How about a Lazy Susan (you know, a rotating platform like in a chinese restaurant). No that's stupid idea, the cables won't stretch.
Mind you, there's one I've seen in the Jensen catalogue (it's a UK tool company, an kind of engineering pr0n magazine;-) for your service workbench, very nice.
OK, run extension cables from the ports back into the case thru a slot, then up to the drive bays, and make a new drive bay plate that you mount them in.
Or, ignore all our ranting and just read the posts that answer your question, i.e. who mkaes these sorts of case!
Definately run CAT5 now. Optionally, put dark fibre in next to it. You don't have to use it now, and the cable itself is probably cheap - it's the termination and the net cards that will cost.
But probably it makes more sense to just run trunking and string so you can pull more stuff later. Who knows, in 5 years we may have wireless at fibre speeds, or sub-ethanet, or be able to run terrabit over CAT-7 copper, or whatever.
Remember, when running the CAT-5, the first rule of cabling:
"Put more cable in than you need, because the customer cannot be trusted when she says "I will only ever need x wires to that point". Even if the customer is you!"
I've just had a day of crimp-tool fun making doublers to run two phone lines down a single CAT-5, largely because the customer did something that was guaranteed as "unthinkable" when we wired the damn site. Should have followed the rule;-)
REmember as well that CAT_5 is well established, and so you will be able to get all sorts of interesting baluns to run all sorts of nifty stuff down it.
It looks like a stereo component. So perhaps the answer is for some company to build cases that look like a stereo compnent for the build-your-own users. You could probably take a rack-mount case and do something similar?
What OS on the laptops? What mail server? What applications might a user legitimately be running while in class? (I presume a word processor?) Does that list change (can you legitimately be sending mail and surfing the net in certain clases?) Does it need to be something the teacher turns on and off? ("Right class, now I'll turn the network on so you can look for the answes to this question on the net")
And having notes that look as good as a text book can't be bad. I'd suggest this as preferable to a digital-ink style device.
But as pointed out, if you're transcribing a lecture you will want at least something that can render quickly so you can see how you are doing.
Might I suggest you investigate something along the lines of a sub-notebook? I imagine even an old cheap one will run Linux nicely, or if you have $$$ to spend, something slinky in the Crusoe line.
... but he was their security officer, not a product designer. What difference does it make that he worked for MS? Other than that consequentially he worked for a huge, high-profile MS shop that everyone wants to crack and not many have managed.
The job'll be easier, I'd imagine, since the White House is a smaller and less ambitious (but equally high profile) MS shop and while he now isn't down the hall from the developers (which is not all it's cracked up to be) he is down the hall from the NSA.
I mean really. If you've got to secure an important *MS* shop, who do you think would be better?
...reading this I went over to catch up on AC's diary. More human interest than the change log. Got to November 5th and read:
"Windows installation day one. Getting rid of the old windows was easy - they fell apart quite happily, and certainly wont be re-installable anywhere else. "
Blimey, I thought, until I remembered his house is getting done up...
You answered your own question in a way - the only hotel that is going to bother to provide broadband internet access in the rooms is one that caters to businessmen. And they'll know how to charge for it too. I like the St Stephens in Dublin - but I wouldn't like to pay for it.
Only other possibility that occurs to me is to try to rent someone's holiday home or such and try and find one that's connected. Worst case, you'll get an analogue conenction charged at sensible rates that doesn't go thru a PABX.
Try some little villa somewhere, bring a server and a wirelss access point and cache all your CVS changes
If you wathc the on-line recordings of DNA's memorial service, his literary agent explained that:
a) salmon of doubt was extremely unfinished (to be precise, it's not a case of only being half of a book, it's a case of what there is being early drafts from a writer who did many many many revisions of his work) but that even so...
b)...they intended to include it in a forthcoming collection of his non-book-published work (journalism etc.) simply because the fanatics would demand it.
Since people have already mentioned incuding the ibooks in your evaluation, I thought I'd mention another possibility, the Series 7
http://www.psion.com/series7/
640 x 480 7.7" screen, StrongArm processor, PCMCIA, CF, IRDA, 8.5 hour battery life.
(There's a near-identical machine called the netbook that they sell more into the indstrial market that is also worth a look.
http://www.psion.co.uk/netbook/
)
It runs EPOC, which might actually do you, but there is an ongoing project to get Linux on it.
http://linux-7110.sourceforge.net/
I'm not sure how solid this is (except to say that it's certainly not a finished distro like you get on the ibooks) but you wanted to do some hacking, didn't you say?;-)
It's not even that, they just aren't ready to provide suer support to XP users. Nothing strange about that; I can't deliver XP support to my end users myself, yet.
Imagine the work these huge support teams have to do when a new OS comes out. If it was a trivial task to re-train, then I expect you'd get a lot fewer exchange like:
"what version of Windows are you running?"
"Linux"
"Eh?"
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How about a Lazy Susan (you know, a rotating platform like in a chinese restaurant). No that's stupid idea, the cables won't stretch.
;-) for your service workbench, very nice.
Mind you, there's one I've seen in the Jensen catalogue (it's a UK tool company, an kind of engineering pr0n magazine
OK, run extension cables from the ports back into the case thru a slot, then up to the drive bays, and make a new drive bay plate that you mount them in.
Or, ignore all our ranting and just read the posts that answer your question, i.e. who mkaes these sorts of case!
Definately run CAT5 now. Optionally, put dark fibre in next to it. You don't have to use it now, and the cable itself is probably cheap - it's the termination and the net cards that will cost.
;-)
But probably it makes more sense to just run trunking and string so you can pull more stuff later. Who knows, in 5 years we may have wireless at fibre speeds, or sub-ethanet, or be able to run terrabit over CAT-7 copper, or whatever.
