Posted by hatim
Fri, 14 Mar 2008 12:59:00 GMT
more pics here
A friend of mine who was coming to Pakistan from USA for vacation was kind enough to order an Acer Aspire 7720-6604 laptop from newegg.com. I have previously used newegg.com and like their service. Initially I had waited for the launch of Apple Mac Book Pro with Penryn processors, but after the launch I was not very impressed with the specs. It was same MacBook Pro with a little better processor. I searched for the first few laptops and decided to buy this Acer machine for my self.
This laptop comes with Windows Vista Ultimate and an HDMI connector, but it does not come with a BlueRay. I am suspecting that with the recent new of impending demise of HD-DVD, upcoming high end Acer laptops will come with BlueRay as an option.
Overall I am satisfied with this laptop. It has a nice exterrior and an OK interior. Its finish is not as bad as it looks in the pictures. The real deal is in the specs. It has whooping 3 gig of RAM. I have nver worked on a machine with this much RAM before so it would be intresting. It also has 512 MB Geforce 8600 GT graphics card which would be very good for PC gaming. But I am no longer interested in gaming.
Windows Vista comes with trail/crap ware, alot of games from Oberon media with 60 minutes demo. The first thing I did was to uninstall them. They left their shortcuts, which I would delete once I log back to Windows. Windows Vista has neat looks, but Ubuntu's compiz is way much more configurable.
After having few hours with Vitsa, I wasted no time and installed Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy on to my machine. Apprently the 64-bit version of live CD was not able to work properly so I selleted for 32-bit one. Every thing worked fine except for sound driver. The sound card in this particular is based in intel high definition audio. I tried few Ubuntu recipies here and there, but I guess the real problem was that snd-hda-intel module had to be loaded with correct parameter, which was essentially one small line at the end of /etc/modeprobe.d/alsa-base
options snd-hda-intel model=acer
I chose for Ubuntu (and not Kubuntu) because of its better integration options (in terms of compiz and multimedia). I plan to make a Gentoo machine out of this laptop, but frankly Ubuntu fulfills most of my needs.
As for the bads of this laptop, I really don't like its keyboard. Perhaps it is because I am used to keyboard of previous laptop. Also this laptop get heated to some extent. I always thought that upcoming chips would probably produce less heat as they consume lesser power, but it is almost the same. I would recommend and one who has a need for a serious devlopment machine to get this laptop. I actually got it for a very good price (1368.51 US$, or around 83000 Pak Rupess at the time). Hopefully this laptop would be a good investment.
Posted in Technology | Tags laptop, linux, ubuntu | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by hatim
Thu, 28 Feb 2008 19:31:00 GMT
I have finally decided with a heavy heart that I won't be buying a MacBook Pro (at least this year) even after the rumors came true and new MacBook pro was released last Tuesday. The primary reason for dumping Mac is price. What ever strings I am trying to pull I will not be able to make a purchase of a new MacBook Pro nearly less enough from its retail 2000$ price. The education discount version comes at a price of 1799$ and that too without a remote control (which is sad as that costs an extra 19$). The only major reason for me to buy a Mac Book Pro was to be able to work on MacOS X leapord, but then I realized that this was not being true to my slef as an open source software developer. Following is a run down of why I am not going for Apple's MacBook Pro.
- It's too expensive. It's not like they put some really cool hardware in it. Infact the model of Acer has more RAM and Harddrive, things which I would require from my portable machine. Also the screen size of MacBook which I was planning to get is some what smaller than screen size of Acer. For programming a bigger screen szie would be helpful.
- I am an open source developer and the OS which is focus of my attention is Linux (I also some times play with open solaris and freebsd). With this laptop I will have a retail version of Windows Vista Ultimate which I can boot just to check how my programs fare on the other side of the force. I could theoretically install Mac OSX onto my Acer, but that would be against the EULA of Apple.
- Laptops dont necessarily die if you use them properly. Although apple computers age better I don't intend to keep my newest laptop for more than two years. So a sturdy Apple Care protected laptop won't do me much good.
- I was expecting that Apple would be releasing a BlueRay based MacBook Pro, but this didn't happen. I am not planning to play alot of movies any way on my laptop. Besides with the money I save I can buy a SonyPlaystation 3.
I have already ordered the Acer Aspire from newegg.com. I will get hold of in second week of March (hopefully). Following are the specs of the said laptop.
Model
Brand Acer
Series Aspire
Model AS7720-6604
Part# LX.ANS0U.011
General
Operating System Windows Vista Ultimate
CPU Type Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 2.1G
Screen 17" WXGA+
Memory Size 3GB DDR2
Hard Disk 320GB
Optical Drive DVD Super Multi
Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
Video Memory 512MB
Communication Modem, Gigabit LAN and WLAN
Card slot 1 x ExpressCard/54 slot
Dimensions 15.9" x 11.7" x 1.5-1.7"
Weight 8.1 lbs.
