Green Tech Girl

Yes, believe it or not, I am typing this from an actual CherryPal computer. It arrived today in a small black box similar in style and size to a classic iPod box. It is extremely small! The carefully folded CherryPal t-shirt took up most of the box. There is supposed to be a single sheet of directions (to save on paper) but I did not receive any with my package. Fortunately, I had gotten an email from CherryPal telling me how to login.

The CherryPal machine itself is super small and compact. It could have been a PDA circa 1995. (Remember the Apple Newtons?) It has two USB ports, a monitor port, and a headphone/speaker output. (Alas, no line-in or microphone input.) No CD/DVD or any other extras (this is, after all, supposed to be a lean, mean green machine).

When you first plug in the machine, a somewhat unfriendly looking login prompt greets you. This is where it’s helpful to have the email that tells you what the login is! Once logged in, you are greeted by a very plain Linux desktop. This is a apparently a specially-built Xubuntu distribution, which uses the lightweight Xfce desktop. The background is just a plain blue. Given the cute CherryPal packaging on the box and the machine itself, it would have been nice to carry that theme over to the desktop (a small wallpaper graphic would not have sacrificed too much disk space), but it’s not a deal-breaker. I’ll put my own background on there soon enough.

I immediately tried to break the machine by using not only a USB hub but a wireless mouse. The USB hub works fine; the wireless mouse does not. I have heard other reports that wireless mice and keyboards do not fare well with the CherryPal, so be forewarned. Perhaps there’s a setting or something; we shall see.

What did work right out of the box was the wi-fi. I immediately got the machine to recognize my wireless network and it connected very easily. I have to say, after fiddling with wi-fi on my various Linux laptops with much pain and grief involved, this was nothing short of miraculous to me. Score one for the CherryPal.

Using a USB hub, I was actually able to plug-in my digital camera and download the photos I just took of my new CherryPal onto the CherryPal. The operating system mounted the digital camera automatically and I was able to move the photos over manually. Not bad.

I have yet to try out any of the installed applications other than Firefox, but a good assortment of software is preinstalled, including Firefox (obviously), games, and a word processor. As with the Xubuntu distribution, AbiWord is the word processor provided and not OpenOffice.org’s word processor (my preference), but maybe I’ll give good ole AbiWord a try for once.

Firefox appears to be a bit slow on the CherryPal. I’m not sure if that’s my Internet connection or the memory that Firefox can take up. Some pages I’ve tried have been excrutiating to load. I’ll probably install another browser to see if it’s Firefox that’s being a memory hog: I find myself using Seamonkey on my Linux machines more often than Firefox lately due to the bloat. Firefox, for whatever the reason, is just not as good on Linux as it is on Windows.

I have yet to see any evidence of the “cloud computing” advertised with the CherryPal, but perhaps I’ll find out more about that later. One thing I was happy to see installed was the Synaptic Package Manager, which means I can easily install most open source software with the click of a button. With a Linux box, 8 gigs is more than enough to install most needed programs and still have some space left over for basic documents.

One thing I will say for the CherryPal – it sure is quiet. Quiet, as in, completely quiet. No moving parts really does mean it’s a silent machine. That may not mean much to some, but I’m one of those strange finicky people when it comes to noise. I have an Acer laptop with an insanely loud fan that likes to turn the laptop into a mini washing machine at times. I truly love the silence of the CherryPal. It’s so much more peaceful.

Well, those are my first impressions. I’ll be posting more here as I go along. If you are willing to plunk money down for a CherryPal, knowing that the company is still a bit unstable and the machine may still have some kinks, you can order one here. Use my promo code CPP235 to get $10 off the purchase price.

P.S. Just as I was getting ready to upload this article, my monitor turned all purple, and I can barely see the desktop with strange bands of darker purple blocking much of the screen. I’m wondering if it’s an issue with my monitor or the CherryPal, or combination of the two: Perhaps my monitor doesn’t like the low power output of the CherryPal. I’ll reboot and post an update soon. Update: Rebooting the machine did not fix the monitor, but unplugging it did. We’ll see if it happens again.

Tags: CherryPal, Linux, Xfce, Xubuntu