Firefox addons for the Elonex ONEt

I've been checking out the recommendation from Leven2e in our email group that Firefox addons can be installed in the Bon Echo browser on the Elonex ONEt - despite the unusual processor in the ONEt.

The first recommendation is MediaPlayerConnectivity - this creates a connection between sound and video links on a web page and the Xine media player on the ONEt - so you can click on a web link and result in Xine being launched to play the music or video - I'm listening to the radio over the web courtesy of this addon at the moment.

The best way to load an addon into the ONEt is to browse to the appropriate Firefox addons page, for example by clicking on the appropriate link in this blog then click on the link to Download the addon - after a while Bon Echo will bring up another window where you click on Install, watch the progress bar as the file is downloaded and installed, then click on Restart Bon Echo - then typically the addon will lauch a preferences window where you can make any settings changes that you need.

MediaPlayerConnectivity automatically detects and sets up the links to Xine. Leven2e recommends a couple of web pages listing suitable radio stations: http://www.radiofeeds.co.uk/mp3.asp and http://www.radiofeeds.co.uk/wmp.asp - I certainly found that a lot of general web pages were "too clever" - telling me that the browser was incompatible without giving me chance to see the links to the appropriate media...

Another useful addon (for me at least) is the British English Dictionary - through it I discovered that the ONEt already had an American English dictionary installed - when you are typing words into a web page (e.g. composing an email on webmail) any mis-spelled words will be underlined in red, right clicking on them gives a choice of words you might have meant and the chance under a Languages sub-menu to change your language to "English/United Kingdom".

Adblock Plus is very good at stripping distracting ads from web pages, you can subscribe to a list of known advertising sites which means that most adverts are removed automatically and if any slip through you can right-click on the image and add that site to your blocked list too.

Leven2e suggests a few other addons which I haven't quite got into yet:
Video DownloadHelper promises much, but the video conversion program it offers couldn't be enabled on my ONEt.
Locator launches Google Maps for an address you have selected on the screen - but I find Google Maps very hard to use on the ONEt because it is obviously designed for a much bigger computer screen.
Firefly offers to turn Bon Echo into a file browser - but it already is in that you can type "file:///" into the standard Bon Echo address bar and look round all the system files on the computer without needing any other browser - the Firefly file copy and rename functions may be useful, I'll see.
Facebook Toolbar is one I haven't investigated.

But, all-in-all, it's good news that the ONEt runs much more software than I ever expected when I learned that the processor was not Intel X86 compatible.

New Elonex ONEt kernel released...

Elonex are now offering a separate download for the ONEt kernel file "uImage" if you follow the links on: http://www.elonex.com/support/products/lnxonet.shtm - and the instructions there indicate that Fn+Shift+F1 are used to update what they are calling the "Master Boot Record" but elsewhere is called the kernel.

For example: http://194.150.201.35/cnmlifestyle/downloads.htm indicates that the V66 version of the kernel includes support for a 3G modem driver and improved USB printer handling... there are also files to download for gFTP (if you ever need to use File Transfer Protocol to load or save files) plus some of the usual games and programs found elsewhere.

Elonex also now have a ONEt home page at: http://www.elonex.com/landingonet.html

It looks there's more things to play with...

Meanwhile for Elonex ONE(+) owners things seem to have gone quiet - maybe interest or news will pick up once the next batch of ONE(+)s start being delivered?

Elonex ONE and ONEt software comparison

I'm gradually working my way through various tests on my Elonex ONEt (evenings and weekends) and putting the results up on the "Software Comparison" page.

Some things are good, others not so good.

For example, the ONEt works well in combination with my old still camera - which is 3.2 megapixels and stores photos on an SD card - the SD card slot on the ONEt works fine and I can view my photos nicely and show slideshows to the family - fine for showing off my photos to someone who doesn't have a computer. The ONEt Media Player also plays the 320 by 240 pixel movies (QuickTime .MOV file type) that the still camera records quite well.

But, it's not up to playing the 640 by 480 pixel .MPG video files I can get off my video camera.

Printer setup turned out to be relatively easy, just fire up the CUPS Printer Manager, select "Add Printer" - from the "Devices" drop down menu select the Network Printer on my home network that CUPS had already identified (it told me its IP address and name in case I had more than 1 network printer) - the tricky bit was selecting the driver on the next screen - it turns out that oldest is best, selecting an "old" HP Deskjet driver for my "new" HP Officejet worked fine - adjust the parameters for A4 paper and 600 dpi (the best the driver would do) and we're away with something usable at least.

One disappointment is that there's no Samba Client (network browser) so I can't copy files from the shared drives on other PCs on my home network - I can see this being a problem in a classroom situation where the teacher has the project work stored on a shared drive on the teacher's PC and students are supposed to copy the start files from the shared drive and put results back there when they have finished. The original Elonex ONE manual clearly shows a Network browser in action...

So, the ONE does definitely have more/better/newer software than the ONEt (except for the Internet Browser where Saramao is more cut-down than Bon Echo) - the ONE has Java, Network browsing (as we've just said), built-in games, a younger child's drawing package, built-in programming software, better WiFi support (according to reports, though neither is perfect) - but the ONE is heavier and the attempt to produce a tablet PC means the ONE has to have a supporting strut to hold the screen up and the tablet support software is obviously not perfect from comments on our email group - as usual, you take your pick and decide which combination is best for you...

