Strange that you should say it's expensive, I use 3 in the uk and can get net access for £5 a month. I also use 3's like home service when I am in ireland and still get my internet access at no extra cost (already paid for in the UK).
I don't know if it would apply to the hspda modems (priced from £10 for 1gb data to £20 -7gb) but probably it would.
3's network is a bit patchy - leading to a notorious problem where calls end up on a partner network and get charged at international roaming rates.
If Irish rates can't compare, it could be worth getting a phone on the british 3 network as pay as you go and game the system a little:)
Actually Water Filters are really good for cheap vodka, a couple of passes and the taste is vastly improved. Vodka is also best served as cold as you can get it. With a separate glass for juice (Apple juice is especially nice although usually reserved for Zubrowka. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zubrivka ).
http://www.linux.com/feature/119544 (October 2007 "The Linux-based eX2 in-flight entertainment system (IFE) from Panasonic Avionics was the big winner at this year's Avion Awards, sponsored by an IFE trade group. The Best Overall IFE awards went to Emirates, Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific Airways, all running variants of eX2"
"About the awards
The World Airline Entertainment Association (WAEA), based near Washington, DC, sponsors the Avion Awards. This year's winners were chosen based on a worldwide poll of 36,000 air travelers, says Elinor Kinnier, public relations manager for WAEA. Poll-based awards were given for overall and regional excellence -- a change from prior years, when a panel of judges chose winners in a variety of specific categories as well as an overall winner."
Panasonic uses redhat as a basis of their in flight Entertainment Systems with over 3000 planes fitted with them and as you can see they have been getting better
DD-wrt and Tomato firmware versions are very useful, giving far greater control over internet access from my IP even traffic shaping certain troublesome Lan IP's. Is there better default router firmware for the home market (or even small business LAN).
There are two cases with the voting machines fraud or no fraud. If the machines can be shown to be rigged, it will not be shown. It will be top secret.
well to be frank the ssd on the aspire one is slow and the 3 cell battery has 2 hours of life. Also to get it running well you need to fit more ram and its quite daunting. They didn't see fit to add a cover over the expansion slot.
gives all the information needed to turn the Aspire One into a decent little laptop.
For the non-technical user the 120 Gb hdd version is just a lot easier to get on with and not that much more money. (230 -260) it's ready to go and familiar.
Linpus is pretty poor, they hid any sign of being able to do anything much with it.
With Ubuntu Hardy and 1.5gb ram, Tweaks done its fine, ssd still gives slow load times though.
Would a normal user strip down a new laptop and wrestle with an unfamiliar OS (i really think not).
The EEE900 901 are probably better netbooks However there is a big price difference between asus EEE 9inch and an aspire one.
It's a shame really the Asus 9inch netbooks are better than the Aspire One but it's price that is killing the smaller EEE's. Unfortunately a 10" EEE is just about outside netbook territory and there are plenty of laptops not much above it's price point.
I think Asus is going to struggle to compete with what they have left.
If you were right in practise, then the jails would be full of prosecution lawyers, who lost cases. Generally even where someone is wrongly convicted they might get compensation but how often do the people who sometimes withheld evidence face any kind of punishment?
Anyone who reads slashdot regularly will be familiar with Jack Thompson's attempts to get debarred and how hard he had to work to achieve it.
while you have deep pockets and probably more than half a clue as to how to produce a meaningful defense, your in a minority.
The costs of defending yourself against the charges made, engaging a solicitor, an expert witness, forensic examination of your computer systems, (which could only demonstrates the systems presented were not used, if you accept you can prove a negative). Loss of your PC hardware while defending the case, the loss of private data, unrelated to the case but stored on the pc systems, all in all can out weigh the annoyance of paying the relatively small sum of £500.
So your looking at lose, lose and the more you try to fight the more the costs get added on. For a lot of people cutting their losses by paying is the cheapest solution.
What is more interesting is there seems to be cases where IP addresses were identified that hadn't been used for p2p, ie not including unknown access by third parties.
If you take this report at face value as the bbc seems to have done, it seems pirate bay inserts random ip addresses into the peers list. It also appears some investigators are assuming that there is an offer to download being made by an ip address by virtue of being on that list and haven't bothered to confirm that the file is actually available from that peer.
As some p2p users block certain ip ranges there is no way to be certain that the user is blocking the investigators ip address or isn't offering the file in the first place.
