Yet another reason to get angry with Bill...

[Duncan Anderson]

On Sunday, 19 March 2006 02:17, Eric Dunbar wrote:
> On 18/03/06, Alan McKinnon <alan at linuxholdings.co.za> wrote:
> > On Saturday 18 March 2006 21:43, Duncan Anderson wrote:
> > > According to the laptop.org website, the machine will have 128MB
> > > RAM and have a 500MHz processor. That is more than adequate to run
> > > a standard Linux kernel. It would be better if the GUI was icewm or
> > > xfce or fluxbox or wmaker based rather than GNome or KDE, though.
> >
> > The specs are interesting.
> >
> > Hardware:
> > http://wiki.laptop.org/wiki/Hardware_specification#First_Generation_Syste
> >m
> >
> > Software:
> > http://wiki.laptop.org/wiki/OLPC_software_task_list#OLPC_Fantasy_Software
> >_Teams
> >
> > The screen is 1110x830 monochrome or 640x480 colour. size 7" diagonal.
> > Doesn't sound like much but remember that's standard VGA resolution.
> > I think even IceWM is too high-spec'd for this, the best interface
> > model is windows-always-maximised (like a PDA), so you lose all the
> > excesses of a WM and programming becomes *much* easier - you know you
> > have 630 x 470 pixels to work in and it will never change.
> >
> > > The storage is only half a GB, as well, so the amount of software
> > > is severely limited.
> >
> > 500M is actually a lot, lately we are used to environments that take
> > up 3G just to be compiled. 500M is slightly smaller than a typical
> > drive from '98 and look at what we put on them then.
>
> Half a GB is stunning. I still remember when my Mac was a *monster*
> because I had a 270 MB drive in there!!!
>
> I still remember <creak crack back breaking> when my Mac had its
> entire GUI operating system packed onto a tiny fraction for a 400 KB
> floppy with enough room left over for one or two apps and the computer
> had a stunning 128 KB of RAM!!! (and, for all practical purposes it
> provided as much utility as a modern 3+ GHz machine that's used for
> everyday work tasks (sans internet)).
>
> Eric.

To deviate slightly, I had a SCO Xenix based laptop (386SX) with 4MB RAM, 
640x480 screen resolution and a 60MB HD running XSight (X11R3) with a full 
development system loaded (Microsoft C compiler, ASM, etc) and I still had 
20MB of disk space left over. In those days that was considered quite a good 
setup!

:-)
Duncan

	
	
		
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