I got myself a “netbook” the other day. For those who haven’t been paying attention, netbooks are basically small laptop computers; while there’s no “official” definition of a netbook (just as there’s not really an official definition of what’s a “laptop” vs a “notebook”) they’re generally thought of as having no optical (DVD/CD) drive, an 11 inch or smaller display, very lightweight, not a lot of memory in them, and running a considerably less powerful processor.

Many netbooks don’t even come with Windows installed, choosing instead to go with a Linux OS of one brand or another.

I bought an Asus EeePC 1005HA. It’s a great little machine, though a bit pricier than many in the netbook category (one of the big attractions of netbooks is that you can often buy one for as little as 200-250 bucks).

I chose this model primarily for one reason- it’s among the very tip-top leaders in battery life. I was down to this or the Toshiba NB205, which also has tremendous battery life. Both of these units are claimed (by their manufacturers) to be able to run “all day”, up to 10 hours.

Netbooks generally have wireless networking built in, and many also have Bluetooth; of course both of these things run your battery down faster and it’s pretty tough to get the full 10.5 hours of runtime that the makers claim, but for the 1005HA I’ve found that I have been able to run it for several hours (and I’m talking like 7+ hours easy) while doing web browsing, which uses more power through the wireless networking.

The 1005HA has a 10 inch screen. I almost went with the EeePC that has an 11 inch screen, but it runs a different processor and in the end I decided that the main thing I was buying it for was portability- hence get the smallest, lightest one I can live with. The 10 inch screen serves me just fine, though I think if I had crappier eyesight I might have wanted the 11 inch model. (I don’t wear glasses and still see reasonably well even after a few hours reading, so I’m lucky there.)

The other thing that the Asus model has that Toshiba doesn’t is as close to a regular keyboard as possible. I write a LOT and am a touch typist, so a good feel to the keyboard was very important to me. The Toshiba uses a “chiclet” keyboard that I was not crazy about, but the Asus has one that’s basically a normal keyboard, just one that’s about 90 or 95% of the size of a standard keyboard.

How do I like it? I love it. The main factor is the portability, and it’s incredibly small and lightweight- less than half the weight of my old laptop (which is almost 10 years old now) and thin, too. The power supply is small and lightweight, too, with the brick in the middle of the cord being smaller than most.

Unfortunately, this means the power supply takes longer to recharge the battery- I ran it down to almost dead and after being plugged in for 7+ hours while the computer was turned off, the battery still wasn’t fully recharged. This makes sense, though- it takes a long time to run the battery down, and the power supply runs at a relatively low 9 volts or so.

The screen is plenty bright and sharp. A higher resolution display would be nice (it’s 1024X600) but it’s plenty serviceable. It came with the standard 1 gig of memory and I’ve been okay with how it runs on that, although I’m waiting for a 2-gig memory stick to upgrade it (you can run them with 1 or 2 gigs of memory and 2 is said to significantly improve performance).

I waited to order mine until Windows 7 was out; netbooks are still shipping with Windows XP and pretty much have ignored Vista. I use a computer at work with Vista and while it’s okay, I prefer XP; there’s really nothing wrong with it and that’s what I run at home. (Why upgrade when there’s nothing in the new version you need?) The OS works fine on the netbook and despite the fact that it’s a slower CPU, it’s actually as fast or faster than my home machine on many tasks. (Which is more a sign that it’s time to upgrade my desktop, which is some years old now.)

Finding a good case for it was actually more trouble than I thought. I wanted something with a harder shell sides because the whole point of this little netbook is that it’s super-portable; I want to be able to throw it into a backpack and haul it onto airplanes in carryons, take it to work, whatever. I found a kind of cool hardshell cover for it that I really like on the Toshiba site when I was deciding on which computer to buy.

I later found the same case at Fry’s for the same price as Toshiba sells it for. It’s not a full hardshell, but it offers good-enough protection plus the way it’s built you can use it as a little desk for your netbook and depending on which way you turn it, it’ll slope the thing away or towards you, depending on what you need (if you’re sitting up in bed, or sitting on a couch, or whatever).

