The OLPC Story

The most recent ABC Science Show consisted entirely of a talk that Nicholas Negroponte gave at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In it, he tells the story of how the One Laptop Per Child project came about, and how it is progressing.

One point he made, that reminded me of my beloved MacBook Air, was that the cost to build a computer with a given set of specs will halve over a period of roughly eighteen months.

So, in theory, one would expect the price of decent hardware to keep dropping as time goes on.

Of course, that's no good for the manufacturer's bottom line. So, instead, they simply keep bumping the specs sufficiently to be able to charge the same price.

In reality, the benefit of these escalating specs, to the average user, ceased a long time ago. Most people use their computers for word processing, e-mail and web surfing. The greatest demand they're likely to place on their machine is asking it to recalculate a spreadsheet.

The reason this reminds me of the Air is not that it's cheap ... I wish! ... but the fact that while my precious has a relatively feeble processor, by current standards, it handles everything I throw at it admirably.

Anyway, I think the podcast tells an interesting story, so here's a link to the MP3 on the ABC site.

Portable? Computer?

I remember an acquaintance of mine had one of these Osborne "portable" computers and I was very impressed.

Now, I look at it and ask how anyone could ever have considered something so big and heavy, with such a tiny screen to be a useful device?

There are lots of pictures of both the Osborne and the TRS 80 over in this CNet article.

Soul Of A New Machine

Here's an interesting article on the work that went into designing and implementing the new Lenovo X300 ultraportable.

I've mentioned previously that I owned a Thinkpad 570 for many years, and was very sad when it finally gave up the ghost.

Sure it only had a Pentium 2 processor and 768MB of memory, but it was just a tad under an inch thick and weighed 4 pounds, yet like the Air it had a 13" screen and full size keyboard. For its time, it was a fantastic little machine.

If you're a Windows person and don't mind outlaying a chunk of cash ... as far as I know, the X300 hasn't been officially announced yet, so we don't have the actual price, but it won't be cheap ... I reckon it would be an excellent machine.

(The post's title is a reference to the book of the same name, which is a fascinating read along the same subject line)

Rumoured HP Ultraportable

Historically, HP have had a number of small laptops, so it's no surprise that, according to this post over at Engadget, they're bringing out a competitor to the Eee PC.

Rumour has it that it will be 2.5 pounds, with an 8.9" 1366 x 766 LCD, WiFi, built-in webcam, the option of normal or solid state drive and be configurable with Windows or Linux.

No information regarding the processor, but it sounds like a neat little package ... although whether it's really attractive will depend on the asking price.

If these allegedly leaked images are accurate, it looks nice, too.

Update: According to this Engadget article, the price will be around $US630 and the processor is a Penryn series chip. That's a bit more expensive than an Eee PC, but with a decent processor and the rest of the specs, sounds like good value.

Curvaceous Cabling

Yesterday afternoon, my mate Matt and I installed an old wireless router I didn't need anymore at our friend Susan's place.

It's amazing what a rat's nest all those cables and power cords that connect the myriad components can become.

I have the same problem behind my stereo and television ... even after removing a DVD player and a DVD recorder, neither of which had been used in well over two years!

So, it's nice to see that it's actually possible to sculpt such a pile of spaghetti into something that's far from an eyesore. Behold, when data center cabling becomes art!

The one shown here is quite nice, but there are plenty more at the end of that link.

Thanks to Unclutterer.

Air Conditioned Clothing?

According to this article over at Ars Technica, a startup named Nextreme is planning to get Peltier cooling devices down to the chip level.

While their plans for it are related to cooling CPUs, I think it's only reasonable for me to consider my dream of air conditioned clothing to be one step closer to reality :-).

What's Not Being Announced At MacWorld

The Apple website has just been updated with new 8 core Mac Pros.

So, that's one thing Stevie J won't be announcing at MacWorld.

One less product to consume time during the keynote ... and a slightly improved chance that the big news will be an ultraportable MacBook or tablet.

Only six more sleeps to go :-).