New Host

 Internet, Linux, Reviews, Ubuntu  Comments Off
Sep 052010
 

I can’t remember whether I made a blog post about my previous VPS switch to Fivebean (now part of Bluemile Inc). The service I received from Fivebean was brilliant, and I can’t fault it at all. I opened a few support requests with them during the initial period (as Fivebean), and recently (as Bluemile) – I genuinely cannot fault the replies I’ve had, which have been stunningly quick, and incredibly helpful.

However…I have (as of yesterday) migrated the site to a new VPS with Linode. I have almost the same VPS (now a Linode 512), however I was suffering from some high memory usage with the Fivebean VPS, which have inexplicably gone away with the Linode host. I don’t think this was the way the physical server was setup, it could quite easily have been Ubuntu 9.10, which is what the previous host was running. The new server is now running 10.04.1 LTS.

The main reason for me moving the service to Linode was not because of bad service from Fivebean/Bluemile, or because of the high memory usage issue. It was, in fact, because I almost always experienced lag when I was accessing the server via ssh. And when you run some things in screen via ssh (IRC being one of these), and frequently use the ssh connection to the server, you’ll soon come to realise that it becomes frustrating using it with lag all the time.
Again, this was nothing to do with the server (as far as I’m aware), it was more to do with the fact that the datacenter is in Texas, whereas I’m in the UK. The new Linode host is in a datacenter based in London, which is around 100mi away from where I live, thus, much better in terms of lag. Not to mention a convenient iOS app from Linode which allows me to check the stats of the server wherever I am, as well as reboot it, if necessary. Combined with the SSH app I also have, remote administration is remarkably easy for me.

I’d still recommend Fivebean/Bluemile to anybody who is in the market for a VPS, as they offer incredible service, however, Linode is a strong competitor, and it’s hard to promote one before the other.

 Posted by at 13:45  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

The Official Ubuntu Book – 5th Edition

 Linux, Reviews, Ubuntu  Comments Off
Jul 202010
 

I received my copy of the new Ubuntu book on Monday. Happy times! I have Matthew Helmke to thank for the copy of the book as well. I guess at this point, I should point out that I was asked to review said book.

From what I read, the book can prove incredibly useful to newcomers, and old-timers alike. I really do think it’s well written, helpful, and I would quite happily recommend it to anybody looking for a book on Ubuntu. Not to mention, the book is compact (much thinner, but equally as full as, some other Ubuntu books I own), and very stylish…that’s my opinion of course…but I think this book would look quite the part sitting on anybody’s bookshelf.

See for yourself:

Ubuntu Book 5th Edition

The book can be bought on Amazon (UK site link), or many other bookstores.

 Posted by at 23:18  Tagged with: , , , , ,

Swype

 Other, Reviews  3 Responses »
Jun 212010
 

Now, for those of you who haven’t heard of swype, I suggest you head on over to http://swypeinc.com and take a look, I’m sure you won’t be disappointed. I think the beta is open for another couple of days.

Essentially, it allows you to “swype”over the word your want to type and, somehow, it works! Though it does appear that it’s only available for android at the moment, unfortunately.

And yes, this entire post was written from swype on my phone.

 Posted by at 14:08  Tagged with: , ,

Qosmio Review: Part 3d

 Reviews  11 Responses »
May 062008
 

Gaming

Sorry for the delay between the last part and this part – I was ill, and GTA IV was released ;)

So anyway, I have no screenshots, as the laptop has been formatted in order for it’s return later today. However I can say that apart from the very latest games, such as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (CoD4) etc. This laptop managed to run everything on full settings.

The games I tried out on the laptop (albeit briefly tried) were:

  • The Sims 2 (incl. Nightlife)
  • Command & Conquer 3 Kane Edition
  • CoD4
  • Black & White 2
  • Half Life 2/Counterstrike Source
  • Unreal Tournament 2004

For a little run down of the games and how they looked and performed, click below :)

More Detail!