Would representatives of the pirate bay make credible witnesses in your defense? Would they even come to your country to take the witness stand?
while this is a uk story and may not be as risky as entering US territory (see cases of off shore gambling company executives being held in the USA despite being legal in the UK and company shares traded on the London stock exchange).
The cost of bringing forth these witnesses would be probably a greater expense than just paying the extortion money.
Should the matter go to court, and the defendants lose there are additional costs incurred, being unable or unwilling to immediately pay usually results in bailiffs fee's becoming payable and these can rapidly spiral way beyond the value of the initial judgement.
I think if you were to bring one of these letters to an honest solicitor or lawyer they would say pay it and get on with your life. It isn't fair or just but it probably would be the cheapest solution.
Hopefully some of these cases where people fight back and win will at least ensure in future that at least some evidence is gathered beyond an IP address.
While I commend your willingness to fight an injustice, you do have something to lose presumably and a lawyer should advice you, you could lose it.
You may never of heard the phrase commonly used by petty criminals "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime". Currently the chances of facing real penalty's for downloading copyrighted pay for data is quite low but the risks do appear to be increasing.
Why bother taking the risk? perhaps it's even worth going for a cheaper net access package and buying wisely.
It's not hard to get clued up on what is worth your money and what isn't these days and often there are good free alternatives.
I wouldn't be surprised if they were attempting to get a real 3d projection floating above the desk.
Microsoft have more than enough resources to throw at a project like this, even if is a dead end, who else would do it?
if you were from 1908 you would be amazed at what has been achieved in 2008 so what will we have in 2108? have we pretty much peaked now or would we be amazed at what technology is in use in 2108?
working 3d display technology who here wouldn't want it?
without a driver you can't use the hardware, anything designed to be used by Vista has to include drivers for Vista it doesn't have to include a driver for anything else including other versions of windows. It certainly doesn't have to have a driver for linux.
hence your box full of hardware that doesnt work under linux. There is no liking about it, just an unwillingness of the Hardware manufacturer to get a driver produced.
Pretty much your options are to buy hardware designed to work with Linux or to research carefully.
With a public funded health service, you may well find plenty of British Volunteers. Honestly it is not that much in tax to ensure you get the treatment you need. A basic pension when you retire and a number of other benefits.
It's just such a pity dental care doesn't get similar provision.
Is it even necessary for living volunteers? surely someone who has reached the end of their life and has a full medical history would be a better subject.
You do know there is a lot of hardware supported out the box with Linux, and some that isn't.
You tend to have more success when you buy hardware that is supported.
(assume samual jackson voice)
Did your computer come with anything that said it was designed to work with Linux or any particular version of Linux Brad? No, So why did you decide to treat it as if it was.
Now Brad it said designed for Windows Vista, didn't it Brad and when you gave it Vista it ran perfectly fine, now why are we not surprised?
Thats right brad it was designed to run vista.
So what have learned brad? Don't bitch when you buy hardware without knowing if its supported or not. Thats right brad but don't feel too bad because that computer can't run XP! Wwwhat! yes brad there are no drivers for XP because everybody was supposed to be happy with Vista.
Well Don't be too sad brad install virtualbox and XP and Ubuntu will run without complaint or any need to compile anything...
The EEE 701 has fallen from £249 to £160 in six months the Acer AspireOne which is better in most respects is £170
This Dell isn't competing with Netbooks its a small laptop which a year ago we passed over for 15 and 17 inch competitors. Once your toting a full size laptop around you may as well go for something big fast.
Screen size is 9 inch with 1024 by 600 resolution. This is quite a comfortable size and is sharper than my old hp 15inch with 1024x768 resolution. Smaller Screen with Smaller pixels. Admittedly the netbooks with smaller screens are a bit too cramped with 800x480.
Keyboard size on 9inch versions seems adequate I can type at a reasonable rate without hitting the wrong keys.
Processing power is good enough in ubuntu and Linux in general. 2000 in a Vm isn't super fast but its quite usable.
in short its probably roughly equivalent to my old HP, The Atom processor isn't quite as fast but its good enough. Really thats the key too the whole thing. It is good enough.
