A week into Road Tour 2010.  After a few days, we found sharing one laptop computer just wasn’t working.  Getting too fat in coffee shops, reading too many magazines in public libraries that we wouldn’t ordinarily read, etc.  We each needed a computer.

We’ve been budgeting for a netbook computer for just this purpose for some time.  Obviously, the time is now.  On our way out of Montana, we stopped at Costco, picked up an HP Mini, and tossed it in the trunk.

That night, I fired it up, upon which it went through the excruciating and dreaded Windozews 7 setup procedure.  After grabbing all the updates and replacing Internet Explodrer with Firefox, I backed up to external disk, shut it down and packed it, since the Ubuntu laptop had been thoroughly shared while I was occupied with the onerous Windows task.  Meanwhile, I downloaded the Windows 7 recovery disk ISO (since Microsoft hasn’t figured out how to make a recovery flash drive: Windows can only deal with CD/DVD drives) to write onto a memory stick, and the Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook edition ISO, expecting a few days of fiddling to get things right.

But, the next night, we broke out both machines, turned on the HP Mini, and something called HP QuickWeb came up, with a desktop menu that offered Mail, Web, Photos, etc.  Down in the lower corner of the task bar was an icon labeled “Boot Windows.”  We didn’t click on that one.  There was a familiar-looking antenna icon, which we did click, getting a list of wireless networks, and with one click, we were on the ‘Net, with a Firefox-looking browser, all we really needed.

The Nice Person was delighted, quoting the line from Jurassic Park paraphrased in the title, and the Unix Curmudgeon was delighted to not have to spend evenings repartitioning, installing, and tweaking Ubuntu.  The amazing part of all this is that HP QuickWeb is a carefully kept secret, as if HP doesn’t want Microsoft to find out that the machine is really a Linux machine that just happens to be able to dual boot Windows.  The automatic firstboot setup of Windows is a red herring.  Why would anyone want to click on the Windows start button if they can do everything they need to do with a Netbook within a few seconds of turning on the machine.  And, like Ubuntu, if the wireless network you connected to last is still detectable, it quietly connects you without asking.  It simply does not get in your way, and when you are ready to move on, it shuts down promptly, without the “do not touch your computer while Windows is installing and configuring updates” that we’ve encountered the few times we had to use Windows.

I still have the Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook Edition flash drive to fall back on, though I need to get a bigger flash drive to make it useful as a stand-alone system. HP QuickWeb is adequate.  Thanks, HP.