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OLPC Hits India
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Nicholas Negroponte's now-familiar OLPC (one laptop per child) initiative to bring technology to the children in poverty-struck areas has now reached India in collaboration with the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani group (RADAG). The pilot, priced at $180 (or Rs. 7,000) will go to a tribal village at Khairat, near Karjat, Maharashtra. "Reliance Communications will provide internet connectivity, network backbone, logistic and support to the OLPC initiative in India, using its network that would cover over 25,000 towns and 6,00,000 Indian villages by March 2008." Get the main story here.

They Just Keep Getting Smaller
Tuesday, October 16, 2007

It's five inches wide and uses only 5 Watts of power. Fit-PC is yet another uber-tiny UMPC. "It is at least smaller than the Mac Mini, the de facto litmus test for tiny desktops. At 5" square, it shaves off about an inch both ways. Specwise, it's also something of a mini, sporting an AMD Geode, 256MB RAM and a 40GB hard drive." Find out more here.

Looking Ahead
Tuesday, October 16, 2007

The EagleCD has gotten a tad reflective on the developments of technology and the Mobile-ITX motherboard in particular. "Are we going to see a 'PicoBook' being released in 2008. Or maybe something more along the lines of an OQO Model 2 Nano." He goes on to wonder about the new MTube that runs on a VIA C7-M 1.0GHz processor. See what he has to say.

Mtube_gui

Good Things in Small Packages
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
I always worry about damage to my handheld from accidentally dropping it or finding its way into the hands of a rambunctious toddler. Or both! The OQO has proved that small is not necessarily fragile. Dennis Moore has a story from an OQO customer on just how rugged the little thing can be. Find out what happened when his OQO fell out of his pocket onto the sidewalk.

Getting Away From Spam
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Sick of spam? Maybe you should switch to Gmail as your primary email account. PC Mechanic has one very happy writer who discovered just how well Gmail's spam filters work after being plagued with spam at his domain email addresses. The spam folder does get pretty full over the course of a month so looking through it for any important mails that may have gotten marked as spam incorrectly would be a little tedious if you don't check the folder regularly. Thankfully, according to the writer, this isn't necessary since Gmail's spam filters (somehow) only block out unwanted mail. Take a look.

Linux FAQs
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Newbies to Linux (or non-techies in general) tend to be wary of swapping out their tried and true Microsoft OS for the promise of fewer viruses (among other things) without some sort of preparation for what lies ahead and how to get through the installation. PC Mechanic has come up with a set of Linux FAQs to guide the hesitant and encourage them to make the jump. See for yourself.

Zonbu Zonbox in the Top Ten
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Practically everything has a Top Ten list that all interested parties are trying to get in on. Here we have the Top Ten Most Brilliant Gadgets of 2007. The Zonbu Zonbox (where do they get these names?) makes it to the list as a $99 PC running on Linux. That means less vulnerability to viruses. But if you do run into any trouble, the company will simply overnight you a replacement. Now that's what I call service. Find out what else made the list here.

Vista's list of frustrations
Monday, October 15, 2007
I mentioned that week that my email completely crashed and that I was now using a PC running Windows Vista. My old system, running Windows XP, did recover from the virus attack and it’s sitting in the lab. Unless things improve, I think I will be reverting back. I have been using this Vista system since Monday last week and I have started to accumulate a list of frustrations. It’s fair to say that part of my peevishness is simply because I’m busy and I resent the time it takes to learn the slight differences of a new operating system. But it’s also much more than that. Here’s my list so far of my pet hates of Windows Vista: The way the folder navigation works when you need to browse to other sections of the computer. If you open Documents, there actually isn’t a way to get to a secondary hard drive – you have to open Computer instead

Permissions that just don’t make sense
Having to give permission 2-3 times for the one action
Really getting rid of the firewall so that you can use ftps
Network connections just not working—with WinXP on the same network I never had so many problems
The see-through nature of the way Vista presents things means that you can’t see text boxes and buttons properly in some applications

I'll give it one more week before I decide.

Who is the one user on Steam using a Cyrix processor?!
Monday, October 15, 2007
After logging out of Team Fortress 2 last night, Steam gave me the option to participate in a hardware survey. The data they have collected is extremely interesting. Some of the things that stood out are that out of 1 million users, 13 000 are using multi-GPU setups, about 1.3%. It surprised me that it’s so low in the fps market. Vista on the other hand has already got 7.99% of users. With over 90%; however, there is no doubt that XP is still the operating system of choice for gamers. 44% of people who completed the survey have got under 1GB of RAM—poor buggers! The race between Intel and AMD for the CPU of choice is surprisingly close, with Intel holding 53.53% and AMD 46.47%. Check it all out here.

Hardware News
Sunday, October 14, 2007

Virtual Hideout is talking about what appears to be a really good deal on a Synology Disk Station DS107+ NAS. It features "external storage with gigabit Ethernet, a web server, iTunes server, backup utility for Cameras and USB drives. Plus the (near as I can tell), unique internal bit torrent download client that you can use from a remote location. It’s not so high priced that a small home business or family with a home network and a couple computers can’t afford it." Find out what a setup like this can cost.

3dGameMan had all good things to say about the Silverstone TJ09 case. It's no different with the TJ10. Made of thick aluminum, the "sophisticated structure is second in stiffness only to the unibody designed TJ07 case. There are plenty of drive bays, excellent air circulation and the motherboard tray is removable. It fits all types of ATX motherboards, long power supplies and full length video cards." This mid-tower case definitely gets the thumbs up. See if you agree.

We don't often get posts on storage solutions for laptops. Benchmark Reviews brings us their opinion of the Targus 15.4-inch Notebook Case CUCT02A after putting it through the hoops "to see how well it performs under pressure." If you're in the market for a new case for your laptop, this is a must-see. You'll find it all here.