January 15th, 2009
I’ve not used my XO nearly as much as I anticipated:
- The keyboard is even more a “fatal flaw” than I thought at first.
- The LCD panel failed (right side went blank) just before I was going to take it to Nicaragua. (A free under warranty replacement machine was shipped promptly, but not promptly enough.)
- Miscellaneous software annoyances, most notably the WiFi limitations and the power management deficiencies, also limited applicability.
Obviously, the keyboard is not going to get better, the LCD failure is history, but there is good news about #3.
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Posted in hardware, operating systems | Comments Off on XO musing (8.)2.0
January 15th, 2009
About twenty 4 to 6 year-old computers were recently donated to Red Arco Iris (en Inglés, Rainbow Network). The disk drives had been reformatted to remove prior content, presumably both for licensing integrity and privacy. Now the question is how to transport/transform them into productive machines in the Network offices in Nicaragua. Likely transportation is from Springfield to Austin in a truck, and then from Austin to Managua in a shipping container.
Inertia would lead to sending the computers, without software, to Nicaragua. Then Spanish packagings of Windows, Office, et al would need to be installed with Spanish settings.
However:
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Posted in operating systems | Comments Off on en Inglés and in Spanish (a reason to prefer Linux over Windows?)
December 10th, 2008
The Fedora Project (and for that matter Ubuntu) seem to have settled into semi-annual, roughly May (April) and November (October), release cycles, with Fedora 10 general availability just over two weeks ago. As usual I felt obligated to explore the new edition, and assuming it was acceptable, quickly put it into production.
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Posted in operating systems | Comments Off on Semi-annual Fedora Fun
October 15th, 2008
Today, Blog Action Day cites 10,000 blogs trying to raise awareness of poverty and initiate action amongst 10,000,000 projected readers. They suggest posts consistent with a site’s other topics that address poverty. It’s very late in the day, so probably best to wait to say much, but here’s a start and some seeds for future posts.
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Posted in Internet, Web | Comments Off on technology for a dollar a day world
July 22nd, 2008
My primary desktop computer, a 4+ year-old VAIO, had been flaky for months. I’d replaced the power supply, re-glued the north bridge heat sink to the chip, re-installed XP, and so forth. So I happily replaced it with a Vostro 200. It was time to try Vista (Home Premium) seriously. But not without a safety net, the ability to multi-boot to XP if/when necessary.
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Posted in operating systems | Comments Off on liking Vista with a safety net (XP)