Back in February, we broke the news that the One Laptop Per Child charity was set to come down under - which was great news for people interested in helping with the development of its uber cool open source laptop, the XO.
OLPC Australia has just announced it will host its first OLPC Techfest in Sydney on Sunday, 1 June. It will include demonstrations, workshops about the OLPC hardware and software, and developer tutorials.
If you're at all interested in the OLPC, I strongly recommend you attend this event, as a lot of its very cool features are best demonstrated when you can network a bunch of the machines together, as will no doubt happen at this event.
For full details, check out the OLPC website. [via]

You just sat down at the internet café, you've got your coffee, your scone, and your laptop all plugged in and ready to roll, but—you need to hit the head. What do you do? Wired's Lore Sjöberg discusses this situation—what he calls the laptop dilemma—in detail, offering five options: Leave your helpless laptop alone, ask a neighbour to watch it, take your laptop with you to the can, take everything with you, or lock it up. Obviously, for safety's sake, you should either lock it up tight or—ideally—bring it along, but we don't always do what we should. On that note, we'd love to hear how you hack the laptop dilemma in the comments. Photo by scottfeldstein.

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The second generation of the geek friendly ASUS Eee PC mini-laptop will hit Australian shelves this month, but Linux lovers are set for a double blow - not only has the price gone up by $150 dollars to $RRP649, but the XP version of the Eee is actually cheaper!
APC had the rundown on this strange state of affairs - pointing out that the Eee PC 900 loaded with XP will cost only $599, which means that even with the Windows XP license, it's $50 cheaper than the Linux version. The Linux version gets 20GB of storage to compensate, in comparison to the 12GB in the XP version. But still, rather odd.
I'd been hanging out for the 2nd gen Eee because they've kept the same small form factor but increased the screen real estate by about an inch to 8.9 inches by moving the speakers away from the sides of the screen. But I have to admit, I'm wondering whether I should snap up a $500 first gen unit rather than ponying up for the 900.
Here's our original review of the first Eee PC - it rocked our socks. :)
Got an opinion on whether the new Eee will be worth the extra $150 - or whether to go for the cheaper XP version? Let us know in comments.

EDIT: It seems I fail at basic subtraction - the XP version of the Eee 900 is $50 cheaper than the Linux version, not $150 as I originally wrote. Apologies!

PC World magazine rounds up eight tips to stop thieves from stealing your laptop, the most obvious-yet-effective of which is simply locking it up. Apart from their suggestion that you encrypt your hard drive (we'd recommend the cross-platform TrueCrypt for that), all of their suggestions require you to throw down a bit of cash. If you're not up to spending any money but you still want to beef up your laptop security, hit the jump for a look at a few no-cost solutions for guarding your laptop against thieves.

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Blogger Ron Brinkmann doesn't want to buy an overpriced laptop stand or build his own DIY laptop stand. Instead, he takes the cheap and easy route and uses a $6 hot water bottle as a water-cooled laptop stand. Brinkmann says:

Yup, buy a hot water bottle, fill it up with tap-water (room-temperature is fine) and insert strategically between laptop and lap. It's comfy, acts as a nice heat-sink, and as a bonus it probably blocks a fair bit of the dangerous 'electronic rays' that are shooting out of the bottom of the computer straight at your important bits.

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Do-it-yourselfer proyZ posts a step-by-step for building a lightweight, sturdy laptop stand for a measly two bucks using a couple of twisted wire easels he picked up from the local dollar store and a few common household items. If you didn't already find a solution that worked for you in our top 10 DIY laptop stands, maybe this is the stand you were waiting for.

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Weblog Geeksugar raves about the Dave laptop table from Ikea, a small, sturdy, and inexpensive solution for taking your laptop away from the desk and into your living room. The Dave (oh Ikea, you and your names!) features adjustable height and angle, and can double as a TV tray or simple end table when you're not computing. If you've been looking for a better way to surf the internet from the comfort of your couch, the $US25 Dave might be just the ticket.

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When your hot laptop needs ventilation and your wrists need a break from a flat keyboard, you can drop 50 bucks on a fancy commercial laptop stand—or you can build one of your own. Do-it-yourself laptop users have built several creations from common household materials to keep their notebooks elevated while they work . Made of everything from wine corks to door stops to paper (and paper towel) holders, check out our favourite top 10 do-it-yourself laptop stands for your lap and workspace pleasure. Photo by hunter1_86.

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