Asus eee PC 1000 and Ubuntu

Is I mentioned earlier in my review of the "Asus eee PC 1000 " I attempted to install the Ubuntu eee distro on my Asus eee PC 1000. I really like how it is organized, better than the Xandros distro, but it had some issues with the webcam, wireless network, and bluetooth. The latter two which I needed to be able to operate in my classroom. To limit my downtime and provide a backup in case of hard drive issues I ordered a 16GB Extreme III SDHC by Sandisk from Newegg. It came in the mail last night and I was able to install Ubuntu-eee with only a few bumps. To my delight most of the issues that I was having with the previous install were automatically fixed by running the system update. The wireless now works as well as my Wacom Bluetooth tablet. A small issue remains with the tablet to increase the resolution when I'm drawing with it and to get X to recognize the eraser and other buttons and such.

This appears to be a great solutions since Ubuntu is a truly open source distro that I can update on my own instead of waiting on Asus or Xandros.

After adding the following list of software I believe that the eee PC is definitely a viable solution for the technically savvy teacher.

• xournal
• audacity
• Inkscape
• KFig
• VLC
• MPlayer with the ASF pluggin
• Celestia
• KStars
• Virtual Box for those proprietary windows apps.
  
• FreeMind

Review of the Asus eee PC 1000

I am always looking at ways to use technology to improve the way that I teach. I decided to venture into the realm of netbooks. The combination of price tag and battery life was very attractive, but the amount of storage seemed rather limited. Then I found the Asus eee PC 1000. It has a total storage space of 40GB, an 8GB system drive and 32GB data drive. This seemed like a reasonable amount of space. I could store enough videos to show in class along with working my current projects for class.

As usual my initial reaction when I got it from NewEgg was this is cool. I liked the size and the battery life. The first day I turned it on with wifi and used it from 7:15am to 1:00pm before it started saying that I needed to charge the battery. That seems reasonable since I teach from 8 to 3. Since it was running Linux I was not sure how it would deal with a couple of things on my needs list. Here's my checklist of things that it needed it to do to help me teach more effectively:

• Play streaming videos such as from Discovery Education/United Streaming, youtube, etc....
  
• Streaming works ok but buffering needs to be fine tuned. It seems to worked best if I save it as an asf and play it using the media player.
  
• Journal/Writing software similiar to OneNote & Evernote.
• Jarnal works.
• Xournal works but make sure you have the latest version.
  
• Wacom Bluetooth writing tablet.
• This worked but not initially. I'll post more about this later but it appears to be working now.
• Surf the web wirelessly & securely.
  
• Works like a charm. Xandros wireless configuration is pretty intuitive.
• Transfer images and videos from my phone to the computer.
• Works but the video's do not appear to have sound.
• This works great for when you want to save what you have on the board but you didn't have time to setup the writing tablet or your smartboard/computer was not working.
  

Initially I was having issues with some of the software system updates. Things just didn't seem to be working such as the "Download programs" link, maintaining the connection with my tablet, and I didn't care for the user interface very much. So I decided to install the Ubuntu-eee distro, more about that later. Most things worked with Ubuntu but I was having issues getting the wireless working and I needed this in class now so I decided to put Xandros back on. I'm sure that I will re-install Ubuntu when I have more time, since I really liked it's speed and user interface better. Interesting enough the install from the CD seems to work better than the install that came on it. Most importantly the "Downloads Link" works now and my wacom bluetooth tablet appears to be working just fine now. Also the chinese software didn't install by default which is good and a few of the other apps available now. It only works in the mouse mode but I may be able to fix that.

As I was looking at the specs before I purchased the eee pc 1000 I noticed that the wired network port was only 10/100 which was disappointing since I have a HP 1800 Gigabit switch at home, but to my pleasant surprise it is actually a gigabit network adapter. I don't know why they don't advertise it as such.

In conclusion I would highly recommend the Asus eee PC 1000 40G. The biggest frustration is the right shift key is split, it is half the size it should be and the up arrow gets bumped a lot. The battery life is great along with the wireless reception.

