I’ve been meaning to post on this for a while, and it’s probably double pronged. When I got my EEEPC 1000H, little did I know that it would become my primary PC. I suppose lot’s of people see netbooks as underpowered, good for one thing devices. On the other hand, if I mentioned a server, most tech heads would picture, imagine, some sort of hyper powered computer, or computers, all linked together, serving data to the internets. What if I say to you, you can run your netbook as a server?

So just some background info, I’ve been blogging for a while, and I set up a couple of sites[free] to archive the stuff I was doing on JAMM and to be able to post things that were, out of the realm of the coverage here at JAMM. Let’s face it, I like lot’s of weird stuff that can’t be categorised here. Although I’ve managed to work some of it in, in my “Now This is Mobile Tech” series. By chance a Twitter friend offered me some server space, so I could self host a blog.

Obviously I chose WordPress as a platform, because that is the editing,admin interface I’m most familiar with, [that’s what JAMM runs on] but administering a blog/website, and creating a look and feel, for your online, personal space, is a bit more complicated than I, and probably many of you think. Although I’m still pretty chuffed at re-writing, for the first time,a plug-in yesterday, I still think it’s a great idea to have a test blog/site, but how to conserve limited server storage and bandwidth? Serve your test site locally’

I spent a lot of time finding a way to host my site locally so that I don’t get things wrong online, and XAMPP was the solution.

Essentially, what this means is that I am running a virtual server on my netbook!

XAMPP is a very easy to install Apache Distribution for Linux, Solaris, Windows and Mac OS X. The package includes the Apache web server, MySQL, PHP, Perl, a FTP server and phpMyAdmin.

XAMPP works with many different blogging platforms, well it will work with any platform that supports the Os’s and programming languages mentioned above. The experience, is something else, and a  bit surreal! You can open your PHP admin page, and your Blog in a browser, any browser, and view the work you have been doing. A great way to preview content, and site design.

Most importantly, this is a mobile solution, that does not require a high powered computer, me and my EEE can run this happily on battery!

Netbooks are actually becoming preferred mobile devices, ease of transport, ease of input, and visual, large enough screen for most of us to be happy. [the first place you go blind is in the eyes] but a lot of people discount the power that a lot of these so called mini devices offer. There’s actually a lot you can do with a netbook.