On top of that, the case is “checkpoint friendly“, which is a pretty big deal if you fly a lot. Checkpoint friendly cases are ones that are transparent to the X-ray machines, meaning you don’t have to haul the computer out completely; just pull out the little case and lay it on the tray to go through the machine. This one meets the definition of a “sleeve”, so it works just fine.

The Asus also ships with a pretty standard neoprene sleeve with a zipper on it. It’s okay for basic use and of course weighs next to nothing, which is pretty cool.

In addition to the case and the 2gig memory, I bought two other accessories. One is a fairly normal USB DVD drive; it can run over a single USB plug but runs better if you use both of its USB plugs at the same time. It uses both USB connections to get more power. No batteries or external cords; it runs strictly on power from the computer. I don’t plan on traveling with it frequently; if I want movies I’ll just save them to the hard drive on the netbook or to an SD memory card (the netbook has a built-in memory card reader for SD/MMC cards, which is really nice when it comes to transferring pictures from a digital camera that uses those cards).

But for ease of installing stuff onto the computer, or as a “just in case” type of thing, it’s nice to have the DVD drive.

The other accessory that I bought was a mouse. I came across a returned Microsoft notebook/portable mouse at Fry’s for 33 bucks, which was a pretty good deal (this particular model is usually more like 40 to 50 bucks).

Most of your “portable” laptop mice have a little plug that goes into a USB port, but this one is Bluetooth, so no additional plugs are needed. It connects up more or less instantly to the computer and works like a charm. I love it; it’s one of the best mice I’ve ever used. They say that the battery life is very long on these, which is good; it’s also small and lightweight and comes with its own little neoprene carrying case.

Only downside is that if I ever want to use it with something else, that something else has to be Bluetooth-enabled. Oh well.

All this stuff set me back around 500 bucks, which is a pretty amazing deal. I love the netbook; its performance is just fine and it’s so much smaller and lightweight that it saves me a lot of hassle. Taking it with on trips is the default, whereas before I would have to strongly consider how much I really wanted/needed to have a computer along.

I’m flying to Houston this coming weekend and so I’ll get a chance to really try it out on a plane for movies for the first time. If I think of it I’ll update on how it works out.

After having heard a lot about how nice the Giants’ new park in San Francisco is, I finally got down there.

I’m…. underwhelmed.

Don’t get me wrong- it’s a really cool park. I love how it sits right on the water and how the fence comes in from CF to the right field foul pole, and the kayakers hoping for HR balls in the water beyond.

I also really like how they designed it so that the vast majority of the seats in the upper decks have a nice view of the water. That’s cool.

The design choices they made are cool, too- very much like Safeco Field, with lots of brick and nice dark-green-painted steel girders and structural supports.

But we went on a little walkabout around the whole stadium, and some parts of it were fairly lame. The concourses were actually pretty bad- quite narrow and crowded, far worse than Safeco’s gets. We were at a game that started at 6 so perhaps it’s worse than normal with a lot of people ordering food at the park, but man, those walkways were really small and really jammed.

When you come through the RF walkway there’s one part where it’s so narrow I’m surprised it met codes.

And those concourses are just too… busy. With color. Everywhere you look, there’s signs and advertisements (and I mean EVERYWHERE) and they’re all in garish colors (granted, the Giants primary color is orange, so you’re going to see a ton of that) and there’s just too much stuff that’s too cute by about half.

Instead of looking old-school advertisingish, it just looks like someone with ADHD went off and put up signs willy-nilly.

The seats were okay. One thing I liked was that the second deck hangs low over the 100 level. Some people don’t like it because from the concourse it cuts off your view a bit, but I liked it because it means those seats are pretty good seats. They also continue all the way around behind home plate, where at Safeco the spot directly behind home is taken up by the giant press box.

On the downside, those seats range in price from $68 to $85 a game! Holy overpricing, Batman! At Safeco they range from $65 to 70 for individual game pricing, and are just $45 if you buy them as season tickets.

In fact, every “premium” seat at AT&T costs considerably more than its counterpart in Safeco. In the Giants’ defense, they financed their park themselves; I’m not sure about land costs but I know that the actual construction was pretty much all privately paid for by the ownership group. So in a way, I can handle them charging it- it’s their gig, they can do what they want.

