I received my Acer Aspire One (AAO) this weekend.  As I mentioned before, the first order of business was to reload the operating system.  Loading the OS on this class of device - netbook - requires the use of a USB flash drive if you don't have access to an external CD drive.  You can find a tool called USB_MultiBoot_10 at boot-land.net.  That is the tool referenced in the how-to video I found on YouTube.  Even though I wanted to use Vista, I ran through the process as shown in the video for an XP install to familiarize myself with the procedure.  I made it through without any problems using a 4GB Corsair Flash Voyager.  Next I moved to Vista.  The USB Mulitboot tool allows this as well.  The setup is not as straightforward as XP steps without a video as a guide, but I found this post that made the process clearer.  The steps are laid out in the Aug 30 2008, 11:54 PM post by user 'wimb'.

Drivers

This table shows the drivers you'll need for the AAO:

All the XP drivers can be downloaded from the support section of the Acer site.  As shown above, the Vista drivers are included for the sound card and chipset.  The others worked anyway except for the network, both NIC and WiFi.  I found this post that showed where the Atheros WiFi drivers could be found.  The downloads were slow, but worked.  As the post says, after installing the drivers in the "Install Vista 6120 1009.zip" use the other download files to update the last errant device in the device manager.  Under XP, the touchpad software adds the ability to scroll vertically and horizontally using the edges of the touchpad.  The software will not install under Vista.  One other note: when installing the video driver I was asked whether to install it even though the currently installed version was newer.  If you encounter the same thing yourself you'll notice the version number of the one from Acer is a higher revision.  I continued with the installation.

All that's left to do now is download several hundred megabytes of updates.

Not that I post all that often, but I've noticed my "Off Topic" post are adding up.  Rather than continue to post non-technical entries in this blog I've created another one where I can write about the other things in which I'm interested. 

Behold the glory of the Off Topic blog.

I've been wanting a netbook for use around the house to browse the web and watch television.  My wife and I made the switch to HD this past summer.  Since then we only use the television to watch movies because as bad as standard def looks on HD, what comes out of the VCR is worse.  For the few programs that we do watch - Sarah Conner Chronicles, Life, The Office, and eventually Lost and Battlestar Galactica - we catch them online via Hulu.com.  For that and Netflix a netbook looks to be just the ticket.  Also it will be a lot easier to take to China than a full size machine.

I had been pretty wound up about the Dell Mini during the late summer.  I've had a good experience with Dell for all of my work machines.  However, when I saw the specifications and price points for the Mini, not to mention what they did with the keyboard layout I turned elsewhere.  After more reading and comparisons I settled on an Acer Aspire One.  Yesterday I ordered the XP, 1GB RAM, 160GB drive, 6-cell battery version from Buy.com.  I even managed to hunt down a 5% discount coupon.

The first thing I do with any computer out of the box is reload the OS.  This of course makes sure you've rid of any bloat-ware.  The Aspire One doesn't have a CD drive so the OS install requires the creation of a bootable USB stick.  I found a video on YouTube that does a good job of guiding you through all of the steps.  I'm going to prepare the USB stick while I'm waiting for delivery of the machine.  Drivers for the Aspire One can be found on the support section of the Acer site.  I'm also going to give nLite a try.  nLite allows you to create customized installations of Windows.  According to the documentation you can integrate service packs and hotfixes and prevent the installation of unwanted components as well as integrate drivers.  I've never used it before, but this seems like a good opportunity to give it a try.

We're headed back to China for one last ride on the Adoption Express.  We adopted our first daughter in 2003 and our second daughter in 2005.  Both were nine months old when they joined our family.  In 2006 we added a son who was six years old.  Now we are about halfway through the home study to adopt a 5 year old boy.  According to the information we've received about him, today is his birthday.  We wish it could be spent here with us, but the next one will be.  Until then, shengri kuaile, erzi - happy birthday, son. 

I came up with this to get the time portion of a datetime data type formatted in 12 hour time with the AM/PM on the end:

Example outputs look like 10:30 AM or 4:10 PM.

I'm not sure if this is the most efficient way, but it seems to work whether the time has single or two digit hours both before and after noon.  Replace the GETDATE() function, which I've stuck in for demonstration purposes, with your datetime column reference.  If there is a better way to do this please post a comment.