Posts by Simon

re: i still dont see the point of these laptops

That's probably why you don't have one then.... Mine fits in the glove tray of my car or in my mini backpack if I'm out and about. Very useful for me indeed.

Be Green - Recycle!

Why buy a new computer just to run Vista when <<insert Linux distro of choice here>> will run on hardware that is 5 years old? Think of the environmental damage caused by forcing users to buy new hardware just so they can run the latest operating system with see-through (tm) window technology!

This is the angle the Linux supporters need to take to win the public over away from Vista... Being green is *the* big thing to be at the moment and people will do almost anything/pay any tax to get there. I hereby dub this effect as the 'nice warm green feeling'.

You simply wont convince the Microsoft fans that Linux is better just because it is 'faster', 'more stable', 'less expensive', 'more innovative', 'more secure' etc. These reasons are simply not good enough for them to move away from a product they have used for the past 10 years and love.... Remember, these are the same morons who buy a new car every year but still feel they are 'helping the environment' because it produces 0.1% less emissions etc. they also equate the cost of a product with quality, so the more expensive something is the better it is, anything that is free is s**t.

Please find more emotive and less relevant reasons to convince these muppets to switch, they're so used to being fell bulls**t by Microsoft that this is all they can now digest. They are so accustomed to being raped from behind (and paying for it) that they have actually come to enjoy it (see Stockholm syndrome). These folks probably think its quite amusing that 'those cheeky chaps' at Microsoft took the time out from fixing bugs in Microsoft Word to install a hidden pinball game. Who gives a crap about code bloat when massive hard drives are so cheap? If it's full, just buy another one like you would with memory/video card/processor etc.

Anyway, if you can somehow suggest that as well as being 'green' Linux can also stop 'Islamic Terrorism' and 'Increase House Prices' then you are sorted! Microsoft are genius with their marketing and it sucks the fools in every time. We all know that Vista is a steaming pile of crap but Linux supporters need to be just as creative as Microsoft in their 'marketing', having a massively superior product just isn't good enough.

Operating System?

Are we assuming the update server runs on Windows? This seems like good uptime for a Microsoft product, perhaps it's running 3.11...

Or just don't use vista....

Seems to me that the problem was with Vista rather than the motherboard itself.... What a total surprise - Vista runs slowly unless you have a dual-core machine, 4gb of memory and an expensive graphics card (shock horror)

I actually have this board and it runs Linux (Ubuntu 8.04) incredibly well indeed. It's perfect for a low cost, low-noise and (reasonably) energy efficient PC. You can even replace the northbridge cooler with a fan-less version for about £5 if that's an issue. There was a problem with the integrated network card but this has been fixed with the latest kernel (2.6.24-19).

To be honest, I don't think many people would buy this is a main system, at £57 delivered it's just not intended for that. After all, for a fully working system you just need a small case with PSU (£25 from ebay), 2gb memory (what £20?) and an old hard disk from a dead machine. So, a fully working system for just over £100... (sans monitor). Even add a DVD-RW (£20) if you so wish.

I'm using mine for a NAS server which is on 24/7 with 7 hard-disks attached (totalling > 2TB) via on-board IDE/SATA and USB (perhaps this is what the extra power was intended for). I connect from work over SSH and x-server. The only upgrade I am planning is to add a cheap gigabit network card (£5).

Anyway some suggested uses: 2nd computer for surfing the web, computer for childs bedroom, kitchen computer for streaming media, NAS Server, Hardware Firewall, DNS Server, in-car PC, thin-client for MythTV, remote X client. Use some imagination!

BTW the oh so very quaint and old-fashioned 'legacy' ports are actually quite useful if you like to play with hardware or want to connect the machine to routers / old printers etc. Some of us do this sort of thing for fun and/or work.

The *only* negative comment I will make is that despite the CPU being very low power, the on-board graphics system sucks up considerably more juice! (I run at just over 40w).

Bad review or bad product? Depends on your point of view I suppose.

If you don't like the truth then supress it...

Just like the Catholic church did when Galileo proved that the earth was not at the center of the universe back in 1610.

Perhaps we should burn this bloke as a witch, a nobel-prize winning witch that is...

400 years on and what progress have we *really* made?