Setting up multiple Firefox profiles in Ubuntu 12.04 and Windows 7

Introduction

One of the more underrated features of the Firefox Web Browser is the ability to set up different user profiles.

This feature comes quite a bit in handy when you have different people using the same computer, but don't require the overhead of setting up separate user accounts for each individual using it.

Setting up separate profiles allows multiple people to have Firefox configured the way they like it: with different bookmarks, saved passwords,  personal history, and so on.

Plenty of people like to keep their browsers signed in to the services they like for convenience (not having to keep signing back in), but when multiple people share a computer, signing people in and out all the time can be a hassle. Enter Profiles, unique "Firefox's" (so to speak) for each person. On my system, I have three profiles: One of myself, one for my better half, and one for guests which uses Firefox In-Private mode so their personal passwords, etc., are not tracked. You could even have different profiles for work and personal use, if you choose.

Firefox profiles are very easy to set up and manage, in today's post, I'll show you how to set them up on both Ubuntu 12.04 and Windows 7.

Ubuntu 12.04

I'll start off with a few assumptions here: You already have one Firefox profile set up and one short cut in your Unity Launcher (or other launcher of your choice). This is how Ubuntu comes by default, so it's not too crazy to assume this. If for some reason this isn't the case, you can easily install Firefox with the Ubuntu Software Center. Also, we'll assume that your secondary profiles (for other users), will also be accessed from the Unity launcher.

Creating new profiles

Before adding the new Firefox sessions to the Ubuntu browser, we'll have to set them up in Firefox first. First, launch a Terminal. Then, from the command line, run:

firefox -no-remote -ProfileManager

Most likely, you already have one profile named something like "Default". Feel free to keep this named Default, or rename it to your own name. Just remember whatever name you give it.

To make a new profile, click the "Create Profile" button:

Firefox will give you some data about profiles (pretty much what I summed up above), and then you can click "Next" and enter a name for the new profile. You can also change the directory the profile is stored, although most likely the default will be sufficient.

Create as many profiles as you desire, remembering the name for each. When you are done, close the Profile Manager.

Setting up different launchers for each Profile

There are actually two different ways you could go about this. You could just keep using your single Firefox launcher, but have it ask on launch what profile to use. To do this, from the Profile Manager, simply uncheck "Don't ask on startup". This will allow you to pick which profile you want each time you start.

But personally, I prefer to have a separate Unity launcher for each profile. This allows each person to access their own profile with just a single click. This is pretty each to set up, but also requires some more Terminal to work. Basically, we're going to change the default launcher to open one profile (your own for instance), then make new launchers for the other profiles.

From Terminal, navigate to:

/usr/share/applications

Here, you'll find all (or at least most) of the launchers used by Ubuntu and Unity, there should be one for Firefox called "firefox.desktop". Open it in your favourite text editor (with root access).

There is a lot of stuff in here, but you only have to make a very minor change or two. Look in the file for the lines beginning with "Exec=". This is the command which is executed when the launcher is run. For example:

Exec=firefox %u

To make it launch a specific profile, use the -P flag:


Exec=firefox -no-remote -P Jason %u

The "-no-remote" flag causes Firefox to launch it's own process rather than trying to connect to an existing process. This way, we can have different Firefox sessions with each profile open simultaneously. Make the change to all Exec lines in the file and save.

Pro-Tip: You might notice upon saving that the Firefox icon disappears from the Unity launcher. If it does, no sweat. Just open /usr/share/applications in Nautilus, find the "firefox.desktop" file, and drag it over to the Unity launcher. Keep Nautilus open since you'll need to do this for subsequent launchers.

To make a new launcher for another profile, just copy the firefox.desktop file to a different name, e.g. "profile2_firefox.desktop". Open it in a text editor and make the same changes to the "Exec" line. But don't save yet.

In order for Unity to isolate this launcher from the original, it's important that you also change the "Name=" line. For example, change:

Name=Firefox Web Browser

to something more personal like:

Name=Profile2_Firefox

Do this for all instances of "Name".

You can also change the icon easily too, so there aren't two Firefox icons in the Launcher. To do this, change the "Icon=" from:

Icon=firefox

To something else. One icon I like looks like a small picture of the planet:

Icon=/usr/share/icons/gnome/48x48/emblems/emblem-web.png

But feel free to poke around /usr/share/icons and find one you like better!

Finally, once you've saved the launcher, don't forget to to to /usr/share/applications on Nautilus and drag it over to the Unity launcher!

That's about it, just repeat the process for each profile you want. If you'd like a "Private" session to use (to avoid tracking passwords, etc), use the "-private" flag in your Exec line.

You can also keep using a "default" Firefox icon if you wish. This will cause the last profile to be launched which was launched with the ProfileManager. One might want to do this if you frequently launch links from other other applications (e.g. Thunderbird). In this case, just keep the default Firefox icon using the most frequently used profile (your own), but use alternate icons to launch other profiles.

Pro-Tip: I also set up a keyboard shortcut to launch the Guest Firefox session. To do this, just make a script (in the "Home", or "Home/Scripts" folder for example) with the following content:


firefox -P Guest -no-remote -private

Replace "Guest" with whatever you might have named the Guest profile. Save, then right click on the file and go to "Properties", then the "Permissions" tab. Check "Allow executing this file as a program":

Now, launch the HUD and type "keyboard". Open the Keyboard settings and go to "Shortcuts". Under "Custom Shortcuts" click the "+" button. Give it a name, and point the command to your script. Click Apply. To active the new short cut, click on where it says "Disabled", then hit the key combination you want to trigger it (for example CTRL-ALT-P). Now try hitting CTRL-ALT-P and you should see the private Guest profile launch.

Windows 7

The process in Windows 7 is quite similar, but seems to be less flexible then Ubuntu.

To open the ProfileManager in Windows 7, hit Win+R to open the Run menu. Then, type "firefox -no-remote -p" to open the Profile manager.

Create your Profiles exactly as described above.You can also un-check "Don't ask at start up" if you want to pick the profile to use every time.

Assuming to have your Firefox icon docked on the Start Bar (a.k.a. Task Bar), you can continue to just click on that icon, which will launch whatever the last profile started with the Profile Manager was. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to make the docked Firefox icon always start a specific profile (but if you know, please mention it in the comments).

You also also create shortcuts to launch other Firefox profiles. To do this, from the Desktop, Right-click and say "New->Shortcut". Use "Browse" to select the Firefox executable (you'll likely find it near C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox").

But before saving it, make the following change:

Before: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -no-remote -P "Profile1"

Where "Profile1" is the name of an alternate profile.

You can make as many of these on the Desktop as you want, and even drag them into the Start Menu. Unfortunately, the Start Bar only seems to allow us to have a single icon, which launches whatever was last launched with the ProfileManager. I'm not sure why this is, but it's a limitation we'll have to live with for now (again, if you have any advice, please let us know).


Hopefully this is a feature of Firefox you'll find useful, I certainly do. Just one of the things that makes Firefox such a great browser!

One final tip: You can protect your saved passwords in Firefox by using a Master Password. This can come in handy in case your computer is ever stolen or its security otherwise compromised.

