Martin Heller
Contributing Writer

BUGbase: A Small Change in Plans

analysis
Jan 19, 20082 mins

The BUG system, which I discussed last Tuesday, will go on sale Monday at the BUG Labs store. It won't be exactly what was previously announced, however. In an email, a company spokesman explained the change of plans: This (the picture at the top left) is the BUGbase "Hiro P" model.  It's what the first batch of BUGbase units will look like, and is much like the BUGbase we've been promoting, only

In an email, a company spokesman explained the change of plans:

This (the picture at the top left) is the BUGbase “Hiro P” model.  It’s what the first batch of BUGbase units will look like, and is much like the BUGbase we’ve been promoting, only with a minor aesthetic change to the front panel and no onboard 802.11 wi-fi.

Why no wi-fi? The issue extends from developing a set of open source wi-fi drivers, and we had to make a decision on our first production run – either ship early with no wi-fi, or delay the ship date until the driver issue was resolved.

However, to compensate the Hiro P customers, we will be offering them a BUGwifi module *at cost*, and we will also be giving them a *free* BUGvonhippel module. Additionally, we will be extending the early adopter program to the new batch of wireless-enabled BUGbases.

More about this can be read in the announcement we just issued on BUGblogger: https://www.bugblogger.com/2008/01/what-about-wifi.html

The wi-fi driver issue sounds similar to the one I encountered when I reviewed the Mandriva Flash 2008 in December. To get wi-fi working on that system, I had to download a small firmware file directly from Broadcom.

Martin Heller

Martin Heller is a contributing writer at InfoWorld. Formerly a web and Windows programming consultant, he developed databases, software, and websites from his office in Andover, Massachusetts, from 1986 to 2010. From 2010 to August of 2012, Martin was vice president of technology and education at Alpha Software. From March 2013 to January 2014, he was chairman of Tubifi, maker of a cloud-based video editor, having previously served as CEO.

Martin is the author or co-author of nearly a dozen PC software packages and half a dozen Web applications. He is also the author of several books on Windows programming. As a consultant, Martin has worked with companies of all sizes to design, develop, improve, and/or debug Windows, web, and database applications, and has performed strategic business consulting for high-tech corporations ranging from tiny to Fortune 100 and from local to multinational.

Martin’s specialties include programming languages C++, Python, C#, JavaScript, and SQL, and databases PostgreSQL, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database, Google Cloud Spanner, CockroachDB, MongoDB, Cassandra, and Couchbase. He writes about software development, data management, analytics, AI, and machine learning, contributing technology analyses, explainers, how-to articles, and hands-on reviews of software development tools, data platforms, AI models, machine learning libraries, and much more.

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