Check it out in its (almost) original size. Blasted Flickr photo size limit. Not my best stitch so far, but for 3 hours of work, I think it’s pretty good.
January 2008
That’s Sinbad in the back. Seems like he’s a pretty big Apple fan.
The Airbook’s flaws, in my eyes are…
- They should have just gone with 12″, it would have made it that much more appealing.
- One USB port is just retarded. I remember how much of a pain that was when I was using my ThinkPad 570.
- 1.8″ drives wear out faster, my opinion.
- The keyboard is fantastic, the best ever, if you’re comparing it to other Mac portables.
- Aluminum case? What do you care for more, your machine not taking damage and lasting for a long time, or the environment?
- Multi touch crap, driver updates shouldn’t be bullet points for the same hardware. I should point out that some Powerbooks very much support multi touch scroll if you upgrade to Leopard.
In the end, especially when looking at the price, I’m not all that impressed. Though I’m probably more annoyed that they didn’t announce anything interestingly newer (larger Nanos?) and haven’t really dropped the price in anything I care about.
There wasn’t much else interesting at the show. I thanked the folks at 1Password for making one of the few bits of software I actually have paid for, caught up with the EyeFi group. Half the vendors were selling iPod and iPhone accessories. I got to see a great demo of this neat thing called Neat Receipts. Some interesting GPS stuff.
Karen showed up and started freaking out about the Airbook. She was looking forward to having Mac aerobic work outs next to one of the Apple displays. Sadly I got hungry before I could see that idea bloom.
All in all, it was an ok time for $10.
A week ago I signed up for Meraki’s Free The Net San Francisco project. I noticed that when I stuck my Macbook against my office window in my 3rd floor flat, I could connect to another AP called Free The Net. I sent them my address and stated that I’d be willing to mount one of their out door repeaters here.
For the past few years Google and Earthlink have been knocking on city hall’s door, telling them they’re ready to install wifi access points with fast internet everywhere in the city, giving anyone with a computer and a wifi card costless internet access. All of this for free, the governing forces of this city simply have to say yes. If you’re not a native here in the bay, I’m sure you can already guess that the answer thus far has been no.
What Meraki is doing is creating a city wide mesh network of open wifi access points. The difference here is instead of asking the government running the city, it’s asking the residents of the city. Access points are all hosted/housed by people who want to expand the mesh. Some folks are (from my understanding) being paid to host a main node plus internet access for it, while others setup repeaters to hit the main node or others part of the mesh.
Today I got a package from them in the mail. It contained an outdoor repeater, a long antenna, power and ethernet, plus various mounting brackets. Setup was extremely easy. Since I wasn’t too keen with hanging out of my window mounting something to the outside of the building in the pouring rain, I opted to use suction cups and stick the repeater to my window facing the street. The device can draw power over ethernet, which is rather rad as the AC/DC adapter’s cord wasn’t all that long. In addition the thing draws less power then my Linksys router, but at the same time getting way better range. The ports on the back of the thing are covered up with a weatherproof plate and gaskets.
After feeding it some power, it took about a minute to find the other Free The Net access point down the street and connect to it. No more configuration. DSLreports tells me the connection is coming from someone on Speakeasy, my speeds are about 83.2kbyts down 4.5kbyts up. For free, that’s not half bad. Overall I’m fairly impressed.
So far the mesh spans most of The Mission, Castro at Market, The Lower Haight and parts of The Panhandle. Check out their map to see live usage, right now there are three people using the repeater stuck to my window. If you look like you’re in an area close by to another repeater but there isn’t a marker for you on the map, take your laptop to a window and see what you get. If you can connect to a network, I implore you to sign up and stick some pretty white plastic electronics to the outside of your home. They have a smaller indoor repeater if you’re not too keen on mounting anything to your exterior.
Free The Net indeed.