Ubuntu 12.04: The Good. The Bad. The (Not So?) Ugly.

Hello friends!

I recently upgraded by home PC from Ubuntu 10.04 to Ubuntu 12.04. I decided to make a hardware change as well, specifically, upgrading my primary hard drive from a 320GB SATA to a 2TB SATA.

Now, I didn't actually "upgrade" the 10.04 to Ubuntu 12.04 in place, I installed a fresh copy of Ubuntu 12.04 on the 2TB drive and manually migrated my programs, settings and files over to the new system. I personally like to start with fresh installs when possible, and given all the custom modifications I had made to my system, I feared an upgrade would cause more problems then it was worth (if you've had a different experience, let us know).

I didn't take the choice of upgrading to Ubuntu 12.04 lightly. I knew I would have to upgrade 10.04 sooner or later, only having a year 10.04 support left, and didn't want to let it go until the last minute. Having heard a lot of dislike between versions 10.10, 11.04, and 11.10 (the Unity UI for example), I seriously considered switching to another distribution such as Linux Mint.

In the end, I decided to give Ubuntu 12.04 a try. From looking at the screen shots and reading the design philosophy, I decided Unity was worth a try. Even if I didn't like it, I knew I could always install another desktop on top, like classic GNOME, Cinnamon, or GNOME 3, without having to switch distros.

So far, I'm happy with what I see, and think I'll be sticking around with Ubuntu, at least for now. The future is always open though!

The Good


Off the bat, a lot of 12.04, including the GUI, impressed me. Install and format process was very fast, even on the 2TB drive. I haven't tried setting up a dual boot system (Linux only) but that has been extremely easy since at least 9.10 so assuming it's been kept up to date with newer versions of other OS's, I don't imagine much of an issue.

Nvidia Binary Drivers


Nvidia Binary Drivers were detected and installed out of the box, no configuration needed. This gave me access to 3D acceleration and advanced multi-display configuration - a must have for a HTPC. I did use the Hardware Drivers option to upgrade to the "bleeding edge" drivers, though rather this was necessary or not, I'm not sure.

HDMI Audio Support


Remember this post? Thanks to an updated ALSA, HDMI Audio worked out of the box too. They also fixed the under-enumeration problem present in 10.04. I immediately had a (single) HDMI audio option in the Sound Devices that I could select and move back and forth seemlessly, no fuss. Success!

New MythTV & HVR1600 support


Since one of the main purposes of the my machine is to use as a HTPC and DVR, I installed MythTV straight from the repositories, and no issues setting up my card. Just don't forget to add you cx18.conf file to /etc/modprobe.d :)

Webcam Support

In 10.04 I was never quite able to get my Webcam and my HVR1600 working together. In 12.04, they seem to both work happily, though I haven't tried unplugging the webcam yet (that may still cause some issues to be aware of)

Improved Third Party Software

Firefox and Thunderbird are installed by default. Maybe you don't like them, but I do. Skype works fairly well and is easily installable. The Ubuntu Software Center is really nice, so far I haven't had any need to use another package manager (though I may need to at some point).

The Bad


USB3.0


I never got USB3.0 working reliably on 10.04, and 12.04 doesn't seem to have improved much. Although the Linux kernel officially supports USB3.0, I'm guessing the there is something amiss with the drivers for my specific chipset (the 3.0 ports are build into the motherboard). I am certain the ports, cords and external hard drive are all USB3.0, but I've never gotten any more then a sustained 60 MB/sec (480Mb/sec, USB2.0) transfer speeds when connected to the USB3.0 ports. Worse, I get sporadic "unmounting" of the USB drive when connected over 3.0, and cannot remount without restarting the computer. I realize this is likely the fault of a driver, or missing kernel module (and less Ubuntu), but it's still irritating. Hopefully I can figure out the bottle neck and start getting reliable USB 3.0 support.

Flash

So basically, YouTube videos have a blueish tint. Yep, you heard me right. Apparently, this is a bug in Flash,  but since Adobe has officially discontinued Flash for Linux, with 11.2 being the last version, it is unlikely the bug will be fixed. Now, there are workarounds, the easiest being to disable hardware acceleration,  but come on, something like this shouldn't be necessary as now I have to drive my CPU hotter. 

Another bizarre issue with Flash if you are using dual desktops: Full screen sometimes only appears on your *primary* display, even if the originating window was on the second. Now, I didn't have this problem with YouTube (full screen was on the correct display), but I did have this problem with sites that used their own custom player based on Flash, such as video from the sites of TV Networks. I found a work around for this using gDevilspie (see this thread). But this only addressed the *position* of the window, *not* the size. so unless the two displays were running at the resolution, the full screen was cropped and I could only see the top-left portion. My only work around of this (for now) is to run both displays at the same resolution. 

Hopefully with Flash for Linux discontinued, Canonical (or someone out there) will do the right thing and take over the reigns of support Flash going into the future. Even if you wish Flash would just die, pretending it's already dead is not the solution to a good user experience.

LIRC

LIRC is a great program, unless your card just happens to not be supported. This isn't LIRC's fault, it tries its best, but for legal reasons there are certain remote they just can't support. Getting LIRC to work for my HVR1600 card was a *huge* pain on 10.04, requiring me to build a custom kernel module. I did eventually get it, but if memory serves, it took several months.

Unfortunately, my card *still* isn't supported in the newest version of LIRC with 12.04. Likely, it never will. On 10.04, I was able to build the kernel module thanks to the lirc-modules-source package and a very nice Fedora user, but it wasn't fun. Unfortunately, it appears lirc-modules-source is not available for 12.04! So until it is, I can't update the patch for 12.04, nor build my kernel module or use my IR Blaster/Receiver.

UPDATE!  I *have* gotten LIRC for my HVR1600 card working on 12.04! Without too much difficulty. I happened across a pre-complied version of the necessary module, lirc_zilog, here inside of a DEB file (32 and 64-bit versions available). I'll post a more comprehensive tutorial as soon as I have a spare moment :).

The (Not So?) Ugly

Unity

Hey, I like it. Been using it for a few weeks now and I find it pretty fluid and easy to use. The HUD feature is very cool. Now, now, I know what you are thinking...that damn Unity bar is glued to the left side!!! While I agree that, in principle, this was a poor choice on the part of the Unity developers, you have to remember that Unity is just one desktop environment. You aren't forced to use it, and there are even forks out there (or could fire one up yourself) to get it on the bottom if it's really important to you. Or use an alternative like Cairo dock, or another desktop environment. So it's not really a reason to abandon the distribution altogether, at least IMHO. And if you give it try, you might just like it too. While I do hope they add an supported option to move it in the future, for now I can deal.

X-Session Weirdness

In Ubuntu 10.04, I ran GNOME on two separate X-sessions, one of the PC display, and one of the TV display. I liked this better then running a single display on both, since applications seemed to handle it better (e.g. full screen Flash), even though it meant you couldn't move windows between displays (no biggie to me).

When I enabled dual X-sessions (with the Nvidia-config tool) in 12.04, I was very confused. On one display was the normal Ubuntu desktop, but on the other was just a pure white background with a "X" for a cursor. Obviously 12.04/Unity wasn't designed to handle dual X-sessions this way.

