Just finished installing CyanogenMod 9 on my HTC Explorer! :-)

Unlocked the bootloader with instructions from the official HTC site http://www.htcdev.com/bootloader

Installed custom recovery (ClockworkMod based Recovery v5.0.2.6) following instructions from http://theunlockr.com/2012/06/14/how-to-root-and-install-custom-recovery-on-htc-explorer/

Flashed to CyanogenMod 9 following instructions from http://www.techethon.com/install-android-4-0-4-ics-on-htc-explorer-pico-via-cyanogenmod-9/

Link to the xda developers page for the unofficial CyanogenMod9 port to the HTC Explorer/Pico:http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=29938928&postcount=2

HTC supports the Explorer only up to Android 2.3 Gingerbread. CyanogenMod 9 is the community maintained equivalent of Android 4 Ice Cream Sandwich, and it runs just fine. Rid of all the bloatware, adware, spyware, malware, etc. from both Google and HTC, CyanogenMod is simple and up to the point, just the way I like it!

I often hear all this talk about how the Explorer is a "low end budget device", about how 600 MHz is just too slow, and so on. But frankly, I can only classify all this as sales talk, or perhaps uninformed talk. Ice Cream Sandwich is not in any way slow on the Explorer, all hardware works fine, and I would certainly recommend anyone with an Explorer flashing to CyanogenMod 9.

Speaking of all this hype about high frequency multi-core CPUs, my first computer was just a 600 MHz Pentium III with only 64 MB of RAM and 8 GB of storage. I was just fine with it. Did a lot of things with it back then. And perhaps, if the hardware were alive, I might still have use for it. And only 3 years back, I owned a Celeron machine with 512 MB RAM. Ran Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope on it. Could easily outperform much more powerful CPUs bogged down by bloated Windows installations.

But what truly never ceases to astonish me is the server hosting the official Slackware site. The site actually runs on a 600 MHz Pentium III with only 512 MB of RAM! And the Slackware site claims that their server has been known to run well over a year without a reboot!! Read more at http://www.slackware.com/about/

I suppose The Tao of Programming aptly summarizes this:

In the beginning was the Tao. The Tao gave birth to Space and Time. Therefore Space and Time are Yin and Yang of programming.

Programmers that do not comprehend the Tao are always running out of time and space for their programs. Programmers that comprehend the Tao always have enough time and space to accomplish their goals.

How could it be otherwise?