My Sylvania G netbook.

If the tips in this entry help you, please send me an E-mail message letting me know!  I GREATLY appreciate feedback!)

A lot of professional reviewers out there seem to have nothing but bad comments on the original (non-Meso) Sylvania G netbook.  I bought one of these puppies for $300 and felt like I was getting quite the steal.  Then again, I’m a Linux user, so I feel more “at home” with a Linux laptop (though my primary line of work is obviously fixing all the problems under Microsoft’s OS every day of my life).  I love my Sylvania G.  It’s tiny, light, the battery lasts forever, people look at it and think I’m watching a DVD on a portable DVD player rather than computing, its wireless actually works far better than I expected…the list goes on.  Granted, it lacks some software that I’d like, but for its primary purposes (Internet browsing, light office apps, maybe an MP3 here and there), it does the job beautifully.  I wish it had all the shortcuts to all the control panels available, but they’re not there because the 800×480 WVGA screen can’t handle them vertically; I’ll tell you how to bypass the vertical issue in a minute.

The main reason I’m writing this is not to explain why my G is so awesome, but rather how to make it that way.  The number one complaint about the G is its postage-stamp sized mouse trackpad, and believe it or not, the laptop comes with the tools needed to fix the insane acceleration that it comes with by default (no more “buy a USB mouse if you’re going to buy this laptop” complaints!)  The biggest advantage of the G over the practically identical Everex Cloudbook (which the G is basically a rebranded version of) is that unlike the Cloudbook, with its moronic “mouse buttons on the left side of the unit, mouse trackpad on the right” layout, the G has the touchpad assembly below the keyboard, WITH THE BUTTONS IMMEDIATELY BESIDE THE PAD.  That leaves the excessive tracking speed (where you can just lift your finger off the pad and the mouse moves two inches across the seven-inch LCD) as the only remaining issue, and HERE IS HOW TO FIX THE SYLVANIA G NETBOOK POINTER TRACKING SPEED, STEP BY STEP!

1. Log in.  You need to be at your desktop with nothing open to do what I’m about to tell you!

2. Right-click on the background.  Click on “Create Launcher…”

3. For the name, type something to the effect of “Mouse settings”

4. For the command, type (without quotes) “gnome-mouse-properties”  Click OK.

5. Double-click on your new “Mouse settings” icon.  Fix the Acceleration and Sensitivity sliders to the way you want them.  Acceleration controls how much faster the pointer gets when you move your finger more quickly; Sensitivity is the raw tracking speed of the mouse.  Move them around until you get the pointer going as slow as you want it to be.  (The settings will change immediately as you move the sliders, so you don’t have to worry about the bottom half of the panel being off-screen until you’re done.)

6. While you’re here, you might as well change double-click and drag-and-drop thresholds if you want to do so.

7. You’ll need both hands to perform this stunt…here’s how you can move a window in Linux even if the title bar is off-screen:  hold ALT and you can drag the window by clicking ANYWHERE!  So, put the pointer in the middle of the control panel, hold ALT, then hold the left mouse button too, and finally, move the touchpad UP with any spare finger you can find.

8.  Now, you can click Close, which you couldn’t even see before!

Now that your mouse is fixed, you can use the machine normally!  Whew.

If you’re a Linux user who wants a command prompt, right-click on the desktop background again, “create launcher” and fill the name AND command with the word “xterm” (no quotes).  You’ll get a terminal launcher from which to do the next tricks…

Want access to the “root” account so you don’t have to “sudo” every single command you need to run as root?  Pop open an xterm, type “sudo bash” and enter your password to launch a root shell.  This is fine on a temporary basis, but I went a step further and typed “passwd root” at said root shell and made a root password.  Voila!  Root account access via “su” instead of sudo.

I really REALLY hate the dock at the bottom of the screen, primarily because it hogs up space you desperately need on such a tiny laptop.  Here’s how to make that dock GO AWAY and not load anymore.  The dock is called “wbar” and if you hop into a root shell, you can disable it with these steps (and find out how to turn stuff off that you otherwise might not have known):

1. Open an xterm.  Either “sudo bash” or “su” to get to a root shell, depending on your setup.

2. Type “cd /etc/xdg/autostart”

3. Type “ls” and you’ll see all these little things that automatically start when you log in, like the battery meter and volume control.  Notice “wbar.desktop” in there?  That’s the culprit.

4. Type this and you’ll have effectively disabled that dock at the bottom: “mv wbar.desktop ../autostart.disabled/” (remember that you can hit [tab] in the middle of typing something to have Linux try to complete part or all of what you’re typing.  If it does nothing, type more.)

5. Type “exit” twice and the xterm will close.  Log out and back in, and that pesky dock is GONE.

Did you know that your computer comes with applications that ARE NOT in the list under the gOS menu?  A couple of handy things to put in the “command” part of the “create launcher” box include “gnome-sudoku” and “gnome-sound-recorder” and “gnome-calculator”.  If you get really bored, open an xterm, type “gnome-” and hit [tab] twice.  You’ll see all the GNOME programs that gOS has installed, and you might see some program names that you didn’t expect.  That’s how I found Sudoku, Calculator, and the sound recorder application!

While you’re here, create a launcher for “gedit” on the desktop.  It’s a text editor like Notepad on Windows, and if you need to jot something down fast, it’s much better than waiting for OpenOffice.org Writer to start.

For $300, and with my tips above, the original Sylvania G is an absolute gem.  You simply can’t beat its value unless you drop another $100 on an Acer Aspire One (what I originally wanted but couldn’t justify purchasing.)  Once you slow down the mouse and add some launchers for some helpful applications, the G starts to look far better than it may have on display in the store.  I don’t know about the Meso, but I don’t care, because I’ve found the perfect laptop for my needs and that’s the end of the story!  I absolutely LOVE my G!

Once again, please send me feedback if this helps you out!