RSS In An Email Client: Netbooks And NewsGator Make It Easy, You Can't Deny It

When the Reno, NV Apple Store personnel told me two Fridays ago that my MacBook Air would be repaired in 3-5 days, they apparently meant 3-5 weekdays, because the long-awaited ‘it’s done’ phone call finally came last Friday afternoon. Then again, maybe everyone there was just distracted by the impending launch of the iPhone 3GS (now with a missing space between the G and S!). Yes, I drove to Reno right away to pick up my precious, after first confirming with store representatives that they were experiencing a temporary lull in the generally busy day (which would likely end when folks got out of work at 5PM and rushed in to claim their pre-orders). And yes, I’ve got a brand new display attached to a brand new hinge, all of which is working fine again. The Apple repair folks didn’t even accidentally wipe my HDD clean

Initially, I’d planned on just monitoring my emails through Gmail’s web interface and entering blog posts directly into EDN’s proprietary publishing tool while the MacBook Air (my primary work system) was in the shop. However, over the weekend I found myself with a few spare hours on my hand as I recovered from jet lag, and I’d long wanted to get Office 2000 on my netbook anyway. So I went ahead and tossed onto the MSI Wind U100’s HDD the Outlook database set I’d just-in-case archived prior to turning in the MacBook Air for repair.

After using my netbook on a continuous basis for nearly a week, I’m pleasantly surprised with its capabilities on fundamental computing tasks. Keep in mind, though, that I’m comparing it against a virtualized single-core copy of Windows XP running on the underpowered Apple system. Office 2000 is noticeably snappier on the Wind, especially when another CPU-intensive process (such as an AVG Anti-Virus Free or Windows Defender scan or database upgrade, or a Windows Update) is concurrently running. The integrated keyboard is (marginally) acceptable for sustained typing tasks; then again I’ve got fairly small hands and fingers, along with a long history of using small form factor systems (Dell’s 320Sli, HP’s OmniBook 600CT, NEC’s Versa UltraLite, and Fujitsu’s Lifebook-P2040).

The LCD’s LED backlight gives it excellent quality; well-known photo gear reviewer gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up to a functionally comparable display in a Dell netbook earlier this year. The biggest issue I struggled with here involved resolution; while the LCD’s 1,024 horizontal pixels were sufficient, its 600-pixel vertical resolution was often inadequate. In fact, with Google Maps (for example), I was unable to scroll the UI to a point where I could close out a location pop-up box; this particular website’s design assumed a higher minimum vertical resolution than was actually available.

Although I put Office on the netbook, I wasn’t willing to devote sufficient time to fully load up the system with programs, tweak settings to match those on the MacBook Air’s virtualized Windows build, etc. As such, I thought that instead of installing NewsGator Inbox, I’d try out the POP3 access to NewsGator’s server (i.e. NewsGator Email Edition) that I’d mentioned to y’all before. It worked great (to the extent of the earlier mentioned limitations versus the fuller-featured NewsGator Inbox alternative). For some unknown reason, the first time I did a download a few hundred posts that I’d previously accessed came tumbling down again, but that was only a one-time glitch. Whenever Mozilla Thunderbird 3 exits beta, I’m ready to make the jump away from Outlook.