While there are many reviews about netbooks after a few days of use, you hardly find any indication on how the person continues to use it. We all know that new toys are cool in the beginning, but how do new toys affect our habits after a certain period of time?

Over the years, I’ve used numerous devices for different purposes. My first true gadget was a 3com Palm Personal, which I later upgraded to a Pro, so I could use it with my cell phone (infrared) and use the internet on the go. I ten went on to a Handspring Visor Platinum. It was not until I got an iPaq 2210 PocketPC when I started getting into portable video and software development, and after a while, I was forced to get a few devices people requested support for. When I got a PSP, the iPaq was the first gadget that ended up in the drawer next to the Handspring. Due to the bigger screen, as well as the better video format, the PSP became my gadget of choice to watch movies on the go. Bulkier than the iPaq, but it made up for it with the bigger screen. When Apple came out with the first Video iPod (5G) I needed one to make DVD Catalyst work with it (I love this job) and opted for the 60GB model. Eventhough the iPod had a smaller screen, it replaced the PSP due to the storage size. It was great to carry around 1 device filled with more video content than I could watch in a week of non-stop viewing. 10 seasons of Friends, Southpark, Futurama etc, and still have lots of music on there to boot.Next came the Microsoft Zune 30. The first Zune. While it features a slightly bigger screen, it never managed to replace my iPod. The colors looked bad and washed out, and the Zune desktop software was (still is in my opinion) a resource hog and a pain to navigate. I picked it up, made it work with DVD Catalyst, and then it went straight to the gadget drawer.

After the Zune came the Apple iPod Touch. If you have used DVD Catalyst for a while, and followed the website(s) you know how much I love my iPod Touch. While it’s only the 8GB first model, it has replaced all my portable devices with it’s capabilities. It even replaced my computer for answering support questions at nights. Bigger screen, better video quality, and while not as much room as my 60GB iPod, it still has room enough to fit a season of 24 on it with room for a few apps.

Unfortunately, the one thing that caused me to look into a replacement for it is due to some “google labs” options I use in Gmail for providing support. While I type all support questions by hand, there are a few things that are always the same, so I use something called “canned responses” for those whenever needed. Reset DVD Catalyst to it’s defaults, and a thank you note for a PayPal purchase with the link (paypal doesn’t send these out by itself, so I have to do that manually). Unfortunately, for some reason, this did not work in gmail/safari on the iPod Touch, so for sending out those emails, I always had to go back to my computer to answer.

So, because of the Gmail issue, and because I wanted one since they came out, I picked up an Asus eeePC.

I wrote a few articles already on the eeePC, please refer to those for initial impressions, and impressions after a few weeks.

2 Months later.

The eeePC has settled in nicely into my life.

It has replaced my gadgets for the most part. It plays video’s in whatever format I have, and because it runs a full webbrowser (firefox) I have no issues using it for work-emails. During the day, it sits next to my development system, and I use it for emails and non-work stuff, such as checking certain websites for news (slashdot for example). During software testing, when my development system is basically in use, I use it for minor development stuff, and at nights, when I turn off my workstation, I close the screen of the eeePC to put it in standby, and have it close by when watching TV. Once in while I pick it up to check for support emails, or look something up about what’s on TV and such.

When I go somewhere, I usually take it with me, depending on where I have to go and what I have to do. It allows me to keep myself entertained, or do work (if an internet connection is available).

While it has a few games on it, the most used application on the eee is Firefox. It’s always open, and even when the netbook wakes up from standby, it responds fast.

Essential upgrades:

The only issues I have with the eeePC is the out-of-the-box performance and battery life.

I picked up the cheapest 8.9″ harddrive-version of the eeePCs, the 900HD, so it came with the smaller battery. I replaced that with one I picked up from eBay. The replacement battery ($60 or so) is quite big, and sticks out at the back, which is a bit annoying, but the increased batterylife is well worth it. With the defalt battery, it was not capable of playing 1 full movie. The battery ran out near the end of a 2hour movie. The new battery enables me to watch about 4 hours of videos.

The hard drive, while decent in size, was quite slow. The seagate 160gb I replaced with a 320GB 7200rpm Western Digital, and the whole system is a lot more responsive. Especially with Firefox getting bigger and bigger, and a virus scanner running in the background, the difference in speed is phenomenal.

The memory. The eee came with 1GB of memory, which is plenty for Windows XP, however, with the video card taking a share, as well as a few startup programs such as a virus scanner, you will notice a slowdown when you have a few programs running (or firefox with 10 tabs open) I expanded this to 2GB, and everything feels a lot smoother. Switching between running programs is a breeze.

The size:

The 8.9″ eeePC is just the right size for me. The screen is big enough to show me information I need and use without having to scroll, and the physical size of the device is just small enough to make it easy to pick up.

