[LINK] Kogan Agora Laptop Better with Classic Interface and Flash Disk

[Tom Worthington]

On 20/06/11 21:49, Jan Whitaker wrote (was: "Q&A tonight - gen Y"):

> If you're on email right now, Q&A is on ...  No pollies ...

ABC TV's Q&A (apparently pronounced "QanDa") featured online electronics 
retailer Ruslan Kogan. He did okay.

But regardless what I think of his TV performance I do like his 
computers. On 10 June I took delivery of a Kogan Agora PRO 12" Ultra 
Portable Laptop Computer.

The minimalist on-line store and the minimalist packaging impressed me 
almost as much as the modest design of the hardware. Kogan's business 
and the products have been pared down to give the customer what they 
want and no more. In this case a very plain cardboard box with a very 
generic looking black laptop, with a very generic version of Linux on it.

The lightweight laptop form provides a 11.6 inch screen and a good size 
keyboard, sufficient for a days work, but small enough to fit in a bag 
with a pad of A4 paper. The LED back-light screen is very readable. This 
would make a good laptop for a student, if a few battery and interface 
problems could be fixed.

My favorable impressions of the hardware changed when I discovered the 
battery only lasted about 2 hours, much less than the claimed 3.5 hours. 
However, more of a problem was the new "Unity" interface of the Ubuntu 
Linux software installed.

Unity attempts to provide an interface which makes maximum use of the 
limited space on a netbook screen. However, the Kogan has a relatively 
large 11.6 inch screen and so does not need a compact interface. Also 
the way the interface saves space is to strip off the borders around 
windows, the titles and menu bars from them. This has not been 
implemented consistently across the applications which make up Linux.

Even applications which are provided by default with Ubuntu had 
problems. The "Evolution" email package's setup menus did not work 
correctly: clicking on one icon actives the icon below it and attempting 
to click on a button instead causes the window to scroll.

I was ready to send the laptop back for a refund when one of my 
colleagues suggested switching back to the Ubuntu classic (no effects) 
user interface. This can be done from the login screen, without changing 
software. It transformed my experience of the laptop. The borders and 
menus reappeared around windows and the menu items I clicked on 
activated. The responsiveness of the machine improved noticeably. Also 
the battery life increased by 45 minutes, due to the interface not 
making intensive use of graphics, for effects such as translucent menus.

While the menus in "Evolution" now worked, it still did some strange 
things and I decided to switch to the simpler Mozilla Thunderbird email 
package.

The laptop still has limitations, the major one being the limited 
battery life (now 2 hours and 45 minutes and less than the claimed 3 
hours and 30 minutes). I tried a number of other Linux power saving 
tips, but most of these seem to have already been incorporated into the 
newest versions of Linux.

One option left to consider is a flash Laptop Solid State Drive. The 
flash drive will save a little power when running, but more importantly 
would allow the laptop to be switched off more often, as it can be 
switched on more quickly.

Ironically, a cheaper model of the Agora is offered with a 30 GB solid 
state drive. But this has only 1 GB of RAM and comes with the Google 
Chromium OS. I did not want to have to install a different operating 
system and more RAM myself, but in retrospect, that would have been 
easier than the changes I have to make to get Ubuntu to work properly.

More in my blog at: 
<http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/06/kogan-agora-laptop-okay-but-would-be.html>.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/
Visiting Scientist, CSIRO ICT Centre: http://bit.ly/csiro_ict_canberra