Colin Charles Agenda

I bit the bullet, and picked up an Asus Eee PC today, while I failed at an attempt to get a rack. Its a 4GB model, with the webcam, and its on its 3rd run, i.e. I’ve got a model without a mini-PCIe connector. The slot is there, but the connector itself is missing - really, silly of them (can you actually save that much money, on a connector?). This batch arrived at OfficeWorks around 27/12/2007 from what I can tell (that’s whats written on the box), and its a 7C model (basically, the only model you get the mini-PCIe connector was the 7A one).

For what it’s worth, OfficeWorks and The Good Guys are price-matched for the Eee PC, while JB-HiFi comes next, with Myer holding the top retail price. Of course, all this is pending you actually getting to a store with stock of the item - I picked mine up from OfficeWorks, in Prahan (South Melbourne for instance, was out of stock).

Now, on to the machine.

Pros:

• You pop the battery in, and the boot-up process is near instantaneous, because its booting from a SSD.
• Standard applications ship with it: Pidgin for IM, Skype for
  video-chat, OpenOffice.org for all your office needs, Acrobat Reader
  for PDFs (why not just evince?) and a whole bunch more.
• The trackpad works perfectly, and even though
  there is only “one” mouse button, it provides a 2-button interface.
• Its nice to have a laptop where suspend and resume work out of
  the box.
• The external display, just works (adjusting to the size
  of the external display, as opposed to mirroring for instance).
• The power supply is very smart. You can remove the Australian plug, and
  see a US-based plug beneath. Either way, it can be used on most modern
  airlines now, even in economy (if you’re on a quality airline, like
  Singapore Airlines, for instance).
• There’s a carrying case that comes in the box, which I’m sure will be handy when I’m about to throw it into my backpack.

Cons:

• The child-like interface, that is almost comparable to, if not worse, than what Sugar will offer you.
• You might be tempted to then say, “Computer Web”, to then hear the voice of a lady then say “Web” fairly softly, and launch Firefox. Not too impressive - for example, I had the Red Hot Chilli Peppers playing in the background, and in my limited use of voice control, I managed to even open up the Clock when I wanted the web browser.
• I tried the dictionary. Its nice to know there actually is an offline dictionary, but its really not too usable. The Longman dictionary is probably ideal if you were speaking/reading/writing Chinese, but I’d have taken an Oxford, or even a Webster’s anyday.
• The keyboard itself, is a tad small, but one will be able to get used
  to it. The positioning of the right Shift key, is not optimal, and I’ve
  seen hacks of people replacing the keys (physically!) and then making
  use of Xmodmap to fix it.
• 800×480 is a tough resolution to get used to. Sure, you’ve got a 7″ screen, but its an odd resolution, and some websites tend not to render properly at this resolution any longer (which is sad).

I wanted a lot more than Xandros could offer me. About the only time I felt at home, was when I hit Ctrl+Alt+T (for the Terminal). At this point, I thought of either installing Ubuntu or Fedora; naturally, I went with the latter, something called Eeedora. More about this, in another post.

What do I think of the machine? Overall, I like it. Its a great sub-notebook. Haven’t tried the battery out yet, but I hear I’ll get about 3 hours of juice from it.

I definitely need to upgrade the RAM - 512MB just doesn’t cut it in this modern world, and a 2GB chip is pretty affordable these days. While I’m there, I might as well get a nice big USB thumb drive, as well as a huge SD card (the slot does SDHC, so maybe some 8GB will be nice?).

Happy to have supported yet another vendor, doing good things with Linux. Go Asus! (similarly, go Nokia for all your beta-quality tablet devices, Dell for Linux laptops [that still haven't reached the APAC region], and I’m sure I’m missing some vendors, but I’ve not purchased from them.)

Technorati Tags: asus, eeepc, eee, asus eee pc, review, 7c, linux

I updated my Nokia N770 with the ‘hacker’ edition of the Internet OS2007 last night. Rather than letting it be a brick, with all the attention on the N800 these days…
 
The update process was easy enough (as a backgrounder, also consider noting the SDK compatibility). Just download the correct flasher, which is currently at version 3, download the image file, and its a one-liner install. Connect the N770 to the computer via USB, press the power button, and automatically the flashing process begins.
 
Once that’s complete, and the N770 boots up, you’ll see the welcome screen. Here, you configure the device a little more - set the time and so forth. The software actually says you now have a N800. Setting up the wireless connection was a breeze, as was pairing with my Bluetooth phone. Yes, it got the Internet settings correct for mobile Internet - just select the country and the provider. Impressed I was, after having to futz around in Linux.
 
