Beta Software - Ubuntu 10.04

Typically I like using beta software. It gives you a glimpse of what's to come.

I finally got around to installing Ubuntu 10.04 Beta on the LT3103u. First impressions are in order I suppose.

The battery life is terrible. Surfing earlier netted me less than 2 hours with the brightness below half. However, everything seemed to work out of the box. Wireless, audio, correct resolution, etc. I installed Skype immediately, and the webcam and microphone were both working as well. I did have to turn the desktop visual effects off as they were giving me some weird artifacts and glitching. After turning them off and restarting a few times though, all was well.

To remedy the battery life I tried installing an older patched kernel found here, but with only a bit of luck. It works, and booting into it gives CPU scaling all the way down to 800MHz, but it also ends up making the rest of the experience quite slow. The whole environment just seems slower and less responsive on the older kernel, regardless what speed the CPU is set to. Flash video doesn't play, and sound playback is intermittent. Some apps play sounds, some don't. And the windows move blockishly like an old Win 95 box would.

So now it's plugged in on my desk back in the newest kernel, and all seems well. Interesting to say the least, so I'll keep it going.

A Minor Annoyance?

But enough of an annoyance to drive a man insane. So you’re streaming some Hulu shows and generally trying to enjoy a bit of free time after several tests. Your internet connection seems to bog down, slowly. Buffering becomes a “few seconds every thirty” type of affair, and you start to get annoyed. Then videos stop playing altogether.

And yet, the 30 second ads play as if blessed by the bandwidth gods.

Updates? Why no thank you.

I have been absent for a while. Dropped off the earth for tax reasons and such. And school.

The Gateway is still chugging along nicely, overclocked. However, the Win 7 RC install is starting to warn me and shutdown. This has put me on the lookout for a replacement OS for the little not-so-netbook.

It has been retired to mostly desk use as of late. It was becoming useless to lug it around to class with me as I’m around a computer in most of my classes anyway. This sort of broadens my possible-OS scope as well. As it isn’t a development or serious school work machine any longer, it is quite open to whatever I feel like throwing at it and tinkering with.

Have you spied those latest screenshots of Ubuntu 10.04? That looks like it’d be interesting to try.

Why, you might be asking yourself, am I coming out of nowhere with a post suddenly? Simple answer to that really. I quit WoW about two weeks ago and I’m starting to really feel the boredom.

Buff(ered) Enough?

**Removed. Have to run more tests, getting a lot of inconsistencies.

Is it getting sad in here or is it just me?

Now don't take this the wrong way. I'm all for innovation and moving forward and all that crap.

But 1080p YouTube? Come on. Is that really necessary? When YouTube brought out HQ and eventually HD (720p) content I was shocked at how far Flash can be taken. But running on a dual core or even quad core and having your cpu time eaten by a flash video that your monitor probably can't support is simply ridiculous. The 21.5" LCD I'm using right now only does 1050 vertical lines.

Now, if their compression techniques were amazing and 1080p content streamed like regular content does, I'd be amazed at the innovation. But at this point I have to wait to view anything in HD because my house's 5-megabit connection can barely keep up. That sounds very sad by itself, doesn't it? The cable in my area is terrible, and the DSL is no better. And my school connection, it can't even stream regular YouTube content so we won't go there.

I'm sure Adobe's new Flash 10.1 will come out, and suddenly netbooks will be streaming 1080p content and I'll shut up about it and get a faster connection. But until then, I'm going to keep asking: why is that necessary?

I just felt a great disturbance in the force. It's as if a million already-stressed modems cried out and were then silenced.

Differences.

They come in all sizes. Some can be game changing while others can be so minute that you don't notice. For instance, going from 1.2GHz to 1.4GHz on a netbook. Sad news: it isn't game changing. Noticeable? Yes. Spectacular? Not really.

However, going from a 2GHz Athlon X2 on a 939 board to an AM2 Athlon x2 at 2.8GHz is. Surprising I know. But really. I never understood the impact of clock frequency on games until this past weekend. The difference is between WoW lagging hard in Dalaran at lowest settings to running at 40+ fps in Dalaran on highest settings. And on a 9800GT, Dalaran should be no sweat on any quality settings.

So I've come to the easy conclusion, that my gaming desktop needs an upgrade. The Phenom 9600BE was great when I bought it. Quad core multitasking power for under $120 was a steal, no matter the clock speed. But now that 2.3GHz clock speed is starting to show. My Radeon HD4770, which is technically more powerful than a dying 9800GT, also struggles in Dalaran on any setting on this computer. And I've never understood why. Simple: it's being held back by my processor.

Lesson learned? Never underestimate the impact your CPU has on your games. Time for a cheap way out. Overclock? Not on an old school Phenom baby. I can't get it past 2.5GHz without raising the core voltage, which raises the temperature quite a bit. Lemon much? An Athlon II X4 is in my future. With another 4GB of DDR2 and a second HD4770 for some Crossfire love. Now I just need the cash for it. How much do kidneys go for online?

Take it and run with it.

Into a wall. Haven't posted anything in a while, school's been hell.

Apparently the scene has been moving past me. The ultra-portable scene that is. Things are heating up out there in the big bad world of not-quite-netbooks. All the cool companies are getting into the game for a bit of action. Just like with netbooks, people are snatching them up. All these Pentium CULVs and Core 2 Solos hitting the market are making me a bit insecure about my little Athlon 64 (that I use every day now as a school computer).

So what can I do to combat my processor related insecurities? Well, get a new one. But that's out of reach for a poor college student. And you know how that is.

So what else can I do? Cry? Complain? I try to do as little of those as possible. I make due with what I've got. And overclock.

That's how you do it. Hop on over to this forum and check out a few methods. Getting a cool new wallpaper is optional by the way, but highly recommended.

Cause and effect baby.

Last score was 2.4. Oddly enough, the Aero graphics score went up from 2.4 as well. The processor really is the bottleneck on this system. 1.43GHz doesn't seem like a lot, but if it pushes that score up by half a point, I can't wait to take it further. If it'll go further that is. Locked down laptop BIOSes aren't friendly, and neither is restrictive cooling on a laptop.

On a less warranty-voiding note, I finally figured out a way to use my Gateway on my desk comfortably. As you probably know, typing on a completely flat laptop keyboard on a flat surface can get rather tiring after a while. But reading Lifehacker recently has put me in a "solution oriented" mood. So I rummaged through the crap in my room and found a 2" hard plastic ring binder. Makes a perfect mount for my Gateway. It even brings it up perfectly level with my 19" LCD for my desktop. And I can stuff the AC adapter inside the binder to clear the clutter on my desk. Nice.