More Busted IBM Support
After yesterday's phone call, I was expecting alpha to be back today and since DHL is really quick with things, I was surprised that it wasn't here. So I gave them a call and I was told I was in billing hold, which is odd since I gave them my credit card number when I first called. It is even odder considering no work was to be done since I was told nothing was wrong with it. So I won't have alpha back for this weekend and I guess maybe they have deicded to fix the motherboard after all.
Busted ThinkPad And Busted Support
Before I left on vacation my ThinkPad started acting funny. It would no longer recognize the AC adapter, which is a problem since I had the battery at that point down to 50% so it was only good for an hour of runtime. Since there were rumors of cheap, Intel-based iBooks floating around, I decided to wait to see if I could just pick up one of them instead of paying IBM $400.00 for a new mainboard. I forgot that I was five hours behind New York time when I called on Friday and didn't get to complete my service call. So I called again on Monday, explained that I tried using both my brother's and father's AC adapter and that my laptop did not recognize any of them, however, it would power on just fine under battery power. They told me it was probably a mainboard issue, something I already knew. A box would be waiting for me when I arrived home.
I received a call today and was told that my laptop worked fine, both off battery power and while running on the AC adapter. I was told my AC adapter was bad. I replied that I had tested not one, but two working AC adapters and neither one of them was recognized by my laptop. They told me it worked fine and that no repair was needed. I said that if my laptop was working flawlessly to please send it back. Given my last encounter with IBM, I have a funny feeling that I will be receiving a broken laptop in the mail tomorrow morning.
Until then, I'm running my laptop harddrive in my secondary computer.
New Harddrive For Alpha
I got a new harddrive for my laptop, a 7200 RPM drive as opposed to the 4200 RPM drive that was in there. Much faster now:
brian@alpha:~$ sudo hdparm -t /dev/hda Password: /dev/hda: Timing buffered disk reads: 124 MB in 3.05 seconds = 40.72 MB/sec brian@alpha:~$
Nokia 770 And Nokia_770_SE2005_3_2005_51-13.bin
I updated the firmware for my Nokia 770 last night. I made sure to create a backup first, which took roughly a minute. First, as of this time, you must get the update from Nokia Europe. For whatever reason, the firmware can't be found on the American website. To download it, you need to enter in your devices MAC address located underneath the battery. You also need to download the Linux flasher. You need to turn the device off and unplug the power adapter and then plug it into your computer using a USB cable. Then you need to run the flasher:
brian@alpha:~/Nokia$ ls -al total 120608 drwxr-xr-x 2 brian brian 4096 2006-01-01 23:56 . drwxr-xr-x 73 brian brian 4096 2006-01-01 23:55 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 brian brian 645032 2006-01-01 23:54 flasher -rw-r--r-- 1 brian brian 60691661 2006-01-01 23:53 Nokia_770_0.2005.45-8.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 brian brian 62016973 2005-12-29 12:20 Nokia_770_SE2005_3_2005_51-13.bin brian@alpha:~/Nokia$ chmod +x flasher brian@alpha:~/Nokia$ ./flasher -F Nokia_770_SE2005_3_2005_51-13.bin -f -R Found image 2nd (length 8576) Found image secondary (length 79360) Found image xloader (length 13824) Found image initfs (length 1581824) Found image kernel (length 1481856) Found image rootfs (length 58851328) Suitable USB device not found, waiting USB device found found at bus 002, device address 002 Error claiming USB interface: Operation not permitted brian@alpha:~/Nokia$
When you get that Suitable USB device not found, waiting message, you need to either plug the power adapter in or turn the 770 on while holding the home button. However, I forgot to run the flasher as root, so I got the Error claiming USB interface: Operation not permitted message.
