Please upgrade to Build 212.

[Jim Gettys]

Please upgrade your machines (particularly BTest-1 machines) to Build
212, which fixes a serious battery over-charging problem, a number of
issues with the firmware in the machine, and some problems with the user
interface, though many more of the UI issues will be fixed by BTest-2,
along with updates and new activities.

Highlights:
  Much improved Linux wireless driver & firmware that supports 
    mesh operation
  Cursors you can see (actually, a bit too big, a better situation 
    than too small).
  Developer's console 

Lowlights:
   Mesh view broken; you can't see other laptops in the mesh. 
   We'll fix this ASAP.

We'd like everyone to upgrade ASAP, particularly people with BTest-1
machines, both to start shaking down the software further before
BTest-2, and particularly to fix an important firmware bug which can
cause overcharging of the battery; so please upgrade even though we'll
be asking again in a few weeks.

The http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Autoreinstallation_image makes upgrade of
machines quite painless.  Note it installs an image onto your system's
NAND flash and updates its firmware (many ATest users have never
bothered with NAND flash due to its very poor performance; BTest-1 is
2-3x faster, and BTest-2 should be another factor of 2-3 times faster
yet than old ATest).  If you are upgrading your a file system you use on
disk or flash key, the corresponding file system image is build 212.

Note that at this date, our performance work has focused on establishing
good measurements of our baseline performance and work on tools rather
than making things run fast.  

We know how to dramatically improve performance (e.g. see
http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/623 for one example; we also have data we
are looking at for activity start-up (believe it or not, we're forking
and exec'ing python twice for each activity activation), and elsewhere
as well not yet documented in trac) these performance improvements will
mostly land after BTest-2.  We are still primarily working on ensuring
everything works, so that there is nothing in the way of application
developers rather than on performance. We can use help on performance
work: Chris Ball is leading this effort (cjb on IRC).

Please let others who may not be on the devel-machines mailing list know
they should subscribe, and that they too should upgrade.
                               Best Regards and Thanks again,
                                       - Jim Gettys

-- 
Jim Gettys
One Laptop Per Child