So, I flipped over to Twinview, to see if I could configure that the way I wanted. To my vast surprise, I found two separate desktops (complete with Launcher and top menu bar) just as if I was using dual X-sessions! But now, I had the ability to move windows between desktops. Pretty cool, considering I had been expecting something similar to way Windows handles extended displays, just making a blank window space on the other monitor, but no separate task bar.

So it seems like they tried to take the best of dual X-sessions and the best of Twinview (extended desktop) and munge them together (as a new form of Twinview). And honestly, it works pretty well, except for two problems I've found so far:

1) The "Flash" full screen issue I mentioned above
2) Applications don't quite "understand" it.

What I mean by #2 is that I'm used to being able to launch an X program on either GUI from the command line simply by setting the "DISPLAY" environment variable. Well, in 12.04 no such luck, the DISPLAY environment variable has the same value (0) regardless of what display you are on. So now, launching applications based on the X-session is a little trickier than it used to be - not a good thing. For the most part, applications do work correctly if you launch them on the correct display, but I haven't yet figured out how to launch an application on a specific display from the command line. Unfortunately, MythTV was one of the applications that didn't quite behave, it was showing up on the primary display regardless of what display I launched it from. No good - I need Myth on my secondary (TV) display. Thankfully I found an option in the MythTV appearance settings which allowed me to choose between display "0" and "1". Setting to 1 put it on the TV display....just as if I had set the environment variable. So there is some support similar to the old methods, but it appears to be application specific.

But sometimes (like when I'm running mythbackend), I *do* want it on the primary display. I used to have separate scripts that I could run for which display I wanted to appear on...but even trying to use the "--display" option on the mythfrontend command line, it goes to whatever display I set it to in the options. So, I have a workaround for now (setting the display option in the settings), but this is irritating...having a way to move it on the command line would be much preferred.

It's only been a few weeks, but so far I like what I see in 12.04 and find it a worthy successor to 10.04 (I usually skip non-LTS versions...due to the work involved with upgrading). So I'll be sticking with Ubuntu for now, and hope others out there enjoy it as well.

Have a great day!

The future of computational devices?

Imagine, for a moment, the computer you're reading this post on.

What type of computer is it? Is it a traditional desktop? A notebook or a netbook? What about a tablet or a smart phone?

Your options on what you use to access information are continually growing, even now they are several times greater then they were just a few years past.

If you are on a traditional computer, say a desktop, what kind of specifications might it have?

A modern 2010-era computer, sold for a reasonable price, might have a set of specifications like this:

* Dual-core processor
* 500 GB Hard drive Storage
* 4 GB of System Memory
* 512 Dedicated Graphics card with 3D acceleration
* Multi-channel sound system

What sized box is your tower? Is it a larger, standard ATX-sized unit, or maybe one of the small form factors?

Whatever the size, I want you to imagine taking that desktop and shrinking it....continually smaller and imagine a computer with similar specifications, but with a form factor the size of your phone.

Sound crazy? Well, consider my own smart phone, a Nokia N900, with the following specifications:

* 600 MHz ARM Cortex-A8 CPU
* 256 MB System Memory
* 32 GB Storage
* PowerVR SGX 530 GPU supporting OpenGL ES 2.0
* Stereo sound system

Not too bad. In fact, as little as decade ago, those specs would probably have been fairly impressive in that desktop your on right now, wouldn't they?

Is it really that crazy that the technology in smart phones could approach the level of desktops? I don't think so.

Consider laptops. Not that long ago, people who chose laptops for the portability advantages they offered were forced to sacrifice the performance of desktop. This is no longer true, as laptops have reached complete parity with desktops in terms of the specifications and abilities.

Those of us today who continue to choose desktops mostly do it for form factor reasons, for example my high definition 22 inch display, full keyboard with number pad and mouse. Of course, these things can additionally be added to a laptop. Other uses for desktops over laptops might include, like myself, use as a DVR (more easily permanently connected to my TV and cable box) or the ability to have multiple disc drives and the like.

Nevertheless, choosing a desktop today is more about form factor and preference then specifications.

In fact, I dare say that while smart phones, net books and tablets continue to make leaps and bounds each year in the amount of power they offer, the traditional computing paradigm of desktops and laptops seem to have plateaued.

For example, why don't we commonly go our local computer stores and see 8 GHZ processors and computers with 48 gigabytes of memory? Are we finally seeing a plateau of Moore's law? Or is the slowdown more for marketing and business purposes?

In fact, one of the problems with sticking more and more transistors on a chip is that the damn things get too bloody hot. Who needs an Infinity-GHZ processor when you need to burn thousands of watts of power just to keep it cool?

Why, even the modest Athlon chips in my two previous laptops could get into the very uncomfortable (and dangerous) 80-90 degrees centigrade range. Had they kept with the numbering convention, I'm sure the slogan for the the Pentium 5 would have been, "Now, you can cook toast on it too!". On the other hand, the Athlon X2 250 processor in my desktop rarely gets above 30C, nor does the Intel Core Duo in my laptop.

But the fact of the matter is that we don't need never increasing clock rates and increases in memory to be happy. In fact, I remember reading an article several years back (that I unfortunately can't source) suggesting that the major chip manufactures such as Intel and AMD would soon stop trying to increase their clock speeds and instead focus on the chips they got: basically, trying to shrink them down and make them more power efficient. This a good thing, not just for your power bill, but for the environment too.

It seems that we are living this reality: Processors aren't getting faster, but they are getting cheaper, smaller, more efficient and multi-cored. We need this more then we need more gigahertz, because there is clearly a limit of diminishing returns. We don't need faster computers because we don't have applications (unless you are in the server or HPC market) that can use them. At least, not yet. Even my desktop with a modest 2GB of Ram runs circles around many computers of better specifications, DVR'ing, web browsing and play games at the same time. Of course, I use a far superior operating system then most :).

So what does that mean for the future of such devices? If laptops and desktops continue their plateau, and the smaller form factor devices such as smart phones continue their rise, will we eventually reach a point where they are all at parity?

It wouldn't surprise me. Likewise, it also wouldn't surprise me if the day comes when your entire computer system fits in your hands, and that's the only computer you need.

For example, imagine a smart phone 10 years from now. We'll consider this our speculative "super-device". It can be connected to a GSM or CDMA network, likely has wi-fi and cellular data capabilities, camera and GPS, plus also a large touch screen and optionally a physical keyboard. It can make calls, play the newest high-end games, browse the web, has storage in the hundreds of gigabytes, extremely fast data transfer and processing rates, and more.

What are the disadvantages of this device? Well, no body wants to stare at web pages on a small screen forever, nor do they want to type up their reports on a keyboard only a few centimeters big.

But wait! Picture another device, in the form factor of a laptop, with a large screen, full keyboard, optical drive and card reader, larger battery perhaps, etc. Except that this device is just a "shell", it has beauty but no brains. No processor, motherboard or memory of it's own. Instead, slide your smart phone into a receptacle and suddenly you can have an entire computer system ready to rock. Able to type reports, see movies and web pages on a larger screen, even play the latest visually stunning computer games.

