It’s me, live with it

So, I’ve been thinking these past few hours.

I’m going back to using purely Linux.

What makes me decided to do this is the fact that my last few posts was about upgrading hardware, mostly for gaming. It is not a bad thing, of course, it’s just that I’ve been playing games too much that my campus assignment was a bit neglected.

Besides, upgrading hardware for pc games will be a never ending circle. You buy a 4850 today, you will find something stronger in a short time. Hardware upgrading costs quite an amount of money, so I don’t think everyone will be able to follow it. I will keep following hardware development, of course, so this blog will keep on running.

What about my upgrade marathon plan?

I’ll continue it. But now, instead of focusing in performance, the upgrade will focus in functionality (e.g. Larger hard drive, etc.).

My Linux distribution of choice is, unexpectedly, Mandriva. I was a happy OpenSuse user for quite a while, but the latest release somehow dissapoint me, so I’m moving. Why not Ubuntu? Simple, I hate it.

Now I’m curently downloading Mandriva’s latest release, 2009. Hopefully it will be done in the morning.

So, my Nokia 5070 refuses most of my attempts to charge it. This, as you might have guessed, pissed me off. So I went to do a research for a decent new phone. After reading specifications and comparing prices, I went and bought an LG KM380t. (those guys making the flash-infested-site-that-does-not-even-list-this-phone should be strangled)

I don’t have any decent camera, so I used a Sony Ericsson Z710i. Sue me.

Anyway, here’s some more pictures of me (my hands, actually) holding the phone, for size comparison:

This phone comes in "Dark Brown, Orange Point" colour that doesn’t make any sense to me. The colour only shown on music control keys and inner keypad

If you haven’t guessed yet, It’s a semi-flip phone, much like the old Sony Ericsson T10 or T28. And, like them, It’s rather slim.

See?

Now, I’ve been tinkering around with his phone and am rather satisfied with it.

First, the part which makes me want to buy the phone, the music player.

The sound quality from the built-in speaker is surprisingly good. No bass, of course, but you can’t expect to get good bass from integrated speaker. The treble and mid sounds comes out nicely, and the volume is loud enough for most purposes.

But the sound quality with the bundled earphone is, I should say, freakin’ good. I tried plugging my Sennheiser HD212 to it, and the little canalphone gave it a run for its money. The sound is clear, and… well… I should just say really good, minus the somewhat unpronounced bass. but that’s it for the sound weakness. And, If it means anything, this phone has "natural sound" enhancement by Mark Levinson. It is also written on the side of the box.

The music player itself can use some improvements. Whenever I shuffle, It seems to be giving me the same ‘random’ order. And if I juggle through the menu or the music player itself while playing anything, I notice some slowdown. It seems that this phone doesn’t have enough juice to multitask.

And the side buttons that controls volume, opens music player, and keylock, is rather hard to press with my bulky fingers.

Next, Internet connectivity.

This phone doesn’t support 3g. But the specification lists this phone as EDGE - capable, so it is fast enough for me. And, sure enough, It blasted through the web using opera mini. It is not as responsive as 3g phones, but again, if I need quick Internet connection, I’ll get it on my PC.

I tried connecting it to my PC as a modem, but It can’t complete any speed test or download, but I presume it is because of my crappy provider (IM3 GPRS) and because I’m trying it on hot traffic time, Sunday morning. For general purpose, though, I’d bet this phone is more than fast enough.

Now that we’ve touched PC connectivity, Let’s talk about it. It is a product of designer programming, a program that does nothing much but tries hard to look cool while doing it, resulting in sloppy performance. While trying to transfer music files to it, I ended up just using the phone’s "Mass Storage" USB connectivity mode, then synchronizing music files with Media Monkey. Because, as you might have guessed, the bundled music-sync software sucks.

The camera, just like that Z710i pictures above, sucks. But what would you expect from a music phone?

You agree? Good. But it is decent enough for me to take review photos for this blog. Expect ugliness to come soon.

I think the rest of the phone is pretty standard, so I’m not gonna write about them, maybe besides the "Mini Game World" that is rather fun to play.

