Being tied to the PC is fine when you are in the office everyday but what about when you have to get out, travel or go to meetings. Well email on the phone is pretty standard these days even for those of us without a Blackberry, my Nokia N73 does things fairly well but no qwerty keyboard does mean lots of time pecking out emails on a number pad.

Bluetooth keyboard works well but still stuck with a small screen and its a bit fiddly. Next step up take the laptop, well from the ‘Black screen of Death” post you will see that while my laptop is good for everyday use I found that taking it for occasional use means lugging 5KG plus around not fun plus it is used as an everyday machine so things to unplug etc etc.

What to do what to do, well I looked at updating the phone and going down the pda/phone combo path then I found out about the UMPC. I had looked at the Mini-PC market before but with prices starting at $2000 for one it was just too much, well ASUS has brought out a compact unit called the eeePC at under 1KG running with solid state memory. They come in a few versions the 700 comes with a 7″ screen but I hung out for the eeePC900 which sports a 8.9 screen and 20GB of storage.

Is it any good I hear you ask, well I have had it for just under a week now and it is brilliant (I am typing this entry on it right now) the key board is small, well the whole thing is just under 23 cm wide so those that touch type and have big hands will find it a bit cramped but I two finger type so I find it ok :).

Ok here are some pics top and Bottom View

Next we have a view of it open and a closeup on the keyboard so you can see just how small it is

Ok last two are of the machine in operation, sorry had to turn the flash off to get some detail in the shots.

Ok now that you have seen it you can see that yes it really is a PC, I chose the linux version my first one for a desktop machine even though out servers run CentOS so it takes a little getting used to but overall things are great.

For the browser using firefox , well I use that on the PC’s so no difference there, open office for documents and spreadsheets well I have that on the PC’s as well so again no difference.

Setup problems, well there are none unpacked it and plugged it into the network and it just works everything is pre-loaded. After reading some great tips at eeeuser.com a fantastic community of fellow eeepc owners I converted the desktop over to full KDE and hooked up the nokia so I could use mobile broadband.

Ok well that is it for now I will keep you posted on how things go.

Well things have continued to grow at WEBY Systems we are now up to 6 servers with the seventh about to come online this week. Our main focus has still been on US based hardware mainly due to the cost of bandwidth in Australia is still astronomical compared to the US suppliers. The situation is getting better but still has a long ways to go.

All servers are now running with the latest version of cPanel and are finally converted over to maildir, no issues reported after the move so that went smoothly. The next stage is up upgrade all servers to php5 and MySQL5  we are currently doing testing to ensure the move can be done without any interruptions to service for existing clients.

Everyone has now been migrated across to the new hosting pans and those customers on the old legacy plans will for the most part have been upgraded as part of the process, if we have missed anyone please let us know.

Well no issues problems to report so back to work for me more news soon

We have all heard of the ‘Blue Screen of Death’ (BSoD) that afflicts all us long suffering windows users but how about the ‘Black Screen of Death’ well not Death I suppose but almost anyway. Desktop users will be unfamiliar but those of you that use a laptop will have at least seen it. Unfortunately for my long serving Toshiba it came on the weekend. Continue reading this post…

Well as I promised the site is undergoing a update it took a little longer than I expected to get started (customer jobs take first priority) but things are progressing quickly. All the existing content has been copied across and we are now in the process of migrating the back-end systems to the new databases.

As part of the update we have also reduced the number of hosting plan configurations from 5 to 3. When we started we had three levels but we introduced two intermediate plans to give customers some more options, while this looked good at first it added to the complexity facing customers.

The new plans are based on out three most common settings and cover 80% of our existing customer base so most users will not be affected by the changes. Of the others the majority are on the old email plan and only have a holding page and are using the plan just for personalised email addresses, these customers will remain as is for the moment. There will be some new discounted package deals as well (hosting, domain, design) which will be released next month, including a business card package that will replace the old email plan.

The main hosting website weby.com.au is about to get a major update. The existing website has grown over time and some sections are in need of a rewrite.

Now that the site builder and shopping cart have been completed we will rebuild the entire website on that platform, so in addition to the new look you will also be able to see the software on an active website.

In addition to the update there will also be a regular newsletter (I’ll be trying for Quarterly) to  keep people up to date with the goings on at WEBY Systems. Of course the information will be posted here as well but if you prefer to get the update in your inbox that option will be available. Anyone will be able to sign up to the newsletter by following the link on the new site layout.