But why stop there? Don't need a keyboard? Just provide a large touch screen dock, sans keyboard, for your smart phone with receptacle and suddenly you've got a fully functional tablet (or e-reader). Add a keyboard with no optical drive and you've got a net book.

Need a larger screen for those high definition movies/games, or want to use a printer? Just provide a small dock which is nothing but ports, for monitors, printers, keyboards, even DVR connections if you want, and there is your desktop.


The receptacle could also be integrated into cars, essentially taking over as the entire entertainment and communication system of the vehicle.

I fully feel as though this is the natural evolution of where technology is heading. But is it a good idea? What are some of the pros and cons of such a design?

Right now, I have three "computers" that I use on a daily basis. My desktop, my laptop and my smart phone. Each has it's own place in my technological arsenal. My desktop of course serves as my main "home" PC: it does my DVR'ing, plays games, lives as my music and media server, browses websites, check my personal email, Skype conference with my family and more. My laptop is mostly work oriented, it has all my work schedules on it, current projects, contact information, work email, etc. But I also occasionally use it when I travel for web browsing, watching movies, etc. My smart phone, while of course admirably fulfilling it's capacity as my only phone, also handles all my personal schedule, memos and todo's, plays games and browses the web, at 5MP doubles as my primary picture and video camera, and is a full Sat-Nav GPS device with voice guided directions.

I'd be lying if I said the thought of all those devices being combined into one, but each with it's own profile what I wanted to do at the time, wasn't appealing to me. It's easy to get into a state of 'digital fatigue' when you are surrounded by too much technology and want to simplify things, only to feel your current technology is unable to fulfill your needs in some form or another. Even I find myself wanting a tablet, net book, or second laptop, even though I can pretty easily convince myself that I don't really need them. And on top of that, I still have game consoles, several televisions, DVD devices, and so on.

But there is danger as well. Phones are of course designed to be robust, they have to be, being jostled around all day after all. There are significant dangers in putting all your eggs in one digital basket: what happens when your phone gets destroyed, damaged or even just lost?

This could have some pretty bad consequences. But there are other problems as well, for example, Vendor lock-in. Just because you buy your device from Vendor A, you shouldn't have to buy your shells from Vendor A. For such a system to work, the dock and protocols should be entirely open and implementable by all.

The idea of an "all in one" device capable of doubling as any computing device we have today excites me a great deal, though there are pitfalls that I seriously hope we can avoid in order to realize such a device.

There is one pitfall we might not be able to overcome: upgrade-ability. A properly built desktop can be upgraded endlessly, to the point where it is an entirely new computer. Laptops are also upgradeable, but to a significant less degree: the hard drive, memory, battery and optical drives are often changeable but good luck trying to upgrade the screen, motherboard or video card. Unfortunately, as the form factor gets smaller, the ability to upgrade decreases proportionally. Good luck trying to change the memory in that smart phone, or adding an optical drive to that net book.

To make our speculative super device, we want to keep two principles in the back of our mind at all times: longevity and recyclability. We've already made the assumption that the specifications of all devices types would largely plateau out, become equal. But I'm not saying that at this point technology growth would stop, merely that the growth of the three major form factors (desktop, laptop and smart phone) would all grow at the same rate. There will still be advances as people develop new technologies and find uses for them. So technology *will* advance, albeit and hopefully at a more sustainable pace.

I think these devices would need to have a long life span, technology sufficient to last as long as possible. And, when you are finally ready to get a new device, we need programs in place to reuse, resell or recycle the old ones, possibly even taking off from the price of a new device.

Could a device/system like this ever become mainstream? Companies such as Motorola are already taking the first step with their Atrix phone (though I've heard rumors the laptop dock is only available with certain plans...which doesn't bode well). Just imagine if a company, say Apple, announced tomorrow that they had a new iPhone that, with the right dock, could also be your iPad, MacBook and iMac? Would not flocks of people swarm out to buy it? I think so. And the other major vendors, Dell, HP, etc would all follow while Microsoft would probably try to slap Windows on everything. Unfortunately, it might not be in the best interest of these companies to work together, which would create a hell for consumers.

Ideally, I would like to see everything left as open as possible. I could go on for a good length of time on how I believe in the decoupling of hardware and software, but we shall save that for another post.

The only way I would like to see this happen is if people are in control of their own devices. For example, as a strong proponent of free and open source software, I'd want to be able to run my own operating system on my device, and still have my hardware work and interact with other devices. We can place extra security and encryption on the devices (biometrics, perhaps), to help prevent the devices from being compromised if lost.

The phone component needs to optional. We can add a SIM card slot onto the device, and hopefully, carriers and manufactures will allow you to hook up to their networks seamlessly. The phone itself would be little more then an optionally installable application on the device. Hopefully carriers would remove those ridiculous data caps on their networks...but I know that is likely little more then a dream.

What about dedicated uses of the technology? Like I said, my desktop doubles as my DVR, and my ultimate device that I envision will hardly be able to record television shows for me if it's in my pocket on the other side of town.

This could be where device "reuse" comes in. In any case, there are likely to varying types of devices with different hardware capabilities. So it's not that crazy that I could use an older one, or cheaper one properly configured for DVR use while my main device stays with me.

We may still end up with multiple devices, but the fact is that the flexibility and configurability of the devices would all them to act as any other device, which would ultimately reduce the number of simultaneous devices we need at once. And with things such as longevity built into the device, they would need to be replaced less often, while the form factor can no longer improve.

I think such a technology has great potential. It's reasonable to implement, and could revolutionize the way we interact with our devices. But is has pitfalls as well, aspects we need to carefully avoid and implement properly if want to be successful. Nevertheless, I believe it is likely where we are to be headed, hopefully it'll be more of a blessing then a curse.

Do you agree? Feel free to share your thoughts and feelings in the comments, and have a great day!

Upgrading to 10.04? Might need to fix your display settings.

Call me an "early adopter", but I love playing with bleeding edge tech (when I have the cash :) even though it might cause a few buggy issues.

As such I was excited when Ubuntu 10.04 LTS was released just over a week ago. After installing the latest Karmic upgrades, I was presented with a friendly request to upgrade to 10.04 and decided to take it. And as always for Linux, the monetary cost isn't something I need to worry about :).

The Install Process

Installing over my Karmic install was fairly painless, but slow. It had to download about 2.5GB, which surprised me since the install CD's themselves are usually only around 700 MB. The download proceeded smoothly and after a few hours the install began. Again, there wasn't a heck of lot of user interaction on my part, just a few dialogs I needed to answer. After an hour or two more, I was prompted for a reboot to continue.

What the....?

Not sure I was quite prepared for what came next. As you might have seen before in my blog, I have a rather customized Gnome desktop, including a custom Xorg.conf file for extended displays. Upon rebooting, my entire desktop was...rather messed up. It's hard to describe, but the desktop seemed to be flipped 180 degrees, and the icons themselves were inverted. The entire desktop was also completely unresponsive. I couldn't click anything, nor would the keyboard or any of my short cuts respond!


Very strange, though I had an inkling it had to with my various desktop modifications. A close up on the Gnome menu:

What next?

