the boredom of ramfree17

The Google Nexus One (N1) is currently my “it” phone fantasy as the sub-30K price is pretty reasonable considering the features. However the Philippines is not included in the list of supported countries, it would require a bit of work-around to get it delivered here in the philippines. Yuga has the instructions here if you are interested. He also gave it a pretty decent review rating of a “steal”.

The only problem with the above method is that if the unit breaks then you have to RMA it to the the USA as the local HTC service centers will not accept it for repairs. It is a bit of risk taking that I don’t have the luxury at the moment (let’s assume that I have the money to buy it in the first place ). This problem maybe no more as the HTC Desire (formerly codenamed as HTC Bravo) has just been announced and there is a strong possibility to come to Asia.

The HTC Desire (pictured above) has the same specifications as the Google N1 except that it has replaced the trackball with a trackpad. It also comes with HTC’s Sense UI which some N1 users are missing.

Time to save for the “unfortunate” case that I need to replace my phone. Hopefully the Desire will also be in the 30K or less range when it gets offered here commercially.

More details and pictures here: http://dvice.com/archives/2010/02/htc-desire-andr.php

ciao!

Tags: Gadget by Erin
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When I bought my Sony-Ericsson(SE) K618i a couple of years ago it was because I want to be able to jump into the 3G bandwagon and have information in demand. While I was able to setup a SMART 3G account, browsing was limited to using the built-in browser which is pretty limiting (pun intended).

My attempts to tether my old Fujitsu-Siemens laptop using bluetooth and cable was not successful. Another factor might be because the laptop is too heavy to lug everyday to work and our home in Binangonan has non-existent 3G signal since we are in a mountainous region. The MSI Wind changed all that as portability is not much of an issue right now.

Being able to use my 3G phone via bluetooth is still a frustrating exercise and my iniitial attempts to use the SE phone suite is not much better. Everything changed when I explored the phone’s connectivity menu that I almost slapped myself for being stupid. For those that have SE phones, the following instructions may be useful for you:

Initial Requirements:
– A SE K618i phone with a configured 3G account. Refer to your telco provider for the setup instructions.
– A corresponding data cable for the phone.
– A laptop or desktop with enabled USB ports.

Instructions:
– In the phone menu, go to the Settings Menu.
– Navigate to the Connectivity->USB menu
– Configure the USB Data Accounts to your telco. Mine uses the “Smart Internet” configuration.
– Select the USB Internet item and set it to “On”
– Plug-in the cable to the port and the USB jack into your desktop.

That’s it. the USB Internet item actually makes your phone be detected as an ordinary USB Ethernet device which means your operating system will begin querying for an IP address when it detects it. Of course this assumes that your system is configured this way but most come this was as a standard. I use this setup for both Windows and Linux with no problem. I get varying result depending on location but this is handy when I need an internet connection in a jiffy. This also means I can put off buying a USB plug-it device until the price gets more wallet-friendly.

I am guessing the USB Ethernet option is also available in other Sony-Ericsson phones but I have not seen a similar feature on my wife’s Nokia E51. I haven’t looked thoroughly but will post an update if I do find one.

ciao!

Tags: Gadget by Erin
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ExtremeTech has published an article announcing that the dual-core Atom processors (330) are now out. These processors are also designed for netbooks and UMPC but there is nothing that can stop anybody from putting this in small form-factor PCs to have a low-power, small, and inexpensive servers.

This would be another tease for those who are procrastinating about getting a UMPC since the current slew of models are only sporting the single-core chip (230). The A230 are already great for the need of the regular netbook user but having more cores would be better if you are doing more intensive processing. I hear that Photoshop on the current netbooks are bearable but having a dual-core unit would make it more tolerable. Code compilations and other number-crunching processes will also benefit from having an additional core. I wonder though how much would be the hit of the additional core on the battery life since if I am not mistaken the power draw has also doubled since the TDP of the 230 ranges between 2.5 to 4 watts. The increase might be tiny enough if viewed on the perspective of the benefits but the processor is part of the triumvirate of the power guzzlers for computers (hard disk and monitors complete the set).

