Category: Computers

Linux on Laptops

Tux!

Lets suppose that your tired of your current operating system and want to try something new. It happens, nothing wrong with that. The problem is that you’re a laptop owner and as we all know laptops are a delicate little box of hardware. Part computer, part monitor, and part strange alien technology that breaks when you look at it wrong. You have a friend that said ‘Get Linux, it’s kewl!’ Well, you know darn well that your sleek exotic beast was barely able to take an install of Microsoft Windows let alone some free OS made by people with more time that you ever remember having. Face it, Microsoft has enough programmers to build an Egyptian pyramid (hey, Gates is going to die someday…) So the notion that free software is going to install might be as crazy as open source XP. But as with many things on the ‘net, other people have forged into this unknown territory and have left notes as to their experiences.

This is an index of information and documentation of interest to those who now use or are considering using the Linux operating system on a notebook or laptop computer.

All in all a very handy site if your thinking of making the switch and want to push your laptop into a new dimension. Heck, I’m downloading Debian right now and have a 20GB drive ready to go into my Toshiba Satellite. Live free, use Linux! 🙂

Linux on Laptops

laptop, linux, OS, cool

Store the Force

Vader USB

The whole custom USB memory device trend is taking longer to catch on than I had thought it would. This is the latest batch, Star Wars inspired memory units. So far this is falling in the same catagory as all the other ones, looks nifty but the storage capacity is far too small to be of any practical use. I suspect that some one is selling smaller (older) USB memory drives for very cheap and because the margin would be pretty good those get used in the cool custom cases.

May the USB Memory be with you my Young apprentice

USB, memory, Star Wars, storage

Just when you thought you’d never see a usb thumb drive/camera/webcam/digital audio recorder/camcorder…

The Octave Multipod does it all except find itself.

Octave 5 in 1 device OK, is it just me, or is it realistic to think that this thing would make a crappy digital camera/voice recorder/webcam/video cam/USB dirve? Why does everybody think that if something is smaller, it has to be better…… I guess I’ll never get into the multi-use micro gadget craze. I do however like the single use micro gadgets. I guess I’m just fickle that way.

The Multipod is a digital camera, web camera, video camera, audio recorder and 128MB portable storage device. It does all of this in a three-quarter ounce shell case that’s the size of a disposable cigarette lighter.

On the other hand, it would be handy to have the use of any one of these gadgets at any time, and not have to carry 5 different items to do it. (See?….fickle!)

Anyway, Ocatve.com has it for $150 and I bet they selll quite a few of them too!

What’s Next, Isolinear Chips?

30GB Holocard

Wow! OK, get the price down where I can afford one and everything will be cool. I like the price of the media though, about $35US to back up a TB of data is a great deal. If the writer is fast, the cards are re-writable, and dirable, a robot library of these buggers would quickly put the heat to DLT tape makers. In the nean time, if a sub $100US reader can be made this will be a boon to the video game market in a huge way.

The card capacity is expected to be 30 GB. The company aims to price the product around $1US. Optware also intends to set the price of a reader device lower than $2,000US and a reader/writer device lower than $10,000US.

Optware to Release 30 GB Holographic Card for Less than $1 at the End of 2006

storage, holographic, memory, computers

Flybook A33i

Flybook

For a 9″x6″ laptop this is a fantastic deal. This would be the perfect computer to take with you on a trip so you can dump camera photos to it. Heck, it even comes in diffent colors!

The TechReport has some nice photos of the tiny Flybook. Measuring only 235x155x31mm and weighing 1.2kg, the Flybook has a 1024×600 pixels screen and GPRS, Bluetooth and Wi-fi connectivity built-in (3G Card available). The model in the photo is the A33i running a 1GHz Transmeta Crusoe-based system with 512MB. The A33i is already available already in Europe with a price ticket of about $2,000. The new Flybooks V33i and V35i feature the Pentium M “Dothan” running at 1.1 to 1.2GHz. Those new models are not yet on sale.
The Flybook A33i comes in six fun colors (see photo below). I would definitely get the yellow one. Flybooks are not available yet in the US, but might come soon. I would wait for the new V33i and V35i with the Intel CPUs.

Flybook A33i

cool, small, sub mini, computer