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--- meetings:pub-2008-03-04 [2008/03/08 14:23] – alexb
+++ meetings:pub-2008-03-04 [2008/08/13 23:16] (current) – external edit 127.0.0.1
@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 ====== 2008-03-04 The Royal Oak, Dorchester ======
-Present:  10, including [[:members#alex_bebb|Alex Bebb]], [[:members#terry_coles|Terry Coles]], John Cooper, [[:members#ralph_corderoy|Ralph Corderoy]], [[:members#andrew_morgan|Andrew Morgan]], Simon O'Riordan, Marti Settle, [[:members#peter_washington|Peter Washington]].
+Present:  10; Alex Bebb, [[:members#terry_coles|Terry Coles]], John Cooper, [[:members#ralph_corderoy|Ralph Corderoy]], [[:members#andrew_morgan|Andrew Morgan]], Simon O'Riordan, Marti Settle, Paul Tyson, [[:members#peter_washington|Peter Washington]], Clive Wills.
 Time: 20:00-23:00.
@@ Line 26: / Line 26: @@
 The **Eee PC** surprised me.  I was expecting to like the XO more and dislike the Eee's smaller screen.  The XO was good, but for practical use the Eee's keyboard was easily more usable, at least for the normal A-Z keys.  The slight annoyance was the ridge in front of the keyboard got in the way of my thumb tapping the space bar.  It's got a heftier CPU than the XO or Koolu, but being of more standard design, battery life is more like a normal laptop than the XO;  indeed, it ran flat towards the end of our playing with it.  The screen, though small, was very clear and bright.  An 80-character wide xterm was readable while only taking half the screen width.  A full screen terminal could be set up with quite large text.  Given it's price, and availability, the Eee looks like a useful gadget, but best of all was my realising that it has a VGA port so you could connect it up to your a normal sized screen and keyboard.  Asus's web site seemed poor on data, you may find [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eee_pc|Wikipedia]]'s page better.
+==== Terry Coles ====
+I only really played with the XO and the Eee PC.  The Zonbu looked fairly useful, but it wasn't particularly attractive to me.  Similarly, I had a look at the Koolu, but only really appreciated it when I saw it's specs at the website after the meeting.  I didn't even realise there was a PDA there ;-)  ; if I even saw it I don't remember.
+I had previously played with the Sugar interface on the XO through the downloadable Live disc (http://olpc.download.redhat.com/olpc/streams/sdk/build1/livecd/olpc-redhat-stream-sdk-build-1-20070403_1732-livecd.iso), so I had a fair idea what to expect software wise.  Of course some things cannot work on an ordinary PC because they are simply not fitted so it was nice to see various functions in action.  I was impressed with the screen performance, the built in webcam and the wealth of different apps available.
+The Eee PC was a pleasant surprise.  I had heard some bad stuff about it, not least because some people put it into the same category as the Intel Classmate, eg as a direct competitor to the XO.  I think that this is a bit unfair, because it is much more like a normal laptop in terms of functionality, and its performance was surprisingly good.
+All in all a great night out and much better than watching the footie in the other bar.
 ===== Pictures =====
-Thanks to Peter Washington for the impromptu snaps.
+Thanks to Peter Washington for the impromptu snaps.  The thumbnails are links to medium sized versions which in turn link to the largest size.
-{{:20080304_xo1.jpg?200|Ralph and Simon look on while a third hand operates the XO.}}
+{{:20080304_xo1.jpg?200|Ralph and Simon look on while John's hand operates the XO.}}
-Ralph and Simon look on while a third hand operates the XO.
+Ralph and Simon look on while John's hand operates the XO.
 {{:20080304_xo2.jpg?200|Ralph's hands on the XO.}}
@@ Line 41: / Line 51: @@
 {{:20080304_eeepc.jpg?200|FIXME and the Eee PC.}}
-FIXME and the Eee PC.
+Clive and the Eee PC.
 {{:20080304_wifitshirt.jpg?200|A dim Andrew Morgan with his wi-fi detecting T-shirt.}}
 A dim Andrew Morgan with his wi-fi detecting T-shirt.