>Earlier you mentioned that you had used a 100mhz 486 with linux and >X. Out of curiosity why did you upgrade, and what functions do you >find noticably improved. Standard things: bringing up mpeg movies is faster. Large compiles/file manipulations faster. etc. I upgraded because I'm the designer of the MIT system and get to be the guinea pig for new hardware. The undergrads are taking over experimental design now. >Still, am I correct in thinking you are the guy who has been wearing a >wearable for 5years? If so I'd say that in itself would be a good >reason for upgrading to the latest and greatest. 6 now. Reliability and battery life are the most important attributes, really. You must be able to trust your machine and leave it on all day for instantaneous access. A 100Mhz 486 is a comfortable speed for Linux/X. Enough so that you don't need another machine 95% of the time. >On the issue of power. Does the 586 use about twice as much power as >your older 486? Did you start carrying more batteries, or just begin >to recharge more often? The AMD 133MHz 586 (Jump SuperMops) uses less power than the IBM 100 486 (Ampro) when idle, but a lot more when running full up. The AMD is basically a 486 on steroids. A true Pentium system like Ampro's new module has more cpu power / MHz than the 586's. >your older 486? Did you start carrying more batteries, or just begin >to recharge more often? The average battery life was the same between the boards (8-10 hrs) using 2 Sony NP-F730 lithium camcorder batteries. I've upgraded to 2 NP-F950's, which give about 15 hrs. >What do you find a comfortable weigth to carry about all day? 2-3kgs? I CAN carry up to 10 lbs in the shoulder pack, but really only carry about half that on average. Very little of the tonnage is actually the computer but all the other stuff I carry in the pack because its convenient :-) Thad Starner MIT Media Laboratory Wearable Computing Project -- Subcription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with subject of "subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" toWear-Hard Mailing List Archive (searchable): http://wearables.ml.org
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