Gecko review

I have posted to my blog recently about the Gecko Edubook:

http://bkhome.org/archive/blog2/200905/gecko-edubook.html
http://bkhome.org/archive/blog2/201001/xcore86-cpu-in-gecko-edubook.html
http://bkhome.org/archive/blog2/201001/gecko-orders.html

Now, forum member judland (David) has posted a review:

http://www.ipernity.com/blog/virtualsky/223038

Here are some performance criticisms from the review:

About the only thing the Edubook falls short on is in its multi-media / video playback capabilities. Although YouTube videos an MP4s do play, they are very choppy and out of sync with the audio track.

However, there is one saving grace; Puppy Linux come installed with a YouTube video downloader and format converter. If you download the YouTube video you wish to watch and convert it to a lower resolution MPEG, the video plays just fine. Same with MP4s you may have ripped from you DVDs.

and...

Now for the biggest beef I have against the Edubook... the mouse-pad. In my opinion, this mouse-pad is far too sensitive to the touch. I don't even need to be touching the mouse-pad for the mouse pointer to start jumping all over the screen. If I leave a finger resting on one of the mouse buttons, the pad picks it up. If, while typing, my palm comes too close to the surface of the mouse-pad, it registers as a mouse-click. Very annoying.

I wonder if things can be tweaked so that videos can be made to play smoothly when streamed from youtube.com?

It is most likely possible to fix that mouse pad sensitivity problem.

...I look forward to working on these issues when I get my Gecko! And of course I'll post my own mini-review.

There is a comment about a signature needed for credit card payment, yes I had to do that too. It's a bank in Thailand that requires that. I think the alternative is a Western Union transfer.

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Comments

Puppy on the Edubook
Username: judland
Hey, Barry. I look forward to reading about your experiences with the Edubook. I hope you like working with it as much as I do. It really is a nice little PC. I also look forward to any special adaptations of Puppy Linux for the Edubook you can develop. I'm quite impressed with how well Puppy runs on it already. So any improvement will be icing on the cake! (especially regarding the mousepad ;o) Regards, David

gecko: wrong culprit
Username: x
""Although YouTube videos an MP4s do play, they are very choppy and out of sync with the audio track" hardly a problem with the edubook itself if it plays correctly after download. perhaps internet-connection or browser or mp4player or insufficent ram are to blame

Try Quirky
Username: Raffy
"Quirky 005 had optimized video playing and browser tweaks - you can in fact have the video be handled by the media player. Am sure Puppy devs can work out something for multimedia playing.

Tags: puppy