Now what makes it better than my old HP is the size its small enough to fit in a glovebox or for the ladies a handbag. power wise it uses about 22,23 watts and even with the stingy battery Acer supplied a comfortable 2 hours can be had. Better batteries can increase that to 5 or 7 hours.
Storage ranges from 4Gb to 120Gb depending on model and extra space is easily added with Sd cards and usb sticks. When you consider that a show such as hero's can be just 300 Meg for an episode a 2Gb Sd card will keep you entertained for hours, if you want to work on a document you could do that too. Wifi and wired connections are built in, some have 3G adapters or you can use a usb hspda dongle or a cell phone as a modem (i use a 10mm usb bluetooth adapter to get net access most places it costs me £5 a month or 50p a day if i feel a need for it).
It's the portability and price that really makes a netbook and i really wonder if by buying a 12inch dell it really isn't too big and pricey. Your starting to get into regular laptop territory and they are just too big, toting a full size laptop soon becomes a chore.
Well you might say well get a pda then, however they have extremely small screens and pretty terrible keyboards if they have them at all picking away with a stylus is a terrible way to type and handwriting recognition far too hit and miss. If you have a net enabled mobile, you probably find that web pages are hard to navigate and interact with. Yet the same mobile when used as a modem suddenly becomes useful for more than just phone calls (or in the case of the pda sat nav).
Storage is easily added when needed, yes you can burn a DVD with a usb connected drive. (mines recycled + an external case) and if I need a bigger screen keyboard or mouse I can plug them in. Off course once I am in contact with my home Lan everything is accessible. I generally print using my samsung lazer printer.
When I'm out and about i have an inverter which allows me to charge my netbook when it needs it. I can park up and still sit behind the wheel and work or pop it on the dashboard and watch a film. My Car stereo has an aux jack but in cars without a small fm transmitter or even a cassette adapter will work as well.
I could choose to read an ebook too.
So its replacing a few devices I might have bought, a full size laptop just can't be used so easily. Airports are good places to have a netbook too, even a kitchen worktop or a coffee table. Students love em, they replace full size laptops and are easily transported from class to class.
They could be better, touch screens, webcams that can face away from the keyboard. screens that can lay flat and usable, would it be useful to record a lecture whilst taking notes maybe. maybe use it as a sketch pad capture an image with the webcam and annotate it perhaps.
So yes there are plenty of uses for a netbook it certainly calls into question the need for any other pc and a dedicated area of the home.
Actually it seems Lexmark printers are better value than they used to be. Printers cost a little more and ink is cheaper.
However we are both guilty of falling into the 'either' trap that is you either run Windows or Linux. I don't know any Linux user who doesn't use windows from time to time. There isn't any reason why you have to be exclusive.
Use whats best for the task in hand, thats what most Linux users do. Most of what I do can be done in Linux some things are easier in Windows. For me a VM is good enough for what I do in Windows, in fact it's better since I can carry my VM on a thumb drive and have exactly what I use in it anywhere.
Conversion is a religious experience, Linux and Windows are not.
There is no physical reason why a Lexmark printer couldn't be used on Linux or OSX, that they choose to limit their printers to windows only is their choice and hence I will not buy from that company I can choose too.
Or it could be that not everyone who uses a PC knows the release date of the next version of Open Office and is waiting to grab it at the earliest opportunity
besides which docx support as of a couple of weeks ago still was um rough to say the least. It's far more likely that people will upgrade over a period of months.
If you get a limited memory box like a Netbook buy some more ram, it's not expensive and run whatever you like. limited memory on a netbook is 1.5 to 2gb plenty for Linux, 2000 or XP.
It might drain the battery a little faster but not by a noticeable amount.
Personally I prefer a minimum of 756. 2000 is nice and frugal but XP seems to like 600 MB just to get to the Desktop. (my observation of typical home user systems with nothing turned off and the usual extra's).
well HP do make some reasonable scanner printers that work without problem in Linux at a reasonable price, although the ink cartridges tend to be pricey.
Personally I prefer to use a cheap Samsung Lazer printer and for photo printing take a card or CD to walmart or similar. Inkjets are relatively expensive to run and if used infrequently tend to get blocked jets. Epsons tend to be cheap for cartridges.
I did get one tip from a Cartridge Refill place try holding the cartridge over a boiling kettle and dab the print head with kitchen roll it can be successful.
If Lexmark provided perfect open source drivers, I still wouldn't consider a Lexmark printer.