Strange looking, hmmm? That's what I thought. However, this isn't the first time I've totally borked my Gnome desktop, so I knew what I had to do to reset it. I restarted and used grub to enter recovery mode which allowed me to boot into a command line interface (Tip: You can also try CTRL-ALT-F1 to get to a command line).

I then gained root access with a sudo bash command, and made a backup folder. From there, a copied the following four folders: .gnome2, .gconf, .gconfd and .gnome_private into the backup folder (Tip: You can use cp -r to move directories and their contents recursively).

I then used rm -rf to remove each of the folders (Don't do this as root from your / directory lest you delete your entire file system!)

Upon rebooting, Ubuntu decided it needed to do a disk check. Considering my last few hard reboots, this was expected:


After it was finished (~20 minutes), I booted into Gnome. My customized desktop was gone *but* everything was still oddly "inverted":



Still borked, apparently. The only other thing I could think of that might be causing such an odd issue is my custom Xorg.conf file, as these haven't officially been in Ubuntu for a while.

So I booted back into the terminal and removed it. And voila! I was presented with:


First thoughts on 10.04

As Bender would say, we're back baby! I then tried restoring my old Gnome settings from the backup (with the removed Xorg.conf, after backing up the current settings first), though this caused my Gnome to freeze on restart, so I put the old desktop back. Still, if you run into a similar issue, I recommend simply trying to remove your Xorg.conf first before resetting Gnome. I'll spend some time with the new Gnome theme before I decide how I want to customize it. So far it's pretty spiffy, if odd looking, not sure if I'll get used to the window controls being on the left side of the screen! No problems with my wi-fi, connected with no issues. My sound isn't working, though I have yet to figure out why, and I'll need to figure out how to bring back my extended display, such is the price you occasionally pay for trying out the latest and greatest. Still, the OS itself seems solid enough though (blazing fast on this outdated hardware!), and I look forward to playing with it more. Hope this post gives a hand to any others who run into the odd display issue I did!

Exploiting Kernel Null Dereferences

From the Ksplice blog comes a fantastic article about Exploiting NULL references in a kernel module to gain root access (or more...) over a system. It's a fantastically written piece, and easy to understand even for non-guru hackers. I recommended taking a few moments out to giving it a read!

Check it out here:

http://blog.ksplice.com/2010/04/exploiting-kernel-null-dereferences/

Extending your desktop to TV with Karmic Koala

Introduction

Ever since I've been using Ubuntu on my original laptop, I've been having great fun poking and prodding with its configuration, getting it to do some pretty fantastic things! My eventual goal is to turn this machine into a full fledged Linux-based HTPC (Home Theatre PC), and have been working on the project on and off to achieve that goal.

I don't have a high definition television, but the laptop comes equipped with a S-video out port, perfect for connecting the PC to my standard definition television. When I used to run openSuse, I had the proprietary ATI drivers installed and could use aticonfig to turn the extended desktop on and off.

Problems

Since switching to Karmic, I haven't quite been able to get this to work. The ATI drivers don't come installed by default, and they aren't open source anyway. I did make an attempt to install the drivers, but the OS seemed to ignore them and continue to use the open source drivers. I didn't want them unless necessary anyway, but the question remained: how to configure extended desktop without ATI config?

...and solutions!

The answer lies in the X Resize and Rotate Extension (RandR), or xrandr. If you run xrandr from Terminal, you should see something that looks like this:

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1280 x 800, maximum 1280 x 1280
VGA-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
LVDS connected 1280x800+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x 0mm
1280x800 59.9*+
1280x720 59.9
1152x768 59.8
1024x768 60.0 59.9
800x600 60.3 59.9
640x480 59.9 59.4

On my laptop, LVDS refers to the LCD screen. Listed there are a number of possible resolutions and screen refresh rates.

To activate your S-video out (or VGA), you'll need to add a display mode for it. Use the addmode function of xrandr for this:

xrandr --addmode S-video 800x600

In this case, I want to set an S-video out mode of 800x600 resolution. You should then see the mode if you run xrandr again:

S-video disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
800x600 60.3

In order to actually use the S-video out, there are a number of options. The simplest is merely to activate it:

xrandr --output S-video --mode 800x600

But not quite...

This'll clone the desktop onto the S-video out. Unfortunately, since the LCD is running at 1280x800, you'll only see the top-left 800x600 pixels of your LCD display. This isn't particularly useful now is it? You can use the --pos YYYxZZZ option (e.g. --pos 100x100) option to move the output display around, but you'll still always be missing some of the screen.

Unfortunately, it was at this point that I hit a road block. I could clone the output, and move it around, but not get a dedicated output for the S-video out. What I decided to to was alter the command a little, I would turn off the LCD display, set the resolution to 800x600, then send it via the S-video:

xrandr --output LVDS --off --output S-video --mode 800x600

Now, I could have either a 1280x800 desktop on my LCD, or an 800x600 desktop on the TV. Not exactly what I wanted, but still sufficient for watching movies, videos, and even using the desktop on the TV.

Eventually, I realized what had to be done in order to extend the desktop.

1. Make the "virtual desktop" (amount of screen area) bigger
2. Use the --pos command to move the S-video output to the right of the LCD desktop.

xrandr has a --fb command for increasing the size of the "Frame Buffer" (the virtual desktop size). Alas, everytime I would try to change it, I'd get an error like this:

xrandr: screen cannot be larger than 1280x1280

Xorg.conf

Doing some searching, it seems the best advice was to configure the virtual desktop size in the Xorg.conf file (so the virtual screen size would be set while X server was starting). But hold on a moment...Ubuntu did away with Xorg.conf files in version 9.10! What to do? I made a few attempts at writing an Xorg.conf file by hand, but was always missing something causing my machine to reboot in "Low Graphics Mode". And my searches for changing the frame buffer without an xorg.conf, including a post on the Ubuntu forums, revealed no results.

Luckily, I found a post today on how to generate an xorg.conf from your current configuration. Essentially:

1. Reboot. When in grub, select to boot in recovery mode.
2. After logging in to a command prompt, run:

sudo Xorg -configure

3. This will create a xorg.conf.new file for you, likely in your home directory.
4. As root, copy this file into your /etc/X11/ folder (remember: back up the old one if there's already one there!)
5. Rename it to xorg.conf
6. Open your favorite editor (you can run startx now and do this from X Windows if you don't want to from the command line)
7. Find the "screen" module.
8. You'll see listed a number of display sections like so:

SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection

To the most common ones (or even just the ones you'll use), add the following line:

Virtual 2080 800

9. Save, and restart.

Upon running xrandr at a command line now, you should see your virtual desktop has changed:

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1280 x 800, maximum 2080 x 800.

You can now use the --pos to set your S-video output to 1280x0, which will put the video output to the right of the current desktop and Volia! Extended Desktop! You can now drag windows over to it (such as videos), full screen them, move them, even see your desktop effects!

Wrapping it up

To prevent having to use xrandr all the time, I made a few simple scripts for configuring the TV Out.

