Category: Hardware
An iPod under Linux
June 12th, 2006, 17 Comments
I finally purchased my first iPod: a black 60GB iPod video model. I had been holding off for years. The iPod sounded nifty, but I just didn’t quite go there. The thing that finally won me over was the camera connector. It lets you plug your iPod directly in to a digital camera. The iPod [...]
Why I Like HP
May 17th, 2006, 9 Comments
I’ve been managing servers professionally for some years now. Support is one of the most important things when you are managing computers for work. You don’t need support to help you out with a printing problem or an e-mail problem. You need support because every minute the machine fails to power up, your company may [...]
NiMH Rechargable Batteries and Charger Review
November 28th, 2005, 1 Comment
I’ve been using NiMH batteries for quite a few years now. Ever since my first-ever digital camera came with a free AA charger and four free rechargable NiMH batteries. I’m still using that charger, and it’s been almost 10 years. I have a few complaints about my existing charger. It won’t charge AAA batteries, and [...]
Linux, Bluetooth and Mobile Phones
July 16th, 2005, 7 Comments
I got my first Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone this week, a Motorola v551. I’ve been playing with the Linux utilities for working with mobile phones and have assembled some links. Most of the pages out there seem focused on SMS features of a mobile, or using a mobile phone for Internet access for a Linux box. [...]
Albatron *Really* Sucks
June 25th, 2005, 1 Comment
So I have some complaints about the lack of support from Albatron. Here’s a fun little e-mail from them: From: RMA Support <tan@albatronusa.com> Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 17:30:52 -0700 To: John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> Subject: RE: Status? Dear Customer, Thank you for contacting AlbatronUSA/Monivision Support. At the moment, we do not have any record of [...]
Don’t Buy Albatron
June 23rd, 2005, 6 Comments
My MythTV box has an Albatron KM18GPro motherboard in it. Last week, the Ethernet port on it went dead. I can plug in a known good cable, and don’t even get LED activity on the port. Plug the same cable into any number of other machines, and it works fine. (This is repeatable across different [...]
Brightness
June 17th, 2005, 6 Comments
I discovered by accident today that the scroll switch on the top of the unit will adjust the screen brightness in X. It doesn’t seem to work in the console, and I’ve done nothing to tell X about it, but it works. Woohoo. Combined with that and laptop-mode and powernowd, I think I’m going to [...]
Unsolved Tablet Mysteries
June 16th, 2005, 3 Comments
Things I’m not sure how to do yet: Adjust the brightness of the tc1100 screen in Linux Display xvkbd (or another on-screen keyboard) when the display has been locked via xscreensaver or KDE’s screensaver Make sure the ACPI thermal settings are correct Find a journaling filesystem that behaves well with laptops About the ACPI settings… [...]
Tablet PC So Far
June 16th, 2005, 1 Comment
As I mentioned earlier, I purchased an HP tc1100 tablet PC. It arrived earlier this week and I’ve been playing with it. Here are some of my initial impressions: Debian stable (sarge) installed easily. The tc1100 has no optical drive, and I have no USB optical drive either. It also wouldn’t boot from a CF [...]
Dude, You’re Being Watched By Dell
June 15th, 2005, 12 Comments
It appears that some Dell laptops now come with hidden keylogger hardware built-in. Some people I asked about this suggested it was a device called a Keyghost. Why would Dell pay money to do this? And is it for real?
