Noise Canceling Headphones

December 3, 2009 | etbe

My patience with the noise of airlines has run out, on my trip from AU to US I didn’t get any sleep due to the cramped seat and the noise of the plane. While I can’t do anything about the cramped seat without spending a lot of money it seems that I can do something about the noise with moderate expense.

I’ve been researching Noise Canceling Headphones [1]. The principle of such devices is that they have a microphone on the outside and a speaker on the inside to generate sound that is 180 degrees out of phase which will then almost cancel out the ambient noise. Apparently such devices are very effective for low frequencies but less effective for high frequencies. High frequencies are more easily blocked by sound insulation, so the ideal seems to be “around the ear” headphones with lots of padding to passively stop noise with active noise canceling to deal with the lower frequencies.

So I’m now planning on buying a set of headphones before I leave the US.

Choice Magazine (an Australian independent product review organisation) published a review of noise canceling headphones in 2007, it has some interesting information but is not suitable for buying advice today [2]. Choice gave the best results to the Jabra C820s which had just gone out of production when they published the review and by now could only be bought on eBay. The Jabra had an active cancellation of 14.3dB and a passive cancellation of 8.3dB. The best active cancellation of all the reviewed products was 19.5dB for the Bose QuietComfort 3 – which incidentally only had a passive cancellation of 4.8dB. Both the Bose and Jabra products got good reviews in a mailing list discussion. It’s a pity that Jabra is now only manufacturing products for call centers.

I am not considering the headphones that go on top of the ears, they will inherently give less passive protection due to the design and they will annoy me. I am also not considering the ear-buds because I don’t like putting things in my ears. I will note that there are some very positive reviews of some of the ear-bud devices. The Etymotic Research devices get very good reviews and are apparently on sale at reasonable prices in Apple stores (among other places) [3]. Anyone who wants noise-canceling headphones and disagrees with me about the desirability of ear-bud type devices should probably consider them.

The Bose QuietComfort 15 is selling for $300 (NB for this post all prices will be in US dollars) [4]. It has microphones both inside and outside the ear cup to allow better detection of ambient sound. A single AAA battery is supposed to last 35 hours, it has a detachable audio cable (for use in just blocking noise), and comes with an airline adapter (for the two-port airline sockets). It does require being turned on to listen to audio, some headphones allow you to turn off the noise canceling feature to listen to music without a battery – this doesn’t matter for my planned use. They have a volume switch (low and high settings) to cope with airlines that set the volume too high. They are specifically designed for passengers in commercial jet aircraft. Surprisingly the Bose web site doesn’t mention the number of dB of audio protection and none of the reviews I have read have mentioned it either.

The store Brookstone was recommended, they have some unbranded noise canceling headphones, but as they are on the ear and more expensive than comparable Sony products ($130 vs $100) I eliminated them quickly.

Sony has a good range of noise-canceling headphones [5]. They have ear-buds starting at $90 and on-ear headphones for as little as $50. They have two models of over the ear headphones that are advertised at $200 and $400. The MDR-NC60 costs $200 and reduces noise by 12dB at 200Hz while the MDR-NC500D costs $400 and reduces noise by 20dB at 160Hz. I don’t know why they didn’t measure both headphones at the same frequency or give any information on passive sound insulation. They state that the MDR-NC500D was voted as being better than the Bose QC2 and QC3 but made no such claim about the MDR-NC60 – presumably the older Bose devices were rated as better than the MDR-NC60, and I have to wonder about how the Bose QC15 would compare to the MDR-NC500D. The MDR-NC500D has an internal Lithium-Ion battery that lasts 16 hours and can take a pair of AA batteries as well for a total of 28 hours.

The Sennheiser PXC 350 claims up to 32dB of passive attenuation and up to 18dB of active noise compensation [6]. Their claims about NoiseGuard (TM) cause me to lack confidence in their products. The PXC 350 is advertised at $330 and the reviews that I have read suggest that the Bose might be a better product. Sennheiser also has PXC 450 which offers 23dB of active noise compensation and costs $450. I am not going to pay $450 for headphones.

It seems that the choice for over the ear noise canceling headphones comes down to the Sony MDR-NC60 at $200 and the Bose QuietComfort 15 at $300. I have the impression that the Bose product is better, but whether it is $100 better is the question. Also while I haven’t forgiven Sony for Rootkitting their customers [7], this is not going to prevent me from buying the headphones that best suit my needs.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Did I miss a good brand that I should be considering? Does Sennheiser have some redeeming features that I missed?

