Showing posts with label Possibility. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Possibility. Show all posts
The Possibilities for an "Open" Platform
As we enter the so- called "Nettop/Netbook" era, the possibilities for the open platform are growing. Last year, we saw the G-PC, from Everex. It offered a system running G-OS, based off of Ubuntu Linux. (See Review Here-Space, not Rocket) The cool part for some people- It was cheap, without a monitor- only $200. It was sold at Walmart. Now, Walmart sells the G-PC2, the gBook, and the Cloudbook. They are not sold in stores, but they are low-power internet use machines. The Cloudbook was the first large competitior to the ASUS EeePC. Both offering small 2 poound notebooks with 7" screens. They were found to be great running Linux.
Intel's Atom is now set to compete with VIA's C7/Nano processors. AMD still seems to be left out of the crowd. Intel is developing Motherboards for the processors, as with VIA. The first Atom product has appeared on Newegg, its a motherboard with soldered Atom 230 (1.6Ghz) and a 945GC chipset. The board supports SATAII, IDE, and many other standards on the awesome and small Mini-ITX platform.
The small Atom platform is priced at only $72.99, that is awesome. Pair it with a 512MB stick of memory and an 80GB hard drive, it would pack a punch for a very small price. It may not make a gaming machine, but it sure does make an internet machine. This may also be the next thing I experiment with. Who knows, it just would be cool to have one running, maybe a decent 24/7 web/ftp server, a file server for a home network, It can have up to 1TB of space if some sort of RAID is used, and 2TB if not on SATA. You could also use it as a router, a firewall, maybe a lightweight HTPC. The downsides of this on the desktop are what they used for the chipset, the old and somewhat hot-running and power hungry 945 is used. It actually uses the active cooling, and if you actually look at the board- here, the CPU is under the small heat sink.
The race between OS'es for this platform is also getting stronger. There is the OS that is on the EeePC, The Ubuntu team is developing a remix for it, and there is a ton of others, which one will be the best candidate for the Linux Netbook/top platform? We won't know until there are systems that are actually doing this type of thing, so I guess we will have to wait.
Intel's Atom is now set to compete with VIA's C7/Nano processors. AMD still seems to be left out of the crowd. Intel is developing Motherboards for the processors, as with VIA. The first Atom product has appeared on Newegg, its a motherboard with soldered Atom 230 (1.6Ghz) and a 945GC chipset. The board supports SATAII, IDE, and many other standards on the awesome and small Mini-ITX platform.
The small Atom platform is priced at only $72.99, that is awesome. Pair it with a 512MB stick of memory and an 80GB hard drive, it would pack a punch for a very small price. It may not make a gaming machine, but it sure does make an internet machine. This may also be the next thing I experiment with. Who knows, it just would be cool to have one running, maybe a decent 24/7 web/ftp server, a file server for a home network, It can have up to 1TB of space if some sort of RAID is used, and 2TB if not on SATA. You could also use it as a router, a firewall, maybe a lightweight HTPC. The downsides of this on the desktop are what they used for the chipset, the old and somewhat hot-running and power hungry 945 is used. It actually uses the active cooling, and if you actually look at the board- here, the CPU is under the small heat sink.
The race between OS'es for this platform is also getting stronger. There is the OS that is on the EeePC, The Ubuntu team is developing a remix for it, and there is a ton of others, which one will be the best candidate for the Linux Netbook/top platform? We won't know until there are systems that are actually doing this type of thing, so I guess we will have to wait.
Give it Your Own Title- Google Apps
Instead of looking at immediate change, we should be looking at the possibilities for change, and then go from there. So begins a series of articles that all have hope, and lets start with one now.
Google Apps- For your Domain
Google Applications may be one of the most easy and successful things that a school could do. My school runs a Linux server with two versions of Windows Server (NT and 2003) running on top. This is one thing I have to stop and think about. First of all, Virtualization seems to be horribly inefficient. Second, since every one's files are stored on the 2003 Server, if that one has a problem, files aren't accessible. The server being down to begin with is always a headache, nobody will be able to log in. Thankfully, I have talked to the Network admin, and he says that we are getting a new server over the summer, which will run Linux. It will be a custom build, and I get to help. Hooray! We all win! Anyway, since the school has started using Google Apps, I haven't seen a lot of activity with it. It just seems to be another feature that kids have access to, but most choose not to use. Many kids, although, seem to love the ability to put a document up there, and then work on it from home. I like it, I don't have to carry around a thumb drive everywhere I go. It is very beneficial, your documents are backed up in several places, and the Google team keeps wonderful service of the headless machines that keep my docs. I barely experience a huge fault with the service. Now, the wonderful Google team is rolling out offline support for Google docs, and several other services. The offline support lets you edit your existing documents offline, with Google gears, and then you just type docs.google.com into your web browser! It is, truly brilliant. If a page doesn't come up, Gears probably isn't installed, or you haven't turned on docs offline. So far though, there isn't any support for Spreadsheets and Presentations, hopefully we will be seeing those soon!
Google Apps- For your Domain
Google Applications may be one of the most easy and successful things that a school could do. My school runs a Linux server with two versions of Windows Server (NT and 2003) running on top. This is one thing I have to stop and think about. First of all, Virtualization seems to be horribly inefficient. Second, since every one's files are stored on the 2003 Server, if that one has a problem, files aren't accessible. The server being down to begin with is always a headache, nobody will be able to log in. Thankfully, I have talked to the Network admin, and he says that we are getting a new server over the summer, which will run Linux. It will be a custom build, and I get to help. Hooray! We all win! Anyway, since the school has started using Google Apps, I haven't seen a lot of activity with it. It just seems to be another feature that kids have access to, but most choose not to use. Many kids, although, seem to love the ability to put a document up there, and then work on it from home. I like it, I don't have to carry around a thumb drive everywhere I go. It is very beneficial, your documents are backed up in several places, and the Google team keeps wonderful service of the headless machines that keep my docs. I barely experience a huge fault with the service. Now, the wonderful Google team is rolling out offline support for Google docs, and several other services. The offline support lets you edit your existing documents offline, with Google gears, and then you just type docs.google.com into your web browser! It is, truly brilliant. If a page doesn't come up, Gears probably isn't installed, or you haven't turned on docs offline. So far though, there isn't any support for Spreadsheets and Presentations, hopefully we will be seeing those soon!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)