Dude, Where’s My Internet?

So tonight, I decided to try the most obvious use case for the CloudBook, simple wireless Web surfing. I curled up on the couch with the CloudBook while I was watching a little TV. One of my cats came over and lay at my feet and I started poking around the Internet looking for a bargain on a new digital camcorder (filming the CloudBook has revealed that my camcorder sucks). I was having a good go of it for about half an hour and then, out of nowhere, the Internet connection died.

I say the Internet connection died, because I was no longer able to pull up any Web sites. However, the CloudBook still indicated that I was connected to my wireless network and it’s clear that the Internet connectivity in my house was unaffected, because my wife was listening to Internet radio the entire time.

I shut down the CloudBook and took a break. Later, I started the CloudBook again and surfed the Web from the same couch for a long time without incident. Oh, and this couch is about five feet from the router.

All weekend long, this machine has been baffling me. Just when I think I have it figured out, it does something wrong that I didn’t expect and can’t reproduce. It’s really hard to report on this system, because it’s just so unpredictable. This morning when I was filming the boot up, twice it gave me “daemon failed to start” errors and then refused to show the dock. I’d reboot and the problem would go away until the next time. This happened maybe two out of five times I booted it and then not again since. The thing has a mind of its own.