Did you know Virtual box can pass USB devices to a guest operating system. So use say Windows 2000 as a guest and print through the VM. For more complicated documents print to Pdf and then print the PDF also works.
Good for a temporary solution till the Lexmarks cartridges are empty and its as cheap to buy a decent printer instead of buying Lexmark printer cartridges.
I'd really like to see a few examples of files that can't be found using a linux desktop but would be easier to locate on a windows or mac pc.
If you ignore command line tools such as locate find and grep and just go for the point and click tools on the desktop the places menu is fairly comprehensive (i will explain fairly later).
There are locations you can open a file browser window on e.g music, video's documents. Computer and network. There is a recent documents list, on mine there are text files docs and docX pdf files mp3, ogg and xvid. Finally there is a Find files tool which is quite comprehensive in its search options.
Now I come to fairly, pictures and music files and video's. Without knowing a file name these are difficult to search for. Music files can be searched for with a more specialised tool such as rhythmbox which can sort by genre, artist year ect using the id3 tag. some programs can automatically retrieve this info. It's pretty much impossible to locate a song by say humming a few bars or by knowing a sample of lyrics. Pictures are even harder although jpegs can record date and camera model. Video's also are difficult.
Some of these problems can be addressed with a little help from the internet. e.g a line of a song can usually identify title artist. A line of dialog or perhaps a notable scene can identify a film.
Pictures are more difficult since they are less likely to be commercial.
The problem tends to be a lack of meta data a descriptive chunk associated with the file and really it needs to be in two places as a chunk within the file and as an entry in your own database.
Music files could embed the lyrics, even better with the timing information so you could sing along with the song. Video could have the dialog, director producer, cast ect. embedded. If the dialog and timing was embedded it could be possible to retrieve or create alternative subtitles. Most broadcast programs have a description in the program guide that could be embedded. Shows like lost and heroes typically have a synopsis of the episodes on a wiki. that could be embedded too.
Pictures are more difficult as they tend to be more unique. However many pictures are associated. It would be useful to be able to select a group of pictures and tag with "pete and jenny holiday in cork 2008" for example as general info and more picture specific info for individual files. Camera's could record more information GPS could be used to add the location a picture was taken at. could be quite cool to integrate your own photo's with google earth perhaps.
Even without GPS if you used a cell phone to take a picture knowing the cell towers your phone was registered with at the time would give useful location information.
So textual search is pretty good on linux and there are programs available that can retrieve additional information about your music files but they could go further e.g lyrics.
Pictures and Video could see real improvements with better meta-data.
One more thought what if you could use the meta data to pull related information to you. Perhaps current tour dates cinema showings ingredients flights, related history wiki articles shopping information...
Where should the metadata be located in the file, in a local database, in a net based database(s)? can existing file formats be extended without breaking existing programs?
Well to be honest there are 5 people that have a public profile Obama, McCain and Palin, and Tina Fey and some guy called joe the plummer. The democratic vice president candidate (I know his name just) has no coverage I believe he is a man. Anything else would be a guess.
Obama seems like he would change things for the better, John McCain will ensure Obama has to justify his actions as president. That seems like a good outcome.
It's funny really but I think Obama would put his country first and his party second. I also think John McCains chances would be better if he was running against Hilary.
I think i'm more influenced by American sources than British news and more by what Americans have been saying rather than the news channels.
Obama makes me feel optimistic McCain like its back to the seventys.
Slashdot Mirror
Strange that you should say it's expensive, I use 3 in the uk and can get net access for £5 a month. I also use 3's like home service when I am in ireland and still get my internet access at no extra cost (already paid for in the UK).
I don't know if it would apply to the hspda modems (priced from £10 for 1gb data to £20 -7gb) but probably it would.
3's network is a bit patchy - leading to a notorious problem where calls end up on a partner network and get charged at international roaming rates.
If Irish rates can't compare, it could be worth getting a phone on the british 3 network as pay as you go and game the system a little :)
Actually Water Filters are really good for cheap vodka, a couple of passes and the taste is vastly improved. Vodka is also best served as cold as you can get it.
With a separate glass for juice (Apple juice is especially nice although usually reserved for Zubrowka. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zubrivka ).
