Recently in Hardware Category

i bought myself a new cell phone. new is relative, but it is newer than my previous phone (se p910i) and the original n95 (which is owned by my girlfriend by now). since i liked the n95 i thought i should buy the n97 or at least the n96.

the n96 however is not the real successor of the n95. it is more the successor of the n85. i dont like the design of the n96. the fabrication of the n96 can not be compared with the fabrication of the n95.

and the n97 is a little bit too much. it is more than a small portable computer. it's not a cell phone anymore. at the moment the n97 is too expensive and not what i want.

but there is also a revision of the n95 available. it's the n95 8gb. it has more memory, a faster cpu, more storage, a bigger display, ... the n95 8gb isn't the newest cell phone available anymore, but fits perfectly my needs. I am able..

• to phone and to write SMS messages
• to read and write e-mail messages through IMAPS (using ProfiMail)
• listening to local radio stations
• downloading of podcasts and listening them offline
• listening to mp3
• online weather forecast
• schedule of the local public transport, online and offline (java app)
• alarm clock
• browsing internet sites optimized for mobile devices (WLAN/UMTS)
• taking pictures with the 5mp camera

here are a few pictures comparing the n95 (grey) with the n95 8gb (black):

And: Symbian, the phones operating system, has been declared as open source just a few days ago.

the server migration is almost complete! my good old host.0.buetow.org server (freebsd 6.x, 1gb of ram, 180gb of hdd space, amd opteron 146, hosted at strato) will be taken out of order :(. this server has served without any major problems over the last 4 years! the contract has been canceled. somehow this makes me sad ;) lets see if the new servers (hosted by hetzner) will last at least as long! ;)

1&1 Internet AG, Germany, Datacenter (one server room of my regular full time job)

My new watch (the Suunto Core All Black from finland, to be specific) arrived! I haven't worn a watch for about the last 10 years. But somehow I decided to need a new toy. And the toy should be pratical too ;)

You look up and see stars. But your Suunto Core sees an approaching squall. And it tells you with the Storm Alarm - one of several intelligent features that can help you make consistently good decisions. Building on the success of the venerable Suunto Vector, the Suunto Core keeps you informed with an accurate altimeter, barometer, digital thermometer, Weather Trend Indicator and digital compass.

The pressure gauge operates in four distinct modes, including an automatic setting that senses your movement or lack thereof, switching between altimeter and barometer accordingly. The compass features a rotating bezel for traditional use, or a one-touch function that allows you to sight, lock and follow a bearing. Daily functions include dual time, date, alarm, sports chronograph and predicted times for sunrise and sunset.

I haven't tried out all the functions yet, but those I've tried work pretty well. Except the temperature seems always slightly too high (which is because of the warmth of my arm). But the real temperature can be easily calculated (or by just taking the watch off for about 5 minutes).

I remember last year when I almost got lost in the center of Valencia, Spain (not knowing which directions to go). I would have used the compass of the watch... (I managed to find my way using my Nokia N95s GPS though ;-)

For my vacations, I was researching for a nice compact digital camera. This one should be not too expensive and should make nice pictures. And it should be easy to use. So I decided to buy myself the Canon PowerShot A590 IS for about 120 EUR.

After 3 weeks vacations/testing I must say, that this may be the best camera in this price sector. However you should buy strong rechargeable batteries (about 20 EUR for two pairs) and you need a recharging device (not included) and another SD card (the camera has only a 32MB SD card included, so I bought myself an extra 4GB SD card). Also the real handbook is only available as a 208 pages PDF document (except of the fast getting starting guide).

If you are not a photography professional and you want to take lots of vacation snapshots, this camera is good for you too. It has an integrated image stabilizer (IS) for sharp pictures even while you are moving and it can do up to 8MP. The easy and auto modes are perfect for photography beginners. This camera is also very good if you want to get started learning real photography because there is a manual mode as well. However I am not going to be professional.

Some pictures shot with this camera can be seen on my flickr photostream (older pictures in this stream are done by the N95 mobile phone though).

The Benkeror (Emperor of the Benkpire, a friend of mine) found this nice chair in the net:

Nice stuff! And so cheap!

This picture has been taken by me in the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany. Its included in the exhibition time-line of the history of Mercedes-Benz.

My new CD-ROM drive (for my Netbook) has its driver on a 3,5" Disk!

In my opinion, this has to be shipped on a USB stick instead. Who owns in 2009 (except of me) a 3.5" Disk Drive?

I want to install NetBSD on my HP Jornada 680. For this, I need to transfer some bootstrapping stuff onto the Windows CE partition. For this, I need a working copy of Microsoft Windows on my Desktop PC. However, I do only use *BSD and Linux. And I don't want to mess around with my girlfriends Windows Laptop. So I need a card reader for my Desktop PC which can read and write Compact Flash Type I cards.

I've ordered myself the Scythe YD-8V08-BK. It can handle old school 3,5" Disks (good for BIOS and CPU microcode upgrades) and also 16 (!!) different types of memory cards (including, of course, CF Type I).

