Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} laptops for a developing country (Vanuatu)
What-ever you source for them, can I please ask you to think seriously about avoiding installing any MSWindows OS? The amount of botnets out there that hit my webservers is only getting worse and any IPs that I've scanned to investigate who the attackers are, I see them running MSWindows. :-( Android seems like the perfect solution. Easy to use, ubiquitous, secure, and free. - Grant
Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} laptops for a developing country (Vanuatu)
On Saturday 27 April 2013 07:06:41 AM IST, Grant wrote: My wife and I recently visited Vanuatu (island of Santo) and fell in love with it. We got to know some locals pretty well and everybody is pining for laptops. Internet service is becoming widely available due to Digicel and TVL cell phone signals but I didn't meet anyone with a real smartphone. I promised to return with laptops and I'd like to make good on that. Which ultra low-cost but functional laptops or netbooks would you choose for this? I'm looking into OLPC but I'm not sure how that works. - Grant I heard Chromebooks are cheap, but I don't know what's their exact cost / feasibility / etc. I think the problem there is a Chromebook needs to be online in order to do much of anything, and the connection needs to be fast in order to make them very functional. Plus most people are paying by the MB in Vanuatu and a Chromebook must use a fair amount of data even on a fast connection. - Grant Well, any Chromebook can run a normal Linux distro. The chromebook team has put up a chroot helper on their github. smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} laptops for a developing country (Vanuatu)
On Sat, 27 Apr 2013 12:05:06 +0530, Nilesh Govindrajan wrote: I think the problem there is a Chromebook needs to be online in order to do much of anything, and the connection needs to be fast in order to make them very functional. Plus most people are paying by the MB in Vanuatu and a Chromebook must use a fair amount of data even on a fast connection. Well, any Chromebook can run a normal Linux distro. The chromebook team has put up a chroot helper on their github. But they are designed to be used with cloud services, and as such have very little storage. Have you considered the used market, especially companies replacing hardware at regular intervals. You may even get them fro free as a charitable donation, giving the company a tax write-off. -- Neil Bothwick COBOL: Completely Obsolete Business Oriented Language signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} laptops for a developing country (Vanuatu)
On Apr 27, 2013 4:02 PM, Neil Bothwick n...@digimed.co.uk wrote: On Sat, 27 Apr 2013 12:05:06 +0530, Nilesh Govindrajan wrote: I think the problem there is a Chromebook needs to be online in order to do much of anything, and the connection needs to be fast in order to make them very functional. Plus most people are paying by the MB in Vanuatu and a Chromebook must use a fair amount of data even on a fast connection. Well, any Chromebook can run a normal Linux distro. The chromebook team has put up a chroot helper on their github. But they are designed to be used with cloud services, and as such have very little storage. Have you considered the used market, especially companies replacing hardware at regular intervals. You may even get them fro free as a charitable donation, giving the company a tax write-off. This. Remember that 1- or 2-year old laptops are mighty powerful enough for nearly everything, except hi-def gaming. OTOH, sometimes business laptops sacrifice battery life for processing power. You will want to select the less power-hungry ones. Rgds, --
Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} laptops for a developing country (Vanuatu)
On 27/04/2013 03:36, Grant wrote: My wife and I recently visited Vanuatu (island of Santo) and fell in love with it. We got to know some locals pretty well and everybody is pining for laptops. Internet service is becoming widely available due to Digicel and TVL cell phone signals but I didn't meet anyone with a real smartphone. I promised to return with laptops and I'd like to make good on that. Which ultra low-cost but functional laptops or netbooks would you choose for this? I'm looking into OLPC but I'm not sure how that works. - Grant I heard Chromebooks are cheap, but I don't know what's their exact cost / feasibility / etc. I think the problem there is a Chromebook needs to be online in order to do much of anything, and the connection needs to be fast in order to make them very functional. Plus most people are paying by the MB in Vanuatu and a Chromebook must use a fair amount of data even on a fast connection. I agree - tablets (and everything else in that category that superceded netbooks in developing countries) are a) expensive b) somewhat fragile and c) need to be online to do much of anything. They tend to use the OS app-store for updates which is much harder than a distro repo to replicate out on a tropical isle. And I think there's your opening: netbooks. They are cheap and once you get past that they are much slower than what you are used to, they do work very well. And they work offline too. With one more advantage from your point of view: Windows runs very suckily one them, but a decent Linux runs rather unsuckily :-) *Someone* has all those netbooks that Westeners ditched in favour of iCraps, I recommend you look into who is now selling them 2nd hand. -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} laptops for a developing country (Vanuatu)
I think the problem there is a Chromebook needs to be online in order to do much of anything, and the connection needs to be fast in order to make them very functional. Plus most people are paying by the MB in Vanuatu and a Chromebook must use a fair amount of data even on a fast connection. Well, any Chromebook can run a normal Linux distro. The chromebook team has put up a chroot helper on their github. But they are designed to be used with cloud services, and as such have very little storage. Have you considered the used market, especially companies replacing hardware at regular intervals. You may even get them fro free as a charitable donation, giving the company a tax write-off. Is this something to find through eBay? - Grant
Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} laptops for a developing country (Vanuatu)