It looks like Linux has got a place in the Sky
http://www.linux.com/feature/119544 (October 2007
"The Linux-based eX2 in-flight entertainment system (IFE) from Panasonic Avionics was the big winner at this year's Avion Awards, sponsored by an IFE trade group. The Best Overall IFE awards went to Emirates, Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific Airways, all running variants of eX2"
"About the awards
The World Airline Entertainment Association (WAEA), based near Washington, DC, sponsors the Avion Awards. This year's winners were chosen based on a worldwide poll of 36,000 air travelers, says Elinor Kinnier, public relations manager for WAEA. Poll-based awards were given for overall and regional excellence -- a change from prior years, when a panel of judges chose winners in a variety of specific categories as well as an overall winner."
Panasonic uses redhat as a basis of their in flight Entertainment Systems with over 3000 planes fitted with them and as you can see they have been getting better
http://www.panasonic.aero/innovation.html
Panasonic seems to be doing well, with their inflight systems as Quantas has ordered 4 more systems for airbus 380's
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS5534592156.html
Virgin have an inhouse system called RED for trans atlantic flights.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/10/mega-hands-on-virgin-americas-airbus-a320-with-red-in-flight-e/ again Linux based.
Seems like Linux is taking off all over and a commercial success story.
It could just be they are bullshitting.
I remember reading about a crashed Linux in-flight Entertainment system probably here on Slashdot http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/20/2231228
Difference is I never bullshitted and said I'd seen it in person.
Beside why bother to post about it on here other than to troll?
Well your opinion is yours and mine is mine.
DD-wrt and Tomato firmware versions are very useful, giving far greater control over internet access from my IP even traffic shaping certain troublesome Lan IP's. Is there better default router firmware for the home market (or even small business LAN).
There are two cases with the voting machines fraud or no fraud.
If the machines can be shown to be rigged, it will not be shown. It will be top secret.
well to be frank the ssd on the aspire one is slow and the 3 cell battery has 2 hours of life. Also to get it running well you need to fit more ram and its quite daunting. They didn't see fit to add a cover over the expansion slot.
however ubuntu hardy runs quite well on it needs some tweaks but
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AspireOne
gives all the information needed to turn the Aspire One into a decent little laptop.
For the non-technical user the 120 Gb hdd version is just a lot easier to get on with and not that much more money. (230 -260) it's ready to go and familiar.
Linpus is pretty poor, they hid any sign of being able to do anything much with it.
With Ubuntu Hardy and 1.5gb ram, Tweaks done its fine, ssd still gives slow load times though.
Would a normal user strip down a new laptop and wrestle with an unfamiliar OS (i really think not).
The EEE900 901 are probably better netbooks However there is a big price difference between asus EEE 9inch and an aspire one.
It's a shame really the Asus 9inch netbooks are better than the Aspire One but it's price that is killing the smaller EEE's. Unfortunately a 10" EEE is just about outside netbook territory and there are plenty of laptops not much above it's price point.
I think Asus is going to struggle to compete with what they have left.
toxic ammonia is only redundant if you know ammonia is toxic, how many people know Obama is muslim? or any manner of other well knowed things.
yeah its good that one isn't it, I believe its because it thinks it may be a headset.
It is actually a windows issue, plug it in to a pc running ubuntu and it will charge.
Well you can't stop manufacturers making quirky hardware that only has had its issues addressed in windows. But have you tried Virtualbox?
It's rather good and the hardware is going to be supported even if there is no native Linux driver for it.
why not take advantage of all the free software available for ubuntu anyway?
and you can move the ubuntu system between pc's any time you want.
If you were right in practise, then the jails would be full of prosecution lawyers, who lost cases. Generally even where someone is wrongly convicted they might get compensation but how often do the people who sometimes withheld evidence face any kind of punishment?
Anyone who reads slashdot regularly will be familiar with Jack Thompson's attempts to get debarred and how hard he had to work to achieve it.
while you have deep pockets and probably more than half a clue as to how to produce a meaningful defense, your in a minority.
The costs of defending yourself against the charges made, engaging a solicitor, an expert witness, forensic examination of your computer systems, (which could only demonstrates the systems presented were not used, if you accept you can prove a negative). Loss of your PC hardware while defending the case, the loss of private data, unrelated to the case but stored on the pc systems, all in all can out weigh the annoyance of paying the relatively small sum of £500.
