TooMuchGreen

It took a couple of weeks (I had to move house) but it looks like I’m at a happy stage with the 1.6GHZ Atom Silverthorne  Dell Mini 12, it’s sociably streaming the BBC iPlayer and running Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala sharp, clear and snappy at 1280×800. Initial dabbling had me set with Jaunty 9.04 which although more than workable for server development wasn’t delivering the multi-use laptop  operating system interface I was after. The GMA workaround under Jaunty didn’t accommodate iPlayer too well and was giving jerky and disjointed playback, not what you want whilst chilling out to the ocean calm of Attenborough’s “Life”.  Read more... (estimated reading time 2:09 mins)

Due to a change of circumstance I eBayed the Dell Mini 9 last week. Don’t get me wrong, it had been, and was still, superb as a cheap little Ubuntu dev box to SSH into however now I’m “on-site” at the Leeds office certain days of the week it just wasn’t a viable option to work on all day, cool as it was that mini keyboard was just too small for anyone larger than a woodland elf.  Read more... (estimated reading time 1:60 mins)

Having previously dabbled with Moblin on my Dell Mini 9 I was obviously most interested in the Ubuntu “developer” version (as recently offered up for purchase on the 10v’s) so I pulled it down from the Dev Wiki and installed it.

I used Ubuntu’s quick and easy usb-imagewriter to create the key and as you would expect with it being a tailored Dell netbook release it dropped onto the Mini 9 with no problems at all, everything worked including the Wi-Fi (which wasn’t seen during previous dabbles with the standard and less together Karmic-Moblin-Remix)  Read more... (estimated reading time 1:45 mins)

Moblin is a Linux environment stack initially developed by Intel for MID’s (Mobile Internet Devices), it’s now taking to Netbooks and being adopted accordingly by major players such as Ubuntu & Suse for it’s mid-ground Web OS re-style. Google’s Android and Windows 7 are already claiming the netbook net-top and even pre-release they obviously have a head start, however if like me you’ve had a play with various flavours of Moblin you’ll probably agree it’s rather stylish and resultantly intriguing to say the least.  Read more... (estimated reading time 2:22 mins)

During my on-going crusade for open desktop solutions I’m quite regularly met with blank looks and confused queries as to what Ubuntu is, I find myself re-pitching the “…it’s an operating system for your computer just like Windows but free…” routine with added justification tagged on highlighting it’s UNIX heritage (for those geeky enough to appreciate computing history), it’s resulting inherent stability and the whole emanated positivity of it’s community created open code base, however with Linux still sub 5% of the global market for operating systems there are some days you really do feel like you’re up against it, but other days, like yesterday, you’re given a real boost.  Read more... (estimated reading time 1:23 mins)

As has been the case with me over the past two years I’m once again in a rented apartment at the mercy of someone else’s Wi-Fi with no resulting control or access to the router. It’s all somewhat limiting should I wish to dabble in any external DynDNS malarkey (which I do) but I get by SSH-ing around the LAN to the wondrous little Dell Mini 9″ and it’s certainly a notch up from running a virtual machine on the MacBook Air, in fact it’s actually a most useful set up and a really don’t know how I ever managed before.  Read more... (estimated reading time 2:42 mins)

Mobile server development can be tricky, or do I mean mobile development for servers? A few weeks ago it would have been the latter however thanks to the superb little Dell Mini 9 I can now deliver both whilst simultaneously sipping a nice latte in the Cafe “Tous les Jours” across the street  Read more... (estimated reading time 3:24 mins)

There’s obviously quite a bit of recycled information on the internet and this review is in part just that, as well as also being part speculation and part *sum* of it’s parts, hopefully (or at least partly anyway)….err….yes….

The Apple Tablet then, hopeful geek myth or concept changing portable shortly to emerge from the reality defining vortex of Steve Jobs designer distortion field? Personally I’d like to think the latter and there’s plenty of evidence stacking up around development of such a product to reinforce an imminent release, including a reported suicide due to a lost prototype (or was it indeed industrial espionage gone wrong?), whatever the story things are getting quite serious about what seems to be just an overgrown iPod Touch….or is it?  Read more... (estimated reading time 2:27 mins)