You might have caught my excited tweets and posts about getting Ubuntu running on the AC100 over the last few days and if so, you might be starting to realize how close these ‘smart’ books or ARM-based netbooks, effectively smartphones in a netbook-style case, are getting to the netbook experience. The overall experience is certainly not ready for the average customer but take this video as a demonstrator that 1) Processing power is significantly better with dual-core devices to the point where Web browsing is not slow 2) A productive […]

There are a few consumer tablets that stir excitement more than others. Of course the iPad is a leader in terms of being a complete product but there are three others you should watch out for. The Dell Streak gets Android 2.2 in November giving it a leading position in the Android tablet space. The Galaxy Tab should launch in November too. It will be expensive but will bring some large-screen optimised software to the Android platform for the first time. The third one on the ‘watchlist’ is the Viewsonic […]

I’ve installed Ubuntu on my Toshiba AC100 ‘smartbook’ and I’m accessing my WordPress back-end via Firefox 3.6. This is a test to see if I can create and post an entry. You should see a photo on the right (uploaded from the filesystem on the AC100) Wifi is obviously working and considering i’m running this from an SD card the experience isn’t too bad. It’s locking-up from time to time as the OS works with the filesystem but i’m seeing some quite impressive CPU-related performance. An interesting example of the […]

Here’s a quick hands-on with the Motorola Droid R2D2. The R2D2 edition is the same phone as the Droid 2 [product page][review] but it has interesting Star Wars branding and content included. The phone is themed to look like the famous droid from the Star Wars saga and the phone features custom Star Wars themed unlock sliders, live wallpapers, a video, a widget, and an app. The box that it comes in is designed to look as though the phone has been encased in carbonite and the effect is rather […]

Firstly, thanks to these forums (I’m just putting the pieces together here and testing it all out) tosh-ac100.wetpaint.org forums.computers.toshiba-europe.com ac100.gudinna.com The work of the uber-Linux and Tegra Lords of these three forums allowed me to do this today: Yes, you’re looking at Ubuntu 10.10 (RC) running on a Toshiba AC100 smart book. This is the most exciting thing I’ve done in a long long time. It’s not quite there yet (the boot hangs at this point but the people-that-know are working on it) but apparently everything works apart from sound. […]