After the initial setup, the GUI is all pretty snappy. Turn it off and back on again, and you’ll see the GUI hang for about 20 seconds. This is a known problem, of course, one where I wonder why?
 
Installing applications requires adding a few more repositories. Getting xterm, and gainroot were crucial; no more do you need to enable R&D mode to gain root access!
 
Tempted as I was to install Skype, I failed miserably. Surfing the Internet, I found out that the processor was the likely cause, and it looks like there will be no sight of Skype in the future.
 
The Gizmo Project provided solace. I installed the version meant for the N800, and gave it a twirl. No problems whatsoever, so much so that I even had to make a test call to ensure that it was all good. Which begs the question - both Gizmo and Skype are proprietary, both deal with audio and VoIP, yet one works and the other doesn’t?
 
Video playback, was a little choppy. I never got to play the provided video about the N93, however, after waiting a while for it to load, I got to play the demo videos for the Ice Age 2 trailer and the Discovery Channel video (they were safely backed up on the RS-MMC card, from previous old images). Full screen worked too. However, sometimes, it would just crash the tablet, and it would restart - highly unpleasant.
 
The AccuRadio hit cast somehow didn’t work either, so I’ve lost my Internet radio. MP3 playback was not a problem however - on the flash as well as the RS-MMC card.
 
Web browsing is the same. It seems the rendering engine is proprietary and unlicensed for usage on the N770, so there can be no improvements. Consequently, you don’t get to try the new Mozilla based rendering engine in the browser - so no sweet AJAX love.
 
Did I already mention the numerous crashes, where the tablet keeps on restarting itself? I counted about 3 in under an hour of use, prompting me to give up and go to sleep. Simply web browsing can lead to a restart!

Note that this was a few weeks back (typed this up on my E61i, and just transferred it over). The N770 has gone back to its old position of sitting next to my bedside, because the hacker edition itself, doesn’t allow all the cool applications to be run. I’ll just end up using it as a mobile web test-bed, but sadly, I can’t even try the new Mozilla based rendering engine.

Technorati Tags: os2007 n770 n800 hacker

It is great to see that Palm is now embracing Linux. I however think that embracing Linux to be relevant again seems like a rather daft idea.

Palm made great products. As someone that had a PDA when it was cool to own one (early 1998, Palm III), I have to say that counting the taps you needed to make to get to an application was what was significant then. Usability was a key focus. Grafitti was something that required learning, but once the hang of it was gotten, it was easy. The idea that you could beam contacts, memos, calendar entries and even software, was simply fabulous. In the early days, I’ll admit to even using the occasional “payware” for free, thanks to this wonderful beaming technology.

I matured after a while, and realized that carrying a cell phone, wallet, keys, coins, and a PDA just didn’t make so much sense. This must have been the stage when I moved from cargo pants, to Dockers Mobile Pants, to just regular pants, when you don’t have all the fancy pockets. I had several Palm PDAs, even a Handera 330, then most recently the Tungsten C.

What worked? Its simplicity. What didn’t work? The ridiculous cost of shareware. A cost you never recouped when upgrading, or even stopped using the piece of software. Horrendous syncing technology, even on the Microsoft Windows platform (double contacts, deleted memos, and the like would happen from time to time).

Over the years, the expandability was good. The Handera meant I had CF and a SD slot, the Tungsten C gave me WiFi, and in the future, it looks like Palm will be releasing an OS that has Linux underneath it.

Will they go all the way into making it into a product that users actually want to use? Or are they hoping that developers fill in the gaps, ala what Nokia is doing with the Maemo platform and the N770/N800. Will people start expecting that because the base is Linux, all software on the Palm will have to be free? Remember though, the operating system under it never mattered - it was always the usability and ease of use.

Technorati Tags: palm, linux, nokia, maemo, pants, usability, handhelds

Seeing that I’ll be in United States next week (or rather this weekend), I figured it’d be nice to find an N800. It retails for USD$399, at all the CompUSA outlets within the San Francisco region. I thought that maybe, Google’s Froogle tool might assist, but have been pretty disappointed to find that the cheapest available from a reputable dealer seems to be USD$349.99 (from Popular Electronics, in Chicago).

Is Froogle the best to search for bargains in the USA? Can I find a cheaper N800 in San Francisco?