After buying a quiet power supply unit my new CPU cooler (Zalman CNPS9500A) arrived.

So far I am very happy with this device. I am using it for cooling down my Pentium 4 2.40GHz CPU. And sensors shows the following temperature and fan speed:

pbuetow@sentax:/proc/acpi$ sensors
fscher-i2c-0-73
Adapter: SMBus I801 adapter at 1c00
+12V:       +12.22 V
+5V:         +4.94 V
Battery:     +3.04 V
Fan1/PS:       FAULT  (div = 2)
Fan2/CPU:   1500 RPM  (div = 2)
Fan3/AUX:      FAULT  (div = 2)
Temp1/CPU:   +39.0°C  (high = +77.0°C)                  
Temp2/MB:    +36.0°C  (high = +57.0°C)                  
Temp3/AUX:     FAULT  (high = +49.0°C)  

And I can't hardly hear the fan. It's automatically throttled down by the mainboard (Fujitsu Siemens D1527) because the CPU is cool enough. Additional I've the opportunity to regulate the speed of the fan by an external control pad on top of my computer case:

I figured out, that I do not need to control the speed of the fan manually. The mainboard does a pretty good job itself. I may will use this extra control for an additional case fan instead.

Right now my router (IBM ThinkPad T20) is louder than my desktop computer. This is caused by the 2,5" HDD. My T42 is silent. :)

Update: Now my CPU is always around 39C. But my Hard Disk is 41C. Its limit is 50C but strange, that my CPU is now cooler than my Hard Disk! I've to enable the additional case fan ASAPs :)

Since a few weeks ago my old power supply unit exploded (may have been too old), I bought myself the new power supply unit Enermax Modu82+ 425w. It's very quiet. It's controlled by an microcontroller using fuzzy logic. So far I am very happy with it.

Additional I received 2 small packs of branded candy. Branded by the computer shop :).

I still have to buy a new CPU fan. My current CPU configuration is too hot. My mainboard includes an additional microcontroller, which takes care of the CPU temperature and throttles the CPU down if needed. Right now my CPU uses a passive cooler. Which itself is being cooled by the case fan. Which is not very efficient. And since the cable of my case fan is too short, it is using the connector of the CPU fan. Which is resulting in a very fast and a little anoying case fan ;) I already ordered a fan of Zalman. Which seems to be the best for my old CPU Socket and my relative small ATX case.

I am using an old Intel Pentium 4 (2.4Ghz) using a Socket 478 and a old school Fujitsu Siemens mainboard. Somehow I am bound to older hardware, because I want to use my AGP graphic board, my PCI cards (I own no PCIe devices), and my IDE hard drives (No S-ATA here, but planed. I already have a PCI -> S-ATA Controller installed).

My IdeaPad arrived! After playing around with SLED 10, I recognized that I should install Debian on it instead. SLED is a little bit too sluggish :(

• Because I don't have an USB CD-ROM drive, I prepared a bootable USB-key with the Debian 40r6 installer. However, the IdeaPad didn't want to boot from it. The reason was probably my USB-key which refuses to be bootable.
• I found out about a nice way of how to boot an .iso from an USB-key. Here, Debian booted into the installer (using a tmpfs) but could not find a CD-ROM drive for the source of the packages. So I unplugged my USB-key and used my workstation in order to copy the content of the Debian ISO onto the USB-key. Afterwards I mounted it to /cdrom => the installer recognized the source. After creating partitions and user accounts, the Debian installer could not find the codename of its version. This problem was caused by mounting an USB-key to /cdrom instead of a real CD.
• I decided to use the network as the installation source. However, this version of Debian didn't recognize any network devices.
• I decided to try out the Debian installer of the testing branch with the hope that it will recognize some network devices. After rebooting my IdeaPad the MBR of the HDD was gone => I was not able to boot the ISO file from my USB-key anymore.
• After checking all available booting methods in the BIOS I found out that I could use PXE in order to boot from the network. So I set up a bootpd and tftpd on my workstation which provides the PXE installer of Debian testing => The installation of Debian progressed without any flaw; until the first reboot.
• After the first system reboot the kernel could not find my root filesystem. I don't know why, but the installer decided to write /dev/sdb3 instead of /dev/sda3 into the grub configuration. The fstab was affected as well. (Maybe I forgot to unplug my USB-key from the IdeaPad during the PXE install). After manual fixing I had a fresh working installation of Debian :)

• One thing still didn't work out of the box: The WLAN. After installing the closed source Broadcom driver everything worked then.

I like the IdeaPad S10e very much. The glossy display doesn't bother in any way. All hardware works perfectly (built in webcam [skype works out of the box with video-call], audio, wireless network, the display + xorg). And after half an hour you can type on the small keyboard very fast and without any typing errors.

