Somewhere out there!

I was exploring some SunRay thinclient information when I happened on this interesting blog entry. Quiet racking systems for the home!! Very nice.

After read this blog, I’m wondering how well NX and the SunRay technology compare with each other.

An interesting set of stats pulled from: Mac Forums – Pentium M and Yonah Processors in Upcoming Macs?

With HT enabled, I can run two copies of the job, but they each take 3 CPU hours (and the two finish in 3 wall clock hours).

So, in a day, I can run 12 jobs without hyper-threading, or 16 jobs with hyper-threading. My Opterons do about 13 per day per CPU. (3.6 GHz/1MiB Xeon, 2.6GHz Opteron)

Is it slower with HT – by one measure, yes. Is it faster with HT – by a different measure, yes.

Mike Calligaro has posted a very interesting discussion about ROM/RAM battery usage in PDAs.

The requirement was that, at the point where we decided the batteries were “critically low,” they had to still have enough power to keep the RAM charged for 72 hours. The idea there was that you could discover that you were out of power on Friday on the way home and you’d still have your data on Monday when you got back to your charger.

A typical battery holds 1000mAh of charge. 128M of RAM takes about 500mAh to stay resident for 72 hours. 64M takes about 250. This is why you never saw a 256M WM 2003 device. It would have run for a minute then decided its batteries were critically low.

This is why switching to Persistent Storage can radically improve your battery life. With PS, we removed the 72 hour requirement.

This cool little device (VGA2USB) even has Linux drivers. Perfect unit for closet-based headless computers.

Going though and cleaning up some old entries. “Mac Forums – 1.5 vs 1.67 PBs – maccentral suggests little difference” is probably still worth posting:

Mac Forums – 1.5 vs 1.67 PBs – maccentral suggests little difference

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: the final version of a product is often its best, most reliable rendition. It seems to me that these are the last of the single-core G4 AlBooks. The next bid release will issue a new era, complete with new design issues, bugs, real-world failings, etc. I predict that these current AlBooks will be considered very durable and desirable, even when the new systems come out.

Given that the new iBook is still not out and Mac is moving in Intel, I think this comment is still on target. I’ve been working around things and I’m planning to put off my laptop decision until August/September now. Although I think a Mini-Mac with NX to a Linux/KDE server is going to be my primary desk workstation. I’m not swinging either way with regards to a laptop. WinXP again with NX is definitely workable. Fundamentally power saving in the biggest issue with Linux laptops at the moment. Using WinXP or OSX means you don’t have to worry about this.

When I look at the prices of the new IBM R52s at roughly 2500 for a 15″ P-M 1.8Ghz with 512Mb and DVDRW or an iBook 12″ with similar specs (need to add bluetooth, and more memory) for about the same price. The Thinkpad is very tempting. For the same price you get either better hardware or better software. That said the NX client works much better on Windows. I think regardless I’m not interested in a Powerbook. At 15″ PB seems pretty much the same spec as the R52s, but for twice the price. I’ll just wait until next year and buy a Mactel PB.

Bottom-line. I’ll try out the MiniMac/NX combo and see how my workflow functions. At this stage I’ll probably restrict myself to larger fast response 20″ screen, vs the 17″ the MiniMac current has.

I meant to post this a while back, but its been sitting in my queue. Back in February I purchase a x335. After some trials I got mpt-status and native hardware RAID functional under XEN. Although, testing the performance is still on my TODO list. Then April I got a x206 to replace a x205. The x206 said it had RAID 1 built-in with linux drivers, and thus didn’t require an additional RAID card. I should have recalled that linux drivers, most often for RAID means Redhat only binary drivers.

After getting back from Paris on Sunday evening I had a used eBookMan EB-901 from France waiting for me. The new morning a reconditioned Palm Tungsten E from Ireland turned up. Both had been bought via eBay, the first for 50Euro (new these are 120GBP) and the second for 73GBP, (new these are around 140GBP) both including shipping.

I immediate set both units up with Mobipocket and copied over one of the eBooks I’d been reading on the Eurostar. I noted while using the 901 in bed that it had a nice interface, although it was quite difficult to read in low light. I didn’t really like Windows sync software. The screen on the 901 was quite large with a lower resolution than the Palm, which has a much smaller screen.

Since Monday afternoon I’ve been using the Palm to since completed a couple new space opera eBooks. I’ve found with the clean clear colour screen on the Palm that its much easy to read even at the lowest font size than both my Psion 5mx and the eBookman EB-901.