1. Go into your home folder. Create a folder called "Scripts".
2. We're going to make three scripts:
One for turning the TV out on in Extended Desktop, One for Clone Mode, and one for turning it off. First the deactivate script:
3. First, deactivate: In gedit (or another editor), paste the following into a text file:

xrandr --output LVDS --mode 1280x800 --output S-video --off

This'll deactivate the S-video and make sure your LCD is the main display. Save it as "Deactivate_TV_Out" or something alone those lines.

4. Now, activate in clone mode:

xrandr --addmode S-video 800x600
xrandr --output LVDS --off --output S-video --mode 800x600

and save as "Activate_TV_Out_Clone"

5. Finally, extended mode!

xrandr --addmode S-video 800x600
xrandr --output S-video --mode 800x600 --pos 1280x0

Call it "Activate_TV_Out_Extended"

6. For each file, right click and go to "Properties".

7. Under the permissions tab, click to allow for executing as program.

You can now click each of those to move back and forth between the various mode. Sometimes, you might have to deactivate the TV-out in order to activate it in a different mode. You can make shortcuts to these scripts, or as I did, set keyboard shortcuts:

1. Go to System->Preferences->Keyboard Shortcuts
2. Go to Add.
3. Give the shortcut a name "Activate_TV_Out_Extended", and point command to your script, e.g.
/home/jason/Scripts/Activate_TV_Out_Extended.
4. Do this for each of the other two scripts.

Make sure to use unassigned shortcuts, I used Ctrl-F1, F2 and F3 respectively. I am a bit unsure of including the "xrandr --addmode S-video 800x600" each time the script is run, but it doesn't seem to cause any problems. Without the mode being added, activating the TV out won't work. If I do find a way to keep the mode consistent, I'll update it here. Good luck, I hope others find these instructions useful (provided without any guarantees)! To end my post: something I haven't shown you yet on my blog: Jay's Desktop! I suppose it's about time =P.

Take care everyone!

Tweeting...From...Space!

First, human kind gazed into space.

Then, human kind sent objects into space.

Then, human kind sent itself into space.

Then, human kind landed on another world.

And now...

Human kind can tweet....from space!

Yes, despite the lack of air that might be required for more traditional tweeting, extra-terrestrial electronic tweeting is alive and well! Just ask astronaut TJ Creamer, who thanks to him, you can follow someone not on planet Earth.

As a self described geek, this combines at least two of my various obsessions: The Internet and Space. Col. Creamer's older posts appear to him working on getting it working: presumably tweeting by a proxy on earth. But now the middle man can be cut out, at least mostly so. One site suggests that the tweeting (and web access in general) is actually done via taking control of a computer on the ground, ala remote desktop.

Nevertheless, allowing astronauts to have internet access on the ISS can only help to further and promote space travel. With access to resources like Twitter, Facebook, even VOIP products, hopefully astronauts won't feel quite so isolated, which may encourage more travel. Let's just hope they don't get any viruses. But then again, they should probably be using Linux anyway :).

New Virtual Box version fixes Gnome display issues

Happy Friday!

As a frequent user of virtual machines, I find myself quite impressed with their usefulness. Virtual machines allow you to emulate entire other operating systems within a host operating, called a virtual machine. You can even carry virtual machines with you from computer to computer and always have a custom system set up for your needs. Three common Virtual Machine platforms include Virtual Box, VMWare and Windows Virtual PC.

Due to it's freedom and flexibility, I tend to choose Virtual Box over option options. It has an extensive suite of features including seamless mode, mouse/keyboard integration, various device support and many more. It's also available for free under the personal use and evaluation license, and also has an open source edition.

One minor problem I've been having with Virtual Box involves the GNOME desktop environment used in many Linux distributions including Ubuntu.

The problem being that when one saves the VM execution state, and then resumes that state, the GNOME desktop graphic set (that is, its look and feel) appears to mysteriously change. Here's how it should look (click on the image to enlarge):

and after returning from a saved state:

As you can see, a number of icons have changed including the mail icon, terminal icon, network, sound, recycle bin. I would have to shut down GNOME and restart it (log back in) in order to restore their icons to the normal state.

I spent some time trying to figure out what was causing the odd issue, but to no avail. Nevertheless, I'm happy to report that upgrading to Virtual Box, 3.1.2, appears to fix this issue. Upon resuming from a saved state, the icons are no longer changed, or if they are, will immediately revert to the correct form! Fantastic!

HP Pavilion tx2617ca Review

Raison d'etre

I'd been in the market for a new laptop for a while, but was holding off until the end of school to get one. I first spotted the tx2617 in December at Staples Business Depot, but spent some time considering other options, eventually picking it up in April 2009.

The tx2617ca is a "convertible tablet PC". The machine functions just like a normal notebook: but the screen has the ability to swivel 180 degrees and fold down over the keyboard to be used as a "tablet": A pen-input based computer.


I wanted a tablet computer for a number of reasons: Mainly, I am constantly taking notes and have a hard time keeping track of them: they either get lost, ruined or eventually buried in a binder in a box who-knows-where. And when I need to reference one again, I'm forced to dig though the myriad of papers dotting my apartment floor to find the one I need. I also loved the idea of reading web pages, e-mails, and e-books like actual books, doing digital drawings, and wanted a small form factor for high portability.

Being a computer scientist (and all around geek), a digital solution seemed right up my alley. I'd actually first seen Tablet PC's in Grade 10 (around 7 years or so ago) and was obsessed with them since then (Penny's computer book from Inspector Gadget anyone?). But buying one was hardly in my price range then (or now for that matter, but more on that). When I did purchase my first laptop in my first year of university, I strongly considered getting a tablet: but they were still pricey and underpowered compared to other machines on the market: I needed something more powerful, essentially a portable desktop replacement to replace my clunky (but reliable) Dell machine tower that served me through out high school. Although I was attracted to a slate-style model, I really need a keyboard for coding if nothing else. So I held off on the tablet for a few more years.

Fast forward to 2009. School was ending and I had some extra cash in my bank account. I had committed to buying a tablet PC. But a quick look at what was available left me in the dust: the majority of tablets I'd seen were still in the whopping $2000 price range. I did manage to find a online few for thirteen to fourteen hundred, before tax/shipping/warranty's/etc. Then I remembered the tx2617ca I'd seen and did some research.

