Elonex One T+ £99 PC, First Impressions

You may recall me mentioning the Elonex One PC back in February, a pocket PC that would sell for the astonishingly low price of £99. Well, at that time no samples were available but I was intrigued enough to send off my £10 deposit, on the promise that it would be delivered in July. Needless to say it never arrived and not only did the delivery date slip, in the meantime Elonex produced an upgraded design, called One t+ (almost certainly a rebadged CNM Minibook), which they offered to those who placed orders, at no extra cost. – the One T+ now costs £120 online. (The original One, with its quirky ‘upside down’ design always looked a bit suspect…) To cut a long story short, involving several unanswered emails and even more delayed delivery dates, mine has just been delivered. Read More »

Free Linux Wireless Driver from Atheros

Atheros Communications, a pioneer in wireless network solutions, is pleased to announce the free availability of the ath9k Linux driver for IEEE 802.11n wireless devices. The ath9k driver will be soon included in the Linux kernel. “The ath9k driver comes shortly after Atheros hired two key Linux wireless developers - Luis Rodriguez and Jouni Malinen. [..] We have been informed Atheros does plan to add access point support to ath9k and to work with the community to enhance and complete access point support in the Linux kernel. It is understood there is plenty of work required on the wireless stack to complete full access point support. Jouni Malinen will help drive this process within the community while Luis helps enhance regulatory compliance in the Linux kernel.” - the MadWifi team. Read More »

Designed for Linux = Windows Vista Incapable

Back in 2006, even before the release to manufacturing of Windows Vista, Microsoft introduced the Windows Vista Capable logo program, designed to fuel computer sales over the holidays despite the fact that the operating system would only manage to hit the shelves on January 30, 2007. The logos were meant to indicate which machines, at that time pre-loaded with Windows XP, were capable of running at least the low end edition of Vista. Microsoft’s latest Windows client comes in no less than four flavors for the general consumer market: Home Basic, Home Premium, Business and Ultimate. Read More »

Everex Walks on Dell’s Steps

Another personal computer vendor is walking on Dell’s steps, Everex, by unveiling its latest PC with Ubuntu Linux-based open-source productivity applications and Google-based Web 2.0 software, which costs only $198.

The machine, called Everex Green gPC TC2502, comes with famous applications from Mozilla, Skype, Google and OpenOffice.org. It uses gOS Initial G, a Ubuntu Linux 7.10 based operating system, that features a simple and intuitive Enlightenment E17 desktop interface, themed around Google. GOS is independent from Google, and “Google Apps” is not bundled with the operating system. The company chose Enlightenment because it needs minimal resources for its interface, rather than GNOME or KDE. You should be happy to hear this: the system comes with a lifetime of free revisions and updates! Read More »

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars for Linux

Oh boy, oh boy… which one should I play? That will be the question asked by many Linux gamers, when both Unreal Tournament 3 and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars will be fully available on the market. However, it looks like Quake Wars has just got an advantage, as the demo client was made available last night for the general public. Therefore, today we will take a quick look at this demo client of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and we will learn some interesting facts about it!

What is Enemy Territory: Quake Wars?

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is the ultimate online strategic first-person shooter, set in the Quake Universe. Enemy Territory: Quake Wars offers the following hot new features to players: Read More »

Linux Is Copying Windows Vista

Forget about Windows Vista! Introducing Vixta, an open source, Linux-based, copy of Vista. Generally speaking, Linux, open source, Microsoft and Windows are by no means aligned concepts. In fact, with the exception of the Linux and Windows technical interoperability efforts derived from the Microsoft and Novell agreement focused on heterogeneous environments, the two platforms don’t mix. Not even by far. Additionally, Microsoft’s latest Windows Operating system, Windows Vista was regarded as a window of opportunity for Linux to increase its foothold on the client side. Almost nine months into the general availability of Vista, and the various distributions of the open sourceplatform are still situated under the 1% market share milestone, according to statistics provided by net Applications.

At the same time, Vista grew past the 7% market share mark, indicating that from January 30, 2007, Microsoft shipped in excess of 70 million copies of the operating system. In this context, a part of the open source community decided to find inspiration in Windows Vista. Read More »

One Laptop Per Child Goes Public

The laudable One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project, which as we reported a few months ago is distributing its rugged XO laptop, eventually costing $100 to build, to children in poor countries. Apparently the take up hasn’t been as quick as the developers had hoped, which may be why the OLPC foundation is doing a bit of a U-Turn and offering the green machine to the public.

The offer, called ‘Give 1 Get 1’ is you buy two machines, for $400, OLPC donates one to a child in another country and you get the other one for your child. Originally OLPC said the XO wouldn’t be available to the public, despite the considerable interest shown in the Linux-based machine, Read More »

New OpenOffice Bug Discovered

A newly discovered vulnerability in the OpenOffice.org suite that could allow hackers to install malicious code on computers, and here’s the really worrying bit, it’s not just Windows, this also affects Mac and Linux users. This concerns version 2.0.4 and earlier (the most recent release,V2.3, is not affected) and it involves modified TIFF image files.

So far this loophole hasn’t been exploited ‘in the wild’ and it has only been tested on the Linux release, but it follows hard on the heels of a real world infection called ‘Badbunny’ that has been found on Mac, Windows and Linux PCs running OpenOffice. OpenOffice comes from the good guys of the software world, Read More »