brian@alpha:~/Nokia$ sudo ./flasher -F Nokia_770_SE2005_3_2005_51-13.bin -f -R Password: Found image 2nd (length 8576) Found image secondary (length 79360) Found image xloader (length 13824) Found image initfs (length 1581824) Found image kernel (length 1481856) Found image rootfs (length 58851328) USB device found found at bus 002, device address 002 Found board Nokia 770 (F5) NOLO version 0.9.0 Sending X-Loader image (13 kB)... 100% (13 of 13 kB, avg. 750 kB/s) Sending secondary image (77 kB)... 100% (77 of 77 kB, avg. 945 kB/s) Flashing X-Loader... done. Sending kernel image (1447 kB)... 100% (1447 of 1447 kB, avg. 955 kB/s) Flashing kernel... done. Sending initfs image (1544 kB)... 100% (1544 of 1544 kB, avg. 996 kB/s) Flashing initfs... done. Sending and flashing rootfs image (57472 kB)... 100% (57472 of 57472 kB, avg. 754 kB/s) Finishing flashing... done brian@alpha:~/Nokia$
The 770 rebooted, I restored the backup and it work just fine.
But it can't replace my laptop, even with a bluetooth keyboard, so I'll be eBay'ing it today. While the 770 is portablilty in ways my laptop can only imagine, it cannot replace my laptop for Intarwebbing on the go and using my desktop computer as my main computer. I'll try using the Hipster PDA next.
ThinkPad Keyboard Wearing Out
The keyboard on my main computer has been wearing out. So far it is still functional, but it is showing some serious wear.
That greasy looking part isn't greasy at all, I've actually worn off the top coating which gives it that textured feel. However, I'm not the only one. I haven't bent my trackpoint buttons yet, though.
Kudos to whoever designed the X series, the bottom of the laptop has six screw wells labeled with keyboard icon. You remove these and just pull the keyboard up, no disassembly of the laptop is required. It took about 3 minutes to replace the keyboard.
Thankfully, my R series is the same.
Consumer Whore
The gigabyte of RAM that I ordered for my laptop came today. Took two minutes to pop that in. It really runs better with more then 256 MB. I ordered the bluetooth CDC for alpha as well, however, there was a part number change, more details on that when I find out what is going on.
Also got a new car, a 2005 Acura RSX Type S. Old car was going through radiators almost as often as I changed the oil, head gasket was on its way out, wipers didn't work, the vents were inverted, it squeaked as it drove; just tons of things wrong with it. I drive stick OK, but I want to really work on it.
Looking at dropping some serious money this summer on a digital SLR and maybe an expensive vacation this winter.
IBM Thinkpad R51 1836BDU Mini-Review
A few months ago, I ordered an IBM Thinkpad R51. Rather than have them build one from scratch for me, I ordered the 1836BDU from Newegg.
- CPU
- Intel Pentium M Processor 1.5GHz
- Memory
- 256 MiB DDR333
- Hard Drive
- 40 GiB
- Optical Drive
- DVD-ROM/CD-RW
- Video Card
- ATI Mobility RADEON 7500
- Display
- 15.0" SXGA+ (1400x1050) TFT
- Communication
- 56K Modem, 10/100 LAN, 802.11b/g
- Ports
- Parallel, Two USB 2.0, VGA, Stereo Headphone, Microphone, Infrared, S-Video, PCMCIA
- Dimensions
- 13.1" x 10.6" x 1.58"
- Weight
- 6.8 pounds
Upon receipt, my first impression was that it looked quite sharp. I've got a thing for electronics, they should be flat black. I can't stand my almost black, but really dark gray tower, it drives me nuts. Anyhow, it's a nice flat black, I most certainly like how it looks. The battery came already charged so I just plugged it in and tossed in the Ubuntu install CD. Everything seems fine. The battery life claims to be a bit over 4 hours, but I get about 3. This may be a Linux issue, or it may be how I use the laptop.
After a few days of use, I noticed that when I went to charge the battery, it would charge for a bit, than stop. I quickly borrowed another AC/DC adapter and battery that I knew were in working order and the problem persisted. I called IBM tech support and they had me remove the laptop from AC power and remove the battery. Than they had me press the power button, I'm assuming to empty the capacitors. Reinsert the battery and connect the AC/DC adapter and I was good to go.
I assumed this was a one time fluke, however, the problem persisted. A few days later it occured again. I opted not to call tech support and repeat the process outlined above. Again it allowed me to charge the battery to the full capacity. After it happened a third time, I called tech support again. They told me they would send me a box for me to ship it back to them in and than they would have it repaired the same day and send it back to me.