Overall, I really like this phone, It sucks right at the feature I don’t need, so I like the rest. Well worth the money.

I had a disagreement with a friend of mine. He said that a graphics card’s brand will determine its performance. I think the opposite. I’m following dan’s must-be-cheap doctrine.

I think so because there are only a few board manufacturer, versus a helluva number of brands. This means that quite a few brands will share the same board, Maybe they put a custom heatpipe cooler, but that’s about it.

And as far as I can see, they perform pretty much the same, too. An example here at firingsquad. If you look at the boards which shares the same clockspeed, you can see that there’s no performance difference. Even when you’re comparing it with the highest factory-overclocked type, you can only see 13% difference. It is big enough to be noticeable, but not big enough for me to care. Besides, I like overclocking the card myself, so if I can save 40 bucks by buying a cheap brand, I will without hesitation.

Shamus made a somewhat dark post here. He’s pretty much talking about how future PCs will be equipped with user-hating DRM chips, and how our future computing will be badly ruined by them. Now that I know this, I try to stay calm. And I advise that you do, too.

The reason from my calmness come from, as Shamus pictured, the end of the spectrum. The open source activist, software freedom fighter, Linuxers, and pretty much all open source programmer.

By the time the actual scheme unveiled, I’ll be ready with my OpenSuse/Fedora Install DVD and haul away with Linux to sunset. I might even actually grow a beard.

This, of course, is not a solution to everyone. I still see around 1:20 ratio between Linux and Windows user, counting pirated Windows. And I’m talking about the Information and technology community (my campus). I’m pretty sure the ratio in general public is pretty much the same to worse.

But to people who use computer just for basic task, like browsing, or office work, or even image and music processing, Linux is pretty much ready to accommodate them. It means that most home users can migrate to Linux easily, they just need a little time learning.

Gamers, though, are not that lucky. Most All of the big games are released on Windows platform, maybe Apple sometimes, but Windows nonetheless is still the choice for gamers. Linux games are growing nicely, but it is still far away from actually competing in the same playground with Windows.

Sure, there are Cedega and Crossover in Linux, maybe Wine for those hardcore Linux user, but they are still too buggy to use on regular basis. They are truly nice development steps, though, those who are desperate to play games on Sabayon or something should try them.

All in all, I’m basically ready to avoid the worst when it comes, I’ll just barricade the kitchen, and hide under the table with a loaded shotgun….

Wait, that’s not right.

I mean I’ll just jump into Linux. I’m pretty sure when there are enough gamers making the jump, the gaming part will sort itself.

So, my house has electricity problem for about half a year now. No, I’m not kidding.

The circuit breaker keeps turning off, though none of the fuse popped out. Which is pretty much normal, seeing as the fuses are rated 6A or more. This causes the central breaker to overload before any of the fuses.

You might think that it is a small problem. To show you how bad this situation is for me, try imagining a one-minute power outage. Done? Now imagine it happens six times daily. Good, now you understand.

Well, to be honest, I have a clear idea of what’s actually happening, and so do my electrical-engineer uncle. An air conditioner unit is broken. When we checked the power consumption, it reads 5A all by itself. Which means it is drawing 1100 Watt of electricity. We told this to the owner, with no further action. We eventually grew tired and decided to wait until the air conditioner unit is either totally broken or catches fire. Hopefully not the latter.

That might be too light a reason to stop the pressure. That is true, but when they say that my computer is drawing huge power, I just stopped caring.

Now, these outages is effecting me very badly, as I work with my computer a lot. And as you already know, power outages and computer using is really not the best combination.

I actually bought a UPS and used it for a while.

One day, when the power goes off, I realized that I didn’t hear my UPS beeping. so I ran upstairs to find it dead while trying to protect my PC. Okay, only the battery is dead. Now that heroic UPS is stored in a cupboard, waiting for me to get a new battery for it.

You see now, the outages are bad and often enough to kill a UPS. Imagine what will happen to my PC in the long run.

I really must buy some low-amperage fuses soon enough.