So your looking at lose, lose and the more you try to fight the more the costs get added on. For a lot of people cutting their losses by paying is the cheapest solution.
What is more interesting is there seems to be cases where IP addresses were identified that hadn't been used for p2p, ie not including unknown access by third parties.
http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-tricks-anti-pirates-with-fake-peers-081020/comment-page-2/
If you take this report at face value as the bbc seems to have done, it seems pirate bay inserts random ip addresses into the peers list. It also appears some investigators are assuming that there is an offer to download being made by an ip address by virtue of being on that list and haven't bothered to confirm that the file is actually available from that peer.
As some p2p users block certain ip ranges there is no way to be certain that the user is blocking the investigators ip address or isn't offering the file in the first place.
Would representatives of the pirate bay make credible witnesses in your defense?
Would they even come to your country to take the witness stand?
while this is a uk story and may not be as risky as entering US territory (see cases of off shore gambling company executives being held in the USA despite being legal in the UK and company shares traded on the London stock exchange).
The cost of bringing forth these witnesses would be probably a greater expense than just paying the extortion money.
Should the matter go to court, and the defendants lose there are additional costs incurred, being unable or unwilling to immediately pay usually results in bailiffs fee's becoming payable and these can rapidly spiral way beyond the value of the initial judgement.
I think if you were to bring one of these letters to an honest solicitor or lawyer they would say pay it and get on with your life. It isn't fair or just but it probably would be the cheapest solution.
Hopefully some of these cases where people fight back and win will at least ensure in future that at least some evidence is gathered beyond an IP address.
While I commend your willingness to fight an injustice, you do have something to lose presumably and a lawyer should advice you, you could lose it.
You may never of heard the phrase commonly used by petty criminals "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime". Currently the chances of facing real penalty's for downloading copyrighted pay for data is quite low but the risks do appear to be increasing.
Why bother taking the risk? perhaps it's even worth going for a cheaper net access package and buying wisely.
It's not hard to get clued up on what is worth your money and what isn't these days and often there are good free alternatives.
Thats a great interviewing technique you've got there.
not so silly really it's a work in progress.
I wouldn't be surprised if they were attempting to get a real 3d projection floating above the desk.
Microsoft have more than enough resources to throw at a project like this, even if is a dead end, who else would do it?
if you were from 1908 you would be amazed at what has been achieved in 2008 so what will we have in 2108? have we pretty much peaked now or would we be amazed at what technology is in use in 2108?
working 3d display technology who here wouldn't want it?
without a driver you can't use the hardware, anything designed to be used by Vista has to include drivers for Vista it doesn't have to include a driver for anything else including other versions of windows.
It certainly doesn't have to have a driver for linux.
hence your box full of hardware that doesnt work under linux. There is no liking about it, just an unwillingness of the Hardware manufacturer to get a driver produced.
Pretty much your options are to buy hardware designed to work with Linux or to research carefully.
With a public funded health service, you may well find plenty of British Volunteers. Honestly it is not that much in tax to ensure you get the treatment you need. A basic pension when you retire and a number of other benefits.
It's just such a pity dental care doesn't get similar provision.
Is it even necessary for living volunteers? surely someone who has reached the end of their life and has a full medical history would be a better subject.
You do know there is a lot of hardware supported out the box with Linux, and some that isn't.
You tend to have more success when you buy hardware that is supported.
(assume samual jackson voice)
Did your computer come with anything that said it was designed to work with Linux or any particular version of Linux Brad? No, So why did you decide to treat it as if it was.
Now Brad it said designed for Windows Vista, didn't it Brad and when you gave it Vista it ran perfectly fine, now why are we not surprised?
Thats right brad it was designed to run vista.
So what have learned brad? Don't bitch when you buy hardware without knowing if its supported or not. Thats right brad but don't feel too bad because that computer can't run XP! Wwwhat! yes brad there are no drivers for XP because everybody was supposed to be happy with Vista.
Well Don't be too sad brad install virtualbox and XP and Ubuntu will run without complaint or any need to compile anything...
The EEE 701 has fallen from £249 to £160 in six months the Acer AspireOne which is better in most respects is £170
This Dell isn't competing with Netbooks its a small laptop which a year ago we passed over for 15 and 17 inch competitors. Once your toting a full size laptop around you may as well go for something big fast.
well this is being posted from a netbook.