ReWine

August 19, 2009 | etbe

I have just discovered an innovative Melbourne company that has apparently been running for five years. ReWine is a wine seller that sells bottles of wine and then refills the same bottles for a lower price [1] (a saving of $2 per bottle). There have been many schemes for selling various liquids in reusable bottles, but a major failing of the business models has been the health issues related to cleaning the bottles. If I am going to drink wine from a bottle that some unknown person has used then I want it to be cleaned really well. But when I take back my own bottle for refilling the hygiene requirements are much smaller as I know where it’s been!

ReWine suggest that people rinse each bottle twice with warm water, a fairly simple cleaning process.

The wine that ReWine sells is described in terms of which region of Australia that it comes from and by the variety of grape. They make no claims about the wine being from a single vineyard or that the wine will come from the same vineyards next season. This is fairly common among the less expensive wines.

The prices for the wine are very low. A refill of a 750ml bottle of Chardonnay costs $5.50 and 750ml of Shiraz costs $9.80. 750ml of what is called “Port” in Australia (but is considered to be just a fortified wine in Europe as “Port” is a trademark for the Oporto region of Portugal) costs $5.80 and 750ml of Muscat costs $16.

I have bought bottles of “Port” and Muscat. The port is quite nice, not the greatest – but when considering the fact that any bottle of similar fortified wine costs more than $20 from a liquor store it’s very good value for money. It’s good for a quick night-cap. The Muscat is great! I would pay twice as much for it and still be satisfied that I had got my money’s worth!

I didn’t try the white wines because still white wine is not my thing. I tried the Shiraz, it was quite nice.

The technical aspects of the ReWine operation seem quite sound. The wine is stored in sealed barrels and pressurised nitrogen is used to force the wine out, this keeps out oxygen to avoid spoiling the wine while also allowing the bottles to be rapidly filled.

The business model of ReWine makes a lot of sense, it offers cheaper wine to customers while avoiding all the waste from the production of single-use glass bottles.

One final thing to note is the high quality of the bottles. The screw-top lids are very solidly constructed. A solid glass bottle with a quality lid can be used for many things, so even if you decide not to refill it from ReWine it will probably be handy – and worth $2.

[1] http://www.rewine.com.au/

LG U990 Viewty

May 31, 2009 | etbe

I have just got a LG U990 “Viewty” mobile phone [1]. It’s a 3G phone and came free on the $29 monthly cap plan from “Three” (minimum monthly spend is $29 – but this is free if you use $29 per month). My previous plan was the $29 cap but had a minimum spend of $20 per month, as I never happened to use less than $29 per month I am not paying more.

For a modern mobile phone the actual phone functionality is a sideline. If a device was strictly designed to be a phone then I think it would be very similar to the Nokia phones that were available 5+ years ago – the Nokia I had in 1999 performed every phone function that I desired of it.

Like most modern phones the LG U990 “Viewty” suffers in it’s phone functionality from the desire to make it do non-phone tasks and from the desire to cripple it to meet the desires of the carriers (not the desires of the users). For example the “home” screen will always have at least two buttons for paid Three services and I have no configuration option to remove them. Replacing them with speed dial options for a couple of numbers that I regularly call would be handy. As the main screen is a touch-screen there is no excuse for this, they should allow the software to be reconfigured with more useful options. Eventually the Android will kill most of the other phones and this problem of phones being designed to suit the telephone companies instead of the users will be solved.

One of the most annoying mis-features of the phone is that it doesn’t properly handle address book entries with multiple phone numbers. One of my friends turns his mobile off when he is at home, so I regularly call his mobile and then immediately call his home number if the mobile is unavailable. With my previous two mobile phones I could press the “dial” button to bring up the list of previous calls and then use the arrow buttons to select from the other numbers that are attached to the same address-book entry, so with three button presses I would be dialing his other number. With the Viewty I have to go back to the address book.

The compelling feature of the Viewty is the camera and display. It has a 5MP camera which makes it the second highest resolution camera-phone offered by Three – the LG Renoir (KC910) has 8MP but needs a $99 plan for it to be free. It also has a 240*320 resolution touch-screen display (in a quick search in January when I bought my phone the best resolution display I could find on a phone is 240*400 in the LG Renoir).

