Whar did February go?

So I haven't posted a peep since January, and I have no viable excuse.

Updates:
The hinge for my tablet pc is non-functional. Well, that's an exaggeration. I mean, it DOES hinge, and open and close with ease. As a matter of fact, it is so easy to open and close, that it will do it on it's own. So I guess, in a way, it is working better than ever before. However, the inability for the screen to stay up with it's own strength is not helpful for my needs. Grr. Currently, it is leaning against my document camera, looking like the situation is under control, just waiting for the opportunity to snap down on my fingers like an evil piano.

In better news, my parents bought an Eee PC which they decided that they didn't want. So yours truly is now the owner of an Eee PC. Its an odd machine, being just too small to comfortably type on, and a bit slow. I could type documents on it all day, but things like checking mail or browsing while typing documents takes its toll on the machine. This Eee Pc has a 700 Mhz Celeron, with 512 Meg of ram, so there is definitely room for improvement.

I worked with my students through a week of Linux, and it was an eye-opening experience for me. I have never tried to teach anyone other than myself how to operate linux. The great part was their surprise that a free operating system could do everything that we were talking about in Windows. However, to most people, an Operating system IS free. Students walking into the library, or into a classroom, are not going to care how much we paid for the operating system.

What IS evident, however, is the experience with the operating system, which to this point, is still buggy enough to be an issue when you get away from the things it is really good at.

Our journey:

Boot into linux. The newest version picked up our wireless cards immediately, and was able to connect to the internet. We needed about 200 MB in updates, which was fine, and then we were in good shape.

I showed the students the Synaptic Package Manager, and they were able to install Wine, and a few games.

FIRST SNAG: They didn't have all of the software sources checked, so they couldn't find Wine at first. Most people fixed it in a minute or so, but there were a few who couldn't search for Wine in the package manager for whatever reason.

We installed compiz fusion settings manager, and everyone was off to the races making desktop cubes, 3d fire effects, and wobbly windows to enhance their desktop experience. So far, they seem to enjoy it, but I'm not sure if it's enough to break people of the windows experience that they are used to.

Student poll: What would be neccessary to do for all computers here to run linux?

-Training Sessions

-Program Compatibility

Not too much of a lofty goal?