May 13th, 2009
The agora netbook’s touchpad comes with a Synaptics touchpad, and a common question popping up around here and on the kogan blog goes something like: “does the touchpad support multitouch?”.
A quick google later, and reveals an article that seems to be the holy grail of multitouch for Ubuntu. The title says it all:
Multi touch for any, all synaptics touchpad
“Any, all” – that’s me! But lets double check. According to what my kernel reports, my agora is equipped with a Synaptics touchpad:
Synaptics Touchpad, model: 1, fw: 6.5, id: 0x25c0b1, caps: 0xa04711/0xa00000
input: SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad as /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input9
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in agora, agora pro, netbook remix, touchpad, ubuntu | No Comments »
May 11th, 2009
In previous blog entries (disabling the touchpad whilst typing and installing gsynaptics) I described how to enable SHMConfig in order to control the touchpad.
I had some feedback from at least two readers who could not enable SHMConfig, and when they tried to use gsynaptics or syndaemon, they were met with the error “You have to set ‘SHMConfig’ ‘true’ in xorg.conf or XF86Config“. The instructions provided in the post to enable SHMConfig using the /etc/hal/fdi/policy/shmconfig.fdi method did not appear to be working.
After a lot of troubleshooting work with Travis, we were able to determine why this was occuring, and how to resolve it.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in agora, agora pro, drivers, gOS, netbook remix, software, touchpad, ubuntu, wireless | 6 Comments »
May 8th, 2009
Is a 2GB USB drive too big for booting the Kogan agora netbook?
Over the last few days I have been trying to USB boot different operation systems on my Kogan agora pro, such as UNR and the recently released ‘koganised’ gOS iso.
I have two USB drives of the same brand. One is 1GB, and the other 2GB. I found that I can only get the 1GB USB drive to boot – the 2GB drive fails with “boot error“. Other users have also reported this behaviour.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in agora, agora pro, software | 9 Comments »
May 7th, 2009
I have just booted my agora using the kogan gOS iso, which can be found here: http://www.sendspace.com/pro/dl/s2eg5d.
I used unetbootin to create a bootable USB drive, and it booted to an Ubuntu/gOS boot menu fine. I didn’t want to overwrite my UNR install, so I chose to boot ‘live’ – i.e. run gOS from the USB drive, and not change my hard drive in any way.
The kogan spash screen appeared and eventually it booted to the ‘koganised’ gOS desktop, which only lasted a day the last time it was installed on my agora! What I didn’t have, semi-unexpectedly, was a functioning touchpad.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in agora, agora pro, drivers, gOS, software, touchpad, wireless | 3 Comments »
May 5th, 2009
Update: waldo has connected his agora to an external monitor at 1920×1080. Not sure what operating system, but I am guessing its a driver thing.
Over at the kogan blog, outsideworld asked what the maximum resolution was for a external monitor attached to the agora. The quickest way to tell was to plug my agora pro into my 19″ BenQ LCD, and see what it could do.
After some playing around in the Display Preferences in Ubuntu Netbook Remix, I found that the maximum resolution was 1024×768.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in agora, agora pro, netbook remix, ubuntu | 1 Comment »
May 4th, 2009
I just read a review for the agora over at cnet.com.au, and I just thought I would try and clarify what was said about the 6 cell battery:
the six-cell battery bulges out and props the netbook up at an angle
This is not the case for my agora. I took a photo on the weekend of my pro (see on the right) and you will see whilst there is the bulge out the back (the extra cells), the netbook is not raised at an angle.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in agora, agora pro | No Comments »
May 3rd, 2009
I took some shots of my agora pro today. Enjoy!
Posted in agora, agora pro | No Comments »
May 2nd, 2009
I have noticed that I often brush the touchpad of my agora whilst typing, and this often moves the cursor to another line in the text I am typing, or changes focus to a different window. It can be very frustrating!
Neerav Bhatt also mentioned that he was having this problem, and I flashed back to all my google searching when I was trying to enable the touchpad in Ubuntu Netbook Remix. I came across some information on how to disable the touchpad, which was completely the opposite to what I was trying to achieve. Flash forward to today, and it now seems pretty useful!
I have dug up that information, and now I have my touchpad disabled whilst I type. When I stop typing, 1 second after the last key press, the touchpad is re-enabled.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in agora, agora pro, touchpad, ubuntu | 11 Comments »
May 2nd, 2009
I have just posted a review of the agora over on my personal blog.
The Kogan agora netbook is very impressive on the hardware side, but open the lid and gOS is not as ‘good’ as the name suggests.
Read the full review…
Posted in agora, agora pro | No Comments »
April 29th, 2009
Update: The manual has now been updated with the URL for the gOS image.
As promised, kogan have published a user manual for the kogan agora netbook on their netbook support page:
http://www.kogan.com.au/media/uploads/Kogan-Agora-Netbook-User-Manual.pdf
It does however have a few gaps. I was keen to see the factory restore instructions, however whilst is says “Download the kogan gOS.iso image file from this link”, there does not appear to be a link! Hopefully this will be resolved soon…
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in agora, agora pro | 4 Comments »
