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.
Monday, March 14, 2005
Gran Turismo
I haven't posted in a while and it's all because of Gran Turismo 3. I know the 4th one is out, but I wanted to get the 3rd one first just in case I didn't like it. I have a couple of gripes about the game, however. First, the computer AI is very dumb. They often like to pit right before the final lap. Also, the game does not put enough power restrictions on your car when entering races. When going in you have no idea if you're being overpowered or if you're just going to smoke everyone else. When you start getting race cars the game loses a lot of its challenge. I prefer the early parts of the game where the emphasis is more on actual driving than horsepower.
Sunday, February 27, 2005
Linux Laptop Mode!
http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsamwel/laptop_mode/tools/index.html
Using the instructions here I was able to easily squeeze some more battery life out of my laptop while running in Linux. If this keeps up I won't have a reason to use Windows anymore, hah!
Using the instructions here I was able to easily squeeze some more battery life out of my laptop while running in Linux. If this keeps up I won't have a reason to use Windows anymore, hah!
SimplyMEPIS Day 3
A few days ago the Linux distro I had been most anticipating, SimplyMEPIS 3.3, was released. I downloaded the ISO, checked the md5sum, and immediately burned the CD. The LiveCD bootup went well, with a few minor error messages here and there. But I was not discouraged. Once the LiveCD finished booting I tried to activate my wireless. This caused the Mepis System Center to freeze. I tried again and got the same result. Hoping that once it was installed it would work, I formatted my Linux partitions and let it go. This time things went worse-- on startup it was getting page faults when loading the IPW2100 driver. This never happened in SimplyMEPIS 2004.06.
This is when I decided that I would rather have a stable Linux installation than a "bleeding edge" one with the latest packages. SimplyMEPIS 2004.06 (contrary to what the name suggests, came out in mid-December) installed like a dream and everything worked "out of the box," so to speak. I did an "apt-get update" followed by an "apt-get upgrade" and all was still good. Tuxrucer using 3D acceleration worked without installing additional drivers. GLQuake worked as well.
Since I am running MEPIS on a Centrino laptop I needed to enable CPU speedstepping (i.e. slowing the CPU down when the speed isn't necessary) to save some battery life. After a quick search on the mepislovers.org forums I was ready to go, effectively doubling my expected battery life in Linux. Unfortunately the battery still does not last as long as it does in Windows. Currently I'm getting between 3-3.5 hours in Windows XP Pro and 2 hours in Linux while doing everyday operations such as instant messaging, web browsing, word processing, etc, with my wireless networking enabled.
Using KDE System Guard I've been keeping an eye on the memory usage of Linux and have been comparing it to the numbers in XP's task manager. XP's task manager usually reports about 250 mb of swap being used while just having instant messaging and a web browser (Gaim and Mozilla Firefox) running. Linux reports no swap being used and only about 256 mb of physical memory occupied with the same applications. Wow! And I was worried that my 256 mb swap partition would be too small. Linux seems a bit quicker for this "everyday use" as well.
In the past few days (this being day 3) I have been spending the bulk of my computing time within Linux and I am loving it.
This is when I decided that I would rather have a stable Linux installation than a "bleeding edge" one with the latest packages. SimplyMEPIS 2004.06 (contrary to what the name suggests, came out in mid-December) installed like a dream and everything worked "out of the box," so to speak. I did an "apt-get update" followed by an "apt-get upgrade" and all was still good. Tuxrucer using 3D acceleration worked without installing additional drivers. GLQuake worked as well.
Since I am running MEPIS on a Centrino laptop I needed to enable CPU speedstepping (i.e. slowing the CPU down when the speed isn't necessary) to save some battery life. After a quick search on the mepislovers.org forums I was ready to go, effectively doubling my expected battery life in Linux. Unfortunately the battery still does not last as long as it does in Windows. Currently I'm getting between 3-3.5 hours in Windows XP Pro and 2 hours in Linux while doing everyday operations such as instant messaging, web browsing, word processing, etc, with my wireless networking enabled.
Using KDE System Guard I've been keeping an eye on the memory usage of Linux and have been comparing it to the numbers in XP's task manager. XP's task manager usually reports about 250 mb of swap being used while just having instant messaging and a web browser (Gaim and Mozilla Firefox) running. Linux reports no swap being used and only about 256 mb of physical memory occupied with the same applications. Wow! And I was worried that my 256 mb swap partition would be too small. Linux seems a bit quicker for this "everyday use" as well.