And the upper deck seats are priced much closer to Safeco’s. They’re a bit closer to the field, but they’re also a bit higher off the ground, so it’s kind of a wash there.

All in all, I wonder if maybe my impression of AT&T was influenced by the weather. August 1st and it was about 55 degrees, breezy, and with a leeeetle bit of mist/drizzle falling. Ginger and I earlier were walking around town (we walked from our hotel at Union Square Park through Chinatown to North Beach for some food, then back to the hotel and then down to the ballpark) and got a bit chilly. Then again, that’s just San Francisco for you, I guess.

Oh, that reminds me- AT&T park is a bit of a hike from much of anything. From our hotel to the park felt like it was roughly equivalent in distance as from walking all the way down from Belltown to Safeco (I know I’m comparing it to Seattle a lot, but that’s what I know best so that’s why I use that as a comparison) except that from Belltown to Safeco, you go through areas that have stuff going on and the park is right on the edge of Pioneer Square.

In SF, you’re walking through a heck of a lot of nothing. It seems like the area is going to recover, but right now there’s not a lot of anything distinctive there.

Maybe on a bright sunny day with mid-70s I’d like AT&T Park better, but right now, I don’t think so. It’s a great park, way better than a lot of the older-school parks out there (and FAR better than Candlestick), but given the choice I’ll stick with Safeco Field.

I think I’ve mentioned here before how filthy the air was in Beijing when I visited there a few years ago. I came across a link to a fantastic web site that demonstrates quite clearly (haha) the extent of the problem.

See this page, by Michael Zhao of the Asia Society, for a day-by-day diary of just how scummy the air can get in Beijing.

What’s amazing is how you can definitely see the difference between days when the air is clean but there’s just some clouds, and the days when it’s supposedly “clear” but it looks like it’s so foggy you would have to slow down when you drive.

Beijing sits in a big bowl, so the air throughout the rest of China isn’t always this bad (though in some cities it’s worse!) If you’ve ever thought about visiting, one consideration might be whether or not you have asthma and can take the disgusting air.

Man, I’ve been slacking on blogging lately- at least here. I’ve still been writing my FAA-related blogs on www.faafollies.com but not so much here.

So here’s a little tidbit for travelers. Low cost carriers!

An LCC is an airline that’s basically like your Southwest or AirTran- one that typically flies a single class of jetliner, has higher load factors than “legacy” carriers, and doesn’t offer much in service. The good news is that their tickets are frequently much less expensive than a typical carrier (sometimes called “mainline” in addition to “legacy” or “network” carriers.)

GG and I flew on a couple of LCC to/from Phuket/Bangkok on our last trip to Thailand. Ordinarily we would take Thai Airways, since they have a reciprocal deal with United, but she doesn’t get the discount since she’s on furlough right now.

From Bangkok to Phuket, we flew on Air Asia. They’re an aggressively growing LCC, based primarily in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. They also have “Thai Air Asia” and “Indonesia Air Asia”, but they’re all branded the same, use the same website and advertising, and the difference is primarily for technical reasons having to do with being owned/operated in the particular nation in question.

Air Asia seemed easy to deal with upfront. Like many LCC in other nations, they tend to have a base rate for the ticket, and then tack on additional fees for anything and everything under the sun that they can. Want to check a bag? Pay extra. Want to board the aircraft before everyone else? Pay extra. Want a predesignated seat assignment? Pay extra.

In our case, since we travel pretty light (a backpack and a rollaboard carryon each), we can get by pretty easy on the fees. I did do the “Hot Seat” service, which costs an extra 250 Thai baht (about 7 bucks). I was pretty disappointed in it. Not the seat picking; that was nice, we snagged row 2 (the first three rows are their “Hot Seats”) so getting off was quick and easy when we arrived.

But Air Asia also advertises “Xpress Boarding” with the seat selection- and that was a crock of shit. The problem is that the plane was at what they call a “remote gate”, meaning you go through the terminal to a gate… and then instead of going down a jetway onto the plane, you go out a door onto the ramp area, get on a bus, and are driven out to where the plane is parked.

