William J. Steele's WebLog

The thrill of a lifetime... I flew a P-51!!!

wsteele — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:48:00 GMT

Ok, so I have to gloat for a bit. This weekend, I got the chance of a lifetime to fly a P-51 Mustang. If you're a pilot, you know what the Mustang is. If not, the P-51 is the finest fighter produced in WWII. It was built by North American Aviation and, combined with the awesome Rolls Royce Merlin engine, was just about the best plane ever. In my mind, it is the most beautiful plane ever produced as well.

My hats off go to several people for giving me this chance. First off, Lee Lauderback, for being the finest pilot I've ever flown with. His calm and cool voice (that's him in the front of the plane) is very re-assuring, especially considering he was letting me fly HIS $3.5 Million dollar plane!!! He obviously wasn't going to let me break his plane but he never once seemed concerned (well there was that one time when I was taxiing out, but it sounded like he was more concerned about the lights then the plane.)

Secondly, I'd like to thank the guys at Forward Vision... for inviting me to the dinner where I won the "grand door prize." Rick and Pat have been going to that dinner for several years and this was my first time... literally, five minutes after I walked into the place, I won the door prize. Naturally, they were pleased that I won it on my first time attending the dinner. Thanks for inviting me Little Tricky Uncle Ricky!!!

Lastly, the prize was given away by Plane and Pilot magazine. Mike McMahon and his team produce one of the finest magazines in the aviation industry and this door prize was from them. (By the way, VirtualHUD will also be featured in this next months issue (August 09.) If you happen to go to Oshkosh this year, stop by our booth and see the article in the magazine... oh, and don't forget to check out the actual VirtualHUD units, too!

Ok, now about the video. The Mustang we were in is actually not a P-51D, but it was at one time. It was built in 1944 as a P-51D, but since then, it's been modified into the TF-51 trainer by removing the rear fuel tank and adding my seat and controls. It is a full dual control plane with all the instruments in both seats. This video starts off with Lee and I on board, both with full parachute systems and strapped into our 5 point harnesses. As we taxi out, he let's me taxi almost the entire way... which is actually harder then it seems because from the rear seat, you see nothing. Now one thing to understand, I've actually never flown a tail wheel plane, which means nothing in the air, but on the ground, the handling is very different and the Mustang actually has an interesting setup where the tailwheel is sometimes connected to the rudder and sometimes not depending on how you have the stick positioned. It's a cool design but you definitely have to get used to it.

Once airborne, the Mustang is a dream. It's very responsive, even though it weighs 8,500 lbs. Just for comparison, my Beechcraft Skipper grosses out at 1,670 lbs and the F-16 weighs much more... like 20,000 lbs empty. We did a high performance climb out and he immediately gave me the plane.

We had a thorough preflight briefing and knew exactly what we were going to do for the full hour. We didn't skip or miss anything, but I did add one additional stall in there. The first thing we did was fly to our aerobatic box. Once there I flew the plane around to get the feel for it and then we did some slow flight. Stalls were mild (except the first one which I sort of dove upside down into... totally my fault.) I'm not used to such a heavy plane stalling so mildly... it's actually an amazing wing on that plane. Also, you'll hear us talk about the pre-stall buffet, which is an indicator to the pilot that the plane is approaching departure. You also hear Lee tell me a lot of times to put in more rudder... with 1650 horsepower turning a 400 pound propeller, you get a lot of what we call p-factor, where the propeller likes to turn the plane and using the rudder compensates for that. Did I mention 1650 horsepower... thats more than 14 times the horsepower of my Skipper and they both only seat two!!!

Anyway, once slow flight was over, we started into the real fun stuff... Wing Overs, Aileron Rolls and Barrel Rolls. Lee is a great instructor and he knows his plane very well. Really well... it's very impressive. By the way, Lee is an instructor in the P-51 and an airshow stunt pilot. He has more than 6,000 hours in the P-51 alone... most people don't ever get that many hours in a lifetime of flying.

Back to flying... after the first few fun stunts, we then went into the vertical, with Loops, Cuban 8s and an Immelmann. The Mustang really shines here... that 1650 horsepower and that huge 11 ft propeller (or HUD as I see it) pulls that plane effortlessly through anything we wanted to do to it.

After a little break, we did a couple more rolls and finished it up with a four point roll. Which is a standard aileron roll, but you stop the roll at four points (like on a compass.) When you're upside down, you can feel the gentle tug of gravity as you're completely upside down at that point.

Speaking of gravity, the Mustang is considered an 8G plane. Which means it can put 8 times the force of gravity on you. We only got up to about 3+ in it during the loops, which was fun just the same. No G suit required. Also, since we were under 12,000 feet, we didn't need oxygen masks either, but the Mustang is equipped with an oxygen system if needed. (During war time, the Mustang is capable of a whole lot more than we put on it... infact, fully loaded, it would weigh over 12,500 lbs and fly at over 30,000 ft escorting the B-17 bombers into Germany. It could also fly at over 450 mph, though we only hit about 345 in our flying.)

When we were done, we flew back to Kissimmee, where to my surprise, Lee let me land his (did I mention $3.5 Million) plane!!! Remember, I've never flew a tailwheel plane... ever! I did fine for my first three tailwheel landings. Pilots understand the joke there. Anyway, once we were one the ground, that tailwheel mechanism kicked in and locked the wheel into place which kind of surprised me... which is why Lee needed to give me a little help with the rudder. But other than that, it was a fantastic flight. I learned a lot and I now I know why I love Mustang... not only is it the most beautiful plane ever made... it's also the finest flying machine I've ever had the chance to fly. Thanks everybody for giving me that chance!

Here's the video... watch and enjoy. Warning... it's an hour long, so it might be good to just skip around... at least 38 minutes or so into it to see some fun stuff.

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Bill

The Terrafugia flies!!!

wsteele — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 11:56:00 GMT

My congratulations go out to my buddy, Carl Detrich, of Terrafugia. On March 5th, their new "roadable aircraft," the "Transition" flew for the first time.

As you can see, the Transition isn't your average everyday airplane. It is, in fact, an aircraft that can fold up it's wings and drive on normal roads. It's a very cool concept that has been tried in the past by some like Molt Taylor with little success. The difference this time is that Carl and his team are taking advantage of the new Light Sport rules, and thus, less strict regulations, combined with modern technologies, like Carbon Fiber Composite Structures to build a light weight, but very strong cabin that can withstand standard road abuse, but still be able to fly.

I've been following Carl's efforts since I first met him several years ago at Oshkosh. It's great to see it "get off the ground" so to speak!

Congratulations, Carl!!! Fantastic job!

Bill

Older "Soup to Nuts" Webcasts are expired.

wsteele — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:30:00 GMT

Well, it seems that the webcasts that I did a while back, the VB Soup To Nuts, ASP.NET Soup To Nuts and C# Soup To Nuts webcasts have expired. Some of these webcasts were 4 years old!!!

What that means is that they've been in our webcast engine so long that they automatically drop out of the queue of available webcasts to make room for the new webcasts.

So, what's the solution, you ask? Simple, I will rerecord them and start them over, but modernize them. In fact, some of these were based on Visual Studio 2003... and none targeted the current VS2008. The new webcasts will also include new language features like LINQ and even things like Generics, which were not available back then.

The next question is when will I start? The simple answer would be as soon as possible, but the real answer is that it will take a little time to update the material for today's world of development, including the practices and tools, so as soon as I get done with that, I'll begin scheduling them. Most likely, I'll start in the July timeframe.

Now, the question for you is, which ones should I do first? I'll let your votes determine the order I present in. I know both the VB and C# Soup to Nuts series were exteremly well received. The plan is to do both of them at the same time along the same time frames, but what about WPF and ASP.NET? (By the way, I've had over 20,000 views to the VB and C# series each!!!)

Let me know!

Bill

VirtualHUD announced at the Light Sport Plane expo

wsteele — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 16:11:00 GMT

Well, I know a lot of you have been wondering what my little avionics project has been up to lately, so here's the scoop.

On January 22nd, in Sebring, Florida, I attended the Light Sport Plane Expo for our first public showing of my "VirtualHUD" Heads Up Display for small aircraft. If you remember, or for those of you who don't know, I invented a new type of heads up display for small aircraft that projects the HUD images on to the surface created by the spinning propeller. I've been working on this little side project for about 3 years now, which was a follow on into my own "glass panel" development that I was doing for a research project.

Anyway, at the show, we announced our first product, the NightVU, which is a portable Heads Up Display that contains all it's own navigation and attitude sensors. It's a hand held unit the uses a standard suction cup style mount to attach to the windshield. The unit points forward and projects the HUD data out the windshield and onto the back of the spinning propeller. The reception and responses we received from the everybody who saw it was tremendous and let us know that we are on exactly the right track.