While the camera is documented as being 5mp there are no specs available about the resolution of the CCD. I want to use the native resolution of the CCD for pictures (I think interpolation is a waste of space). The CCD might actually be 5mp, a picture of the 1400*1050 resolution screen on my Thinkpad allows me to read all the text even when small fonts are in use, so the CCD resolution must be significantly greater than 1400*1050. This is a really important feature as the Viewty will work well for making screen-shots for bug reports about crashed computers (several of my clients have expressed interest in getting one after seeing such a demonstration). One annoying problem is that the camera software takes a while to load, my trusty Sony digital camera starts a lot faster and the LG U890 phone I used for the past two years is also a lot faster and more convenient. This won’t work well for photographing unexpected events. When I am traveling by public transport I will photograph the relevant pages of my street directory as I can zoom in to photos of the maps and read the street names, it saves some weight when traveling. The 2G micro-SD card (which incidentally cost $10 from OfficeWorks) will allow me to store a lot of maps.

One interesting feature is the video recording capabilities. It can do 640*480 resolution at 30fps (which is pretty good) and 320*240 resolution at 120fps (they claim that you can film a balloon popping). In my quick tests the standard 640*480*30fps mode works well, but the 120fps mode requires much brighter light than most of my test environments, so I have not yet got it working properly.

The phone has a reasonable voice recording function, it can record considerably more than 34 hours of audio and the quality is reasonably good if you use an external microphone. It is however quite poor if you use the built-in microphone for a dictaphone function, it seems that quality is poor at any distance. I had wanted to record my LCA mini-conf talks with my phone but unfortunately forgot to bring the adapter for the external microphone. It’s a pity that the phone doesn’t have a standard microphone socket as I have misplaced my Viewty microphone, when designing the phone they should assume that misplacing attachments is a common occurrence and design it to use common parts.

I recently spoke to a journalist who uses his mobile phone to record interviews. He said that his phone supported phone calls, voice recording, and taking pictures – all the essential tasks for his work. It seems that the Viewty would be better than most phones for journalistic work apart from the issue of low quality voice recording when you have misplaced your external microphone.

The text editor is unfriendly in the keyboard mode (I have not tried hand-writing recognition), one thing I don’t like is the fact that the letters jump when you press them. This does allow changing a letter by moving the stylus before releasing the press (some people consider this a great feature). There are no cursor control keys (which is a serious omission), and the keyboard doesn’t resemble a real keyboard. My iPaQ is far better for writing (I once wrote a full-length magazine article on an iPaQ).

The stylus is quite strange and interesting. In the picture of the front of the phone the stylus is compacted with it’s lid on. In the picture of the back of the phone the stylus is extended with the lid off. The end of the stylus clips in to the lid so that removing the lid drags the central part out of the body. It’s an interesting design and with the string on the lid allows the stylus to be attached to the phone when it’s not being used. But I have never used it. Even with an iPaQ (which had a proper stylus that attached firmly inside the body of the device) I often used a fingernail on the touch screen. I have not felt the need to ever use a stylus with my Viewty.

One final noteworthy thing is the support for Google services. It seems to have client support for YouTube, Google Maps, GMail, and Blogger. This seems to be a major win for Google, the Viewty is one of the most popular phones at the moment and I expect that lots of people who buy them will now have an incentive to use the Google services. Between these sorts of deals and the Android I think that it will be necessary to have some sort of anti-trust action against Google. Google are generally doing good things for the users. I have been quite satisfied to use Google search, Google advertising on my blog, and Gmail. Also I have been moderately happy with Blogger (it was good when I started blogging) and Google Maps is useful on occasion. So generally I am happy with Google, but monopolies are bad for the users so I think that if things continue on their current trend then Google may have to be split into several little Googlets some time in the next few years.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viewty

Creating a Double-Ended Bun

April 25, 2009 | etbe

The people who made the above magazine advert gave it two top-halves to the burger bun. But I think that there is actually a demand for such buns, and that it is possible to make them!

Traditional buns have a flat bottom where they rest on a baking tray. One solution to this problem would be to bake in outer space, another possible solution would be to develop a rapid baking process that allows baking in a free-fall aeroplane, but both of these would be unreasonably expensive.

It seems that it would be viable to bake double-ended buns by having a rapidly rising column of hot air to suspend the bun. The terminal velocity of a bun would probably not be that high (maybe 60Km/h) and it should be quite easy to have a pipe full of hot air that bakes the buns. As slight variations in the density and shape of the bun would affect the air-flow it would be necessary to closely monitor the process and adjust the air speed to keep the bun afloat. Manufacturing cheap ovens that use LASERs to monitor the position of the bun should not be difficult.

This might blow the sesame seeds off the bun, but this problem may also be solvable through careful design of the bun shape to make it less aerodynamic and by strongly attaching the seeds. I’m not sure how you would do this.

Toy Helicopter

December 11, 2008 | etbe

I have just bought myself a toy helicopter. I had been tempted to buy one for a while and when I saw them on sale for $30 I couldn’t resist.