In our case that was about a 5 minute ride across the airport to a big open area where several of their planes were parked. That alone wasn’t so bad, but their gate agents did absolutely NOTHING to keep order in the line. As a result, this asshole with a big group from France cut in the line right in between Ginger and I. The bus was a crazy mad crush of people… just a real goatroap.

As a result, if we can help it, we’ll be skipping Air Asia until we hear they’ve gotten their stuff together. It’s kind of a cultural thing- Luis mentioned the differences between different nations a few days back in his blog- but I don’t like having to put up with it.

From Phuket back to Bangkok, we flew on Nok Air. They use the “old” Bangkok airport, Don Muang. (The newer airport, Suvarnabhumi, is only a few years old.) They were considerably better; I even left a couple of brand-new suits in a carryon in the plane’s closet and didn’t remember them until we’d gotten to the hotel, by which time everyone had gone home for the evening. The next day, I called the airline and they wound up tracking down the bag and holding it for me at the airport; a 400 baht (11 dollar) taxi ride out and back and I had my new suits (I bought two while I was in Phuket).

One thing about LCC; they tend to not be listed in the big international computer databases for flights. For example, if you go to Travelocity, you’re using the reservation system that started life (decades ago) as “SABRE“, the computer/res system that was started by and used to be owned by American Airlines. They later spun SABRE off onto its own, and it’s grown and evolved into the database and the Travelocity travel agency.

(SABRE has an interesting history. I used to use it back when it was still a command-line interface type of system, and you had to know the various commands for searching into the database. It was pretty cool.)

Right now, if I do a search on Travelocity for a round trip from Seattle to Denver, Southwest Airlines doesn’t come up. They don’t pay the same fees as the mainline carriers do, so they’re not always listed in online databases.

There is a terrific web page at Wikipedia, though, that lists LCC for the entire world. This list of low-cost carriers goes by country, so say you’re planning a trip from Singapore to Bali, Indonesia (as we are for next month).

You go to the listing and look for the LCC in Singapore and find Jetstar; Tiger Airways; and Valuair. A quick read of the Wikipedia articles on each airline shows that Jetstar owns Valuair now, so there are effectively two LCC listed for Singapore.

Since we’re going round trip, I also look at Indonesia, and find multiple carriers. Now I’ve got a nice listing of carriers to search to see what kind of ticket prices I can get.

The price difference can be significant. For our proposed dates of flying SIN-DPS (Singapore to Denpasar Airport on Bali) on April 21, and DPS-SIN on April 25, the web site Kayak.com (which, by the way, I strongly recommend as one of the very best airfare searching sites- they not only hit the big services like Travelocity and Expedia, but also search the airlines’ own reservation/pricing services) produces round-trip pricing of $535 on Malaysian Airlines.

Jetstar, on the other hand, has a SIN-DPS flight for 80 Singapore dollars, which converts to $52.55 US dollars. They don’t have any flights available on the 25th, but Lion Airways (an Indonesian carrier) has a flight for 49,000 Indonesian rupiahs- which converts to an almost-too-low-to-believe $4.26 US! The flight schedule sucks, though- midnight departure, 3am arrival in Singapore. Yuck, no wonder it’s so cheap.

Lion Air’s site is a perfect example, though, of what you might be getting in an LCC. They have a web page that brags:

Circumcision of 1500 kids at Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

On June 30, 2004, Lion Air celebrated the third anniversary by holding a mass circumcision for more than 1500 kids lived around Jakarta area at Taman Mini Indonesia Indah. The event was being noted at Museum Record of Indonesia.

Now, maybe something went awry in the translation… but I suspect it means exactly what it says. So yeah, you probably should consider these airlines’ safety records and cultural attitudes at least a little bit!

The point here is that you can’t search just the typical web sites and come up with the best fares; you have to do a little digging, but they’re out there if you have a good starting point.

Another great way to search is to dig around on the net for the web page for the airport in question you’re heading to/from. This way, you can find (for example) flights between Singapore and Bali. More importantly, you get the names of all the airlines doing those flights- so you can go to their individual web sites and keep looking for a good deal on airfare.

Now, all this might seem like a lot of work, but when you compare a total round-trip airfare possibility of about 57 dollars (like I found above) to over 500, you realize pretty quick that it can pay off to do some searching!