about 1 month ago - No comments
Asus have revealed that their new Eee PC T91MT multi-touch netbook will feature the 32GB pSSD Gen2 drive from SanDisk. Asus chose this model from SanDisk’s offerings as it suits the netbooks low power needs and small form factor requirements.
As many readers would already be aware, this means enhanced durability for the T91MT because the More >
about 4 months ago - No comments
Most of the UMPC and MIDs available today share the same disadvantage: most of the time the keyboard just doesn’t work well at those tiny key sizes, especially if you have large hands. What to do? One possible solution could be using one of these ultra-portable external keyboards with your UMPC! The device shown on the right for example, bearing the rather technical description “Targus PA875U01X”, weighs just 180 grams at a size of 280 x 108 x 9 mm (unfolded), with 68 full-sized keys in QWERTY layout – enabling easy and smooth ten-finger typing for the mobile email enthusiast
about 4 months ago - No comments
During the last few months, Asus has started selling the “eeePC 1000H GO” with internal 3G/HSDPA card for easy everywhere connectivity. So far so good, but what about all those thousands of customers that already bought an eeePC 1000H before? Are they doomed to use one of those ugly external USB 3G modems – a threat to your eeePCs health if you drop it accidentally and the USB stick destroys the USB port it was sticking in (if not even more)…
about 4 months ago - No comments
For all those users without free USB ports on their smartphones, PDAs, MIDs and other devices, or those with an aversion against cables in general, there are also bluetooth versions of those full-sized foldable keyboards I mentioned already on this blog few days ago – namely I’d like to make mention here of the “Freedom Universal Keyboard²” (from a company called Freedom Input Ltd) with its own two AAA sized batteries and – most important – bluetooth! The manufacturer claims that due to support for both HID mode (used and recognized by all PCs, most PDAs, UMPCs and smartphones) and SPP mode, a bluetooth serial port emulation protocol utilized by the blackberry family of smartphones for example, this gadget enjoys comaptibility to > 200 different devices. Sure is that every device with bluetooth and either Blackberry OS 4.0 and upwards, symbian OS v9, or windows mobile 5 & 6 ( both PPC and smartphone edition), as well as Windows 2000 and WinXP is supported without need to install any drivers. No mention of linux though, and what about windows CE??
about 4 months ago - No comments
Since last night, I had the doubtful joy of having to re-solder two pins of my extra miniPCIe socket (I accidentally dropped my eee from ~50cm heigth and afterwards the 3G card wouldn’t work anymore, which was pretty annoying since I need internet access – so I had to re-open the whole apparatus and take apart everything, leading to the lucky discovery of only said two loose pins as a cause for the malfunction), I will take this as an opportunity to give you the gentle reader some more details about the inner workings of how I did this modification (there may exist better ways I must admit, specifically for securing the modem card in place). That being said, you will surely remember that there’s an old and well known (and true!) proverb saying “A picture sometimes tells more than a thousand words” …
about 4 months ago - No comments
Its nice to see that during the past year, the number of linux distributions custom tailored to fit the needs of netbooks has increased dramatically. While this is a great advancement, it cannot be denied that this is mainly the merit of one linux distribution – ubuntu linux, on which most of nowadays “netbook linux” are based (ubuntu in turn is debian-based, btw). While these custom netbook linux flavors usually come equipped with all the device drivers you’ll need for your netbook, there’s one thing that is missing (at least in Ubuntu 8.04 or “Ubuntu eee”): an easy possibility of formatting SD memory cards with the usual FAT16 (or the faster FAT32) file system with the card reader that is built into all eeePC models – but sometimes you just need an empty and freshly formatted SD card, for example to “burn” the newest ubuntu ISO image onto and install right from the SD card (which is quite handy if you don’t have a DVD/CD drive).
about 4 months ago - No comments
I’m sure everyone knows those design-award-winning Apple iMac computers that look like just a flat panel LCD and keyboard standing on your desk, but contain a whole macintosh… Now Asus has realized the advantages of such a design and is selling a computer-inside-an-LCD too. The “Asus eeeTop ET1602″ has about the same specs as the average eeePC 1000H netbook (making guesses about the interior of this device very easy), namely intel Atom N270 clocked to 1.6GHz, 533MHz Frontside Bus, 1GB DDR2 RAM, the rather weak Intel 945G graphics chipset, 160GB SATA-II harddisk (spinning at only 5400rpm), connectivity is provided by 802.11 b/g/n wifi, bluetooth and 1000MBit LAN, the thing has a 1.3MP webcam and built-in stereo microphone – and so far, I could just as well have read the description from the package of my eee1000H instead, without any difference…
about 4 months ago - No comments
Yes I know – this has not got anything to do with mobile computing (sorry), and No, its not an april hoax at all – but I simply had to write about it.. as you can see on the youTube video below, this guy actually makes a small (and inefficient but still amazing) solar panel at home – from donuts, “starbucks passion” red hibiscus flower tea, water, vodka and some microscopy object slides…
about 4 months ago - No comments
During the last days I’ve been quite excited about a certain idea I want to report about here, and which I think is quite an entertaining project. During one of my web journeys I recently happened to stumble upon this link over at instructables.com and was fascinated: I was looking at a 5×5 LED matrix that initially blinked its LEDs randomly, but somehow “magically” (with the support of 25 light-dependent resistors) synchronized them very slowly, to finally reach a state of absolute synchronicity – and all this with 25 totally independent control circuits, all based on 25 single atTiny13 microprocessors!! The whole thing should be considered as being a model of large swarms of thousands of male fireflies in sout-eastern asia, which are capable of synchronizing their blinking to attract more female fireflies over a greater distance. For more detailed explanations about the background (and how to set up a physical logic model using AtTiny13 chips and C coding) I want to forward you to the instructables link above as well as to this scientific paper explaining the underlying mathematical theory behind this..
about 4 months ago - No comments
I guess after my last articles bearing somewhat randomized topics it is time for a real “eeeGadget” again.. So, what about having multi-color LED signaling incoming email (and ICQ instant messages) for you, visually with various blinking colors for assorted message types, even when your netbook’s lid is closed, for example