Screen size is 9 inch with 1024 by 600 resolution. This is quite a comfortable size and is sharper than my old hp 15inch with 1024x768 resolution. Smaller Screen with Smaller pixels. Admittedly the netbooks with smaller screens are a bit too cramped with 800x480.
Keyboard size on 9inch versions seems adequate I can type at a reasonable rate without hitting the wrong keys.
Processing power is good enough in ubuntu and Linux in general. 2000 in a Vm isn't super fast but its quite usable.
in short its probably roughly equivalent to my old HP, The Atom processor isn't quite as fast but its good enough. Really thats the key too the whole thing. It is good enough.
Now what makes it better than my old HP is the size its small enough to fit in a glovebox or for the ladies a handbag. power wise it uses about 22,23 watts and even with the stingy battery Acer supplied a comfortable 2 hours can be had. Better batteries can increase that to 5 or 7 hours.
Storage ranges from 4Gb to 120Gb depending on model and extra space is easily added with Sd cards and usb sticks. When you consider that a show such as hero's can be just 300 Meg for an episode a 2Gb Sd card will keep you entertained for hours, if you want to work on a document you could do that too. Wifi and wired connections are built in, some have 3G adapters or you can use a usb hspda dongle or a cell phone as a modem (i use a 10mm usb bluetooth adapter to get net access most places it costs me £5 a month or 50p a day if i feel a need for it).
It's the portability and price that really makes a netbook and i really wonder if by buying a 12inch dell it really isn't too big and pricey. Your starting to get into regular laptop territory and they are just too big, toting a full size laptop soon becomes a chore.
Well you might say well get a pda then, however they have extremely small screens and pretty terrible keyboards if they have them at all picking away with a stylus is a terrible way to type and handwriting recognition far too hit and miss. If you have a net enabled mobile, you probably find that web pages are hard to navigate and interact with. Yet the same mobile when used as a modem suddenly becomes useful for more than just phone calls (or in the case of the pda sat nav).
Storage is easily added when needed, yes you can burn a DVD with a usb connected drive. (mines recycled + an external case) and if I need a bigger screen keyboard or mouse I can plug them in. Off course once I am in contact with my home Lan everything is accessible. I generally print using my samsung lazer printer.
When I'm out and about i have an inverter which allows me to charge my netbook when it needs it. I can park up and still sit behind the wheel and work or pop it on the dashboard and watch a film. My Car stereo has an aux jack but in cars without a small fm transmitter or even a cassette adapter will work as well.
I could choose to read an ebook too.
So its replacing a few devices I might have bought, a full size laptop just can't be used so easily. Airports are good places to have a netbook too, even a kitchen worktop or a coffee table. Students love em, they replace full size laptops and are easily transported from class to class.
They could be better, touch screens, webcams that can face away from the keyboard. screens that can lay flat and usable, would it be useful to record a lecture whilst taking notes maybe. maybe use it as a sketch pad capture an image with the webcam and annotate it perhaps.
So yes there are plenty of uses for a netbook it certainly calls into question the need for any other pc and a dedicated area of the home.
Interesting findings
Actually it seems Lexmark printers are better value than they used to be. Printers cost a little more and ink is cheaper.
However we are both guilty of falling into the 'either' trap that is you either run Windows or Linux. I don't know any Linux user who doesn't use windows from time to time. There isn't any reason why you have to be exclusive.
Use whats best for the task in hand, thats what most Linux users do. Most of what I do can be done in Linux some things are easier in Windows. For me a VM is good enough for what I do in Windows, in fact it's better since I can carry my VM on a thumb drive and have exactly what I use in it anywhere.
Conversion is a religious experience, Linux and Windows are not.
There is no physical reason why a Lexmark printer couldn't be used on Linux or OSX, that they choose to limit their printers to windows only is their choice and hence I will not buy from that company I can choose too.
Or it could be that not everyone who uses a PC knows the release date of the next version of Open Office and is waiting to grab it at the earliest opportunity
besides which docx support as of a couple of weeks ago still was um rough to say the least. It's far more likely that people will upgrade over a period of months.
If you get a limited memory box like a Netbook buy some more ram, it's not expensive and run whatever you like. limited memory on a netbook is 1.5 to 2gb
plenty for Linux, 2000 or XP.
It might drain the battery a little faster but not by a noticeable amount.