Remember, when running the CAT-5, the first rule of cabling:
"Put more cable in than you need, because the customer cannot be trusted when she says "I will only ever need x wires to that point". Even if the customer is you!"
I've just had a day of crimp-tool fun making doublers to run two phone lines down a single CAT-5, largely because the customer did something that was guaranteed as "unthinkable" when we wired the damn site. Should have followed the rule
REmember as well that CAT_5 is well established, and so you will be able to get all sorts of interesting baluns to run all sorts of nifty stuff down it.
Put the CD-ROM in an external case and turn the unit around so the backs to you.
Well, I said probably stupid, but what do you expect when I'm only on my second cup of coffee.
It looks like a stereo component. So perhaps the answer is for some company to build cases that look like a stereo compnent for the build-your-own users. You could probably take a rack-mount case and do something similar?
BTW, can we get a proer problem description?
What OS on the laptops? What mail server? What applications might a user legitimately be running while in class? (I presume a word processor?) Does that list change (can you legitimately be sending mail and surfing the net in certain clases?) Does it need to be something the teacher turns on and off? ("Right class, now I'll turn the network on so you can look for the answes to this question on the net")
Server-centric, but why not block access to the e-mail server for the student accounts during class hours?
I'm sure you could knock together a script that reads the timetable and determines where each student is meant to be.
Let us rephrase that: if your nokia has a Java VM blah blah blah.
And having notes that look as good as a text book can't be bad. I'd suggest this as preferable to a digital-ink style device.
But as pointed out, if you're transcribing a lecture you will want at least something that can render quickly so you can see how you are doing.
Might I suggest you investigate something along the lines of a sub-notebook? I imagine even an old cheap one will run Linux nicely, or if you have $$$ to spend, something slinky in the Crusoe line.
I mean, imagine buying a games console and playing games on it? You'd be shunned.
... but he was their security officer, not a product designer. What difference does it make that he worked for MS? Other than that consequentially he worked for a huge, high-profile MS shop that everyone wants to crack and not many have managed.
The job'll be easier, I'd imagine, since the White House is a smaller and less ambitious (but equally high profile) MS shop and while he now isn't down the hall from the developers (which is not all it's cracked up to be) he is down the hall from the NSA.
I mean really. If you've got to secure an important *MS* shop, who do you think would be better?
Hey, imagine a Beowulf cluster of those.
God, can't believe I just posted that....
I suggest the paperpalm
/ de vices/paperpalm.html
http://www.brighthand.com/palmhandhelds/reviews
to avoid culture shock in using a piece of paper.
Get the old ipaq, since you care not for PPC 2002 (since you're going to run Linux on it, aren't you), and they're cheap these days.
Hmmm... How about 2 PCs and a KVM switch?
Well, most Linux people have to earn a crust somewhere, and the tendency is for them to work of Linux companies, so not really that surprising.
...reading this I went over to catch up on AC's diary. More human interest than the change log. Got to November 5th and read:
"Windows installation day one. Getting rid of the old windows was easy - they fell apart quite happily, and certainly wont be re-installable anywhere else. "
Blimey, I thought, until I remembered his house is getting done up...
You answered your own question in a way - the only hotel that is going to bother to provide broadband internet access in the rooms is one that caters to businessmen. And they'll know how to charge for it too. I like the St Stephens in Dublin - but I wouldn't like to pay for it.
Only other possibility that occurs to me is to try to rent someone's holiday home or such and try and find one that's connected. Worst case, you'll get an analogue conenction charged at sensible rates that doesn't go thru a PABX.
Try some little villa somewhere, bring a server and a wirelss access point and cache all your CVS changes
Heh, and people say us geeks are wierd. But, what could be more wholesome than candy floss?
Seriously: I suspect you need to get real equipment and simply hack it with sensors.
If you wathc the on-line recordings of DNA's memorial service, his literary agent explained that: ...they intended to include it in a forthcoming collection of his non-book-published work (journalism etc.) simply because the fanatics would demand it.
a) salmon of doubt was extremely unfinished (to be precise, it's not a case of only being half of a book, it's a case of what there is being early drafts from a writer who did many many many revisions of his work) but that even so...
b)
Since people have already mentioned incuding the ibooks in your evaluation, I thought I'd mention another possibility, the Series 7
;-)
http://www.psion.com/series7/
640 x 480 7.7" screen, StrongArm processor, PCMCIA, CF, IRDA, 8.5 hour battery life.
(There's a near-identical machine called the netbook that they sell more into the indstrial market that is also worth a look.
http://www.psion.co.uk/netbook/
)
It runs EPOC, which might actually do you, but there is an ongoing project to get Linux on it.
http://linux-7110.sourceforge.net/
I'm not sure how solid this is (except to say that it's certainly not a finished distro like you get on the ibooks) but you wanted to do some hacking, didn't you say?
My D-Link has a lump on the outside, so it's single-height but has a proper RJ45 on it. Looks like this:
[]____
>/b>
Pardon my ignorance, but is the Muslim Sabbath on a Sunday?
See if you can borrow another laptop from someone else for a couple of hours.
Then drop your HDD into it, and squirt your data out via LAN, removeable drive, or even a null modem cable.
Ah, but you are a slashdot reader - the idea of this is surely as a consumer hifi device that "12 o'clock flashers" * can use to get into MP3 fun.
;-)
* i.e. people whose VCR's are flashing at 12:00
It's not even that, they just aren't ready to provide suer support to XP users. Nothing strange about that; I can't deliver XP support to my end users myself, yet.
Imagine the work these huge support teams have to do when a new OS comes out. If it was a trivial task to re-train, then I expect you'd get a lot fewer exchange like:
"what version of Windows are you running?"
"Linux"
"Eh?"