Hi, my name is Adam, I am in Melbourne.
I just bought Fujitsu P1610 tablet (for my motorcycle trips) and I am looking for fast, simple, easy to learn and preferably free OS. I remember how well IT magazines commented BeOS many years ago and that brought my attention to Haiku now. If anybody can advise please if Haiku is a good choice for me ?
I need this Fujitsu P1610 to do emails (preferably Gmail), internet-some googling, maybe Skype if possible, GPS, some music and-very important-to download video and photos that I record/take during my motorcycle trips in Australia/Tasmania. It may be 20GB of movies every day, I need to download from camera to external 1.8" or 2.5" portable HDD. That is what I want to do…my Fujitsu has 80GB Toshiba hdd at the moment and Vista Business, (and 1GB RAM)but I am going to format this hdd or even to replace it with 8GB-16GB SSD. I will also have some CF and SD cards in my Fujitsu but main data storage will be on external HDD. Please advise-is Haiku what I need ? Will it work very fast and reliably on SSD or I should keep 80GB/4200rpm Toshiba hdd ?
Thanks in advance
Adam
In a nutshell: no, Haiku would not suit your usage profile yet.
Ethernet and wireless would need testing. No WPA encryption yet. Gmail was somewhat wonky last time I tried. No Skype. No GPS/chart software that I know of. Music could work if the hardware is supported, needs testing. Downloading video and pictures could work, needs testing. The CF and SD card compatibility would need testing. No support for SSD TRIM command yet.
If you’re interested in advice, I’d look into finding a suitable lean Linux distro instead, perhaps something Xfce based.
That said, since you’re planning to wipe the HDD anyway, why not set a small partition aside for booting into Haiku to check it out? Or just install once and wipe afterwards.
Your travel plans sound like great fun though, good luck and drive safely. 
Pretty bad news for me, but thanks Luroh. It looks I need to keep searching, perhaps I will buy XP Home which I know and I never used any linux. Thanks !
I spent good several hours researching opinions about different systems for laptop/netbook and it was pretty common opinion that people recommend XP Home for that purpose, instead of Win7 (apparently XP Home is less demanding-runs faster on older computers-that is not my opinion, that is what i found on net).
My Fujitsu tablet (P1610) has 80GB/4200rpm older hdd and Vista Business installed on one of partitions (other-40GB is "“empty”). But it runs absurdically slow-not usable for me. I don’t have installation Vista disc, and I know Vista is crap, so I am rather decided to format/replace this hdd and use other-faster system. Most likely I will buy 16GB SSD and increase RAM to 2GB (currently 1GB). I will check/test this EasyPeasy - thanks ! (does it work on SSD ?).
I see no reason to buy Windows XP, which is about ten years old, outdated, unsafe and unstable.
But I cannot recommend Haiku either.
It is still Alpha quality software, which means it is not properly tested, has a lot of bugs, lacks features you would expect on a operating system and has little software.
Haiku is a great potential, and I use it as often as I can on my secondary laptop.
But I always have other computers available.
If you travel abroad with only ONE computer, it MUST be a reliable one.
Windows is OK, but costly.
You could consider a Linux distro.
Many of them are now so simple to use they rival Windows and Mac!
There’s even a distro made especially for netbooks like yours.
It is called EasyPeasy. Get it here:
http://www.geteasypeasy.com/
So incredibly simple to use.
But if you already have the Windows that came with the computer, you should use that. You would be foolish to install an operating system you don’t know how to use, and then travel into a remote country with no way to get help.
I don’t know any GPS software for Linux. Apart from that Linux is a fully useable operating system. And MUCH faster than Vista. Gmail and Skype works fine.
If you decide to go for Windows, don’t buy XP. Buy 7. Any computer that runs Vista can run 7 better. XP is outdated.
Good luck.
You can use EasyPeasy on SSD.
SSD is different from mechanical drives, and will be worn out quicker if you use a journaling file system.
Therefore use EXT2 file system, not EXT3.
Vista is, as you said, crap. But perhaps it could be better if you reinstall it?
You say you don’t have the CD.
But many laptops have a recovery partition on them. Perhaps yours does?
If it does, you can reinstall Vista from there. After you are done, install all updates from Windows Update.