Why I'm ditching Vista

I really have tried to like Vista - I've been using it for a year now on my work laptop - a Macbook (2 gigs RAM, Core Duo 2Ghz, 80gig Windows partition). I quickly turned off all the eye-candy (Aero Glass etc) but even so for the last year I've spent more time gazing at the spinning blue thing whilst waiting for trivial things (opening explorer windows or files to copy). It put me in mind of what I'd read Nicholas Negroponte say about modern electronics;

Prices of electronics keep dropping, but if you keep handing savings to the consumer, then there won't be a high price or margins. So manufacturers keep adding features, so the price can stay the same. Laptops, cell phones, etc. So an obesity occurs and turns most things into SUVs. Most of the gasoline is used to move the car, not the person....

You can listen to his keynote at CES this year - I lifted this from The World Technology Podcast's coverage. I like the way he compares the bloat of modern hardware/software with an SUV. You think that the multi-processor machine of 2008 should be able to hand file copying etc. better than the 80486 I was running in 1994!
So there you have it - Leopard, Ubuntu, and XP all run brilliantly on this machine and there are no compelling reasons for me to stay with Vista.

Solid state laptops and all that

Watch this episode of Unwired from my mucker Wil Harris;

That caught my eye on Saturday morning while I was sitting around in my dressing gown and catching up on video podcasts. I was so turned onto the idea that I've decided that by hook or by crook I shall get one of these bad boys to play with. It really reminded me of my old Jornada 820 which was excellent as an email/Excel/Word machine.
Anyhow - with that in mind I noticed that Uruguay has ordered 100,000 OLPC machines. The market for small, embedded, task-specific robust devices is getting more interesting.

They're starting to ship the OLPC

The rumour is that you'll be able to buy them in the west but you'll have to fund the purchase of one for the third world - fantastic! I can't wait to get my hands on one.

'$100 laptop' production begins

Hardware suppliers have been given the green light to ramp-up production of all of the components needed to build millions of the low-cost machines.
Previously, the organisation behind the scheme said that it required orders for 3m laptops to make production viable.
The first machines should be ready to put into the hands of children in developing countries in October 2007.

Cutting the cost of computing

My institute's magazine plopped onto the doormat yesterday and I was pleased to see this article about the one laptop per child project. I blogged about it previously.
The piece goes into more details about the number of territories who are bypassing traditional business IT models and adopting a more open source model. It reminded me of something that's been evident in India with their post-production market. Essentially they avoided the first couple of generations of non-linear editing technology and pretty much all of the developments of the nineties and have plunged into data-driven workflows (particularly DI for film). I wonder if this will be mirrored in other areas of technology as what was the third world becomes the tiger economies of the twenty-first century?
Essentially they let the USA/Europe make the mistakes and when the technology has been shaken down it's ready for them.

One Laptop per Child

OLPC is a proposed inexpensive laptop computer intended to be distributed to children around the world, especially to those in poor countries, to provide them with access to knowledge and modern forms of education. The laptop is being developed by the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) trade association. OLPC is a U.S. based, non-profit organization created by faculty members of the MIT Media Lab to design, manufacture, and distribute the laptops.

AKA The ¨$100 laptop¨ - I have been watching this for a while and am very excited with how it's all going. Having had a bit of contact with orphan initiatives in India and Ghana it is the case that education (and education in IT disciplines) definately fast-tracks kids out of poverty. Although it's the case that this thing provides neither nourishment nor shelter it does enable clever and motivated individuals to rise out of their situations. The naysayers will criticise this kind of project but it's the ultimate example of the ¨Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime.¨ philosophy.

Wikipedia's page on the project covers all the details including the valid criticisms. I'm particularly interested in the mesh networking features and the very modest 2w of operating power (my MacBook consumes 30w!).