Archive for the “fail” Category

After everything that has been revealed so far, I really want to like Star Wars: the Old Republic. I want to be excited for it to be released. It’s just that I keep having this nagging feeling about it that I can’t shake.

Let me preface this: I’ve never been an MMO fan. I don’t like investing a ridiculous amount of time into a never-ending game only to get repeatedly pawned by some snot-nosed teenager in Shanghai with way too much time on his hands. But my general dislike of MMOs aside, I’m just not sure what to think of this game.

My company recently bought a Dell Inspiron Mini9 to try out in the field. It’s what’s referred to in the industry as a “netbook” because it’s so small. The idea is to have a device that’s a cross between a full laptop, and a smart phone with constant internet access. It’s really a handy idea . . . for blogging from a coffee shop. If you need more, however, you’ll be disappointed.

Well, we found that our field agents didn’t like it because the keyboard is too small for them to type for long periods of time. It was retired to my shelf of misfit toys in my office. Dell offers it in either Windows XP (which is just plain stupid) or a specialized flavor of Linux called Ubuntu. So I decided to image it with the Ubuntu installation, and I was pleasantly surprised! Everything worked well right off the bat! Even the onboard mobile broadband card! There’s also a neat feature called Network Manager who’s sole purpose is to keep you online: