1. DEAL KILLER: wifi radio is implemented very, very badly. If you are going to ship Ubuntu Linux on a consumer netbook you would think you would go the extra mile to insure that the WIFI chipset you were using was well supported. But not at Sylvania, it appears. The driver for the radio is extremely flawed. It cannot connect to a network featuring modern (i.e. this century) encryption. Plus, for some reason, the driver causes the range of the radio is diminished to 10 feet or so. I hear that the Windows XP driver works just fine. But that is a dead-end OS and we don’t know how Windows 7 will run on this sort of computer. Deal killer, fer sure. With a lot of hyper-technical huffing and puffing I managed to get the netbook connecting about 50% of the time. But I wouldn’t expect Joe consumer to be able to get that done — even with step by step instructions.

2. The keyboard is too small. I guess I should have paid more attention to the comments before I bought this. My expectation was that it would have a keyboard on a par with the Acer Aspire One netbook (on which I can type with my usual 6 fingered style). Not so, the G-Meso. This keyboard is truly tiny. I find myself using my cell phone technique for it.

So I’m removing the G-Meso from the list of Bazaar products. Lesson learned… I’ll make sure that I check these things out more thoroughly.

I’m currently in negotiations with my daughter Olivia to trade her my G Meso for her Aspire One. The negotiations are not going well….