Ed

xterm, root and games on the Elonex ONEt

In case you missed my earlier aside, there's xterm, a patch to give access to root, three games, a Contact Manager and a text editor at: http://www.littlelinuxlaptop.com/software.htm with the hope of more to follow

"grumpyoldman64" has told us about a WiFi patch at: http://www.maplin.co.uk/media/A98HX_WiFi_Patch.zip which improved his signal level and a Dutch based group discussing the software in detail: http://projects.kwaak.net/twiki/bin/view/Epc700/WebHome

Though there is a hint at: http://www.elonex.co.uk/support/products/lnxonet.shtm that one of the 4 automatic software updates is that missing WiFi patch - and the fact that automatic updates appear to work suggests that you don't need Little Linux Laptop's automatic update patch.

The Elonex Support page also includes a link to the manual and to the relevant restore images for the ONEt and ONEt+ - which I suspect are more up to date than the Trendtac EPC700 image offered at the Little Linux Laptop site.

And, as you gathered it looks like deliveries of the ONEt and ONEt+ have started and support pages have appeared.

The ONEunion hasn't appeared yet (and schools did start back a fortnight ago here in Scotland) and my personal ONEt hasn't arrived yet, but it does look as if we are making progress.

Elonex ONE Support page updated

The ONE Support page at http://www.elonex.com/support/products/lnxone.shtm has improved since I last looked there in that the link to the ONE Recovery image now works: http://www.elonexsupport.com/one/onerecovery.zip and the Download Manual button connects to the correct manual: http://www.elonexone.co.uk/downloads/oneusermanual.pdf

Looking at the manual also gives hints that the software has been updated compared to the Aware laptop manual that I've been working from up to now. There's even a clue that there might be a drop-down menu to change WiFi protocol from WEP to WPA or WPA2? So, if anyone has managed to get WPA working on the ONE can you let me know?

There are also a couple of new FAQs:

Q. Why can't I view some webpages?
A. As The ONE can't view some parts of some webpages as it does not have Flash 9 (for example you can't view Youtube videos) but sometimes you can't view some content because Java or Flash are disabled in your settings.
To enable Java and Flash open the internet and click the Settings button (the spanner and screwdriver icon in the top right corner). Under Content Options change the Java and Flash options to Enabled, then press Apply. You need to close your internet browser and then reopen it for the changes to take effect.

That's good news, the ONE appears to have Flash and Java, you just need to enable them? Again I'd be grateful if someone could let me know the versions of Java and Flash on the machine.

Q. Why can't I connect to the internet?
A. To be honest if you are reading this page then you have no problems connecting to the internet (!!) but if you have a friend who has problems then please get them to call our support number (0871 90 296 90).
The ONE has experienced some problems connecting to BT Home Hub and Sky Broadband. There is a software update for this so please phone us for more information.

I don't like the answer to this question - I'm sure most ONE owners will either have their own bigger computer or know someone (teacher or parent) who has - why can't Elonex put the answer on the web instead of promoting their Premium Rate telephone number? So, if you know the answer to this question, please let me know so we can distribute the answer as widely as possible.

Or more ONEt delays?

I did warn everyone when posting my first blog entry that the arrival of the Elonex ONE had a lot of similarities with the launch of the Sinclair Spectrum and BBC microcomputer and other machines from the 1980s. To have three 28 day delays in delivery was not unusual then, and I'm not too surprised that it's starting to look a bit that way again... Apologies if I called "time" too early from the hints I'd been seeing that the ONEt was on the way.

If it's any consolation, I've found a good little website at http://www.littlelinuxlaptop.com - the Elonex ONEt (or something very similar) has been on sale in the Netherlands for some time by Trendtac http://www.trendtac.nl/ and the two sites already contain a lot of useful stuff, like a recovery image, a patch to get automatic updates to work, a patch to get to root xterm and a few games.

The Trendtac site is in Dutch so you may want to translate it using http://translate.google.com - the Dutch to English result is at: http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.trendtac.nl%2F&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=nl&tl=en

The site does have 320 megabytes of source code to download, released under the Open Source licence, and a cross compiler - so we prospective ONEt owners could take a bit of a lead by getting any programs we need compiled in advance of getting a machine...?

Elonex ONEt's on the way?

There's a forum post at: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1113971 that implies that one customer has received an email saying his ONEt is on the way - there's no votes in our poll yet indicating any ONEt's being received - but we are now into the "last week in August" which is when the delay email said they would be delivered...

The delay has given us chance to think over the features of the various machines - and as always there's swings and roundabouts:
The advantage of the plain ONE is definitely its price, the 486 compatible processor means that it's likely that Elonex (or more likely some third party) will eventually bring the software more up to date, either by producing updated files for the installed "Linos" operating system, or by producing a version of "Puppy Linux" for the machine - and the spare internal USB port means that adding bluetooth or a bigger flash drive should be easy;
The main advantage of the ONE+ is the 256 megabytes of RAM, it might even be possible to port xUbuntu for this machine;
The ONEt may have a better input device with its touchpad, it's certainly lighter in weight, its MIPS processor has advantages and disadvantages - it's harder to port software for it, but equally it will be harder to write viruses and spyware for it - and the installed software while it may be based on older variants than those on the ONE may well include better video support;
And, the ONEt+... is probably for those with a little bit of extra money to spare...

So, we wait to be able to check these guesses out.