 Posted by at 10:38  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Qosmio Review: Part 3c

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Apr 252008
 

HD DVD Playback

As I mentioned in part 1 of this review, the Qosmio has a HD DVD-R Drive :D Now as I have a few HD-DVD’s, I figured I would try this out. Especially given that it also sports a Full 1080p HD Screen!

So I popped in the HD DVD (The Matrix if you must know) and the HD DVD player launched. I have to admit, this slowed the system down a little, and changed the theme to Windows Vista basic, however I expected this, as playing HD content requires a lot of processing power.

I should also mention that if I paused the movie, and minimised the player window, I was able to do other things (i.e. yesterday I was torrenting the new Ubuntu 8.04 release all day).

So, overall, combined with the killer audio system, the HD DVD playback was brilliant, the images were sharp, black’s were very dark etc. I think the sharpness of the image was helped a little by the small 17″ screen – It’s small when you consider I watch HD movies on a 37″ screen usually ;) – however I can’t really say much more than this, other than the playback was flawless :) So I’ve attached some screenshots, though I don’t know how good the image quality will be, I know it won’t do justice to the HD images ;)

See the Pictures

 Posted by at 20:32  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

Qosmio Review: Part 3b

 Reviews, Ubuntu  Comments Off
Apr 252008
 

Ubuntu Linux

Yes that’s right, I managed to get Ubuntu installed on this machine. I installed Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) as it was at the Release Candidate (RC) stage when I tried it.

It all runs perfectly smoothly. I had to change the boot options on the installation CD, due to the Nvidia graphics card, which needed a proprietary driver. This was the most painful part of the installation, as on a screen with a native resolution of 1920×1200, I had to run at 800×600 :’(

After that it was all smooth sailing, I compiled a few apps, and used it as I would my own. Everything worked just fine, I was impressed that the volume control (the disc “thing” on the left of the keyboard) even worked! Sadly the touch buttons didn’t work, but I expected this, as I know they’re controlled by software and not hardware.

I didn’t manage to get the fingerpint reader to work either, which I wasn’t too fussed about, but it would’ve been nice. Overall I was impressed with the Linux experience I had with the Qosmio. The battery life didn’t differ from Windows, though it doesn’t on my own laptop either.

So overall, the Qosmio does actually work pretty well with Ubuntu in my experience, I wasn’t expecting much because Toshiba laptop can be notoriously difficult to get working properly (just read through some of the threads in the UbuntuForums ;) ).

There are also some pictures of the qosmio running Ubuntu if you would like to take a look :

See The Pictures

 Posted by at 12:47  Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

Qosmio Review: Part 3a

 Reviews  7 Responses »
Apr 222008
 

This part has been split into 4 subsections (a,b,c,d) to cover the following topics:

Windows, Ubuntu Linux, HD DVD & Gaming, so that said, onto -

Performance: Windows Vista

For those of you who have used Windows Vista: The Windows Experience Index tells me that the laptop scores a respectable 4.6 rating.

I’ve noticed that occasionaly, the laptop will boot fine, I’ll log in, and then it will take a good 3-4 minutes to load up everything before I can start using it. Other times it’s <1 minute, but on average, I would say between 1-2 minutes.

Obviously this gets quite annoying. I don’t even have many programs loading on startup, I turned off most of the Toshiba apps, I didn’t need them. All that starts is Windows Live Messenger, AVG Anti-Virus, Daemon Tools Lite, and that’s it (that I’ve added anyway). Having said that however, after the initial pain of waiting for it to load, it runs pretty quick, and is generally very snappy and responsive, even with Aero enabled ;)

Overall I’m pretty impressed with the responsiveness on Windows, I’ve been running a Game (full screen, high settings – and I’m not saying what game yet) and minimised it to check some stuff on the net, and ended up writing a document in OpenOffice.org Writer, and there was no noticeable lack in performance.

