gizmos

System76, the company that focuses on Ubuntu based computers, has just launched its first netbook model, the Starling.

By the end of 2007 I decided to buy a nice little gizmo for my 6 years old daughther, a tiny 7" laptop manufactured by Asus called the Eee PC 701. Nintendo had started with the funny sounding names a year before when launching the Wii.

Many thought there was no space in the market for a new kind of laptop. Boy they were all wrong, a couple of years later we have a new category added to the usual desktop and notebook line up, there are netbooks all over the place and if you're serious about web development you should be ordering yours just now. This is why.

While I was writing a new article about why every web developer should buy a netbook in his arsenal, writing that happens using my tiny daugther's Asus Eee PC 701, I was quite tempted to buy the newest star in Asus line of netbooks: the Asus Eee PC 1000HE.

At US$ 389, with a 10" screen, 1 Gb. of RAM, 160 Gb. hard disk, improved keyboard and the promise of more than 9 hours of battery life looks like a great deal.

I had it already in my shopping cart but then I made a few numbers and decided not to complete the checkout. The reason? I have two daughters now. Beatriz is seven and lovely little Catalina arrived just a couple of weeks ago.

Obtaining the much desired wife acceptance factor of one is more difficult than ever and the finance crisis, worldwide now, doesn't help either.

So, what a man/web developer/father's got to do? Well, ask for a little help from his friends, I guess.

I've created a Chipin account to raise the funds for my new Asus Eee PC 1000HE, see the nice widget above. I'm sure some of my articles may have helped some of you in the past so if you want to put a few bucks in the tip jar I would really appreciate it. Let's see how it goes.

Some days ago Amber, my loyal Pangolin from System 76, stopped working, apparently due to some power supply issue.

The System 76 guys were very kind, they helped me to discard the problem via email and offered me to repair it at not cost, honoring the warranty, but I was in Lima and couldn't ship it on time.

Rumours onlike talk about Apple announcing a new ultraportable tomorrow at MacWorld 2008. Some have even guessed the new product could include Air as part of its name, maybe because of the There's something in the air message at Apple's website.

Looking forward to Steve Jobs' keynote in a few hours to decide if I start my gizmos wishlist for 2008 with an Apple toy.

Confirmed! It's the MacBook Air starting at US$ 1799.

I never imagined how wonderful was taking pictures, even of the silliest objects around, until Toma, my Canon Digital Rebel XTi, arrived a few weeks ago.

What I got with my Olympus D-320 or Beatriz's Canon Powershot A460 (a great point and shoot camera by the way) were nice memories, with a Canon Digital Rebel I get real photographs.

I'm not a professional or pretend to be one. It's just plain fun discovering so many things thru the viewfinder: a couple of toys doing nasty things, a rock to block the door, a misteryous flower at night and even a lonely metal bar at some gas station.

Digital photography is a fascinating field, no doubt about it. I still have a million things to learn and quite a bunch of functions to master on the Rebel.

The lens I got with my kit (EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6) are more than enough for now but I'm sure that I'll start looking for new options as I learn and I'll spend more in the new hobbie as well.

Anyway, I'm quite happy with Toma, my Digital Rebel. Now I can tell, for sure, there's a big world of difference between a regular digital camera and a real SLR.

Everex announced in CES 2008 that its new ultra portable: CloudBook, will be available at Walmart, and I think probably in many other online stores, on January 25th and will cost US$ 399.

2007 is almost over and in recent months several new gizmos have arrived. To repeat something I did some time ago in the discussion forum here are the names of our toys at home:

• Desktop 1, a Pentium 4 HT: Woodcarver
• Desktop 2, an old Pentium 4, soon to be upgraded: Flenser
• Laptop System76 Pangolin: Amber
• Laptop Dell Vostro 1000, Yesenia's: Lucy
• Nokia N800: Ozzie
• iPod 5G, 30 Gb: Manny
• Digital Rebel XTi: Toma
• Server 1, AMD Dual Opteron: Alpha
• Asus Eee PC, coming soon, it's for Beatriz: Silfen
• Palm Z22, long time friend for reading ebooks at night: Myo
• Palm TX, Yesenia's: Clare

I'm a weak, very weak, man. I couldn't resist the avalanche of so many good reviews or the fear of the already reduced stock of Asus Eee PC at Amazon completely vanishing, a la Kindle, until 2008.

So, I've ordered my first Asus Eee 4G Galaxy a few hours ago. It's the black model with 512 Mb. RAM, upgradable, unlike the Surf ones, and solid state disk of 4 Gb.

I'm counting the seconds (days actually) until this new family member arrives but it already has a name: Silfen. By the way, a very special prize for the guy or gal who can tell where that name comes from.

Now, watch out for the review when the new toy is here.

We have been reading about this all year and now CNET publishes that Amazon could make the official announcement for its Kindle, the E Ink based ebook reader, this Monday 19. A move that could demonstrate, once and for all, that the electronic books market has a future, something I've always believed even if many tried to deny.