The first unit is only designed for night time use, but we've partnered with Forward.Vision to include cool support for their Forward Looking Infrared Camera, the EVS-100. Now, pilots can fly into total darkness, but still see directly in front of them via the combination of the EVS-100 and the NightVU. It essentially turns the propeller into a window of visibility in front of the pilot. Smoke, Fog, Haze, Rain, Snow or Darkness all become "visible" via the combination. It works amazingly well. The following is a video from our demo unit:

We plan on attending Sun-n-Fun and Oshkosh, as well as a few other smaller events year. We also have a couple of other products in the works, but they're kind of secret at this point. However, I will give you a hint, there are two obvious other products we "should" be working on... a daytime version and a built in and/or certified unit. ;-)

It's been a very cool journey fostering this little research project and I've met some very talented people, in fact, I even hired a few to help me out, so we'll all get to see the fruits of their labor soon. If you're interested in learning more about the VirtualHUD, feel free to ping me or check out our website at http://www.virtualhud.com/.

Oh, and before you ask, yes, we have several aircraft manufactures that would like to include this in their planes and no, I have absolutly no plans to leave Microsoft... I love my job way too much for that. ;-)

Bill

Unfortunate Times for Eclipse Aviation

wsteele — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:25:00 GMT

Eclipse Aviation suffered a serious blow earlier today. They were apparently unable to meet payroll and notified their employees... some of whom apparently left rather abruptly this morning.

I've always been a fan of Eclipse Aviation, makers of the Eclipse 500 Very Light Jet. They have had some problems over the past few years with certification, avionics, etc, that have really let them down, however.

Their jet was one of the first VLJ's on the market and was supposed to be the mainstay of the Air Taxi concept from the NASA SATS vision. In fact, Eclipse was a great partner in the SATS program. Their jet utilized much of the technology from the AGATE and SATS programs.

I hope for the best for the employees and for Eclipse Aviation. I would love to see them make through this extremely tough time and finally fullfill their vision.

Bill

MSDN Demo Code

wsteele — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 20:37:00 GMT

Here is my demo code for the MSDN Unleashed event!

Enjoy!

Bill

Come see the new MSDN Unleashed events!

wsteele — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:11:00 GMT

We're trying something new this year... MSDN Events at the local Microsoft offices. Starting on September 10th, in Franklin, TN, I will be putting on additional MSDN events at the local Microsoft offices. Same great content as the "real" big MSDN Events, but now with a local flavor.

I'm doing several this quarter. You can sign up for them just like regular MSDN events, but instead of the usual venue of a hotel or movie theater, you can sit back and relax in one of the Microsft Office MPR rooms (MPR = Multi Purpose Room.) They'll be from the normal 1:00pm to 5:00pm time slot and we'll even provide snacks!

Due to the smaller rooms, seating is limited (shown below,) but there is plenty of space right now, so sign up early!

Here are my upcoming MSDN Unleashed events:

WWE ID	Title	City	State	Date/Time	Capacity
1032386180	MSDN Events Unleashed	Franklin	Tennessee	10-Sep-2008 01:00 PM	150
1032386192	MSDN Events Unleashed	Downers Grove	Illinois	16-Sep-2008 01:00 PM	150
1032386193	MSDN Events Unleashed	Indianapolis	Indiana	17-Sep-2008 01:00 PM	50
1032386182	MSDN Events Unleashed	Southfield	Michigan	30-Sep-2008 01:00 PM	125
1032386200	MSDN Events Unleashed	Columbus	Ohio	02-Oct-2008 01:00 PM	175
1032386206	MSDN Events Unleashed	Chicago	Illinois	07-Oct-2008 01:00 PM	125
1032386201	MSDN Events Unleashed	Cincinnati	Ohio	07-Oct-2008 01:00 PM	70
1032386199	MSDN Events Unleashed	Cleveland	Ohio	09-Oct-2008 01:00 PM	115

See you there!

Bill

MSDN Events for Q1

wsteele — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:07:00 GMT

Well, folks, I'm back and ready to start presenting our new content for the next quarter.

My first event is next Tuesday in Chicago. You can register for it right here: http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/EventDetail.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032383949

See you there!

Bill

5 Minutes of Innovation in C# - Episode #1 - Generics

wsteele — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:02:00 GMT

It's been a long time in the works, but I have finally started my new Screencast series, 5 Minutes of Innovation in C#. This is the very first episode, Generics.