My helicopter is model FJ-702 from Flyor, it is controlled by infra-red and is designed for indoor use only. It seems that the trick to flying one is to control the rate of ascent and descent. If the helicopter rises too fast then it may bounce off the ceiling which results in it swaying uncontrollably and crash-landing. If it is allowed to descend too fast then it becomes impossible to slow the rate of descent, I suspect that this is the settling with power [2] problem that is documented in Wikipedia. The helicopter is very fragile, I broke one of the skids and part of the tail assembly before I learned how to control it properly. Probably the main thing to look for when buying a model helicopter is a solid design – some time after buying (and breaking) my helicopter I visited the shop which sold it and heard the owner advising other customers to buy the $45 model which is apparently more solid.

It seems that an ideal design would be a frame made of spring-steel (not to make it springy but to avoid it breaking when it hits). I recommend flying in a room with a carpeted floor, bouncing off a solid surface such as a wood floor will break a helicopter.

Controlling a helicopter is really difficult. The models that I have tried and seen demonstrated all have serious problems with unwanted rotation. My helicopter and the others I have seen have coaxial rotors to avoid rotation without a tail rotor. According to the Wikipedia page a lot of energy is used by a tail rotor [1], as there has been obvious difficulty in designing the helicopter with adequate power (in terms of the light and weak frame and the short battery life) it seems that they didn’t use the tail rotor design to save energy. It’s a pity that instead the designers couldn’t have skipped the flashing LEDs etc.

One strange thing is that one pair of blades can have their angle changed (which appears to be similar to the “semirigid” design shown on the wikipedia page). I’m not sure how increasing the angle of one blade while simultaneously decreasing the angle of it’s pair will do any good. I expect that this has something to do with the fact that the helicopter will rotate at different rates when under different amounts of vertical thrust. This incidentally makes it almost impossible to maneuver the craft. It has a tail rotor on a vertical axis to control forward and reverse movements, but the extreme difficulty in keeping it facing in one direction makes this almost useless.

I wonder what the minimum size at which a gyro-stabiliser becomes practical. But as Wikipedia doesn’t document the existence of an autopilot for full size helicopters the chance of getting one for a toy is small.

In summary, while I have had $30 of fun, I think that a more solid helicopter would be a better investment.

Leaving Optus

November 28, 2008 | etbe

Today I phoned Optus to disconnect my Internet service. Some time ago I got an Internode [1] SOHO connection. This gave me a much faster upload speed (typically 100KB/s) compared with Optus having a maximum of 25KB/s. Also Internode has better value for large data transfer (where “large” in Australia means 25GB per month) and I get a static IP address. I also get unfiltered Internet access, Optus blocks outbound connections to port 25 which forced me to ssh to another server to test my clients’ mail servers.

But the real reason for leaving Optus is based on events two years ago. When I first signed up with Optus four years ago my contract said “unlimited uploads“. What they really meant was “upload as much as you want but if you transfer more than 8KB/s for any period of time you get disconnected“. They claimed that running a default configuration of BitTorrent was a DOS (Denial of Service) attack (the only part of their terms of service that even remotely permitted them to disconnect me). So I was quite unhappy when they cut me off for this.

What really offended me was the second time they cut my connection. I had been running BitTorrent on Friday and Saturday, and they cut my connection off on Wednesday. Once it was determined that the issue was uploads we had a bit of a debate about when my BitTorrent session was terminated, it was my clear memory of using killall to end BitTorrent during a commercial break of a TV show on the Saturday night vs the Optus idiot claiming they had a record of me doing big uploads on the Sunday. But I let the help desk person think that they had won that debate in order to focus on the big issue, why large uploads on a Saturday (or a Sunday) should result in a loss of service on Wednesday (three or four days later). They said “it was to teach you a lesson“! The lesson I learned is that it is best to avoid doing business with Optus. I didn’t immediately cancel my contract, if you have both phone and Internet service through Optus they do offer a reasonable deal (there are a variety of discounts that are offered if you have multiple services through them).

When discussing this matter in the past it had been suggested to me that I try appealing to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman etc. However I didn’t do this because I was in fact breaking the Optus acceptable usage policy for most of the time that I was a customer. When I signed up their AUP prohibited me from running a server and from memory I think it had a specific example of a shell server as something that should not be done, it now prohibits running any automated application that uses the Internet when a human is not present (which presumably includes servers). I’m pretty sure that my SE Linux Play Machine [2] met the criteria.