1 Gripe I had however, is that the battery life is pretty average (verging on poor). Though I realise that the size and components in this laptop scream “my battery life is rubbish”, and I expected this, it does have 1 issue:
The battery lasts around 1 hour 30 minutes – 2 hours 10 minutes with full screen brightness (it depends on the activities), which I find I have to have, because dimming the screen makes it very difficult to read.

That aside, I’m pretty pleased with the performance when running Windows Vista on the laptop.

 Posted by at 09:35  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

Qosmio Review: Part 2

 Reviews  1 Response »
Apr 162008
 

Bundled Software

As I’m sure nearly everybody who has bought a new computer, has had the torture of preinstalled (a.k.a bundled) software. Most of us will remove it, as they’re usually 30, 60 or 90 day trials of some program you probably won’t need.

Some of the worst in my experiences are:

  1. AOL, it is truly terrible, though I’ve not seen it for a few years now
  2. McAfee/Norton, if I want anti-virus, then I will get Anti-Virus!! [Note - I use AVG Free for my Windows machines, it works perfectly well, at no cost!]
  3. Manufacturer software (I’ve noticed HP have a lot of software coming on their laptops still:()

So, with a brief history of that, here comes the details of the bundled software on the Qosmio G40 I received:

  • Loads of Toshiba Apps
  • Norton Internet Security 2008 Trial (90 days)

Now as I stated above, I don’t really like preinstalled software…I can cope with the manufacturer applications, in fact, they actually seem pretty useful on this laptop, as they include an HD DVD player, which for some odd reason, wouldn’t work unless I opened the app then inserted the HD DVD, more on this in a later part. Also included was the Fingerprint reading software, which allows me to log-on (and more!) using a Fingerprint, which is pretty cool.

And Norton…well…I make it no secret that I dislike Norton software, I think it slows the system down after a while, so the first thing I did (after installing Firefox) was uninstall it, re-enable the Windows firewall, and then download and install AVG Free.

That’s really all the software that came bundled with it…a couple of useful ones included to (I noticed Adobe Acrobat Reader was already installed). So that was quite good to see, I’m glad manufacturers are cutting down on the amount of software preinstalled.

Update: I have to say that I did in fact forget the most important piece of bundled software. The laptop came with Genuine Windows Vista Ultimate :) Though annoyingly I had to go through the process of installing all the updates :(

 Posted by at 12:43  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,

Qosmio Review: Part 1

 Reviews  3 Responses »
Apr 142008
 

First off, let me start by saying, I have absolutely NO idea exactly how many parts this review will have, but anyway, onto the first part!

System Specs

Ok, so from what I can gather, the laptop has the following:

  • 2x 200GB Hard Drives
  • Intel Core 2 Duo T7700 (2.40GHz)
  • 2GB RAM
  • Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT (512Mb w/HDMI out)
  • HD DVD-R Drive (i.e. can write HD DVD’s)*
  • Intel Wifi 4965
  • Harman/Kardon speaker system**
  • Bluetooth 2.0
  • 17″ Full 1080p HD Screen (actual resolution 1920×1200)
  • Array of Touch-Sensitive Buttons
  • Fingerprint Reader (I use this to log onto the PC, I think it’s awesome :p, it must be the big kid in me!)
  • TV Tuner
  • 2.0 Megapixel Built-in Webcam

*I do have an HD-DVD player, so I’ve tried this briefly. Though as I’m sure many are aware, support for HD DVD will be non-existent after around June time. Sad as it is, therefore I hope that future Qosmio models come equipped with a Blu-Ray drive rather than HD-DVD.

**I’ve never heard of Harman/Kardon though I have to say, the speakers on this laptop are BRILLIANT, not just decent for a laptop, they’re really good anyway, and I can safely say, they are the best speakers I have ever heard on a laptop, it even beats a fair few desktops on this! It’s even got a sub-woofer!

Update: Added TV Tuner, Webcam & Fingerprint reader to the list of hardware

 Posted by at 21:19  Tagged with: , , , , , ,
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