One Laptop Per Child
By now you’ll all have heard: The OLPC is available for sale on a “buy one, donate one” basis, for $400 USD, which worked out to about $430 CAD for me including the shipping.
By now you’ll all have heard: The OLPC is available for sale on a “buy one, donate one” basis, for $400 USD, which worked out to about $430 CAD for me including the shipping.
I’ve purchased four 19″ TFT monitors from Samsung over the past three-or-so years (two for parents, and two for in-house use), and have recommended them to others without reservation. The honeymoon with their LCD display product line just ended after returning a recently purchased SyncMaster 931c to Best Buy because it had two dead pixels—only to return with another monitor (also factory-sealed like the others) which displayed … Another dead pixel. Fuck.
I know LCDs were plagued with problems in their early days, but come on. You’ve had over a decade to get your act together.
My conclusion: After having had three of these in my house so far, and only one that didn’t ship with any factory defects, unless you want to take a 66% chance of having one or more dead pixels on your new monitor, don’t buy the Samsung SyncMaster 931c. If you have had spectacularly good luck with a line of monitors in the past, please post a comment and let me know. I don’t think I’ll be buying Samsung again.
P.S.: Yes, I have tried the two common “folk wisdom” tricks for fixing the defect, but to no avail. I suspect these hacks may help fix some users’ aging monitors, but they can’t help rectify production defects.
A recent blog entry by Mark Shuttleworth (owner of Canonical, creators of Ubuntu Linux) describes a gripe about audience response to his presentations about Linux: “pervasive support.” I think Mark and I agree that this level of product support is required, but our opinions perhaps differ a bit on perceived vs. actual levels of “support” in/for Linux, or even the multiple meanings of the word.
He first points out that commercial distribution vendors are willing to offer end-user support for their products—for a fee of course. He however neglects to point out there are multiple levels of end-user support, including the “non-critical” variety that is acceptable—even preferable, in some cases—to home users and DIY types (who prefer to learn to fish rather than be handed one when they get hungry)—as well as those working on a budget who don’t have the extra cash to shell out for support (or the operating system itself).
This is a bit of a depressing day. First, I wake up to news that Logitech has acquired my favourite hardware vendor, Slim Devices, then my kid projectile vomits all over me, my chair, and a large portion of my desk. Ah, fatherhood.
Slim Devices, in case you didn’t already know, manufactures streaming audio players; the devices themselves don’t store any data locally (you can’t pick them up, plug them in anywhere and listen to music like you could an iPod) but rather play audio from a server located on the premises (or across the internet if you have a fast connection and a reason to do it, like playing music stored at home from work or something). More after the gap …