Some critics:

• The CPU fan turns on and off a lot which can be anoying. This is a firmware bug which Lenovo has to fix. I am waiting for it ;)


• I am working in fulltime as a Linux Systemadministrator. So I am using the shell a lot. It is not very comfortable to type the pipe | on this keyboard (don't know if it only affects my german version of the keyboard). You have to press three buttons at a time for the pipe: Fn + AltGr + y. This can be fixed by customizing your keyboard layout.


• It would be nicer to have a TrackPoint instead of a small TouchPad (even if it's multi touch). A TrackPoint would save even more space and it is (in my opintion) more comfortable. I am used to TrackPoints.

But overall the IdeaPad S10e is a pretty nice toy :)

Yesterday I ordered myself a Lenovo IdeaPad S10e in black with SLED 10 (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) preloaded.

Well, some people will critizise me buying HW from a chinese manufacturer. I am not a politician and I buy the HW which I like the most. Point.

I am not sure yet if I will keep SLED on it or if I want to install Debian on it. I will not install a FreeBSD (my favourite OS) on it. Lots of people don't like a SUSE Linux. Even I've had some problems in administrating SUSE. However, maybe I will not replace SLED for the following reasons:

1. SLED is preinstalled and the IdeaPad is certified running it.
2. All drivers are included already (even closed source WiFi drivers) and work out of the box.
3. It is a Netbook and not a development Notebook. I do not care how the system feels under the hood. I will use the IdeaPad for reading PDFs, surfing and e-mailing.
4. Installing Debian is possible, but I could do more important stuff instead.
5. Why not to use several Distros and Operating Systems on all the Notebooks, Netbooks, Desktops and Servers? My fulltime job is Systemadministrator and it does not hurt to try something else once a while. :)

Well, now I hope that my IdeaPad will arrive ASAP! This year I also want to buy a replacement for my old IBM ThinkPad T42. Maybe it will be a Lenovo ThinkPad T400 or a Lenovo ThinkPad X300 :). I am not sure yet.

Today I finally retired my 15 years old serial mouse. Now I am using my 2 years old USB mouse which still has been in its original package since i bought it.

Why did I switch? Because I replaced my FreeBSD with Debian on my home Workstation and it does not auto recognize serial mouses anymore and since I am too lazy (I've a full time job and additional to it a part time job) to configure my desktop I just plugged in my USB mouse which works out of the box now :) I must say, I like the feel of the new (optical) mouse. It is much more comfortable than the old serial mouse. It even has a wheel.

FreeBSD still remains on my private main Laptop, my private Webserver and my Workstation at work. While Debian will stay at my Workstation at home and my Gateway at home. And at work there is Linux all around. A Windows XP Prof. is installed in parallel to FreeBSD on my laptop. At work I can also access a Windows via rdesktop. So it's a pretty good mix now :)

As many of you know, I am a big fan of open source software and UNIX and UNIX like platforms! So the perfect mobile phone should use an UNIX like OS and it should be made out of open source software!

Symbian is now open source but it is not UNIX like.

The iPhone uses an UNIX like operating system, but the user can not make advantage of it officially. And it's not open source at all!

The Android platfrom looks very promising. It's complete open source and it's a Linux operating system. However, no official phone for Android yet available. However you can already develop applications with the Android API, but Java only.

The OpenMoko project looks the most promising for myself. It's a complete open source phone platfrom as well and it's, like Android, a Linux. The advantage of OpenMoko over Android for me: You are not bound to the Java programming language, but you can use all kind of APIs including C, Python, probably Perl and C++ as well. And there is already the first running OpenMoko phone, called Freerunner, out to buy. However, the phone looks so damn ugly.

OpenMoko offers the most flexibility to a Linux user and programmer. An OpenMoko user should develop his own applications, or make use of the forming community. Probably, then the first phone running Android comes out, OpenMoko will get ported to it too. Maybe this will be the time I will get myself a new phone?

There are several other Linux based phone platforms I did not mention yet. That's because I don't know much about them yet. :)

At the moment I am using the Nokia N95. Well, it's not using an UNIX like OS and it still has a closed source version of Symbian on it. But it does it job well: Nice pictures, WLAN, SMS, phoneing, etc. It's a tool and not a toy for me. The perfect mobile phone would be also a toy for me (e.g. programming my own applications for it with fun in an environment I like).

On Slashdot I found a review about Das Keyboard. In germany it's available for 79 Еuro at Getdigital. If we belive the review, the keyboard seems to be nice but too expensive because not enough extras offered. I don't need any extras (special keys, sound intensity controls, USB hub etc). I've read several reviews about this keyboard so far, and everybody thinks that it really feels nice while typing. The other thing I like very much is, that you can order this keyboard without any lettering/markings. This makes it look even nicer.

And I really don't need any markings on my keyboard. At the moment I am using a 5 Euro cheap PS2 keyboard from bulgaria. It has as well as cyrillic and latin (us layout) markings (I may ll post a picture of my cyrillic keyboard here one day). Well, do you think this keyboard is worth its 79 Euro?