In this episode, I show you how to define an object and create a generic list of those objects. I then demonstrate how Type safety works on that collection. The demo code I created is attached to this message.

Let me know what you think. I am also doing several other series in VB, Silverlight and various other technologies.

I will be posting at least one screencast each week and plan on having a full line of content availble.

If you are currently subscribing to my RSS feed, please refresh the link as I am now tracking it with Feedburner. Simply remove your current subscription and re-add it point to the new RSS feed.

Enjoy, and don't forget to let me know what you think or just send me suggestions on what you'd like to see.

Bill

God Speed Rob.

wsteele — Sun, 04 May 2008 19:17:00 GMT

Robert W. Westover, III (Robbie): father, husband, brother, son, uncle, friend. Robbie will be remembered as loyal and true to all of these important roles throughout his life and will be missed by everyone who knew him. He was always there for us all. Robbie was born at Burien, WA on August 27, 1960 to Robert W. Westover, Jr. and Susan S. Westover. Robbie died suddenly of a massive heart attack on April 29, 2008.

Rob was always a happy and energetic man who made friends easily. He felt a compelling responsibility to protect his sister, Deborah Winram, and younger brother, Russell (Rusty), throughout his life and was devoted to his parents and children. He married Eileen Boyle from whom he was later divorced. He then married the love of his life, Jamie, and assumed responsibility to help raise her children, Ryan and Megan, whom he loved as his own.

Rob attended Eastgate Elementary School and Tyee Middle School and graduated from Newport High School in Bellevue in 1978; he went on to receive a BA from Washington State University with a dual degree in finance and accounting in 1982. In college, he was an active member of the Phi Kappa Epsilon fraternity and maintained close contact with many of his fraternity brothers. During high school and college Robbie worked for contractors doing new home construction. He acquired many skills that he happily applied to helping his friends and family. Rob was also an accomplished auto mechanic and maintained his own as well as numerous friends’ and family’s vehicles. Rob was active in Boy Scouts.

Rob’s careers spanned field work for Dunn and Bradstreet; served as a technician for McCaw Cellular installing cellular transfer stations; served ten years as a computer technology specialist for the Boeing company; was CFO for Tiger Shark Golf Corporation; was a technology specialist for several start-up high tech companies; and was a project manager for partner development of new information technology for Microsoft where he worked until the time of his death.

Rob was well known for always being there for anyone needing help, never expecting anything in return. If you had a problem, Rob always had a solution and was anxious to help while making you feel good about accepting his aid. One never felt he created an obligation – that Rob’s support was given cheerfully, unconditionally, and selflessly. Rob got along with everyone and was universally loved and respected.

Rob’s many interests were varied. He loved gaming in Las Vegas, fishing, golf, pool, skiing, and traveling with his wife Jamie. Rob enjoyed the company of his little Jack Russell Terrier who accompanied him everywhere. Rob was a devoted “Cougar” and was proud of his WSU school experience. He was a born leader and ascended to become president of many social organizations with which he became involved. Rob had the unusual ability to be immediately accepted and admired by all whom he met. He loved and was deeply devoted to his children, Rachael and Bert, and played an important role in the development of Jamie’s children, Ryan and Megan. Rob loved his brother, Russell, and took every opportunity to spend time with him working on projects or playing. He also maintained contact with and loved his little sister who lives in Frederick, MD. Rob was particularly close to his parents and called them almost daily, visiting them many times each month. He was always there to help make their computers work and to keep them up to date with the latest technologies. Rob is irreplaceable and will leave a hole in the hearts of his family and friends.

Rob is survived by his wife, Jamie Winslow Westover; daughter, Rachael Westover; son, Robert W. Westover, IV (Bert), and grandson Donovan Westover; sister, Deborah Westover Winram, her husband Scott and daughter Mary Helen of Frederick, MD, brother, Russell Stowe Westover, his wife Suzanne and children Gabrielle, Christine, and Alex of Snohomish, WA; parents, Robert W. Westover Jr. and Susan S. Westover of Bellevue, WA, uncle and aunt Joe and Jean Westover of Granbury, TX; and several cousins and many other close relatives and innumerable friends.

Goodbye Robbie. We will love and will miss you forever.

Friends and relatives are cordially invited to share a celebration Robbie’s life which will be held at Washington Cathedral located at 12300 Woodinville-Redmond Road, Redmond, WA 98052. Services will begin at 2:00 p.m., Thursday, May 8th, 2008 Following the Memorial service, relatives and friends are invited to a reception at Sammamish Forest Manor Club house located at 2407- 175^th Ave NE, Redmond, WA to share their support and their experiences with Rob.

