Linux Laptop Good for Presentations

The Sydney Linux User Group meets on the last Friday of each month at Google's Sydney headquarters. Last night there was no keynote speakers, instead six lightning talks. These are five minute talks, requiring the speaker to get to the point quickly, not spending time on who they are or fiddling with slides. I decided to give an update on my Kogan Agora Laptop. As I had my laptop plugged in at the podium, all the other speakers used it for their presentations.

This highlighted one of the features of this Linux laptop: it is very good for presentations. Since purchasing the unit several months ago I have been at events where the presenter was unable to get their laptop to work with the video projector. I simply plug in my Kogan Agora and a perfect picture comes up on the screen and on the laptop. When I commented on this at the SLUG meeting, one of the experts said this was due to the very good Linux support for the Intel graphics chip in the Kogan.

At a previous SLUG meeting I had criticized the Koag for its short battery life, at under three hours. However, installing the Power Manager Inhibit Applet appears to have had the side-effect of turning on the power saving features, extending the battery life to almost four hours.

Other speakers at the meeting (availabel in a video of the six lightening talks) were:

1. How to create an ebook - Marghanita
2. Update on my Kogan laptop - Tom
3. Building an satellite tracking system - Bruce
4. PyCon AU conference program - Tim
5. Prey, finding stolen laptop and Modeling your house - Patrick
6. SpiderOak and other Drop box alternatives - Sridhar

If a Linux, open source or general IT enthusiast, or if you are visiting Sydney and want to see the inside of the Google building, then a SLUG meeting is worth attending. If you can't make it to Sydney, the meetings are streamed live. The next meeting is 26 August 2011, so why not volunteer to speak?