That aside, Froogle is a rather cool tool. Its got some amazing sorting facilities (sorting by relevance or price, which is important for bargain hunters), and if you enter a city, state or zip code (post code), it also provides a map (directly out of Google Maps) of stores in the area. Rather nifty, I must say. And of course there are also sponsored links (AdWords) on the page. All in all, if you’ve not visited it, do pay it a visit. Not so useful in Australia, where something like ShopBot might be handier, but clearly something for the folk at Google to think about bringing to the Aussie market.

Technorati Tags: handhelds, n800, cheap, san francisco, froogle

Here are some quick notes:

• If Smolt tracks your Fedora hardware, then the Mugshot Open Source Application Statistics is cool to see what people are using on their desktops daily. Its opt-in, and clearly, I’ve opted in. There’s not much stats there yet as its new, but it’ll be interesting to see it grow.
• I’ve written up the Fedora on the Dell Inspiron 640m guide, which came out from various blog posts here, but adds more details, with keys that are working and what not. I’ve yet to file useful bugs on FC-6 for the problems.
• Wordpress 2.1.2 looks sweet. The update didn’t kill anything, and I just noticed a nice little Export feature (something that will be really handy when I move the blog, soon). Plugins got updated, as well.
• I’ve asked for maintenance of adns, python-adns back, and also want to update straw, in Fedora. Lets see how this pans out. I have claimed rehabilitation, apologized for my absence (bad), but really needed the break.
• I’ve just learnt that that on i386, vdso will need to be disabled if you’re setting up Maemo 3.0 on Fedora Core 6. And I also learnt that on x86_64, there is no vdso. Props to #fedora-devel, and jwb.
• 2 million FC-6 installs. Great news. I hope that by 0.35% updates on the ppc arch, we don’t lose ppc support. I have a feeling a lot more will come to us now that Ubuntu has got some odd PCC support arrangement, and a lot of older Apples are in the market. And the stats don’t reflect laboratories, or say, my home office, as I sync the updates and trees locally, at night when the bandwidth limit is greater, and the clients all update via a server I have sitting here.
• Yesterday was a great day. The course of my life, changed for the better.

Technorati Tags: mugshot, application statistics, fedora, dell inspiron 640m, wordpress

Maemo 3.0 (Bora), and Scratchbox APOPHIS installs just fine on Fedora Core 6. Its important to probably follow the install documentation, and do just a few other things.

First of, it starts with the installation. If you’re on an x86_64 platform, it is suggested that you have some kind of chroot environment setup. In Debian land, you might find reading Maemo 2.0 on AMD64 handy, however in Fedora-land, there’s a great utility called setarch.

SELinux should be disabled before installation. As root, type echo 0 > /selinux/enforce. Then proceed to install via:

setarch i386sudo ./maemo-scratchbox-install_3.0.sh -s /opt/scratchbox -u username

The above installs it to the path /opt/scratchbox, and adds username to the sbox group. Now, while in your i386 “chroot”, run, sudo /opt/scratchbox/sbin/sbox_ctl start, and try running /opt/scratchbox/login. You should be greeted with a prompt like: [sbox-SDK_X86: ~]>.

Outside of Scratchbox (I suggest you exit it), run bash maemo-sdk-install_3.0.sh -s /opt/scratchbox (the -s specifies the path, if you installed it in /scratchbox, its not necessary). Continue following on the instructions in the install documentation.

Pull down Xephyr via YUM - its xorg-x11-server-Xephyr. Remember that all this won’t work unless you’re in the sbox group, so if things seem to be broken, run id and see if you can see that you’re a member of the sbox group.

At startup, just run setarch i386, then don’t forget to start scratchbox via sudo /opt/scratchbox/sbin/sbox_ctl start. Fire up Xephyr, via Xephyr :2 -host-cursor -screen 800x480x16 -dpi 96 -ac (this should be done outside your setarch-ed environment), and then login to scratchbox, export the display to :2, and run af-sb-init.sh start. You should have the Maemo environment running now.

Update: Russell Coker dropped me a line, and yes, while I don’t simply encourage the turning off, of SELinux, this was not implied by me. There’s a test in maemo-scracthbox-install_3.0.sh that checks on this (lines 420-427), and it recommends that it should be dropped to permissive mode. You can also obviously use the setenforce tool. Also, if you’re looking for a guide to Xephyr, he’s got a resource that’s pretty good.

I am now the proud owner of a Nokia N73. Thank you Optus. Of course, getting to use it is a little quirky.