CPU
CPU Type Intel Core 2 Duo
CPU Speed T8100(2.10GHz)
CPU FSB 800MHz
CPU L2 Cache 3MB
Chipset
Chipset Intel PM965
Display
Screen Size 17.0"
Wide Screen Support Yes
LCD Features Acer CrystalBrite Technology
Display Type Wide XGA+
Resolution 1440 x 900
Operating Systems
Operating System Windows Vista Ultimate
Graphics
GPU/VPU NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
Video Memory up to 1280 MB of TurboCache (512 MB of dedicated GDDR2 VRAM, up to 768 MB of shared system memory)
Graphic Type Dedicated Card
Hard Drive
HD Capacity 320GB
HD RPM 5400rpm
HD Interface SATA
Memory
Memory Slots 2 x DIMM
Memory Speed DDR2 667
Memory Size 3GB
Optical Drive
Optical Drive Type DVD Super Multi
Optical Drive Interface Integrated
Communications
Modem V.92 56K
LAN 10/100/1000Mbps
WLAN 802.11a/b/g/draft N
Ports
Card Slot 1 x ExpressCard/54 slot
USB 4
IEEE 1394 1
Video Port 1 x VGA, 1 x DVI, 1 x S-Video TV-out
Other port CIR (consumer infrared)
Audio Ports headphones/speakers/line-out with SPDIF support
microphone
line-in
Audio
Audio High Definition Audio support, Dolby Home Theater
Speaker 2 surround sound speakers + 1 subwoofer
Input Device
Touchpad Yes
Keyboard Standard
Supplemental Drive
Card Reader 5-in-1 card reader for optional MultiMediaCard, Secure Digital card, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO or xD-Picture Card
Webcam Yes
Power
AC Adapter 90-watt AC adapter
Battery 8-cell lithium ion
Physical spec
Dimensions 15.9" x 11.7" x 1.5-1.7"
Weight 8.1 lbs.
Manufacturer Warranty
Parts 1 year limited
Labor 1 year limited
Posted in Technology | Tags laptop, linux, mac | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by hatim
Thu, 28 Feb 2008 13:07:00 GMT
Google announced the 2008 revesion of it's Summer of Code. I was selected last year for a project by Internet2 consortium but I was unable to complete it. I was also a part time student in Virtual University at the time. This year I am not sure If I can participate or not. As of now I am not part of any university course and there is considerable workload at my full time job. But I did ping people at OpenNMS and have setup an Ideas page on their wiki. I have gained some experience in working with Java EE and Spring in past few months so I guess working with OpenNMS would be bit more fun than last time. Even if I do participate in SoC, there is probably going to be only one application (provided OpenNMS get selcetd for the project).
Posted in Technology | Tags open, projects, source | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by hatim
Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:11:00 GMT
Previously I had posted that I am looking into buying a MacBook Pro for my self. I thought that updated MBPs would be available by the end of Feburary. But so far there only have been rumors about an update. I am thinking of skipping to buy a Mac this time and go cheaper with Acer. The reasons are simple, its cheaper, it has all the things which I really need most important of all its available. With BlueRay gone from the scene, it probably makes sense to get a laptop with BlueRay player. But I am thinking of buying me self a Playstation 3. I will be asking a friend who works in USA to order a the said laptop from newegg.com and bring it along in hist next trip to PK which is next month. All of this provided that Apple does not release a new version of MacBook Pro in coming few days. It is possible that Apple releases the new laptop but it is not readily available for my friend to buy. Now that would be a shame.
Posted in Technology | Tags laptop, mac | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by hatim
Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:51:00 GMT
One year ago I bought my first hosting plan. This year I decided that I needed more, so went to choose a VPS. This is my first experience with a VPS. I asked around of freenode and settled for Linode.com (although tettonic.net and slicehost.com were also options). Linod has a very well setup site and has a irc channel as well. I first installed CentOS as my linux server image, but then decided to go with Ubuntu instead. It is much easier to find packages on Ubuntu as compared to CentOS.
I used this tutorial to get my self rails 2.0. I jsut got backups from my RailsPlayground server through mysqldump utiliy and have this blog running in parallel. Before I go to sleep today I will point the nameserver from Godaddy to my new server so by the time my service at RailsPlayground expires I still have a running website.
I still have to do the following with my new site, here is the laundy list
- Get all my mail and fix up an IMAP server.
- Copy and setup subdomains which were present on my previous site,
- Get my site an Nginx or Lighttpd permanent server.
- Get my previous home page back.
- Post list of links, which were useful in my migration.
I just love the idea that I finally have my own (virtual) machine with which I can play.Edit: I also used the following tutorial to tweak up my mongrel installation.
