So….still playing with the Rudd Laptop and haven’t broken it yet although this morning I crashed Windows and the cute little music programme destined to give Finale notepad a run for it’s money (twice) !

Resolution is little hard to gauge — the super fine resolution (1026×728) is too small to read and although you can combat this with the magnifer or view in 125%  but it means you can’t fit as much n the screen. Obviously this will be better plugged into a data projector and rumour has it that the next rollout will have full size screens !

The laptop has USB ports on either side of its tiny body which is cool especially if you are right handed and want to use the mouse on the other side. My Mac was obviously design by a left hander as its 3 usb ports are on the left hand side so you either need a wireless mouse, or a long cable, or use the touch pad which I always revert to anyway.

The  windows activation screen — “contact administrator” is an annoying little popup as apparently we aren’t allowed to administrate our own laptops which is a little understandable — I wouldn’t trust most of us either but there are more than a few who know what they are doing.

Also, the flash player appears not to work (possibly due to Windows 7 — there is no download for Windows 7 on the Adobe website and it ain’t on the laptop that I can find) and there is no apparent popup stopper or adblock on the IE7.

So …. MUSE SCORE (http://musescore.org) – apparently a free programme but clearly unstable as I have just crashed it a second time and I had almost finished inputting my 16 bar melody and written the simple accompaniment to it — DAMN !! Lesson learnt — save often ! Doh !!

The programme is similar to Finale Notepad (which you have to now pay for)
* note entry is easy –  you use the keyborad, and changing note values s as simple as typing in anumerical number
* chords are simple to make (alt3 for a 3rd/alt4 for 4th and so on) but you need to know how they are constructed
* you can begin with a template or create tour own and add extra instruments as you go
* laptop on board sound is ok but not great — I will see if I can uload the xg-synth from Final Fantasy
* shortcuts are easy to use and simple alphnumerical entries — adding 3rd/4th etc
* there is an online manual and one in the programme — kids would benefit from a handout
* you can save as xml, midi, bitmap, and Lilypond (http://lilypond.org/web/index) the linux based msuic software — but not as a wav or mp3 for burning to cd or putting on your ipod.
* adding lyrics is fairly simple once you get the hang of it and editing it is simly hilight and delet or double click, adding space or a hyphon
* you can apparently plug in a midi cable and therefore a keyboard — but my adator is not usb to midi so I can’t test it yet ! (if it reads the piamo keyboard input better than finale I suggest you all chuck out finale !!)
* oh and I didn’t need to install fonts to look like notation — it seems installed already !!
* there doesn’t appear to be an import function for bitmap/jpeg or scanned music — but it did open the midi I downloaded and allow me to edit it, and print !!! NICE !!!!

All in all very user friendly !

Oooh — I just found the new paint in windows — very pretty !!!

Oh and “Print Screen” is FN+(Del)PrtSc !!

Now having said all that I have had to dump the laptop as it neared battery dump and come upstairs because the wireless connection decided to go kaput !! This may be our booster box or the laptop onboard wireless….hmmmmm !!

POSTSCRIPT — if you see lots of typos its cause the keybaord on the laptop is tiny and the screen tinier so I couldn’t see half of what I was typing…. yes I was wearing my glasses thankyou very much !!