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GlobeTrotter: Mandrake-based 40GB Linux Mobile Desktop
joestar writes "Mandrakesoft & LaCie have just launched "GlobeTrotter", a ultra-compact 40 GB bootable USB hard-drive pre-loaded with Mandrakelinux 10.0 Official. It may be plugged to any available PC with a USB 1 or USB 2 port, automatically recognizes the host-PC's hardware, and then is ready to use. Multiple uses can be imagined, from the office/internet workstation to the multimedia jukebox! The concept is quite similar to Mandrakemove, excepted that it's way more powerful than a USB-key based system! And for $219 it's a credible alternative to a laptop."
It's not really an alternative to a laptop imho - check its weight. Always recall that transportable doesn't make it portable. ;)
"I don't mind God, it's his fan club I can't stand!" E8
to hijack data off a system that you dont have the password to log into yourself..
?SYNTAX ERROR IN LINE 42
I think this is great. Not only can you take along your preferred operating system, but your files, too.
Maybe my hardware is old, but can most boxes boot off USB these days?
After reading the article, I wonder what exactly makes it so special? Perhaps the convenience of the entire setup, but for 40 gig, you would expect a lower price. I can get a USB enclosure for a hard drive for $30.00 here or perhaps elsewhere for even less. A 200 gig HD from tigerdirect.com is $89.99. Don't get me wrong, I am really excited to see Linux systems set up like this, but the price kind of threw me off.
With USB2, its feasible, but I surely wouldn't boot off a USB1 device unless realy no other options are available. Or the machine has so much ram, I barely acces my swap.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
I've never seen "USB" as an option in the "A, C, CDROM" selections in any BIOS setup program I've ever touched. Is it handled somewhere else, or is it just very rare among ~1-year-old hardware?
Carrying along a bootable CD and a USB storage device sort of defeats the purpose.
Loadlin would be a natural for this thing...
This'll only be useful when 95% of computers support booting from USB. Right now, only 5% do, so you'd just be pissing away the $219.
--Jon
Cleanstick.org: Dumb weblog about nothing
Update your BIOS firmware!
Why it is so expensive? You can get a USB 2 box for a 2.5 inch drive for $25 (Check Fry's or Outpost) and you can get a 40GB 2.5 inch drive for less than $100. It follows that they charge about $100 for the OS, whih is way too much: in my opinion they should not charge more than $40. Today the laptop drive are so cheap, you can get am 80GB drive for for $150(Pcprogress, basoncomputer). Moreover, Bason computer sells firewire/usb2 boxes with 80GB laptop drives inside for $209. (the empty combo box is about $60). You could buy this 80GB box, install linux yourself, save $9, you have twice the size and have both firewire and USB2 ports!
I did this about 2 months ago, I installed my preferred Linux distribution, SuSE 91 on a combo box.
LaCie is traditionally a Mac company, and for this reason they charge a lot. NEVER BUY FROM THEM.!
It needs hardware encryption so that the disk is useless without the right pass-phrase, and optionally a hardware token like a separate USB pendrive (or compact flash, whatever) with a really big one-time pad on it. And I mean real encryption like AES or Blowfish, or at least triple-DES. Not something that Joe-Bob and his little beowulf cluster can crack in a week or too.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Damn, it is hard to please the slashdot crowd. It's too expensive, how is this different from knoppix?
Well, I find it very inexpensive and convenient. Yes, I could probably do this myself, but I happen to like Mandrake's distribution and this gives me the chance to support my favorite distribution in an all-in-one package that is easy to use.
If you think you can do it reliably and more cheaply than Mandrake, please by all means give them some competition.
But I, for one, love Mandrake. It is the fastest distribution of the latest round I tried (Suse 9.1, Fedora 2, Slackware 10) and it is very stable. I also happen to like Suse 9.1 quite a bit for certain uses, but overall lean much more strongly towards Mandrake, but I digress.
I love this idea. You will be able to take your desktop with you everywhere without needing to use Knoppix. Knoppix is very nice, but this gives you another way to reach portability and will be faster since it runs off a HD, rather than off the CD. You can take music, documents with you and have your fully personalized desktop available anywhere where a computer is available.
This is more convenient than a laptop in some regards as it doesn't need to be recharged and is less conspicuous and thus less likely to be stolen.
And I don't know about you, but I can find a computer I can plug into just about anywhere, whether it's at a friend's or a relative's house, the library...
I think Mandrake is working very hard and they are making incredible progress. I have tested their 10.1 Beta 2 and it is already very, very good, although I would caution new users to wait for the *Official* release, not community, and definitely not RCs.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software