In lieu of flowers, a scholarship fund in the name of Robert W. Westover III will be set up to help deserving students attend Washington State University. Details of this will be forthcoming soon. For information please send an email torwwestover2@comcast.net or call his father at 425-747-1740.

Update on Bill's Avionics development

wsteele — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:01:00 GMT

Ok, folks. I know several of you have been waiting anxiously for me to post an update to my development of the experimental "glass cockpit" that I've been working on for years.

So, here's the beef. First, the bad news... on Thanksgiving day in 2006, I stopped all development of the "glass cockpit" that I was working on. However... and now the good news... I had an amazing idea that totally blew away all my expectations and instantly made glass cockpits old time junk.

I came up with an idea for a head up display that projects the flight information in front of the pilot... not on the windscreen or a piece of glass in front of the pilot, but on the "virtual surface" created by the spinning propeller. Since then, I have been spending all my free time to develop this idea. It's called the VirtualHUD and it's now complete.

The picture you see here is of the first working prototype. I have a lot of other ideas that I am working on, but at this point, I am not ready to show them... however, you can learn more about it by checking out my personal website at http://www.virtualhud.com. One thing I just noticed as I was typing this message is how much it looks like HAL on 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was purely unintentional. (RIP: Arthur C. Clarke.)

Now, to answer questions:

1.) How does it work? Well, that is part of my patent and at this point, I am not quite ready to discuss that... but, if you happen to see me, ask me about it and I'll show you it working.

2.) What about Microsoft? Microsoft is my employer and I plan on working here for ever. I do not plan on going into production with this design, but fully intend to license it to other companies who will. Microsoft is by far the best company that I have ever worked for and they have been very supportive about this side work that I have been doing. I have several patents filed on this design and they have been very gracious in allowing me to persue them on my own.

3.) Does Microsoft own the patents? No, because this technology is not core to what Microsoft does, they have released me from assigning them over to them... however, they are allowed to license this technology from me at no cost. I'm not sure if they ever will, but it's available to them.

4.) Has it flown? Yes... and it does quite nicely.

5.) What does it display? My current prototype displays Airspeed, Altitude, Horizon Line, Pitch information, Heading and Highway in the Sky. But, I can display anything that I want to.

6.) Do you have any companies that have licensed it yet? No, however, I am in talks with several at this time.

7.) Can I see more? Yes... I will be down at the Sun-N-Fun airshow on April 8-13th in the Toxo Aircraft booth. I will also be at EAA's AirVenture (better known as Oshkosh) Airshow at the end of July. Also, if you happen to run into me, I'll gladly show you.

8.) What about your "glass cockpit" stuff? Well, most of the work I did on it actually is in the VirtualHUD. The only thing that is different is the actual display itself. I use all the hardware for attitude, gps, compass, etc that I developed for the glass cockpit in this unit. The big difference is that, to me, that stuff was easy... projecting presented it's own challenges which I have been working out for the past 18 months.

9.) Doesn't the display flicker on the prop? No, at the engines slowest speed of 750 rpm, the refresh rate is still 25 hz. Which is the speed of movies in a theater. 750rpm/60seconds*2 prop blades = 25 sweeps per second (hz). When the pilot speeds up the prop to cruise, the prop is spinning at 2500 to 2700 rpm, which makes an amazingly clear display at 83hz to 90hz . If the prop has 3 blades, it is even clearer. The system is able to track the propeller and only project the laser beams on it without missing. It's like the old WWI machine gun interrupters that prevented the pilots from shooting off the propeller blades in a fight, only in reverse. With this system, we want to only hit the propeller with the laser and not an oncoming aircraft.

10.) Can it project in color? Yes. Currently, the prototype has two colors, Red (635nm) for night flying and Green (523nm) for day flying. I have also developed a laser diode that contains 4 colors, Red, Green, Blue and Infra-red. The RGB Lasers are for doing full color displays and the IR laser is used to scan the propeller for things like Direction of Spin, Speed, Size and the Pitch of the blades (for Constant Speed Props.) My current prototype doesn't use the IR Laser, instead, it uses 4 high intensity IR-Light Emitting Diodes to light up the propeller area. It works, but the IR laser is 100 times more accurate.

I am still tweaking on the units (I have 3 prototypes,) and even have a few suprises up my sleeves, but those will have to wait for "really interested parties" to help seal the deals.

