TO-Tech Blog

Interesting and lengthy overview of the OLPC in Linux Today.
Notes From a Senior Editor: A Close Look at the OLPC

The comment that caught my eye was: The software is based on Fedora Cora 6, put on an diet to reduce it to 150 MB, and leverages Python heavily. According to Bletsas, both Microsoft (WinCE) and Apple (OS X) offered their operating systems, but neither fit the footprint or security requirements that the XO demanded. In addition, the closed-source nature of those operating systems wasn’t a good fit to the OLPC philosophy. I wonder what eliminated other Linux distros.

This is not available for public consumption yet, but Yahoo! has a…

Yahoo! Messenger for Vista Video Preview

…available that looks pretty good.

One of the more interesting Vista features (to me) is ReadyBoost. This feature lets you plug in a USB 2.0 flashdrive to provide additional system RAM… Handy for when you might want to work with big images or some other RAM hungry task. SanDisk announced support for this feature in their flash drives and has a webpage with more information at:

http://www.sandisk.com/readyboost/

The people who brought you the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner now provide a kit to let you design your own robot.

iRobot Create

What amazes me is that the starter kit price is nearly half of the LEGO Mindstorms NXT price. However, the price can start to climb a bit (though still in the Mindstorms price range) as you add options. But, still, this is great news for those of us who want to build and program little robots for fun.

It’s been a long time since TO-Tech.com had a functional blog. But, it’s a new year and time to bring it back to life. This blog focuses on aspects of technology that I don’t talk about in my existing blogs (see list below).

To start things off, I’ll be looking at upgrading a low-priced PC (an eMachines T6420) from Windows Media Center Edition to Windows Vista Ultimate Edition. Although this is a capable machine, you will probably see why upgrading low-end machines can be anxiety causing. I’ll probably also talk a bit about Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, and Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard… when it is released).

MobileViews.com Blog - Mobile technology with a focus on Microsoft Windows Mobile

OgasaWalrus.com Blog - Freeware & Free and Open Source Software (F/FOSS) for proprietary systems: Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS X
O’Reilly Network Blog - I blog on the MacDevCenter and WindowsDevCenter areas of O’Reilly’s site