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DiNotte 200L/140R LED Bike Light Review

After reading many reviews on the different bike lights on the market today I finally decided to go with the DiNotte 200L-LI-4C headlight and the 140R-LI-4C tail light. I just got them this last week so these are only my initial impressions and opinions of them. I'm sure I'll write another review after I've used them a bit more.

I purchased them directly from DiNotte online and was very impress with how quickly they got all the way from the north eastern US to Alaska. I decided to purchase them directly from the online store because I could get two batteries instead of just one and they offered the Rider Experience 200 which has the 200L and 140R, a Y-adapter and an extension chord. Also when you purchase them from DiNotte you can select if you want the two 2C, two 4C batteries, or one of each. At this point in time I wish that I would have purchased the one of each option because the 4C battery feels a bit heavy to put on my helmet. I also went with the Lithium-ion version over the AA version because it should work better in the cold weather and also has longer run times.

Pros:
Excellent design
Small
Easy installation
Run the head and tail light off the same battery or separate batteries

Cons:
4C battery is a bit bulky.
Included directions are minimal.

Conclusion:
Would I purchase them again? At this point I would say yes, but we will see after a few months of use.

Exploring K12LTSP, Again

Since I'm going to be teaching at a new school this next year and switching from high school math and computers to grades 5-8 math, science & physical education. I thought I would invest a little time to see how the K12LTSP project is coming along. It would be great to have a small easily maintainable network in my classroom for students to be able to explore a new operating system and the tools that it provides.

For those of you not familiar with K12LTSP. K12LTSP is a distrobution of Linux that is packaged for teachers. It stands on the shoulders of a popular distrobution, in this case CentOS, and adds tools for teachers and LTSP functionality. LTSP stands for Linux Terminal Server Project. A terminal is a simple workstation that displays information to the user while the server does all the work of actually running the application, but that is a whole different tangent I'll let you explore an your own. Just note that a HP terminal right now runs for as little as $200-$400 and has now moving parts to go bad and feels the upgrade when the server get's an upgrade.

Now back to my exploration. I just recently rebuilt my computer this last fall and attempted to put Ubuntu 7.10 on it but wasn't very successful at getting the video card working correctly. Had I found that ATI driver then or ENVY which I used to get Ubuntu working on my wife's laptop I'm sure I would have been able to get it working but because of other reasons I decided to install M$. Now having ventured into Vista and VirtualBox I decided to give K12LTSP a try again and resovlve the M$ issue using it in VirtualBox. Besides my install has other issues. The initial K12LTSP installation went smoothly except for the network card a RealTek RTL8169, this is simply a driver issue which I'm sure a newer kernel will remedy. It was easily fixed by walking through a couple of steps in a tutorial and a download from the manufactures website. The next major issue was to get the correct video card drive working so that I don't have to kill my eyes on the 60hz refresh rate. ATI has kindly provided a driver which was easy to install. The printer/scanner an Epson CX6400 seems to be working correclty by simply plugging it in. WOW this was want of the easiest installations that I have ever done. I would say that the only difference between installing it and Vista was the activation of Vista with M$. When I installed Vista I had several driver issues which included loosing some features that I really like from my CX6400 such as double sided printing and the ability to scan multiple images at once.

Back to the evalutation of how K12LTSP is doing. It appears that there are several useful applications installed.

• Inkscape for vector drawings and illustrations
• Gimp for photo editing
• Open Office Suite word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation.
• Celestia space exploration
• Acrobat Reader (as an extra download)
• Scribus for desktop publishing
• QCad
• Firefox
  

The great thing about all of these pieces of software is that all of them work on both Windows and Linux platforms exept Scribus. What better way to give your students a choice of how they work. Asside from that many students can't afford some of the software such as Photoshop & Illustrator. I'll concede that Gimp & Inkscape may not be as powerful but for an elementary and high school setting they will offer most if not all of the solutions that you will need.

Other great programs that I will be installing and using in the classroom are:

• Stellarium planetarium
• GnuCash for balancing your budget

I hope to setup a server in the schools existing network, which is small and has now dedicated admin.

Checkout the aschool blog and worksheetshare this after the summer of 2008 to see any activities that I have created for these programs.