well - the 'net finally is, anyway.

the 'phone company finally has upgraded it's tower from 3g up to HSPA+
which is just 3.5g in reality. ..

initially it was just as bad, as before, but they seemed to have also changed
the upstream as well. so now it's working somewhat better
- that is it doesn't freeze / time out as much.

the probability of 4g is still some years away,
as that is still only available in the major urban areas....

since, there is no *DSL availabilty, it's a 3g connection to go ..
but, boy does that thing time out, freeze and otherwise embark on a NoGo campain.

suprisingly, it will D/L stuff quite A.ok,
but it just won't stream any 'browsing the internet' ie: surf the 'net.

someting to do with the tower, - is about 8000m away - that's too far?
always thought that you could get over 20Km with mobile technology,
- but aparantly not.

going...

Another day, another laptop that has crashed - gee I just gotta love M$ stuff - it's just so reliable, ain't it ?. Boot a 'nix live_cd and look at those partitions. Gee - what's that? A yellow triangle against the C: drive - that's SDA3 - ain't it? Must be, as that little, boot, partition is SDA1. No that's not right - SDA1 is PQrecovery, SDA2 is boot, SDA3 is C: drive. That's better. No it's not -the live 'nix cd can't read the partition's data - rat's that means that I can't copy out this person's...

Been playing with this for a while now,
seems quite a good gadget - to play wih.
this one came with Mint13 - cinnamon - partially installed.
just had to complete the install - username, location etc.

haven't used cinnamon before - so was keen to 'give it a run'.
probably prefer Mate - though - but happy to use either. . .

the H/W is quite up-to-date & uses several usb's to connect,
the video is via hdmi & sound vis 2.5mm socket....

Just looking at a gov't grant to buy a pile of <wiped> used notebooks.

may be able to get several 2nd hand ones.

at least - there won't be any previous O/Ss that I would have to get rid of.

these would be used to show other people, how to use a 'nix O/S
without them getting concerned / afraid the their M$ will get altered / damaged / wiped out.