All in all, I’m quite satisfied with my $250 netbook, now if only it had a dual-core processor and a better video card. I hope they come out with a 9″ ION based netbook.

*Save State. This stores the current conversion queue and the current device queue on your computer. This can be used to save the current state of DVD Catalyst so you can do something else, (a different conversion, or play a game or something)

*Load State. This loads the previously saved state of DVD Catalyst, so that you can continue with the conversion where you left off. If DVD Catalyst was converting a file at the time of saving the state, it will start over with this file.

*Exit. This closes DVD Catalyst.

*Scan DVDs. This will have DVD Catalyst scan your DVD drives for actual DVDs. By default, DVD Catalyst does this by itself. Unless you disabled this in Global Settings, there is no need to manually do this.

*Add files. This will open a file dialog enabling you to select individual video files to add to the conversion.

*Add folders. This will open a folder dialog enabling you to select folders containing video files to add to the conversion.

DVD Catalyst 3 supports Drag & Drop to quickly and easily add files to the conversion. Just drag files and/or  folders onto the program, and DVD Catalyst will sort out what it can handle, and add it to the selection queue.

*Automatic Movie / Episode recognition. If this is enabled, DVD Catalyst will filter through the found DVD content after scanning, and if it thinks it’s a movie DVD, it will enable just the Movie track for conversion, and if it thinks it’s a TV episode DVD, it will enable only the individual episodes. While it works with most DVDs, due to the enormous amount of different ways DVDs are organized, it is not 100% full-proof. To enable tracks for conversion that are wrongfully disabled, just click on the track, and checkmark the “enable for conversion” option.

*Minimum playtime for DVD selections. Most of the users of DVD Catalyst use it to convert movies and TV episodes. Because of this, DVD Catalyst uses this option as a filter to eliminate most trailers and special features from appearing in the conversion queue. If you are converting an “Adult Swim” DVD, it is likely that episodes will not appear, due to the play length of shows like ATHF and Robot Chicken only being 5 minutes or so. Or, if you want to include special features and such with your converted files, change the value of this to something like 1 minute.

*De-interlace. This removes “jagged lines from videos during conversion, at a price of conversion speed. More info can be found here.

*DVD as VOBs. A very special option, intended originally for some The Teaching Company DVDs, but can be used for other functions as well. Rather then to convert a DVD on a “per track” basis, this will convert the individual files separately. This option works with unprotected DVDs only.

*Nicer subtitles. This tells DVD Catalyst to use a different way of accessing the DVD when converting, which is less compatible, but offers nicer looking subtitles.

I’ve had DVD Catalyst 2.5 and had no problems with it. I recently upgraded to the new 3.3 and it’s even better. The selections for your device are easy to understand, and set up was even easier. I have three different devices that I put movies on and 3.3 handled all three with ease. This companies customer service is top notch. They’ve been very helpful and have answered every question I’ve come up with quickly. This is definately worth it!

I’ve never tried to convert a DVD to mobile device format before, and although at first I found the user-interface of this program a tad confusing, the customer support provided by this developer is nothing short of ASTONISHING. On a SUNDAY NIGHT, mind you, I received a response to my email(s) within _minutes_!! And not just a terse, businesslike reply, but a friendly, detailed and absolutely helpful one that led me to my goal of sucessfully converting a DVD for use on my Palm Treo 700w. THIS IS WHAT CUSTOMER SERVICE IS ALL ABOUT. Cheers!

I recently got a Samsung i730 and wanted to learn how to put video on it. I am not a tech savy person, I really had no idea of what I was doing. I bought DVD Catalyst and tried it, I had a few problems that I wrote the support board about and the answer was immediate! I was told what to do, and it fixed my issue and I had my video’s on my phone in no time! I am impressed by the ease of use, the great, simple directions and MOST of all, the absolutely fantastic support for this product. I’d give this software ten stars if they’d let me!

I’ve tried ‘em all, and this program has the best compression – files half the size of its competitors’ equivalent resolutions (no tearing, either), that look great even on a fullscreen PC. Did I mention it’s half the price, too? Their support is phenomenal and, while the transfer method may seem a little old-fashioned, it produces unparalleled results (and relatively quickly, compared to other, more “professional” converters). Plenty of options for the beginner or pro user and a great interface make this my new best friend. Way to go, guys!

GREAT PRODUCT. Only issue I had with it was I didnt know what I was doing at first! I did 3 movies last night and each took about 70 mins to put on my hard drive and 5 to put on my PPC!My largest file was 170mb’’s. I”m still learning how to do the movies in chapters but thats no biggie becuase you can just slide the progress bar to where you left off. This is a MUST HAVE for PPC owners.