Personally I prefer a minimum of 756. 2000 is nice and frugal but XP seems to like 600 MB just to get to the Desktop. (my observation of typical home user systems with nothing turned off and the usual extra's).
Avoid the swap file and you get a usable PC.
well HP do make some reasonable scanner printers that work without problem in Linux at a reasonable price, although the ink cartridges tend to be pricey.
Personally I prefer to use a cheap Samsung Lazer printer and for photo printing take a card or CD to walmart or similar. Inkjets are relatively expensive to run and if used infrequently tend to get blocked jets. Epsons tend to be cheap for cartridges.
I did get one tip from a Cartridge Refill place try holding the cartridge over a boiling kettle and dab the print head with kitchen roll it can be successful.
If Lexmark provided perfect open source drivers, I still wouldn't consider a Lexmark printer.
Did you know Virtual box can pass USB devices to a guest operating system. So use say Windows 2000 as a guest and print through the VM. For more complicated documents print to Pdf and then print the PDF also works.
Good for a temporary solution till the Lexmarks cartridges are empty and its as cheap to buy a decent printer instead of buying Lexmark printer cartridges.
I'd really like to see a few examples of files that can't be found using a linux desktop but would be easier to locate on a windows or mac pc.
If you ignore command line tools such as locate find and grep and just go for the point and click tools on the desktop the places menu is fairly comprehensive (i will explain fairly later).
There are locations you can open a file browser window on e.g music, video's documents. Computer and network.
There is a recent documents list, on mine there are text files docs and docX pdf files mp3, ogg and xvid. Finally there is a Find files tool which is quite comprehensive in its search options.
Now I come to fairly, pictures and music files and video's. Without knowing a file name these are difficult to search for. Music files can be searched for with a more specialised tool such as rhythmbox which can sort by genre, artist year ect using the id3 tag. some programs can automatically retrieve this info. It's pretty much impossible to locate a song by say humming a few bars or by knowing a sample of lyrics. Pictures are even harder although jpegs can record date and camera model. Video's also are difficult.
Some of these problems can be addressed with a little help from the internet. e.g a line of a song can usually identify title artist. A line of dialog or perhaps a notable scene can identify a film.
Pictures are more difficult since they are less likely to be commercial.
The problem tends to be a lack of meta data a descriptive chunk associated with the file and really it needs to be in two places as a chunk within the file and as an entry in your own database.
Music files could embed the lyrics, even better with the timing information so you could sing along with the song. Video could have the dialog, director producer, cast ect. embedded. If the dialog and timing was embedded it could be possible to retrieve or create alternative subtitles. Most broadcast programs have a description in the program guide that could be embedded. Shows like lost and heroes typically have a synopsis of the episodes on a wiki. that could be embedded too.
Pictures are more difficult as they tend to be more unique. However many pictures are associated. It would be useful to be able to select a group of pictures and tag with "pete and jenny holiday in cork 2008" for example as general info and more picture specific info for individual files. Camera's could record more information GPS could be used to add the location a picture was taken at. could be quite cool to integrate your own photo's with google earth perhaps.
Even without GPS if you used a cell phone to take a picture knowing the cell towers your phone was registered with at the time would give useful location information.
So textual search is pretty good on linux and there are programs available that can retrieve additional information about your music files but they could go further e.g lyrics.
Pictures and Video could see real improvements with better meta-data.
One more thought what if you could use the meta data to pull related information to you. Perhaps current tour dates cinema showings ingredients flights, related history wiki articles shopping information...
Where should the metadata be located in the file, in a local database, in a net based database(s)? can existing file formats be extended without breaking existing programs?
Well to be honest there are 5 people that have a public profile Obama, McCain and Palin, and Tina Fey and some guy called joe the plummer. The democratic vice president candidate (I know his name just) has no coverage I believe he is a man. Anything else would be a guess.
Obama seems like he would change things for the better, John McCain will ensure Obama has to justify his actions as president. That seems like a good outcome.
It's funny really but I think Obama would put his country first and his party second. I also think John McCains chances would be better if he was running against Hilary.
I think i'm more influenced by American sources than British news and more by what Americans have been saying rather than the news channels.
Obama makes me feel optimistic McCain like its back to the seventys.
True enough Murphys and Heineken on draft but bottled Guiness is available too.
(bottled coors and bud if you must)