Let me know what you think!

Bill

Are you attending Mix 2008?

wsteele — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:43:00 GMT

If so, look me up. I will be around. I know most of you haven't seen me in a while... let's just say, it's been a busy few months.

Anyway, I have been working on a major new project. Check out http://www.5minutesofinnovation.com. Phil Wheat and I have been producing a new videocast series around innovation. We're started publishing the first videos. The first video was about my trip to Redbird Flight Simulations. Very cool stuff they're working on.

Let me know what you think and I'll see you all next week... if you're at Mix, that is! ;-)

Bill

What's new in Visual Studio 2008: Office Development

wsteele — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 19:59:00 GMT

As promised, attached is the demo code for my last webcast on What's new in Visual Studio 2008.

Happy holidays!

Bill

What's New In Visual Studio 2008 Webcast

wsteele — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 21:08:00 GMT

Here is the demo code for Today's Whats New In Visual Studio 2008: New Language Features of VB9 and C# 3 Webcast.

You can view the webcast right here. Don't forget, this Wednesday is the final webcast in this series, where we will be talking about the new development features in Visual Studio 2008 for building Microsoft Office 2007 applications. You can sign up for it right here.

Thanks for watching!

Bill

ASUS Eee PC Review

wsteele — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 20:25:00 GMT

Wow... a product review from me? Normally, I wouldn't do something like this, but this machine is so good, I had too.

The product is the ASUS Eee PC (Buy.com for $349.) This is a very small "sub notebook" computer. It is a solid state machine with no moving parts (well... almost, I think I heard a fan inside it.) The unit I purchased is the black 4 gigabyte unit. It came pre-installed with some variant of Linux on it, but also came with a DVD with Windows XP drivers, so I was able to upgrade.

Unpacking the unit was a breeze... no assembly required. Snap on the battery, plug in the power adapter. That's it.

The size of the unit is, well, small. Very Small. For years, I've been using an Acer TravelMate C100 Tablet PC. This is much smaller than it. It's also smaller than my old IBM Windows CE based WorkBook computer. That's small. In fact, the keyboard is a little too small for my taste... but it's a lot better than the old style CE based devices like the HP Jornada thing or the Phillips Velo1.

The instructions are top notch... in fact, they even include step by step instructions for not just installing Windows XP, but also for tuning XP to run efficiently on the device. I must say, that is a very nice touch.

Installing XP was just like the usual install process... slow. But, once installed, it worked flawlessly. I installed the drivers (exactly like the manual says) and again, flawless.

Now... with this small device, you have to ask... well how does it perform? Well... I have to say, it's faster than my Acer C100! Running XP (Pro) on the device isn't blazing, but it is quite acceptable. The built in wireless worked perfectly right out of the box. The only thing I would rather it have is BlueTooth connectivity. In fact, I really wish it had BlueTooth... do you hear that ASUS?

Now, as for the display... crystal clear, but too small. The screen resolution is 800 x 480. Huh? Why such an odd resolution? My guess, cost. The only using it is during web browsing... the pages get cut off. ASUS also included a driver that supports 800x600, but scrolling. It works, but to me is annoying. You can hook up an external display to it as well, and with XP, either use it as your primary display, a duplicate display or an extended desktop display. All three modes worked perfectly.

Boot up time is great. About 20 seconds from a cold boot. Standby startup and shutdown is instant. I have not tried Hibernate due to the disk space requirements of it. My machine is a 4 gig unit and with XP installed, Visual Web Developer Express, Visual C# Express, Expression Blend 2, Windows Media Player 11, all the Windows Update updates and IE tools (Flash, Silverlight, etc.) I have 1 gig free. The hibernate feature would want half that. Now, to clarify it, it does have external storage via an SD slot as well as 3 USB ports. I have a 2 gig SD card in the slot, which interestingly enough only reports itself as a 1 Gig card. (Haven't figured out why.)

Overall, the ASUS Eee PC is very light weight, is built very nicely and has a very high quality feel to it. It's easy to setup and use and has features that just work. It's a miniture notebook that does exactly what it was designed to. I only ask for three things in the next version... BlueTooth, 800x600 (or 1024x768) and a bigger keyboard.

My score out of 10... 8.

Next steps for me... see if Vista will run on it. ;-) I was simply amazed that .NET 3.0 WPF worked as flawlessly as it did on it. Video animations, 3D, etc... it all works! Now I can do development on those long plane rides.

Bill