While I’m reviewing Optus service I need to mention their mail server, here is the summary of the Optus anti-spam measures in protecting my email address etbe@optushome.com.au in September (other months were much the same):
131 emails have been sent to your Inbox.
52 of these emails were identified as spam and moved to the Spam Folder.
39% of your email has been identified as spam.

The email address in question only received legitimate mail from Optus. This meant that I received between two and four valid messages a month, the rest were all spam. So of the 79 messages delivered to me, at least 75 were spam, and Optus blocked less than half the spam. But to be fair, given that the Optus mail servers are listed on some of the DNSBLs it seems reasonable for them to be lax in anti-spam measures. I wonder whether it would be reasonable for an ISP of Optus scale to run the SpamAssassin milter on mail received by their outbound relays to reject the most gross spam from customer machines.

But Optus are good at some things. The download speed was always very good (I could receive data at 1MB/s if the remote server could send that fast). Also their procedures for account cancellation are quite good. The guy who took my call offered to transfer me to the complaints department when I mentioned how I was “taught a lesson”, he also offered me a significant discount if I was to continue using the service. In retrospect I should have had that conversation six months ago and had some cheap service from Optus before getting rid of them. Getting the account terminated happened in a couple of hours. It was so quick that I hadn’t got around to transferring my Play Machine to my Internode account before it happened, so I had a few hours of down-time.

Australian Business and IT Expo

August 16, 2008 | etbe

I’ve just visited the Australian Business and IT Expo (ABITE) [1]. I haven’t been to such an event for a while, but Peter Baker sent a link for a free ticket to the LUV mailing list and I was a bit bored to I attended.

The event was a poor shadow on previous events that I had attended. The exhibition space was shared with an event promoting recreational activities for retirees, and an event promoting wine and gourmet food. I’m not sure why the three events were in the room, maybe they figured that IT people and senior citizens both like gourmet food and wine.

The amount of space used for the computer stands was small, and there was no great crowd of delegates – when they can’t get a good crowd for Saturday afternoon it’s a bad sign for the show.

I have previously blogged about the idea of putting advertising on people’s butts [2]. One company had two women working on it’s stand with the company’s name on the back of their shorts.

A representative of a company in the business of Internet advertising asked me how many hits I get on my blog, I told him 2,000 unique visitors a month (according to Webalizer) which seemed to impress him. Actually it’s about 2,000 unique visitors a day. I should rsync my Webalizer stats to my EeePC so I can give detailed answers to such questions.

The IT event seemed mostly aimed at managers. There were some interesting products on display, one of which was a device from TabletPC.com.au which had quite good handwriting recognition (but the vocabulary seemed limited as it couldn’t recognise a swear-word I used as a test).

Generally the event was fun (including the wine and cheese tasting) and I don’t regret going. If I had paid $10 for a ticket I probably would have been less happy with it.

Updated to fix the spelling of “wine”. Not a “wind tasting”.

Review of the EeePC 701

July 21, 2008 | etbe

I have just bought a EeePC 701 [1], I chose the old model because it’s significantly smaller than the 90x series and a bit lighter too and it had Linux pre-loaded. Also it was going cheap, while I am not paying for it I give the same attention to saving my clients’ money as to saving my own. I ruled out everything that was heavier or larger than an EeePC 901 and everything that cost more than $700. That left only the Linux version of the EeePC 901 (which I couldn’t find on sale) and the EeePC 701 as my options. I also excluded the EeePC 900 because it is bigger and heavier than the 701 but has the same CPU (and therefore can’t run Xen).

In terms of it’s prime purpose (a SSH client) 96*22 characters is the size of a konsole screen with the default (medium) font size when the window is maximised, that is 5% more characters than the standard terminal size of 80*25 but the smaller number of lines is a problem. When using the small font I can get 129*29 which I find quite comfortable to read (it would be impossible for me to read withut glasses – which means having almost average vision for someone in their 30’s). Then I can get 129*31 if I dismiss the tool bar at the bottom of the screen and could probably get another couple of rows if I removed the tabs that Konsole uses to switch between sessions. That would only be viable if using screen extensively as a single session without the ability to switch between programs is not particularly useful (I don’t think that ALT-TAB is adequate for switching between terminal sessions). When running Debian I can get 130*32 with the same font due to smaller window controls, but I’ll write more about converting to Debian in another post. Note that while the OS that ships with the Linux based EeePC machines is based on Debian, it is heavily customised and has some notable differences from a typical Debian install. It has some proprietary software, and uses unionfs for the root and /home filesystems.