My wife and I recently visited Vanuatu (island of Santo) and fell in love with it. We got to know some locals pretty well and everybody is pining for laptops. Internet service is becoming widely available due to Digicel and TVL cell phone signals but I didn't meet anyone with a real smartphone. I promised to return with laptops and I'd like to make good on that. Which ultra low-cost but functional laptops or netbooks would you choose for this? I'm looking into OLPC but I'm not sure how that works. - Grant [snip] And I think there's your opening: netbooks. They are cheap and once you get past that they are much slower than what you are used to, they do work very well. And they work offline too. With one more advantage from your point of view: Windows runs very suckily one them, but a decent Linux runs rather unsuckily :-) This brings up another important question: Windows or Linux. These folks have ultra-basic computer skills if that. They won't be able to hit the forums when something goes wrong. I've only ever really used Gentoo so I'm not sure how easy Ubuntu or whatever is but I'm leaning toward Windows for this. It's a much more universal language in the computer world so the chances of them finding help for a problem are much higher. Plus they can install Windows programs that way. Of course Windows comes with its own set of problems but I think those might be preferable in this case. If I can get systems with some kind of a restore partition, they could follow a pretty simple procedure to restore the OS back to factory when it gets too far out. In fact the owner of the place where I was staying brought me his Toshiba laptop while I was there and (typically) the thing was riddled with viruses and had become unusable. Luckily there was a restore partition and it was too easy to snap it back to factory. He then promptly checked his email for the first time in however long and opened a message from his daughter in Australia which contained a photo of his granddaughter. It was the first time he had ever seen her. He bought the kava every night after that. *Someone* has all those netbooks that Westeners ditched in favour of iCraps, I recommend you look into who is now selling them 2nd hand. I should look to eBay, right? - Grant
Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} laptops for a developing country (Vanuatu)
On 27/04/2013 20:45, Grant wrote: *Someone* has all those netbooks that Westeners ditched in favour of iCraps, I recommend you look into who is now selling them 2nd hand. I should look to eBay, right? I reckon that's a good start. There are other companies around that sell refurbed machines, check those out too. I have no idea how to find such companies in your part of the world, so you are probably gonna need some uber-google-fu to find them. And as almost, do your homework and due diligence. -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} laptops for a developing country (Vanuatu)
*Someone* has all those netbooks that Westeners ditched in favour of iCraps, I recommend you look into who is now selling them 2nd hand. I should look to eBay, right? I reckon that's a good start. There are other companies around that sell refurbed machines, check those out too. I have no idea how to find such companies in your part of the world, so you are probably gonna need some uber-google-fu to find them. And as almost, do your homework and due diligence. How about Android netbooks or tablets? Here are a well-reviewed Android 4.0 netbook and 4.1 tablet for about $80 each brand new: Kocaso NB726A netbook: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1M80H31141 http://www.ebay.com/itm/Kocaso-NB726A-Black-7-1-2Ghz-Google-Android-4-0-Netbook-Notebook-Laptop-/300826243684 Avatar Sirius S701-R2A-1 tablet: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834686007 - Grant
Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} laptops for a developing country (Vanuatu)
On Saturday 27 Apr 2013 22:09:38 Grant wrote: *Someone* has all those netbooks that Westeners ditched in favour of iCraps, I recommend you look into who is now selling them 2nd hand. I should look to eBay, right? I reckon that's a good start. There are other companies around that sell refurbed machines, check those out too. I have no idea how to find such companies in your part of the world, so you are probably gonna need some uber-google-fu to find them. And as almost, do your homework and due diligence. How about Android netbooks or tablets? Here are a well-reviewed Android 4.0 netbook and 4.1 tablet for about $80 each brand new: Kocaso NB726A netbook: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1M80H31141 http://www.ebay.com/itm/Kocaso-NB726A-Black-7-1-2Ghz-Google-Android-4-0-Net book-Notebook-Laptop-/300826243684 Avatar Sirius S701-R2A-1 tablet: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834686007 - Grant What-ever you source for them, can I please ask you to think seriously about avoiding installing any MSWindows OS? The amount of botnets out there that hit my webservers is only getting worse and any IPs that I've scanned to investigate who the attackers are, I see them running MSWindows. :-( -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
[gentoo-user] {OT} laptops for a developing country (Vanuatu)
My wife and I recently visited Vanuatu (island of Santo) and fell in love with it. We got to know some locals pretty well and everybody is pining for laptops. Internet service is becoming widely available due to Digicel and TVL cell phone signals but I didn't meet anyone with a real smartphone. I promised to return with laptops and I'd like to make good on that. Which ultra low-cost but functional laptops or netbooks would you choose for this? I'm looking into OLPC but I'm not sure how that works. - Grant
Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} laptops for a developing country (Vanuatu)
On Saturday 27 April 2013 06:33:24 AM IST, Grant wrote: My wife and I recently visited Vanuatu (island of Santo) and fell in love with it. We got to know some locals pretty well and everybody is pining for laptops. Internet service is becoming widely available due to Digicel and TVL cell phone signals but I didn't meet anyone with a real smartphone. I promised to return with laptops and I'd like to make good on that. Which ultra low-cost but functional laptops or netbooks would you choose for this? I'm looking into OLPC but I'm not sure how that works. - Grant I heard Chromebooks are cheap, but I don't know what's their exact cost / feasibility / etc. smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} laptops for a developing country (Vanuatu)
My wife and I recently visited Vanuatu (island of Santo) and fell in love with it. We got to know some locals pretty well and everybody is pining for laptops. Internet service is becoming widely available due to Digicel and TVL cell phone signals but I didn't meet anyone with a real smartphone. I promised to return with laptops and I'd like to make good on that. Which ultra low-cost but functional laptops or netbooks would you choose for this? I'm looking into OLPC but I'm not sure how that works. - Grant I heard Chromebooks are cheap, but I don't know what's their exact cost / feasibility / etc. I think the problem there is a Chromebook needs to be online in order to do much of anything, and the connection needs to be fast in order to make them very functional. Plus most people are paying by the MB in Vanuatu and a Chromebook must use a fair amount of data even on a fast connection. - Grant