Edit: I also used the following links to tweak up my installation
Ubuntu Gutsy - Nginx vhosts, rails and mongrels
Ubuntu Gutsy - mongrel clusters and surviving a reboot
Edit: I also used the following links to setup PHP-FCGI
Setup nginx for php and rails on Ubuntu Gutsy 7.10
NginX, PHP, FastCGI
Posted in Technology | Tags linux, vps | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by hatim
Fri, 11 Jan 2008 09:17:00 GMT
This code is not working right now
I didn't know this trick my self, but yesterday I figured it out with (some googling ofcourse)
Consider the following input field, look how it changes its type from normal input field to type "file". [have to post javascript here]
Normally what people do is to make a hidden input field of type. But with help of some easy to use JavaScript one could change the attributes of document elements.
The following code should be helpful as an example
function toggle()
{
//if our_input type is text make it type file
if(document.getElementById('our_input').getAttribute('type') == 'text'){
document.getElementById('our_input').setAttribute('type', 'file');
}else{ //otherwise make it type text
document.getElementById('our_input').setAttribute('type', 'text');
}
}
Posted in Technology | Tags code, javascript | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by hatim
Fri, 11 Jan 2008 09:02:00 GMT
I finally took some time to upgrade my typo installation to latest revision of SVN. After updating the code base I found out that my website had broken. As usual I panikly logged onto irc.freenode on channel #typo. I found neuro` (typo dev) there who told me to 'reke db:migrate'. When that didn't work he told me to get rcov gem. The hosting company which I use manages ruby gems by them selves. so I postd a request for gem. Lucky for me this request was honoured within minutes. I then did a successful db migration. But my blog was still broken. I read some where that It was probably a older dispatch.fcgi is still running. While I was figuring this out, my website came online by it' self.
The reason I switched to typo was to learn ruby and rails (and perhaps work on typo). I need to get my act straight and start coding :)
I found one bug in typo, when sorting posts by dat in manage, it does not sort entries according to the dates visible in view (i suspect it sorts by date of actul post). So perhaps I can start by looking into this bug.
Posted in Technology | Tags Ruby, Typo | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by hatim
Thu, 29 Nov 2007 00:05:00 GMT
I have an inherent bias towards KDE and when I ponder upon it I really don't know why it is the case. Perhaps its because of softwares like Amarok, which give an experience not found in Gnome-land. I feel taht KDE apps are faster, but there is no factual basis for that. I have never actually profiled applicatinos running in KDE to Gnome or some other DM. In my core gentoo days I would spend hours figuring out most optimal CFLAGS so that my KDE/gentoo apps utilized most of my hardware. Crashes were inevitible, but I would blame those crashes on my own CFLAGS. For the last month or so I have been using Kubuntu on my VAIO and I have come across some bad behavior from apps like Amarok, kFlickr.
Perhaps even more disturbing is the crashing os supposedly stable compiz-kde. I did not have the time to look into stack traces of the applications to see what was happening, but the whole point of using Ubuntu is to used tested and tried software. I think Ubuntu/Kubuntu should put more emphasis on testing of different components, than adding goodies into the trunk which are unstable.
Posted in Technology | Tags kde, linux | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by hatim
Fri, 23 Nov 2007 14:58:00 GMT
I am in need of a new laptop in coming months. For me the decession was simple, it just had to be a 17 inch Mac Book Pro. Having a MacBook has many advantages, first of all its Apple machine, so it adds a lot of cool points to your personality :P. Secondly being a devloper you could run any major Desktop-OS on that machine.
At around 2400$ it feels a bit expensive, but I was not able to find much difference between prices of MacBooks and other high end laptops. There are some other aspects to the machine as well, it has a high end graphics card which I don't plan to use much. It's battery time is not the best in the market and it is sensitive machine, unlike HP or Acer which can rough out much more IMO. Also I am not really sure when would Apple be laucnhing it's latest product offerings (it is speculated that may annouce a Peryne based MacBook Pro as early as January 2008 in Apple WDC)
I will post the following questions on some credible Mac forums
So far I have been able to come up with following list of questions, I will try to get them answered on different tech sites/forums very soon
- From experience when should we expect new MacBook Pro's?
- Are refurbished MacBook pros a good deal?
- Is there any chance of design flaws in the upcoming MacBook pros, considering that they would be of a new generation of processors. Would it be based on proven core?
- Is there any real user experince difference between 17inch mac book pro and 15inch MacBook Pro.?
- Is 5400RPM hard disk fast enough, is 7200RPM worth the extra money (I would avoid putting in my own hard drive for now)?
[Edit the questions and post]
Posted in Technology | Tags Blog, mac | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by hatim
Mon, 19 Nov 2007 02:55:00 GMT
We are entering the 5th week of our design pha for our ERP projects graphical modeler portion and it seems that more can be done in terms of design. Software design is some thing which cannot be figured out in one go, and good design should carter for future upgrades. But having little background in the technolgies we are planning to use is some thing which I am concerned about. The thing is that we are implmenting a standard for which Class diagrams are already suggested. These diagrams themselves are some what sketchy so for our own understannding we have improvised fiew new fields.
[Post examples of ambiguties in current ISA95 in very generic terms and hint at the solutions taken by me]
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