Read more here: Brighthand Staff’s Predictions for the Palm “Hawk”. Timing is about right (for me). Pretty excited about what might come out of Palm’s camp next week (end of May, beginning of June 07). Keeping my fingers crossed for a table-like device running POS on Linux. Please. Been considering Nokia’s N800 tablet but it’s not available in Malaysia. If one comes out running Palm, I’ll be very happy.

I’m afraid that saying I’m busy is pretty much an understatement. I’ve forgotten it’s almost a whole week since my last post. 2 reasons for this:

• rushing for a major project for DiGi
• oversee my younger brother’s project

So during office hours I’ll be slugging it out for work and after office hours, including weekends, I’ll be tied up with my brother. Since I’m not sacrificing my sleeping hours for blogging, it pretty obvious why I’m slacking off from posting these days. But hey, being busy with work and family matters shows 2 things - I’m still needed in both work and personal life ;). So it’s a Good Thing.

Do I care? Well not really. WM6 looks to be same old, same old to me. Probably I’m not a heavy WM user yet, coming from Palm and Symbian. But still, I’d rather HP stay with WM5 for now, iron out the bugs via new firmware (especially for the sluggishness). As for WM6, thanks but no thanks for now.

The article was spotted here - Star Online : TechCentral. Let’s cut through the chase here.

What’s the goal:

1. Cheap computers at 50% off the retail price
2. Cheap software. You get Windows and MS Office with some education software (Math and Office Essentials). Live Mail Desktop is free so that doesn’t count.

What’s the catch:

1. Windows XP is Starter Edition only. See here for what this means, coming from Microsoft. See what the industry is saying about it. Words like ‘Cripple ware’, ’stripped down’ are thrown around.
2. Office 2007 isn’t as bad, you get full versions of software, just less. The most glaring omission would be Outlook. On the bright side, you get to install it on 3 machines, legally ;).
3. The government will need to subsidize 50% off the purchase price, do at least 10000 PCs and look for its own PC vendor. (PC used loosely, includes laptop k?)

Now I admit that everything still looks fine, despite the stripped down Windows. But in order for mass adoption, the computer has to be really cheap. Because no matter how you cut it, software has little value to the home user, more so in Malaysia. Those that has money, goes for Apple computers. Obviously, this scheme is NOT aimed at this crowd. No, this is aimed at folks that won’t even consider buying a PC because RM 1000 is too much to spend for a non-essential household item. Rationalizing based on the fact that a cheap bare bones computer can be had for RM 1000, a 50% subsidized PC will have to sell for less than that, ideally at RM500. And here lies the problem - the government will most probably go for branded computers and/or act stupidly by getting ripped off by unscrupulous vendors (hey, happens all the time). If either happens, the subsidized computers will not sell cheap enough and the ultimate goal of increasing PC usage among Malaysia will fail to materialize yet again. De ja vu? Remember the EPF-sponsored computers last time? Tax payers’ ringgit goes down the drain, again.

All in all, it’s a great strategy by Microsoft to increase its Windows and Office user-base. What do you think?

RAM is so cheap nowadays (but that might not last) that I had to resist splurging a bit on an extra stick of 1 GB of DDR2 6400 RAM. Got a gig of memory for RM 200 without taking into account the credit card surcharge of RM 4. I had to pay close to RM 500 a few months back. In the end I decided against fitting my desktop with 3 GB of RAM. Partly because I know my memory usage is just slightly above 1 gig so 2 gigs should be more than enough for now, and I was right. Performance went up a notch with much less drive swapping. Also, S.T.A.L.K.E.R now runs smoothly with no drive access at all. Overall the system feels snappier and I can keep more programs running at the same time - Eclipse and NetBeans can run concurrently with an application server of choice. Way cool.

And to take a page out of the MasterCard ads: performance of a 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo, 1.6GHz FSB and 2 GB of DDR2 800MHz RAM - priceless

After a post back in October about cool workspaces, I was practically begging for something like this to be posted again. Nothing inspires like drooling over other people’s personal workspace.

Coolest Workspace Contest: The multi-monitor havens - Lifehacker