. Love

So far, I only have two complaints - the built-in speakers are loud, but rather distorted; and the function hotkeys aren't quite right in Ubuntu. Wireless on/off functions as next music track (thus there's no way to turn off wireless...), change monitor types the letter "p" and hits enter (seriously) - the others work though! Everything else seems to work great - no weird volume tweaks to get the mic working, no problem with the card reader, etc (those are two big problems Ubuntu has on some netbooks).

Dell has an official version of Ubuntu for this netbook, but I'm not using it. I'm using the normal netbook edition of 10.04. This is 32-bit; I may try the 64-bit desktop version but I like the netbook interface... and I'm not sure how much benefit 64-bit is on a machine like this (it's worth noting Windows 7 Starter is also a 32-bit OS).