The price according to Staples website changed significantly over the few weeks I'd been checking it out: from $1049 to $999 to $849. Online information and reviews seemed scarce at best, which could be a good or bad sign. I'd figured the machine was still decently new, and so there hadn't been too much comprehensive testing, yet. I did find its feature list however, and they were sending me to that geeky place known as "specification heaven":

Product Name tx2617ca
Microprocessor 2.10 GHz AMD Athlon X2 QL-62 Dual-Core Mobile Processor
(the marketing jazz says Turion but the system itself says Altlon)
Microprocessor Cache 1 MB L2 Cache
Memory 4096 MB (max)
Video Graphics ATI Radeon HD 3200
Video Memory Up to 1982 MB
Hard Drive 250 GB (5400 rpm)
Multimedia Drive LightScribe Super Multi 8X DVD±R/RW with Double Layer Support
Display 12.1" WXGA High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen Integrated
Touch-screen, Convertible Display (1280 x 800)
Network Card Integrated 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet LAN
Wireless Connectivity Wireless LAN 802.11a/b/g/n
Sound Altec Lansing speakers
Keyboard 101-key compatible
Pointing Device Touch Pad with dedicated vertical and horizontal Scroll Up/Down pad
PC Card Slots One ExpressCard/34 slot
External Ports
* 5-in-1 integrated Digital Media Reader for Secure Digital cards, MultiMedia cards, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, or xD Picture cards
* 3 Universal Serial Bus USB 2.0
* 1 VGA (15-pin)
* 1 S-video (7-pin)
* 1 RJ-11 (modem)
* 1 RJ -45 (LAN)
* 2 headphone-out
* 1 microphone-in
* 1 notebook expansion port 3
* Consumer IR
* Integrated Stereo Microphones
Dimensions 8.82"(L) x 12.05"(D) x 1.23" (min H)/1.52" (max H)
Weight 4.56 lbs
Security
* Integrated Fingerprint Reader
* Kensington MicroSaver lock slot
* Power-on password
* Accepts 3rd party security lock devices
Power
* 65 W AC Adapter
* 6-cell Lithium-Ion (Li-Ion)
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit with Service Pack 1

Perhaps not the top of the market, but considerably more juice then my previous machine, and easily passing many notebooks at the time. With my previous machine getting on its last legs (at least until I give it a planned overhaul later in the year), I really liked that this machine had potential to replace it, not just supplement it. My first worries however were screen and keyboard size. I wasn't sure if 12.1 inches would cut it, coming from a 15.4 inch screen. And smaller screens usually meant smaller keyboards: something I dreaded from those nasty looking "netbook" keyboards.

When I went to have a closer look: there were none there! The machine was listed on the shelf, now for $899 on "clearance". But there was no machine there, so I had to ask. I was in luck: one left (probably the original demo machine). I asked to have a look at it: the screen really didn't feel small and I was pleasantly surprised to find a very full sized keyboard most of the alpha numeric keys actually being larger then those on my 15.4 inch notebook, at the expense of some smaller function and specialty keys. Since this was the last one left, I knew if I didn't buy it now I wasn't likely to find another any time soon, so I rang it up and it came home with me. I still had 14 days to return it if I felt the screen size would be a deal breaker. Finally, on to the heart of the review!

External case:

The machine itself feels very strong and well built. No flex on the case, and the swivel hinge feels very solid and doesn't seem to have loosened much at all in three months. No odd noises or clicky-ness, I'd be lying if I said the fan was silent, but its not too bad, it just gets loud when doing something processor intensive... The screen also feels very strong, its recessed in a bit from the case:


There are enough ports to keep you going: Gigabit Ethernet, 3 USB, SD card reader, 15-pin D-sub, 7 pin S-video. I really like the S-video since I only have an older standard definition TV set, it works great for watching movies, DVD's, etc (hopefully if I ever get a higher definition TV I can use the VGA). The optical drive works well, though I haven't used the Lightscribe functionality:


Also, the machine comes with a small media remote, which works great (especially when connected to a TV for watching DVDs, etc), though I'm still trying to customize its functionality a little more. It also has a finger print reader that you have to enroll your finger prints to use, though it only seems to pick mine up once every 3 tries or so, though I believe that's more my own fault. The stylus has a perfect resting place at the bottom of the keyboard, which is easily accessible no matter what orientation you're using the computer in.


It comes with a lanyard connecting it to the computer, but I don't use it since I found it got in my way when writing. Nevertheless, it's spring loaded and can fly quite the distance if you're not careful. One thing I don't like about the case is how the air vent and power connector are on the left and right sides of the machine (facing the screen) respectively:

Although fine when in landscape mode, when using my machine as a tablet, I'll most often have it in portrait mode (like a piece of paper), which means that you are either blocking the power connector, or partially blocking the air vent. Chalk this one up to poor choice on the part of the designer, though I tend to have the machine on the battery when I'm using it in portrait mode, so I use it with the connector facing me. Secondly, although quite light at about 5 pounds, I find the machine just a tad heavy to hold in portrait mode for too long (like a book). I find myself having to balance it against my legs, arms, or chest (hence why blocking the port or the vent is a problem). The screen has media keys which work good, as well as quick keys for screen rotation and Windows Mobility center. There are also "DVD" and "Quick Play" keys, but these only work if you use the HP Quickplay software (I don't), nor have I found any way to reprogram them. There are also media keys on the screen which function the same as the "FN" media keys on many laptops:


The memory, wifi card, and hard drive are all accessible from the bottom. The optical drive also snaps in and out with the flick of a switch: this came in very handy a few days ago when the tip of a 3.5 mm jack broke off in the audio out and rattling around inside, I was able to get it out simply by taking out the optical drive and guiding it through the slot:

The screen and video:

The 12.1 inch screen actually runs at the same resolution as my 15.4: 1280x800. The means I get the same screen real estate as on my old screen, albeit things being are a bit smaller. After a few hours of using though, I hardly noticed the screen size: it was plenty big for email, web browsing, and standard work (e.g. coding). I haven't done significant gaming on it, but it works good for our Stronghold Crusader and Civilization 4 LAN parties. Movies play no problem, and the ATI video card handles video output and dual desktop without issues (important for me). The screen is bright, but difficult to see in sunlight, even at maximum brightness, which is one thing I don't like. The second thing I dislike about the screen is the viewing angle. The horizontal viewing angle isn't too bad (from a standard notebook point of view), but the vertical angle is terrible. I would like to be able to see what's written on the screen in portrait mode when its just laying on my desk to the right of me, but you pretty much have to have it directly in front of you to see, and even then, your head needs to be tilted almost directly over it. I suppose it could be argued a good thing for privacy reasons, but I'd personally prefer the better angle. This is fine for a regular notebook, but not a tablet.

Comparison of viewing angles:


It also attracts dust and smudges like a magnet: be sure to have a cloth with you for cleaning readily (one was provided in my box with the machine). Note that the screen is not multi-touch, unlike the newer TX2's (something I'm afraid I'll regret with Windows 7).

The keyboard:

As mentioned above, I like the keyboard a lot, the keys are all plenty large for use. I do have some issues with the specialty keys, at the top right of the keyboard are the "pg up/dn/home/end/insert/del" keys. I find myself having to memorize the location of these keys because its impossible to read the text on them at a standard use distance. The F-keys are little easier to read than the other keys, and I do understand this choice so that the alpha numeric keys can be larger. I would have liked to see more shortcut keys on the screen itself, specifically for scrolling documents when reading them, since using the on screen scroll bar in tablet mode can be awkward.


Stylus and Touchpad:

The touchpad is completely covered in recessed dots, I'm not sure if this is supposed to make it more comfortable or easy to use, to be honest I hardly notice it. There's a button at the top to turn the touchpad on or off, as well as a vertical strip for scrolling. The touch pad works fine and is easy to use, but there's nothing spectacular about it either.

The stylus is awesome. It's thin and light (about the size of a mechanical pencil), easy to write with. The screen can pick up the stylus' location when hovering above the screen, same as a mouse's "hover function". The right click button is a bit hard to use, since I rarely pick up the pen in the right orientation to push it (you can also right click by holding the pen on the screen for a few seconds). You can also "erase" by using the opposite side of the stylus, which is neat though sometimes you have to press a bit hard.


