Many, many years ago, my dad, the bargain hunter, found a sale on some shiny new 15" Acer monitors. After around three years both stopped functioning properly. One of them would suddenly turn all blue, while the other would lose its picture altogether. I should have learned my lesson from that. If I had I wouldn't be making this blog entry today.
Approximately last January I went on the market for a laptop. My criteria were quite strict. It had to have a Pentium M (aka Centrino) CPU, 512 MB of RAM, at least 30 GB of hard drive space, and a Radeon 9000 or higher video chipset with dedicated memory. On Ebay I found a fantastic deal on an Acer Travelmate 800 which met (and exceeded) some of my criteria. Six-to-eight weeks later it arrived and I couldn't have been happier. It was an excellent laptop in all respects. Key word: was.
Today the nice SXGA+ LCD screen decided to pack it in. Now, after just over a year of ownership, I find myself needing to use a bulky, old, CRT monitor in order to use my modestly small laptop. Conveniently, the laptop is no longer under warranty.
It is still a fine machine to use as a desktop replacement for now. But unfortunately, I just can't picture myself carrying a CRT monitor with me into lectures to take notes. I think it is safe to say that I will NEVER, e-e-eeever buy another Acer product again.
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Monday, April 18, 2005
Gran Turismo 4
After only about a month and a half with Gran Turismo 3 (and already getting 75%), I began to crave more variety. I ended up breaking down and buying Gran Turismo 4 only hours after my last exam of the semester was over.
Gran Turismo 4 has almost everything from Gran Turismo 3, plus a whole bunch of extra goodies. Plus the cars just seem to feel more realistic when driving them. Crashes seem to have more impact to them (but still no damage model, sadly). The two games might be from the same series, but they play very differently. Gran Turismo 4's driving model makes Gran Turismo 3 seem like Ridge Racer.
Gran Turismo 4 has almost everything from Gran Turismo 3, plus a whole bunch of extra goodies. Plus the cars just seem to feel more realistic when driving them. Crashes seem to have more impact to them (but still no damage model, sadly). The two games might be from the same series, but they play very differently. Gran Turismo 4's driving model makes Gran Turismo 3 seem like Ridge Racer.
Another Linux Post
When Mepis 3.3 was released I was ecstatic. I was waiting for that version to be released so I could use it as my Linux distribution of choice on my Acer Travelmate 800 laptop. It was just too bad the Intel Pro Wireless 2100 drivers included with it were apparently compiled for a different version. As a result the bootup would halt every time it tried to initialize my wireless connection. I went back to the 2004.06 version and all was well, but I could not help but loose faith in the SimplyMepis QA process.
Those who follow Linux will have heard of Ubuntu. Previously I gave Ubuntu 4.10 a bad review, but to be fair I probably did not give it a fair chance. Ubuntu 5.04 "Hoary Hedgehog" was released earlier this month so I decided to give it another try.
First impressions are important, and Ubuntu 5.04 gave me a pleasant initial surprise. It is, so far, the only Linux distribution I have tried that has been able to initialize and connect my wireless on initial boot up. In all other distributions the wireless would not connect during boot up and would need to be re-activated manually once in the desktop environment.
While Ubuntu does not give a complete multimedia experience "out-of-the-box" like Mepis does, I found that once the proper packages are installed the video and audio playback surpasses Mepis in every respect. The audio quality is much clearer, the video is smoother, and it even plays videos that would not display under Mepis. I was confused by this because these two distributions are supposed to be using similar Debian repositories to get these packages.
I am starting to wish that I had given Ubunto 4.10 a bit more of a chance back then. I think that one of the reasons I came down so hard on it initially was because I was expecting a KDE-like experience and was unprepared for some of GNOME's interface differences. I also expected apt-get to work properly from the command prompt right away and was unaware that I would have to edit a text file before that would work.
I hereby retract my previous Ubuntu rant and give "Hoary Hedgehog" two thumbs up.
Those who follow Linux will have heard of Ubuntu. Previously I gave Ubuntu 4.10 a bad review, but to be fair I probably did not give it a fair chance. Ubuntu 5.04 "Hoary Hedgehog" was released earlier this month so I decided to give it another try.
First impressions are important, and Ubuntu 5.04 gave me a pleasant initial surprise. It is, so far, the only Linux distribution I have tried that has been able to initialize and connect my wireless on initial boot up. In all other distributions the wireless would not connect during boot up and would need to be re-activated manually once in the desktop environment.
While Ubuntu does not give a complete multimedia experience "out-of-the-box" like Mepis does, I found that once the proper packages are installed the video and audio playback surpasses Mepis in every respect. The audio quality is much clearer, the video is smoother, and it even plays videos that would not display under Mepis. I was confused by this because these two distributions are supposed to be using similar Debian repositories to get these packages.
I am starting to wish that I had given Ubunto 4.10 a bit more of a chance back then. I think that one of the reasons I came down so hard on it initially was because I was expecting a KDE-like experience and was unprepared for some of GNOME's interface differences. I also expected apt-get to work properly from the command prompt right away and was unaware that I would have to edit a text file before that would work.
I hereby retract my previous Ubuntu rant and give "Hoary Hedgehog" two thumbs up.
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