The first issue is that Console (the KDE terminal program) can only be accessed from the file manager (via the tools menu or ^t), the machine clearly doesn’t have defaults for someone like me. In principle it’s a multi-user system that can be fully customised, but in practice it’s configured as a single-user machine. Once you have a Console window open you can run “su -” and the root password is the password for the “user” account.

I wonder whether I could get more than 42 rows or more than 140 columns of text that is readable. If so then I could have two console windows fully displayed on screen.

The screen is bright and clear, this is essential as the number of pixels per character is going to be low for any reasonable amount of text to be displayed on screen.

The password that you set when you first use the machine also works for “su -” (in fact that is the only real use as I expect that almost everyone will choose the automatic login option).

The display comprises a significant portion of the weight, if the screen is fully open (about 150 degrees) then it will tip over. Even when the screen is not as far open it will tip due to bumps if resting on your lap on a tram. It’s a pity that the screen is connected at the very back of the base, if the attachment point was a bit closer then it would balance better and also be easy to hold with one hand. The depth of the machine combined with the angle at the back makes it impossible for me to get a good one-handed grip from the base, so typing while standing on a moving tram or bus will be extremely difficult (unlike my iPaQ which I can use at full speed on any form of public transport). Inidentally it would be good if there was an attachment point for a wrist-strap, every camera and most mobile phones have them so it would be good to have the same safety feature in a laptop to facilitate use on public transport. Another reason for not using it as a PDA is the fact that it takes about 7 seconds to resume after hibernating (when the lid is closed).

The PSU is almost as small as that of a mobile phone! This is a major benefit as in the past I have often stored a Thinkpad PSU at a client site for 9-5 jobs as it is heavy enough that I didn’t want to carry it on public transport. The EeePC PSU is light enough that it won’t be unpleasant to carry, and small enough to fit easily into a jacket pocket.

The OS installation is very well done for the basics. It’s easy to launch applications and there is a good selection of educational programs (including the periodic table, planetarium, typing, letters, and hangman, drawing, and a link to www.skoool.com). It’s a pity that they organised the folders according to the area rather than the age, but generally the OS is very well done. Most of the reviews focus on the speed of the CPU, the RAM expansion options, etc, but miss the fact that it is a really nice machine for using as-is.

It is a much better machine for teaching children than any of the machines I’ve seen which are sold specifically for children (see my previous post about an awful computer for kids [2]). I believe that you could give an EeePC to any 3yo and have them doing something useful in a matter of minutes! The ability to freely install new software should not be overlooked when considering a computer for children to use. Someone who buys one now could use it for a few years as an ssh client and then reinstall the original OS and give it to a child as an educational toy.

It has a program to create OGG video files from it’s built-in camera and mic, at this moment it’s the only device I own that can create OGG files (this is a good thing). OGG compression takes a really long time, the Atom CPU in the 901 and 1000x series would be good for this. It’s a pity that the microphone is directly below the mouse buttons, it clearly records the mouse click used to finish recording. The version of mplayer which is installed to play OGG files can also play FLV files downloaded from youtube with youtube-dl (althrough the file association is not set). When I tried to play a MP4 file from ted.com it only gave audio (the video works on a full Debian/Etch installation).

There is a full set of office software, OpenOffice.org, Thunderbird email client, and all the other stuff you might expect.

I find that the biggest problem for using it is the size of the keyboard, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to touch-type properly on it. Not only are the keys small but the positions of non-alphabetical keys are slightly different from most keyboards. Another problem is that the space-bar needs to be pressed near the centre, I usually like to press near the end but that doesn’t work. Those issues are all trade-offs of the small size. My T series Thinkpad is reasonably portable and has a great keyboard so I have the serious typing while travelling angle covered.

One real mistake in the keyboard design is the lack of a LED to indicate whether caps-lock is enabled (there are four status LEDs, adding number five couldn’t be that expensive), this is a real problem when using the vi editor (which uses letters as editor commands and is case-sensitive). It will also occasionally cause problems when entering passwords. There is a caps-lock indicator on screen, but that is in the toolbar at the bottom of the scren (which I like to dismiss to gain an extra two lines of text). It would be good if I could display the status of the caps and num lock keys in the right side of the title-bar of the active window (the only bit of unused space on the screen).

The cooling fan makes an annoying buzz. It’s significantly louder than Thinkpads which dissipate a lot more heat.

The other problems are all software, which is OK as I plan to reinstall it. Firstly it is using Debian and shipped with the broken openssl library. There is a GUI for installing upgrades, but it recommends rebooting after installing each one! Naturally I didn’t choose to reboot, I installed the security update #1.