The speakers and audio:

I'm impressed with the output from the Altec Lansing speakers, though I don't use them on a regular basis, most of the time I use the audio out, either hooked up to a pair of headphones (once again, a great pair of HP headphones came with the computer), or my TV. There's a third "HD" audio port, but I rarely use it. I'm honestly not sure what's its supposed to be used for (I don't think it supports 5.1 or anything that I can find).

Microphone and Webcam:

The computer has duel microphones built in above the screen, along with a webcam. The microphones pick up sound okay, I use it to chat on Skype with little issue, but you can't keep your mouth too far away. The webcam has a good picture, though I can't figure out if there's a way to "rotate" the image, otherwise you appear at the wrong angle when using it in other orientations.



Speed:

The machine is quite speedy, the Athlon X2 is a desktop level processor. I usually keep it throttled with Vista's power options to about 35% with no noticeable degradation in performance (except for some movies and games, for which I'll put it up closer to normal). The machine has 4 GB of ram, and a 250 GB, 5400 rpm drive which I haven't had any trouble with. I have two partitions of roughly equal size (not including the recovery partition), one for Windows + software, and one for documents (I prefer this setup to protect data should I need to reformat the software partition). Visual C# is a tad slow compiling and running, though no slower then my old machine (I blame it more on .NET). I of course removed all the unnecessary bloatware from the machine as well as start up programs, and run CCleaner on a regular basis.

Wifi:

The wireless works good and has great range (better than my old machine), it's draft-N though unfortunately I haven't had the opportunity to a connect to draft-N router to see just how much faster it is. Curiously, the range on the WiFi is considerably smaller when it tablet mode, it doesn't seem any slower, but you have to be closer to the access point to connect (preferably in the same room). My guess is it has something to do with the placement and orientation of the antenna getting less signal when in tablet mode.

Heat:

The heat from the machine is something that concerns me and I'm keeping an eye on. Although it doesn't get nearly as warm as my old laptop, it still gets a little warmer then I'm comfortable with. Although the case itself doesn't feel too warm, Speedfan tends to read between 55-60 degrees C, which seems quite warm. When the fan comes on, it pumps considerable waves of hot air out of the unit. The case also seems to get hotter when the processor revs up, such as during a virus scan. When in tablet mode, the screen also gets noticeably warm around the fan to the point it can be uncomfortable to rest your wrist on, which worries me (likewise the keyboard is warm going back to notebook mode). My guess this is due to the processor in the machine, and I keep the processor throttled even when plugged in to try to manage this. I have a few cooling pads, which I use if it's doing something processor intensive, but prefer not too so as to keep the smaller form factor (it's awkward to write on in tablet mode with the cooling pad because of the height raise).

Battery life:

My battery usually gives me about 2.5 to three hours of light use with the processor throttled. Obviously more would be better, but as mentioned the Athlon X2 is a desktop level processor so it sucks down a lot of juice, even when throttled. I also stretch this out by going to standby whenever not in use. So far, I've been happy with the trade off, though I might consider buying a second, stronger battery, I've also heard Windows 7 is getting more juice out of the batteries which I'm looking forward to trying.

Software and Tablet usage:

As mentioned above, I removed the bloatware upon installation, leaving mostly just Windows Vista Home Premium installed, along with the software I use. I was nervous about Vista at first from what I'd heard and having only used XP on my previous two machines. I was pleasantly surprised though, I've had few issues with Vista itself, though I am considering getting Windows 7 when it's released (having unfortunately missed the "grace" upgrade period of course), specifically for its touch screen features (even without multi-touch). One issue I did have is with Windows Media Center: it likes to crash a lot, so I've since switched since to Boxee, which works well expect I can't figure out how to get it on the external display without cloning. To be fair, I it would be cool to get a rockin' custom Linux distribution running the whole thing (I'd totally make it look like LCARS...), but since I do use it for mild gaming, that wasn't really an option anyway. Plus, my research indicates that touch support for Linux is barebones at best, especially with handwriting recognition (something which Vista absolutely shines at). Instead, I'm using VirtualBox to do Linux work, which even lets me use the stylus in Linux with no problems.

Using the machine as a tablet is pretty much everything I hoped it would be, in no small thanks to Vista's touch support. Vista comes with Windows Journal for hand writing documents, which works well enough, though I use tend to use Office OneNote instead because of its organizational abilities.


It's easy to write notes, diagrams and keep them all together. I'd like to set up some sort automatic note backup for important documents though. I love reading PDF's and E-books, I switched to Foxit reader over Adobe though, I find it works better with the touch screen and Adobe was crashing on me a lot. I also frequently use it in tablet mode just for general browsing, if I don't have to do a lot of text input. And even for text input, you have a couple of options. Usually, when the focus is in any sort of text box, an icon pops up allowing you to use the tablet features to enter text. I was quite shocked how easily Vista could recognize my (considerably bad) hand writing, without even running the training samples. There's also an on screen keyboard which I'll switch too from time to time, though to be fair for any long amount of typing, I'll convert to notebook mode.


I prefer hand writing when jotting and working though ideas so I can incorporate diagrams, etc, but prefer typing more formal notes (such as summaries, etc). Now, I can have both together and well organized. I could pick up using the stylus for touch input almost instantly, though I find using my finger a challenge and needing some practice: scroll bars for instance are hard to use unless you use your fingernail, as is anything small like tray or tool bar icons. Nevertheless, I do find myself often using the touch screen controls instead of the touch pad even in notebook mode, especially if I'm sitting up and its on my lap. In addition, it can be hard to "drag" things with your finger since you have to press a bit hard which creates more friction, thus it's tougher to move your finger. Note that there are two ways you can calibrate it: either for finger or stylus. Unfortunately you don't seem to be able to use both at the same time: if you calibrate for touch, your stylus is less accurate, and if you calibrate for stylus (like I usually have it), your touch is less accurate.

Here's some handwriting in Onenote:


Viewing a webpage (my blog! :)


Vista does do a few odd things with the screen: the rotate button always rotates counter clockwise, though I'd prefer it to rotate clockwise. It's also always trying to enforce what orientation it thinks it should be in instead of what I want it in (for example, I'd like it to automatically go to portrait mode when converting to tablet, instead of landscape like it insists on). It should either be controllable, or just let me choose the rotation by hand. Another quirk is that sometimes one of my "power/network/volume" icons will mysteriously disappear on boot and I have to restart to get it back. When turning on the external display, sometimes I have to click the command twice for it to actually activate, which I find odd. I do love that the remote simply sends KeyPress messages to the WndProc, so I can easily write support for it into my own programs such as my media player.

Summary:

Main Pros:

* Sturdy build
* Powerful machine for all around use
* Touch/Tablet features are fantastic
* Gigabit Ethernet and wireless N
* Media remote/video out

Main Cons:

* Heat issues
* Poor viewing angle
* Heavier than I'd like for use in tablet mode

I am mostly happy with the machine so far and hope I'll get a lot of use out of it. I'll keep my blog updated on new information about it if I have any to share! Thanks for reading, hope this review might help some people out in the future. Take care!