Category: Technology

Vista + Notebook = Low Battery. Fast.

The general consensus is that Vista substantially decreases battery life on notebooks.  That is, with the new Aero Glass interface enabled.

From independent testing, some notebook users have concluded that Vista draws 20% more power with the Aero Glass interface disabled. With Aero Glass enabled, expect your notebook to run for much less than the quoted battery run-time. Four hours of battery life under XP just decreased to two and a half under Vista.

Isn’t mobility the whole purpose of a notebook? I mean there’s other purposes, but a vast majority of notebook users would agree that portability and mobility are the key reasons behind a notebook purchase. With Vista, I guess we can remove mobility from the notebook equation and hope there’s always a power outlet nearby. Or, we can keep running XP until drivers and hardware with better power management are developed.

Upgrading Ubuntu Server 6.06 to 6.10 (Edgy)

On October 26, the Ubuntu team released a new version of Ubuntu, 6.10 (aka Edgy). I waited a couple of days for them to work out any last minute bugs, and decided to proceed with the upgrade today.

In the Ubuntu 6.10 / Edgy release notes, Ubuntu recommends the following procedure to upgrade from Dapper to Edgy:

# apt-get dist-upgrade && apt-get dist-upgrade

That will not work. Why? Because sources.list needs to be updated first (and apt-get update needs to be run beforehand).

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Configuring Ubuntu – Part 1

Once I had Ubuntu Server 6.06.1 installed on my new web server, I quickly realized it needed several changes before I could put it online. Hence, this is the first installment in a series of blog entries to help others configure their systems.

If you installed from a CD-ROM and have a working network connection to your Ubuntu system, you should update the sources.list file used by apt-get so that your system won’t prompt you to insert the Ubuntu CD-ROM each time you install a new package:

1. Log in to your system via the console.
2. Run the following command: sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list
3. Add a # before the following line (use cursor keys to put cursor in front of the line and then press i, followed by #) :

deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 6.06.1 _Dapper … restricted

4. Save sources.list by pressing ‘Esc’, followed by the following sequence of characters to write the file and exit: :wq

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Bye Old Server. Hello New Server.

My web server was down for most of yesterday, for reasons out of my control.

I shelled in only to see one error message upon restarting the Apache web service: Segmentation fault. I checked the last few lines of Apache’s error_log only to see many more errors related to the same problem. It’s one of most dreaded messages one can receive on a Linux box, aside from the dreaded ‘kernel panic’.

A segmentation fault usually means one of two things in the Linux world: a software fault or a hardware fault. So, I set out to determine what the underlying cause was.

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Some Memory and CPU Benchmarks

Last weekend, I decided to test the memory performance of my ASRock 775Dual-VSTA motherboard paired with the Mushkin EM2 1 GB DDR2-667 memory kit.

Specifically, I was eager to determine the maximum memory bandwidth I could attain using DDR2-553 memory timings (4-4-4-12 stock), while acknowledging that the ASRock 775Dual-VSTA performs poorly with the standard DDR2-667 memory timings (5-5-5-12 stock). Hence, all tests below were completed with the memory timings set to DDR2-533. EVEREST Ultimate Edition 2006 was the benchmark utility of choice. CPU used: Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 (stock configuration with Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro HSF).

Test 1 (CL-tRCD-tRP-tRAS):
4-4-4-12, CR: 2T
Memory Bandwidth (Read): 10,136 MB/s

Test 2:
3-3-3-8, CR: 2T
Memory Bandwidth (Read): 11,274 MB/s

Test 3:
3-3-3-8, CR: 1T
Memory Bandwidth (Read): 11,785 MB/s

Surprisingly, the Mushkin memory kit ran using a command rate of 1T using DDR2-533 timings! In contrast, I could only squeeze about 9.9 GB/s of bandwidth using DDR2-667 stock timings.

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Vista Pricing and Release Date

It appears that Amazon has Windows Vista available for pre-order on their website. Personally, I’m going to wait for general OEM availability of the Vista Ultimate DVD-ROM, rather than shelling out for the retail-boxed version.

The release date for Windows Vista has been scheduled for January 30, 2007. I’ll leave it up to Microsoft to meet that deadline 😉

Want to get your hands on Vista Build 5536 (pre-RC1)? Well, click here. Hopefully, you’re one of the first 100,000 people to get your hands on it. After that, you can bet it will end up on various BitTorrent sites worldwide for your downloading pleasure (2.58 GB).

Update (9/7/2006):

Click here to download Vista Build 5600 (RC1). I recommend using the provided Download Manager to download the 2.52 GB DVD image.

Adventures with WDS

This past Wednesday (after work), I experimented with a wireless distribution system (WDS) installation at a local cafe.

What makes this WDS installation unique is that there’s a thick concrete wall, metal rafters and a big neon sign that I have to work around. Can you say, ‘i-n-t-e-r-f-e-r-e-n-c-e’? Yes, good times that started with stock Linksys routers.

On one end, I have a Linksys WRT54GL v1.1 router running the DD-WRT v23 SP1 firmware, with a set of Linksys 7 dBi antennas. The other end has a Linksys WRT54G v2.0 router running the same firmware with a set of generic 9 dBi antennas. The former is the host (office), with the latter being the client (cafe). Output transmission power is set to 200 mW (stock is 28 mW) for both. Yes, I tried lower transmission power, but to no avail (going from 28 mW to 100 mW yielded less than a ten percent increase in signal strength).

The distance between the two routers is a mere 100 feet (two floors though). Signal strength you ask? It’s less than ten percent! Yes. Pathetic. Hey! It works, until…

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