The other issue I noted is the 901 seem to lose its OS when the battery was removed. I’ve read that this is caused by a fault in the capacitors, which needs to be replaced by Franklin. Obviously this makes the 901 a bit useless. I’ll have to see how difficult it is to get the unit fixed.

I’ve been attempting to recondition the battery a little, but it seems that just reading an eBook gets about 4-5 hours of battery life. Today I went down to Maplin and after a couple tried managed to find someone to help me put together a 4xAA external battery pack to charge the Palm. I’ll see how things go with this charge over the next couple weeks.

How i’ve used the Palm I can see by Paul G. comment as he did about the screen on the hx4700. I’m quite keen to try this out now, especially with its external battery options. Its pretty hard to find one of these second hand on eBay, so I’ll probably get a new unit when I get back to NZ.

With regards to the PDA options of the Palm. I’m finding Graffiti 2 much easier to use than the older Palms I tried at various times. I’ve used the Tasks list a little today, and it seems nice. We’ll see how it goes, Its quite possible I might start using the Palm Tungsten E in its PDA role.

It’s also time to replace my P800, and I might consider a Treo 650. Everyone seems to rave about these. I’ll need to reconvince myself about a PDA+Phone choice though. As I didn’t really like the P800. Basically the interface wasn’t that great and I found it was too bulky, quite often slipping out of my pocket.

I realised that given that I’m in the UK at the moment, I have the access to everything that’s avaliable on eBay UK. I figured that my Psion 5mx got damaged recently and I need a replacement unit for (only) reading ebooks. I’m not that interested in PDA features and I expect I’ll get a Sharp C3000 at some point. However the C3000 doesn’t seem like a good ebook reader. They is no native Linux readers for any of the common commerical ebook formats.

The main features I’ve been considering are:

* Battery Life
* SD or CF expansion port
* Min 320×320 screen
* Ability to be powered by the common AA or AAA batteries

Battery life is important, as I would hate for my reading device to be tied a charging station. I like to be able to pull out the book in whatever odd situation I’m in and being able to use AA batteries makes this easy.

My P800 mobile phone has a 208×320 screen. Using Mobipocket I find this resolution much too small. The Psion with a screen size of 640×240 is very easy to read. Although the form factor is sometimes I little difficult to hold with one hand.

Being able to use either SD or CF expansion cards is vital as reload

After a little research I figured the ebookman looked like the optimal option. However, production of this has stopped, new units are around 150GBP and its difficult to find them on eBay.

After a little research I discovered this thread about Tungsten E battery life and a post by Robert L. Smith, Jr. were he built a PDA charger with a AA Battery Holder . This opens up a whole new set of PDA based eBook reader options.

Even though the new Palms don’t have removable batteries, then seem to have the best general software support. This post suggested a very clever idea. The Palm Tungsten W (1500 mAh) design as a mobile phone has a very large battery. If you turn off the phone features and use it purely as a Palm with a 320×320 screen it gives you a very good base platform. The Palm Tungsten C (1500 mAh) also has had good battery life reports.

Of course the final decision is a balance of avaliablilty on eBay, cost and the specs. The best options now seem to be:

* Palm Zire 71/72
* Palm Tungsten W
* Palm Tungsten C
* Palm Tungsten T3 or T5 – huge 480×320 sized screen
* Palm Tungsten E – Seems to be a popular option for this situation.
* Sony TH55 – battery life reports are good, but it is now EOL and only takes Sony’s MS cards.

One last option is the eBookwise 1150 a rebranded Rocket eBook reader. Unfortunately only avaliable in the USA.

Upgrade to Tiger by buying a Mini. I’ve been thinking that this is the best option as well. Helps that I want a second mini for desktop use when I shift to the UK.

However I’ll probably hold off, and not buy into the hype. Let some other people beta test Tiger.

As I just post I’ve been working on installing a new R51 laptop. While working on this I discover that IBM have an option where you set the level were is starts charging the battery. It also has an auto-adjust feature. Thinking about this I realised that:

* Li-Ion batteries discharge very slowly when not under load and have no memory.
* When plugged into the wall, the batteries are not under load.
* IBM is clever and don’t charge the batteries when the TPs are plugged into the wall. Unless the charge level fails below the configured %.

This probably why their batteries do so well, and actually age very well. The R40 isn’t as clever, but after 2 years of use after some discharge/recharge reconditioning the primary battery still holds 90% of its original charge and the UltraBay battery about 85%, or about 6-9 hours total life. The R50 has a large screen, but a better processor. It will be interesting to see how well that performs.