When we got back to the room, there was a cake waiting for one of the attendees…evidently Nick had spotted that it was Xavier’s birthday from his Facebook profile. See? There’s at least one valid use for social networking.

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After a short bus ride from our hotel, the13 invited bloggers showed up at the beautiful new AMD Lone Star Campus. Parts of it are still being finished, but the company began moving in late last year.

Mauricio Freitas of GeekZone (we met at Mobius 2007 in Amsterdam) standing in front of the entrance to “our” building

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Now that Mitchell has shared his views, I will share my views on the Eee.

The 8 GB drive on my Eee is fine for almost any OS.  Once you start using the machine, it becomes clear that the 2, 4 and 8GB drives available are simply not enough.  Plus Asus, in their infinite wisdom, has used the Union FS so that you can quickly restore the Eee back to the factory OS.  You can do this without needing to have a External Optical drive or a USB thumb drive.  It’s very convenient, but it takes up a tremendous amount of space on the 8 GB drive.  One of these days I need to follow the instructions on eeeuser.com to remove the partition.  This will make the full 8 GB of flash available.  I have already bought a external USB drive from Best Buy, which goes with me when I need the extra storage.  I have most of my music on that drive with a subset of music on an SD card.  I also have some video and a backup of all documents on the Eee stored on this drive.  Because it’s a portable drive, it’s completely powered by the Eee’s USB ports.  It takes up two of the three ports.  It runs just fine when it’s on battery but it does suck the battery down faster.  Soon I am going to be purchasing a 16 GB SDHC so I can leave the USB drive behind occasionally.

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From now until September 15, 2008 Apple is offering up to a $299 iPod rebate to Students and Faculty who purchase both a qualifying Mac (MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and iMac all qualify) and iPod (8GB Nano and 8,16 & 32GB Touch qualify). Unfortunately you’ll have to shell out money for both the Mac and iPod and wait to claim the refund for the iPod. However, if you’re lucky enough to live in Connecticut or Rhode Island, the rebate is instant - so there’s no waiting for them to send your free iPod!

Link: Apple Back To School Promo
Link: Apple Rebate FAQ
Link: Apple Promo Terms & Conditions (PDF)

It looks like all of you ASUS fanboys and girls may soon have even more reason to get excited; not only is there a 901 coming, but according to UMPC Fever, there is possibly a 1000 coming as well. Say Whaaa?

ASUS is looking forward to welcoming you during Computex 2008 in Taipei, Taiwan, for the ASUS’ 08 Computex Trilogy of launch events. We would also like to specially extend an invitation to you to attend the official global launch of the new Eee PCâ„¢ 901 and 1000 series.

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If the $1799 price tag is keeping you from getting the MacBook Air, then perhaps a $250 savings will be the push you need. Apple is now offering their sliver-thin blogger’s laptop for $1549, and before you think that it’s for someone else’s trouble, realize that as one of Apple’s Certified Refurbished Products it comes with these quality assurances:

- Stringent refurbishment process prior to sale
- Covered by Apple’s One-Year Limited Warranty
- AppleCare Protection Plan can be purchased

Of course supplies are limited, so if you are interested you had better get on over to Apple.

Link: Apple MacBook Air Refurb for $1549

Mike Cane just sent the link to a Register posting on something so bizarre that it must be seen to be believed: a 19″ laptop that folds over onto itself. I think you will agree with me that the first reaction to seeing this is something along the lines of “WHY?”

An intrepid eBay seller has posted a Xentex-brand prototype laptop that that has a hinge down the middle, allowing it to literally be folded in half. Although this won’t detract from the machine’s weight, and make the laptop twice as thick, the ability to ‘fold’ your laptop away is unique. - The Register

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There has been an issue which has been bugging me for the last couple of days, and tonight Mitchell and I found a solution. I thought I had better post about it, as I’ll bet that others have run into the same…

When I bought the MacBook Air I restored it to the MacBook Pro backup copy I had stored on Time Machine, and the restore went without a hitch…but for one exception: I had an empty wireless cone in my menu bar. Instead of showing a wireless signal indicated by bars, the cone was completely empty - even when the wireless network was definitely on.

If I would restart my laptop or even just shut the lid, the wireless network would disconnect. I would click on the wireless cone icon and it would then report that the Airport was not configured. Opening the airport configuration panel would bring up the Open Network Preferences option, and I would then have to manually configure the network…each and every time. The only high point to the process was that it did at least remember my network password, but it was otherwise a true PITA.

Mitchell and I did some searching tonight, and we found this post by Dave Marsh in the Apple Support Forums:

Hi, I just received my MacBook Air today and after setting it up and migrating my environment over from my old PowerBook G4, everything seems to be working, except…

the AirPort icon in the menu bar is displaying the empty/open pie with no signal strength, although I’m connected to the Internet just fine as I type this reply.

If I click on the icon it reports AirPort: Not configured, and displays only the Open Network Preferences… option in the menu.

I’ve tried going into Network Preferences and disconnecting/reconnecting, deleting my configuration and re-entering it, to no avail.

Anyone else experiencing this issue?

Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Me!

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…the HP Dragon, that is!

Steve (FYI guy) Hughes of BostonPocketPC has just posted his full review of the HP Dragon, the same portable desktop solution which has been featured in the 31 Days of the Dragon contest that has been sweeping the web. Let’s take a look and see what he thought.

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This is definitely a moment in OLPC’s history of big changes as views are conflicting on what the mission should really be about. This week, we have two important announcements: Microsoft is officially pushing Windows XP into the XO and Sugar Labs is no longer dedicated to the XO but will now offer the possibilities of building a “learning ecosystem” on all platforms.

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