New addition to my computer family

A good while back, Chris Muir said that he didn't expect to see "Oracle running on the EeePC (Oracle XEeePC, or ZeepC)" at OpenWorld.

Well I've never made it to OpenWorld, but have just added 'Middy' to my computer family, an ASUS EEEPC 1001HA.



The specs are typical of a low-end netbook, Intel Atom N270, 1 Gb of RAM (which I'll probably upgrade in due course), 160GB hard drive, wireless, 10" screen, webcam and XP Home. And, amongst the normal bunch of tools and utilities I added, I successfully installed OracleXE and VirtualBox..

The general idea is that I can use it on the train catch up on podcasts and work on material for my blog / website.

One thing I noticed as I set it up is that Windows has a screen, accessed through control panel, where you create users and their passwords. This screen offers to save a 'password hint' and at the XP login screen, there's a little question mark button which will display the hint to remind you of the password. But when you change your password the way I do (Ctrl-Alt-Del, and the Change Password button) there is no opportunity to set a new hint. As such the hint will probably be for a password which is out-of-date by several months or years. I mean, you DO change your password regularly, don't you ?

Of course it is relatively trivial to overwrite XP passwords with a rescue CD, so really the password is no deterrent to thieves, miscreants or James Bond. I guess its mostly there to protect the machine from my wife, kids, friends and colleagues (not necessarily in that order, but I am determined to keep the games off this).