[sf-lug] Report on SF-LUG meeting on December 4

[Bobbie Sellers]

	Well this meeting was well-attended with 6 attendees.

	 Arrived just as John Strazziano showed up  He bought
me a decaf soy latte and Ken Shaeffer. was next in then
Jeff, Jim Stockford and Eric finally  Biggest meeting in
a month or so.  My Notebook refused to contact the local
access point.  It worked with Mint but failed to work
with Ubuntu or Mandriva.
	But Ken Schaeffer also told us about his
new tablet, the Chumby which comes with Linux.

Below is the lead-in paragraphs to his notes which
are a total of over 160 lines.  If anyone wants the
full notes send me an e-mail and if I get enough
requests  just might put it up on the list.
  I got a chumby 8 from Woot for $120 in November.
This is the device seen in store.chumby.com,
for a list price of $199.  The best price I see on Amazon is
$155, but I bet it will be cheaper in Jan.  By itself, the Chumby is
billed as an "Internet Radio", running apps written in Flashlite,
and can be used as a clock, digital picture frame, email reader, web
browser, weather reporter,...  but since it runs Linux, and has no
root password, and comes with sshd, and documents how to put hooks
into the boot sequence, you can do pretty much anything.

    It runs Linux kernel 2.6,28M on a Marvell PXA168 ARM9 800Mhz cpu,
has 2G flash (as device mmcblk0) with four partitions, 128M memory
(and 128M swap), two USB 2.0 ports (maybe only one HS),
an SD slot, a CF slot, built in microphone, headphone jack, stereo
speakers, 8" 800x600 resistive touchscreen, 5V 2.5A power connector,
802.11 bg WiFi, and a dimmable backlight.

	I hope when Kenś schedule is cleared of family matters
he will be able to do a presentation on this and chow us
the Chumby.

	Bobbie Sellers