I’ve not been able to get the Flickr Upload working. Maybe this is something Optus decided to disable? Anyone can confirm this? Instead, I’ve decided that a ShoZu account is probably what I want, and that’s my “interface” to Flickr or even to Wordpress it would seem. Oops, scratch that. Flickr Upload does work, it just seems to be configured a little differently (and if you’re doing it on a Mac, you need to send the file via the Bluetooth File Exchange utility in Applications/Utilities). One thing ShoZu is missing seems to be the MovableType API.

I’ve not been able to get it to sync with Linux, which is a bit of a pain, but I’ve managed to get it to sync with iSync on the Mac. You want to read Adri’s excellent post on the topic, and get this file. I’d say read the site, but I can’t read German myself. Now my calendar and contact details are on my phone, which is rather nifty, because unlike the iPod, I can edit entries here.

Inserting the memory card is a pain. You need nails. I just cut mine yesterday. I thought this was bad on the Nokia 770, but this one’s worse. Speaking of which, the chargers for the Nokia 770 and the N73 are similar! No more old Nokia phone chargers (though they do provide the dongle for it, if you absolutely need to use it).

I can’t figure out how to display the time thats being taken on the current call. Help? This was available on the Ericsson T610, and the Minute Minder is generally useful as here we have free 20 minute calls to other Optus customers. Also, the Autolock seems daft - why do I need to enter a pin to unlock a keylock? On the T610, after 20 seconds it’d keylock the phone, but unlocking it was simple and didn’t require a PIN. Can this be replicated?

It has a built-in radio. Very cool stuff. I just paid $5.50 so I could get my favorite ring tone, Bittersweet Symphony on the phone. Talk about a Optus Zoo sham. Worse, its not even the tune that I wanted, but a twenty second MP3 rip!

And the camera phone, probably the reason I went with this, is just amazing. The photo quality is great. Its got more megapixels than my first digital camera. Technology has come far!

Quirk: once I’ve locked the keypad, and open the camera, it takes a while before all things start working. This is with the radio playing in the background.

Anyways, more after some playing. In other notes, I’m sick. High fever, flu, and its really hot outside. Sigh.

I dusted off the N770, and installed the new Maemo 2.0 Internet 2006 Tablet edition (probably worth reading the update guide - make sure you have the 2.0 Flasher). While I was at it, I set up scratchbox again.

In the sbox environment, if you need to install something, remember to use fakeroot (just pre-pend it to the command you’re running).

I must admit that I’m quite excited with the GTalk functionality. Holding the 770’s speaker to my ear, the microphone is just where my mouth is. Rumor has it (upon opening it up) that the mic is exactly the same as the one used in mobile phones that Nokia make. The quality of the audio is actually surprisingly good - I’m quite happy with the fact that I now have a VoIP WiFi phone. The other good thing about GTalk is that I can be connected on OS X, Linux, as well as my 770 - I like the idea of having multiple presences. If only more people used GTalk (as opposed to MSN)! (reach me at ccharles@gmail.com)

All the telephony options become even more interesting with Gizmo Project and their recent release of the 770 ARM client. I’ve had an account with the Gizmo Project almost since they started offering a Linux and an OS X client (I think the latter came first). I’ve hardly made much use of it, mainly because a lot of the folk I know are still connected to Skype. SkypeOut is also something I use from time-to-time, but now, it seems that the Gizmo equivalent is also not too bad. SIgning up with them gives you a little free credit, and I still had it after all this time, so a test call via the Nokia 770 proved to be useful.

My mother, some 4,500 miles away from me heard me loud and clear. Again, I’m hooked, and wish more people were on the Gizmo Project. Best part about it is you don’t actually need to even fire up the client, you can use standard SIP phone software, like Ekiga, to get things working. I don’t know if this works for dialing out to non-Gizmo Project users, but it’s on my to-do list to give it a go. Another boon is the fact that I can be logged in via OS X, Linux, and on the 770 - again, multiple presences at work. If only more people used the Gizmo Project (as opposed to Skype)! (reach me at colincharles)

One complaint that I have with the Gizmo Project is that you need to install not just one file, but three - it forces Bonjour on you (even if you have howl, it doesn’t seem to care), and you need a separate sound library (that can either be OSS or ALSA based). I guess this is where Skype wins with the one-file installer.

The other complaint is that when making a Gizmo-to-Gizmo call, the interface seems clunky enough to not allow me to pick up the phone call! On OS X its Growl, I click the answer interface and it doesn’t work. On Linux, its the same deal. On the 770, I pick it up and nothing happens. I seem to have problems making Gizmo-to-Gizmo calls, anyone had any success?