Then I clicked on the button to install a BIOS update. It told me that it had to reboot to apply the update and gave only one button (OK), I tried closing the window but it rebooted anyway (fortunately the vi swap file allowed me to recover this post – which I am entirely writing on the EeePC).

Aftere booting up again I discovered that the libssl bug still wasn’t fixed and that there was a second udate to apply! Why can’t they have a “apply all updates” button and also have it not automatically reboot? This must be the only Debian-based distribution that forces Windows-style reboots.

But that said, while they made some mistakes in their software it generally provides a good user experience

New Dell Server

July 5, 2008 | etbe

My Dell PowerEdge T105 server (as referenced in my previous post [1]) is now working. It has new memory (why replace just the broken DIMM when you can replace both) and a new BIOS (Dell released an “Urgent” update yesterday that fixes a problem with memory timing and Opteron CPUs). The BIOS update can be installed from a DOS executable (traditionally done from a floppy disk) or an i386 Linux executable. As I didn’t have a floppy drive in my new server I had to use Linux (not that I object to using Linux, but I’d rather have had the technician do it all for me). I used rescue mode from a Fedora 9 CD that was convenient, mounted a USB stick that I had used to store the BIOS update, and then ran it.

The Dell service was quite good, on-site service and the problem was fixed approximately 27 hours after I called them. Replacing a couple of DIMMs is hardly a test of skill for the repair-man (unlike the time in Amsterdam when a Dell repair-man swapped a motherboard in a server with only 20 minutes of down-time). So I haven’t seen evidence of them doing anything really great, but getting someone on-site close to 24 hours after the report is quite decent, especially considering that I paid for the cheapest support that they offer.

When I got it working I was a little surprised by the memory speed, I had hoped that a new 2GHz Opteron would perform similarly to an Intel E2160 and better than an old Pentium-D (see the results here [2]). Also the memtest86+ run took ages on the step of writing random numbers (I don’t recall ever seeing that step on previous runs, let alone having a system spend half an hour doing it). It seems that the CPU (Opteron 1212) doesn’t perform well for random number generation.

In terms of actual operation all I’ve done so far is to install Debian. The process of installing Debian packages was quite fast (even with a RAID-1 reconstruction occurring at the same time) and the boot time is also very quick.

The hard drive “rails” seemed a little flimsy. The way they attach to the drive is that they have screws that end in pins, so you screw them into plastic and the pins just sit in the holes in the drive where screws normally attach. I think that it would make more sense to have them not screw onto the plastic and instead screw onto the disk. Then if the plastic part that connects the two sides was to break it would still be usable. In fact they could just make the “rails” be separate rails as most other manufacturers do.

One thing that surprised me was the lack of PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports. I had expected that such ports would last longer than serial ports and floppy drives. However my Dell has a power connector for a floppy drive and has a built-in serial port (with some BIOS support for management via a serial port – I have not investigated this because I always plan to use a keyboard and monitor). Of course I expect that most other machines will start shipping without PS/2 ports now and I will have to dispose of my stockpile of PS/2 keyboards and mouses. I generally like to keep a few on hand so that I can give friends and relatives a chance to try a selection and discover which type suits them the best. But I probably don’t need a dozen of them for that purpose.

While a comment on my previous post noted that the floppy drive bay can be used for another disk, it seems that a disk is not going to fit in there easily. It looks like I might be able to install a disk there from the front if I unscrew the face-plate – but that’s more effort than I’m prepared to exert for testing the system (for production I will only have two disks).

In terms of noise, the Dell seems considerably better than a NEC machine which was designed for desktop use. Of course it’s difficult to be certain as part of the noise is from hard disks and one of the disks I’ve installed in the Dell is a WD “Green” disk and the other may have newer technology to minimise noise. Also the mounting brackets for disks in a server may be better at damping vibrations than screwing a disk to the chassis of a desktop machine. Finally the NEC machine does seem to make more noise now than it used to, so maybe it would be best to compare after a few months use to allow for minor wear on the moving parts.

I was initially going to run Debian/Etch on the machine. But as Debian didn’t recognise the built-in Ethernet card and the Xen kernel crashed when doing intensive disk IO I was forced to use CentOS. CentOS 5.1 didn’t start my DomU’s for some reason (which I never diagnosed) but CentOS 5.2 worked perfectly.

Finally I was shocked when I realised that the Dell has no sound hardware! When the CentOS post-install program said that it couldn’t find a sound device I thought that meant that it didn’t support the hardware (it’s the sort of thing that sometimes happens when you get a new machine). But it actually has no sound support! It seems really strange that Dell design a desk-side server (which is quiet) and don’t include sound support. If nothing else then using something like randomsound to take input from the microphone line as a source of entropy is going to be useful on servers.

