Marcin Juszkiewicz

Few days ago one of my friends asked me for help on choosing laptop. The idea was “I want to buy laptop to use instead of my 7 years old desktop”. We were discussing few options and he finally found Dell Inspiron 9400 for less then 1000 EUR. It is interesting machine:

• 17” display with 1400x900 resolution
• Core 2 Duo cpu
• 2GB ram
• ATI X1400 gfx card
• 160GB Serial ATA disk

After checking who seller is we decided that I will go and buy that laptop (seller was from Poznań).

Yesterday I bought that beast and I have to say one thing — it is HUGE (bottom one on photo). I am used to my 12” D400 (top one on photo) and sometimes I use Ania’s 15.4” laptop (middle one) when I need MS Windows.

As usual it comes with MS Windows — this time it was Vista Home Premium. It was my first time with Vista — so now I can tell that I used all MS Windows versions (from 1.01 to Vista). What do I think of it? Hard to tell because I do not used it too much. Looks nice and takes some time to find things which were in XP.

Now when I used 17” laptop I know that I do not want such one — 12-15.4” are enough size for travelling. And for desktop I prefer desktop machine with big LCD then 17” laptop.

During Friday I had a trip to my family city (Olecko, Poland) for my sister wedding. It was by car (not mine) and we had to visit brother to take him with us. As I never was in Toruń before I had to use some online services to see how to get to the place where he works.

Google Maps

Interface easy to use, checking directions can be done with few clicks, adding new points to trip is intuitive. But route is not optimal — force to use highways (Poland nearly does not have such ones) so I needed to add few extra points to get proper directions. Printing is unusable — most of space taken by driving instructions and maps in print are small.

Targeo

Only Poland covered. Map is from AutoMapa navigation application. Interface also easy to use but lack scrollwhell support and need some time to understand buttons. Allow to create route with few points and do it well. As a bonus it show list of road repairs. Printing does not work.

Zumi

Also only Poland covered. Flash interface :( Only routing from point to point. Printing use flash too.

Finally I checked route in Google Maps and Targeo. Needed part (Toruń, where we had to take my brother) was printed from GM screenshot.

Few days ago Intel released PowerTOP utility which can be used to check what software takes most of power on device (x86 targetted but should works on other architectures too). During weekend I started it on my laptop and changed few things after that so it came from about 300 to less then 100 wakeups during X11 work and 70 when working in remote console over wifi (most taken by bcm43xx driver).

I do not remember how big impact it had on battery life because I mostly use this machine with AC connected and battery keep only 50% of original capacity (it is over 2 years old).

Today I bought Linksys NSLU2 machine. It is small, ARM based NAS and it is running Linux out-of-box. Unpacked, connected to home network and after checking that it is working I reflashed it with OpenSlug 3.10. So now it runs 2.6.16 kernel (instead of old, hacked 2.4.something) and opensource system (built with OpenEmbedded).

What for I bought it (other then taking space under desk)? I plan to run few services on it:

• NFS server with DL_DIR contents (all sources used by OpenEmbedded builds)
• TFTP server (to server kernels, rootfs images for miscelanous devices on my desk)
• SMB server (music, movies)
• Bluetooth access point for my Neo1973 phones and other devices

Too bad that small embedded PCs are harder to get that such gadgets. I hope that one day I will be able to buy machine which will replace my WiFi AP/router and NSLU2 (NAS, BT AP) in one.

I just got my GTA01B_v4 from UPS courier. This is send as “developer update” as package contains:

• GTA01B_v4 phone
• battery (charged)
• Europlug -> US plug adapter (no idea what for)

After powering phone I started ‘DM2’ application which allow to make few simple tests of hardware. And let Mickeyl and Sean stop talking that Neo1973 has nothing common with “The Matrix” movie — the sound sample used to test audio subsystem is Morpheus telling Neo that he is “The One”.

What do I plan to do when I have two phones? First I will upgrade Bv4 to newer software. Then I have to decide which one will run OpenMoko and which Ångström — so I will be able to compare (now both has OpenMoko distribution installed). And I wonder will Bv4 recognize my SimPlus prepaid card (it is normal 250 entries sim) — Bv3 do not like it.

This time I had to pay customs and UPS — 109 PLN (~30 EUR) in total. And as this time it was sent to me as person not as company I can not add this into company costs. But it does not really matter — I have phone and this is more important :)

Yesterday I got phone call from UPS about misterious package from Taiwan, today this mail from Sean:

We’ve been so busy trying to get production moved from Taiwan to China, and shipping you new NEOs(GTA01B_v4), that we well…forgot to tell you that we’re shipping you new phones ;-)

So your Freed Phone is in the mail. Please keep your eyes open.

Happy Hacking!

Now I wonder will courier bring me phone to home or will it go to customs…

Thomas Kunze provided newer version of his SD/MMC driver some time ago. Today I finally got some time to test it.

Result is awesome as most of my cards works now — only RS-MMC from Nokia 770 does not want to behave. I posted logs into proper bugraport and Thomas told:

hrw: fine. so nearly all cards work now. I have an idea what your rsmmc might need.

So it looks like this one will work too soon. New test images for Ångström will be available probably tomorrow.

I have Nokia 770 tablet at home. It is mainly used to play Maemo Blocks, Mahjongg or other game. From time to time I use it to browse web or read RSS feeds so it is non-stop connected to my home WiFi.

But today I had to charge it in the morning and after that it died after 2-3h of playing. I do not know how good is N800 in this subject but hope that next tablets will have better battery life as this one has it too small.