For me, I will procrastinate again on getting my low-power download/storage server until the 330 becomes available locally. Hopefully there is a new chipset that will complement the low power draw as well since the current chipset for the 230 is not known for power efficiency.

And yes, there are reports that when it comes to performance per watt, the AMD Turion Mobile processor still beats the Atom processors. That is a testament to how efficient the AMD designs have been from the start. Too bad that there are no netbooks and UMPC model that sports these processors.

ciao!

Tags: Gadget by Erin
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Fixed by overriding the GRUB lines, editing the GRUB menu, and correcting the entries in the /etc/fstab.

Here is the original line that causes the bootup to panice:

kernel (hd1,0)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux root=/dev/sdc10 vga=788
initrd (hd1,0)/boot/initrd.img

PCLinuxOS is configured to use the graphical GRUB menu so pressing the ESC key will allow the users to go into text mode that allows the editing of the line command. Pressing ‘e’ on the selected entry enabled to correct the order of hard drive being searched [ (hd0,0)/boot] as well as the correct root [root=dev/sda10]. After both the kernel and initrd lines have been updated, pressing ‘b’ will continue the boot process.

The GRUB entry is only half of the problem since the boot operationg still panics and dumps me in a command line. The culprit is that the fstab file still contains incorrect entries since all of the partitions are being searched at /dev/sdc. The USB flashdrive I used for the installation has 3 partitions so there are also 3 incorrect entries for it in /etc/fstab.

As I said, the boot process dumps me into a command line. This is where knowledge of vi comes very handy. It is small enough and ubiquitous enough to be in most *nix system. A quick ‘vi /etc/fstab’ to correct all linux partitions (and temporarily disable mounting of windows partitions) and I am now good to go. Invoking ‘mount -a’ confirms that I am able to successfully mount all partitions.

This problem is solved but unfortunately the PCLinuxOS Minime distribution is not the answer to my wireless in the Wind woes.

ciao!

Tags: FLOSS, Gadget by Erin
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Doc Mana (or rather his daughters) own a Wind and has pointed me to the released Linux realtek drivers. As Doc Mana has stated, the released drivers are in RPM format but this gives me a good opportunity to use the alien utility for converting packages. Doc also said his Neo empriva is working fine with a similar wireless chipset.

With the extended weekend, I promised to try it out with a refreshed Xubuntu installation, or better yet try installing the PCLinuxOS MiniMe distro to get native support for RPM. The nutshell is that I now have a semi-hosed Wind UMPC.

Here is what happened:

• I replaced the gnome network manager with the kwlan application and I hosed down my network connections. I then decided to refresh the Xubuntu installation from the my 4GB flash disk. And then…
• I tried converting the package using the alien utility with the “–scripts” parameter because it told me so. It said it is for including the scripts inside the package. When it was time to install them with dpkg, an error was thrown out that there is a parsing error in the post install script. Both drivers show this error. Great!
• As this is a refreshed installation, I decided to try again the tip from the msiwind.net wiki as this is also stated in the Gentoo Wind wiki. The build essential tools refused to install properly because of the problem with the botched realtek drivers installation.
• I cannot uninstall/purge the realtek drivers from synaptic becase there are errors in the hooked scripts.
• I wiped by flash disk with MiniMe and proceeded to install over my Xubuntu system. Everything seems to be fine until I rebooted. The system got reconfigured with my flash disk as its main storage (sda) and my Wind’s drive as its secondary (sdc) so the GRUB entries refuses to work.
• I tried booting with the flash disk inserted and tried to select the HDD Minime installation but the boot process refuses to proceed and ends with a kernel panic.

Right now the Wind will only continue booting if I have the flash disk inserted, and its too late into the night to start tinkering with livecd options. The bright side is that I have effectively created a very crude security key. /lol

I hope I can fix this properly tomorrow as the wife is giving me weird looks when she can’t easily get into the Windows partition to play Mystery Case Files.

ciao!

Tags: FLOSS, Gadget by Erin
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