While the seven USB ports initially seemed like a lot, being forced to use them for keyboard, mouse, and sound (if I end up using it on a desktop) means that there would only be four left.

Dell PowerEdge T105

June 26, 2008 | etbe

Today I received a Dell PowerEDGE T105 for use by a client. My client had some servers for development and testing hosted in a server room at significant expense. They also needed an offsite backup of critical data. So I suggested that they buy a cheap server-class machine, put it on a fast ADSL connection at their home, and use Xen DomU’s on that for development, testing, and backup. My client liked the concept but didn’t like the idea of having a server in his home.

So I’m going to run the server from my home. I selected a Dell PowerEDGE tower system because it’s the cheapest server-class machine that can be purchased new. I have a slight preference for HP hardware but HP gear is probably more expensive and they are not a customer focussed company (they couldn’t even give me a price).

So exactly a week after placing my order I received my shiny new Dell system, and it didn’t work. I booted a CentOS CD and ran “memtest” and the machine performed a hard reset. When it booted again it informed me that the event log had a message, and the message was “Uncorrectable ECC Error” with extra data of “DIMM 2,2“. While it sucks quite badly to receive a new machine that doesn’t work, that’s about the best result you can hope for when you have a serious error on the motherboard or the RAM. A machine without ECC memory would probably just randomly crash every so often and maybe lose data (see my previous post on the relative merits of ECC RAM and RAID [1]).

So I phoned up Dell (it’s a pity that their “Packing Slip” was a low quality photocopy which didn’t allow me to read their phone number and that the shipping box also didn’t include the number so I had to look them up on the web) to get technical support. Once we had established that by removing the DIMMs and reinserting them I had proved that there was a hardware fault they agreed to send out a technician with a replacement motherboard and RAM.

I’m now glad that I bought the RAM from Dell. Dell’s business model seems to revolve around low base prices for hardware and then extremely high prices for extras, for example Dell sells 1TB SATA disks for $818.40 while MSY [1] has them for $215 or $233 depending on brand.

When I get the machine working I will buy two 1TB disks from MSY (or another company with similar prices). Not only does that save some money but it also means that I can get different brands of disk. I believe that having different brands of hard disk in a RAID-1 array will decrease the probability of having them both fail at the same time.

One interesting thing about the PowerEdge T105 is that Dell will only sell two disks for it, but it has four SATA connectors on the motherboard, one is used for a SATA DVD player so it would be easy to support three disks. Four disks could be installed if a PCIe SATA controller was used (one in the space for a FDD and another in the space for a second CD/DVD drive), and if you were prepared to go without a CD/DVD drive then five internal disks could probably work. But without any special hardware the space for a second CD/DVD drive is just begging to be used for a third hard disk, most servers only use the primary CD/DVD drive for installing the OS and I expect that the demand for two CD/DVD drives in a server is extremely low. Personally I would prefer it if servers shipped with external USB DVD drives for installing the OS. Then when I install a server room I could leave one or two drives there in case a system recovery is needed and use the rest for desktop machines.

One thing that they seem to have messed up is the lack of a filter for the air intake fan at the front of the case. The Opteron CPU has a fan that’s about 11cm wide which sucks in air from the front of the machine, in front of that fan there is a 4cm gap which would nicely fit a little sponge filter. Either they messed up the design or somehow my air filter got lost in transit.

Incidentally if you want to buy from Dell in Australia then you need to configure your OS to not use ECN (Explicit Congestion Notification [2] as the Dell web servers used for sales rejects all connections from hosts with ECN enabled. It’s interesting that the web servers used for providing promotional information work fine with ECN and it’s only if you want to buy that it bites you.

But in spite of these issues, I am still happy with Dell overall. Their machine was DOA, that happens sometimes and the next day service is good (NB I didn’t pay extra for better service). I expect that they will fix it tomorrow and I’ll buy more of their gear in future.

Update: I forgot to mention that Dell shipped the machine with two power cables. While two power cables is a good thing for the more expensive servers that have redundant PSUs, for a machine with only one PSU it’s a bit of a waste. For some time I’ve been collecting computer power cables faster than I’ve been using them (due to machines dying and due to clients who want machines but already have spare power cables). So I’ve started giving them away at meetings of my local LUG. At the last meeting I gave away a bag of power cables and I plan to keep taking cables to the meetings until people stop accepting them.

etbe – Russell Coker

Linux, politics, and other interesting things

Category Archives: Review