In the past few days (this being day 3) I have been spending the bulk of my computing time within Linux and I am loving it.
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Intec dance mats suck
One of the reasons we got a PS2 was to play Dance Dance Revolution. So, on the same day we got the PS2, we bought an Intec dance mat and DDR Extreme; all was good. Soon afterwards we even bought a second mat. Woohoo! Then things went sour...
The first dance mat suddenly stopped working. Not just a single sensor, but the whole thing stopped working altogether. We took it back to EB and exchanged it for another (which will be referred to as the third mat).
A few days later the second mat began to act up. The "up button" sensor wouldn't always work. This was remedied by putting some cardboard under the said sensor.
One day, out of nowhere (again) the third dance mat stopped working. We went to take it back to EB, but they were out. They assured us that we will get one as soon as they come in. To add insult to injury the second mat decided to quit as well.
Data:
PS2 purchased December 26
Three dead Intec dance mats
Three dance mats in less than two months
Conclusion:
Intec = teh suck
The first dance mat suddenly stopped working. Not just a single sensor, but the whole thing stopped working altogether. We took it back to EB and exchanged it for another (which will be referred to as the third mat).
A few days later the second mat began to act up. The "up button" sensor wouldn't always work. This was remedied by putting some cardboard under the said sensor.
One day, out of nowhere (again) the third dance mat stopped working. We went to take it back to EB, but they were out. They assured us that we will get one as soon as they come in. To add insult to injury the second mat decided to quit as well.
Data:
PS2 purchased December 26
Three dead Intec dance mats
Three dance mats in less than two months
Conclusion:
Intec = teh suck
Ubuntu Linux Thoughts
In my never ending quest to find new ways to procrastinate, I decided to give Ubuntu Linux a try. Initially I tried the "Warty" LiveCD version and was disappointed right away by the lack of support for my laptop's wireless. Afterwards I decided to give the stable 4.10 "Warty Warthog" installable release a try.
Initial impressions: Very nice, clean interface. User-friendly menu system. Stable. Good selection of packages.
After playing with this distro for a couple of hours it has become painfully obvious - it just isn't for me. I am not looking for a new primary OS since I still need to run Windows applications to do some school programming assignments. My plan is to have relatively small partitions for my Linux installation while still having the bulk of my documents and media files on my FAT32 partitions so they can be accessed from both OS'. Every distro I have ever used has automatically mounted my FAT32 drives, until Ubuntu. I had to manually edit the /etc/fstab file and create mount points before I could even mount these partitions.
Another feature I am used to being able to use is to copy my fonts over from Windows. Let's face it, Linux fonts are rather lacking. So I copied and pasted all my truetype fonts from my Windows/Fonts "folder" into Ubuntu's font directory. Apparently the files transferred, but they weren't showing up in the file manager, nor were they showing up in OpenOffice. After some Googling I found out that I was supposed to manually edit a text file for the fonts and add an entry for each one. Thanks, but no thanks.
I am not saying that Ubuntu is a bad OS. It seems perfect for someone who is looking for a user-friendly, memory-efficient and secure primary operating system. For transitional Windows/Linux experimenters like myself, however, I'd have to say that Mepis is what the doctor ordered.
Initial impressions: Very nice, clean interface. User-friendly menu system. Stable. Good selection of packages.
After playing with this distro for a couple of hours it has become painfully obvious - it just isn't for me. I am not looking for a new primary OS since I still need to run Windows applications to do some school programming assignments. My plan is to have relatively small partitions for my Linux installation while still having the bulk of my documents and media files on my FAT32 partitions so they can be accessed from both OS'. Every distro I have ever used has automatically mounted my FAT32 drives, until Ubuntu. I had to manually edit the /etc/fstab file and create mount points before I could even mount these partitions.
Another feature I am used to being able to use is to copy my fonts over from Windows. Let's face it, Linux fonts are rather lacking. So I copied and pasted all my truetype fonts from my Windows/Fonts "folder" into Ubuntu's font directory. Apparently the files transferred, but they weren't showing up in the file manager, nor were they showing up in OpenOffice. After some Googling I found out that I was supposed to manually edit a text file for the fonts and add an entry for each one. Thanks, but no thanks.
I am not saying that Ubuntu is a bad OS. It seems perfect for someone who is looking for a user-friendly, memory-efficient and secure primary operating system. For transitional Windows/Linux experimenters like myself, however, I'd have to say that Mepis is what the doctor ordered.
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