Chrome OS Laptops - A Review

Here is a critical review of Google's Chromebook. I call it critical because the reviewer dwells more on the bad and the ugly of Chromebook. And he also works for Microsoft ;-).
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Opera 10 - A first look at this fabulous web browser

Opera 10 has been released. This release of Opera sports a number of alluring, new features, many of them not seen in any of its contenders. The enhancements to look out for in Opera 10 are as follows.

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HP 2133 sub-notebook powered by Linux

When Asus rolled out the eeePC, it received rave reviews. Now it is the turn of HP to jump into the sub-notebook market. HP has unveiled a laptop with 8.9" high resolution WXGA display, 92% full size QWERTY keyboard and touch pad. It comes with an optional solid state drive, weighs just 1.19 KG and is just 1.05 inches thick.

HP 2133 Sub Notebook Specification

• VIA C7-M ULV processor
• 512 - 1 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
• 120 - 160 GB SATA hard drive
• USB 2.0 ports - 2 Nos
• VGA External monitor port
• Audio in/ Microphone Jack
• Audio out/ Headphone Jack
• Express Card 54 Slot
• SD Card slot
• RJ-45 network jack
• 1 AC Power connector
• Kensington Lock slot
• VGA webcam (Optional)
• Stereo speakers and
• Stereo microphones and
• is wireless enabled
  

It's all aluminium case makes it sleek, sturdy and lightweight. HP has targeted this sub-notebook at the education segment namely the students and it will compete directly with other sub-notebooks such as Asus eeePC. The HP 2133's price starts at US $499.

A video of HP 2133 Sub-Notebook - Courtesy: Notebook.com

But the one thing which excites me the most is that HP sells this sub-notebook with SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 as an option.

Xavier has written an indepth review of this eye catching notebook with plenty of pictures to supplement his narration.

An in depth pictorial look at OLPC hardware

The One Laptop Per Child project is unique in many respects the most prominent of which is its philanthropic goal of providing a cost effective medium to further the education of poor children in third world countries.

But did you know that on the technology front, the OLPC laptop named XO-1 is the front runner to a number of innovations ? Consider these facts ... The XO-1 has been designed from the grounds up with the goals of survivability, serviceability, and robustness in mind. The mother board is located behind the LCD screen instead of below the keyboard as seen in traditional laptops. The LCD is a dual-mode display, both a full-color, transmissive DVD mode, and a second display option that is black and white reflective and sunlight-readable at 3x the resolution. It is said to be one of the first devices to use the Li-Fe-P battery, which is considered safer than normal Lithium ions.

I came across this in depth article which details each and every part of the OLPC right down to the chipsets used, accompanied by a dozen or so high resolution photos of the parts. A very informative read indeed.

Mount an Ext2 or Ext3 partition in Windows

There are different ways of sharing files between GNU/Linux and Windows. Mostly we make use of the services of a FAT32 (or FAT16) partition which can be read and written to by both Linux and Windows. The disadvantage of using a FAT partition for sharing files between Windows and GNU/Linux is that you are forced to reserve a part of disk space solely for sharing files. But this is just one of the number of file sharing methods available for people who wish to dual boot between the two OSes.

Another method which comes to my mind is to use the new stable release of ntfs-3g module which allows you to mount an NTFS partition as read-write in GNU/Linux.

But the method which has caught my fancy the most is a project which allows me to mount a ext2/ext3 GNU/Linux partition in Windows and assign it a drive letter similar to C:, D: and so on. The project in question is the Ext2fs installable file system. This project is the brain child of Stephan Schreiber. Once this driver is installed on Windows (98/2000/XP), you can easily mount a Linux partition on your computer into Windows and assign a drive letter to it. Once that is done, the files in the Linux partition can be browsed, read and written to.

Fig: Installing the Ext2 IFS driver

Fig: Another installation screen shot

The first step is to download the setup program from the ext2fs site and install the ext2 driver for Windows. Once the driver is installed, you will find an icon named "IFS Drives" in the Control Panel in Windows (See figure below). Double clicking on the icon will open a dialog box which will show all the partitions on your machine including the Linux partitions. Using the drop down box on the corresponding partition, you can assign drive letters to them.

Fig: Access the IFS GUI from the control panel in Windows

Fig: Assign drive letters to the ext2/ext3 partitions from the Ext2 IFS GUI.

Viola! now you can access the files on the corresponding Linux partition from the Windows file explorer by clicking on the drive letter you assigned to that partition. What is more, if you have a floppy which is formatted using the ext2 file system, then it could also be accessed in Windows without any problem.

Advantages of Ext2 IFS

• Read and write access to files residing in Linux ext2/3 file system from within Windows.
• Read and write access to floppies with ext2 file system.
• Seamless integration and use of ext2/3 file system in Windows to the extent that all applications have access to it.
  

Disadvantages of Ext2 IFS

• This program has a drawback in that it mounts only Ext2/Ext3 partitions. So if you have installed Linux on any other file system such as reiserfs, JFS or XFS then you are out of luck.
• Does not have support for Linux logical volumes. So if you use LVM in Linux, this software will be useless even if the underlying file system is ext2 or ext3.
• Current version of Ext2 IFS does not maintain access rights. So mounting an ext2 partition in Windows will give full access to the files on it to all the users.
  

While there are some limitations to this software as noted above, one convenience I see in using this method of sharing files between Windows and Linux is that once you have finished, you can also hide the corresponding Linux partition by re-opening the "IFS Drives" GUI front-end from the control panel and then removing the drive letter you assigned to the partition previously.

If by any chance you do not like any of the methods explained here, you can transfer files between Windows and Linux using a floppy or a USB key too ;-).