The box showed up the following day by overnight mail and contained a block of foam occupying the entire volume of the box. The block of foam had several perforations in it, allowing me to remove portions based on the size of the laptop I was returning. I filled out the enclosed form and made note that I ran Linux and included a user and password if it was necessary for them to do anything aside from just replace hardware.
My laptop was sent back to me in the same box in 3 business days, an outstanding turnaround time. The form enclosed indicated that they replaced the motherboard and that my old one was defective. Since that time, I've had no problems. I think I will need to get more RAM since I was quite used to 2 GiB and 256 MiB is just not enough for my multitasking. I was also quite used to having the fastest hard drive on the market, a 15000 RPM SCSI beast, and dropping down to a laptop hard drive is sort of a let down. I also want to get the internal Bluetooth communicaitons daughter card as I really want to be able to surf the web everywhere I go and I have a really cheap data plan with my cell phone provider.
Aside from the battery issue, I'm quite happy with this purchase and with IBM's support. While the machine is not a screamer, it is more than enough for my email, web surfing, homework, and teaching myself a programming language or two.
Ubuntu Linux Instead Of Debian?
I think I might have found the answer to the problem faced by most Debian GNU/Linux users. Debian stable is old. Over two years old. Woody was released in the summer of 2002. As such, it is mainly used in production enviroments where the latest and greatest is given up for stability. While this may be great for a server, it is horrible for a desktop user. I've been using Debian for several months now and I jumped straight into Debian unstable. While I've found it to be quite stable, there have been glitches. But even unstable is not bleeding edge, that is what Debian experimental is for. But I don't think every package that I use has ever been stable all at one time in experimental. So I wait a bit, but otherwise have a more than pleasent and productive computing experience. However, with each apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade, I was worried something would break.
So I had a trade off, not update for a while and wait, than do a mass update and wonder what broke when a quarter of all my packages got updated all at once. Or update frequently, and hope I can just manually roll back a package if something gets broke until it gets fixed. Neither solution is optimal.
But today I read at the Ars OpenForum a post by whiprush (Jorge Castro) about Ubuntu Linux, a Debian based distribution. In whiprush's words, it seems to bring a lot to the table:
- Easy installer (based on the debian sarge installer) - toughest part is partitioning. They're working on a GUI installer for the next release.
- X config is brainless (just pick a resolution). It's X4.3 with lots of patches, some stuff from Xorg. Full Xorg next release.
- Project Utopia out of the box. Just plug stuff in and it mounts.
- Kickass laptop support. Laptop mode enabled, ACPI, CPU freq thing on by default. Tons of wifi drivers out of the box. ipw2200 (centrino), madwifi, atmel, atheros.
- GNOME 2.8, Evolution 2.0, Firefox as the default browser
- Kernel 2.6.8.1, w/ALSA sound
- no root account, you use sudo instead.
- Cleaned up default desktop (ie. no icons on it), most has been moved to a new Computer menu entry
- LiveCD so you can try it out. (Not available yet I don't think)
- Time based release schedule. Stable release every 6 months. Support for a version for 18 months. Basically snapshots of sid with polish.
- Support base of software, most everything else are rebuilds of lots of Debian packages (but unsupported), around 13,000 packages.
- Free and open. The developers are literally an all star team from the debian, freedesktop, and gnome communities. Improvements and fixes go back into debian. This is probably why this distro is going to seriously own, these guys know what's up.
So I get the latest stuff, it all works, and I don't have to update, I can wait 6 months and then I know I can update everything and it will work. And all of the things I had to learn how to configure (mostly hardware stuff, X working out of the box is awesome, as is the ipw2200, which is what will be coming on my laptop) work out of the box. And it's based around GNOME. And it includes Evolution 2.0, something that isn't even in Debian unstable. This is cool.
I can't wait to take it for a spin on my laptop. The final release doesn't come out until the end of October, but I figure there should be no problem giving it a spin and updating once it comes out.
