Hi all,
As the thread title says really, where I work we go to clients workplaces (and sometimes houses) and have to deal with a myriad of networks etc, basically it's come to the point where having a "pool" laptop would be a good idea to take to clients to use instead of their own PC, maybe preloaded with some diagnosis tools.
We're really just looking at the pros and cons of an EEE. How well does it play with Windows, shares etc? What version of Linux is it running?
Cheers,
James.
Hi James.
Welcome to EeeCommunity!
I have personally used my Eee PC to do network diagnostics at a client's site. Before I go into that, I thought I'd mention some advantages it has over other hardware for using as a pool/tech support laptop :-
1. It's small.
- almost pocketable... also clients will be impressed by it!
2. It has wifi and ethernet.
- this means you can ping routers etc. Very handy.
3. It works with Vodafone's (and other networks) mobile broadband services.
- this is fabulous as if your client's net connection is down and you need a driver, you can grab it online, slap it on a USB key and copy it to their PC.
4. It lasts for about 2-3 hours on batteries, which is pretty good.
5. Its charger isn't a brick - it's just like a mobile charger and has a very long lead on it.
6. It has 3 USBs and a VGA port. Useful if you need to copy data to a portable HDD or USB key, and the VGA is good if you want to test a monitor on a 'known good' machine.
7. It comes with a stretchy carry case, which keeps it well protected.
8. It's ultimately a cheap machine, which means if you do bang it about or drop it, nobody is going to get as upset as if it was a £2k Sony.
9. It has a SD card reader on it. Useful for extra inbuilt storage - good if your customer wants to rescue things off their camera and their PC is dead.
Onto the diagnostics you can do and software you can run...
Well of course it's linux, so basically anything for linux will work on it. The tools I tend to find myself using most are ping and traceroute. Note that it's a perfectly decent web browser and email client and skype machine. If you want to test any of these things on a "known good" machine, simply join your eee to their network and try it!
As far as other software goes, I expect ethereal would work OK - which is a advanced network analyser... Specifically regarding your point about Windows Shares. Yes, I have had mine accessing windows shares without any difficulty. You don't even need to resort to the smbclient commandline - it can all be done through the GUI.
Overall I'd say yes - this is a very very viable little machine for network support. Just remember to take a few extra items with you :-
* Ethernet cable
* USB pendrive/removable HDD
* Mobile broadband dongle if you have one.
Note that I've just assumed you're going to stick with Linux on the machine (as I would). You can also install Windows XP quite nicely on there.
Finally if you're stuck and want to google to find a solution for your client, it's much better to do this googling on your own machine out of sight so they don't think you know nothing and are just googling for all your answers ;-)
Fred.
Thanks for that helpful post freddy
We went out and got a 2G Surf along with a 4GB Micro Cruzer USB Stick for storage (only £15!)
Must say I'm really impressed with the speed for a 500-ish MHz processor! It's exactly what we were looking for, and it does look really cool!
Guess I'll be sticking around here then!
James.
Thanks for that helpful post freddy
We went out and got a 2G Surf along with a 4GB Micro Cruzer USB Stick for storage (only £15!)
Must say I'm really impressed with the speed for a 500-ish MHz processor! It's exactly what we were looking for, and it does look really cool!
Guess I'll be sticking around here then!
James.
You could always install Windows XP on the machine if you want to do mostly windows support on it. Post to the relevant forum if you decide to!
Alex.