One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)

After delays in manufacturing OLPC, I recently got my hands on a new OLPC for a few hours. Currently, the only way of getting your laptop is via the G1G1 program where for $400, you give one laptop to a child in need and you get one. Tmobile was also generous enough to give 1 year of free Tmobile HotSpot service with this!

First impressions:
It's pretty small & light, and cute with a little handle on the top.


It took me a few minutes to open the laptop since I didn't RTFM. Hint: need to open both antennas first before the laptop would open.


This laptop is definitely for kids. Everything seems small. Small screen, small keyboard (so small that I can't touch type on it). The keyboard is not the tactile type, it's molded rubber so it's still OK if you spill stuff on it.


There are some thoughtful design:
The LCD swivels 360 degrees, allowing you to show what on your screen easily.

When you open the antennas, it uncovers USB and headphone/mic jacks. I like the fact that there's one horizontal and one vertical USB ports. Depending on what you try to plug in, sometimes it fits better one way or another (because of the antenna).

It's also equipped with stereo speakers, and even a camera!


I find the software not too intuitive though, at least not for me. A taskbar appears when you drag your mouse button to the edge of your screen. Then there are a variety of applications you can run. The only thing that took me awhile to figure out is how to switch between applications. They have some pretty cool applications pre-installed. Like a video recorder, sound recorder/analyer (you can see the waveform on the screen and it changes when you talk).


Overall, I think it's a good first laptop that will help educate many children abroad. It's not something for me to use daily - even if it's only for web-browsing.

Ubuntu first timer

First, I downloaded GParted free utility to repartition my HD. I reduced my current Windows boot partition to 30gb and left the rest unformated. GParted is a straight-forward FREE program that let you do this. Just boot off the CD that I created off the .iso. Boots with a nice X-windows with the util loaded already. After it's all done, I rebooted to Windows just to make sure that partition still works. Windows ran the diskchk since it thinks the disk is "dirty", but everything is fine after that.
A couple months ago, I requested a ubuntu 7.10 CD. Finally got a chance to put it to use. I booted off the CD. It loaded ubuntu and ran it out of RAM. There's one "install" icon on the desktop and clicking that start the install. I made a mistake and let it choose the biggest partition to install (I should've configured the partition to 30gb and put the rest as a shared storage partition between my windows and linux OSs). While it's installing, I'm free to web-browse using the firefox already loaded. It was by far the easiest Linux install I've experienced (the last time I installed Linux was redhat circa 2003).
That's it! Now I have a dual boot machine in less than an hour.

Dell Inspiron 530s

Got my new Dell Inspiron 530s (the 's' for slim) computer yesterday.



Here's the spec for it:
Intel Core2 Duo processor E6550 (2.33GHz 1333FSB) w/Dual Core Technology and 4MB cache
1GB DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz
Dell USB 4 Button Premium Optical Mouse with Scroll
Dell USB Keyboard
Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3100
320GB Serial ATA 2 Hard Drive (7200RPM)
Dell 19-in-1 Media Card Reader
Integrated NIC card
56K PCI Data Fax Modem
16X DVD+/-RW Drive

I ordered on Friday morning. It shipped on Saturday (the next day) and I got it on Tuesday! it's amazing how quickly Dell can configure a computer.
Even though I could've gotten a QuadCore for the same price, it doesn't come in the slim-case version - which would look nicer if I decide to use it as a MediaPC connected to the TV.

The first thing I noticed when I turn on the computer is how LOUD the fan noise is. It's like sitting on the plane near the jet engine.

When I first got a Dell about 5 years ago, I was really impressed by their computers. It was so quiet, well built and nicely engineered. I remembered it was the first time where I saw a clam-shell case (no screws needed) and slide-on HD and optical drives. Many of the features that common cases now have. It was then that I decided that I couldn't beat Dell with price or the quietness - it was the end of computer-building era of my life.
When I heard this new 530s, I thought that era might come back.. yes, it was that loud.


I had thoughts of selling it off immediately. I guess I'm impatient - because if I rebooted the computer just once, I would notice that the fan noise would be gone :) A sure way to fix the fan noise is to reset the BIOS to default settings and start over.

The good thing I like:
The media reader!

In Windows Explorer, you can actually see the icons of the type of media card each drive letter correspond to. This has always been my pet-peeve with multi-media reader, it would pop up as E,F,G,H drives and you don't know which one is which.
Cooler still, the icon would turn to color when you insert a card.

Looking inside the case, everything is pack tight.

Still, there are 2 PCI slots, a x1 PCIe slot and a x16 PCIe slot. They're all half-height (low profile) slots though. Which will make my search for a good video card slightly harder, but I expected as much. My current choice is the MSI 8500GT low-profile fanless video card. It's at the top of my list because it has both HDMI and DVI output. HDMI is useful so that I only need one cable to carry both 1080p and audio.

I do like the fact that this case has space for 2 Hard drives. Most slim cases only have space for 1. It also have 4 memory slots. Currently it's only populated by 2x512MB 667Mhz DIMMs, but I plan to buy at least 2x1GB 800Mhz DIMMs.

My dissapointments:

• No SPDIF!! The onboard audio (HD Realtek) supports 7.1 surround sound, but it doesn't have a simple digital audio output .
• No Gigabit - another cost cutting measure from Dell. My 1.5 year old Dell Dimension E510 comes with Gigabit Ethernet. This brand new one only comes with 10/100.

I got XP home just so I don't feed Microsoft's Vista bandwagon. I fully intended on putting Linux or move my XP MCE from my old computer to here.

Next would be my experiment with ubuntu 7.10 before deciding which OS to keep.