Avaktavyam

I had problem with getting dates to show up properly in both systems. I searched a bit and found that neither support DST. A bit more search showed that PHP (the language in which both are implemented) has all the functionality to provide DST support. For the developers of Wordpress and MediaWiki, supporting DST is simply a matter of performing the right function calls to PHP which in turn relies on the OS for DST support. Basically, neither Wordpress nor MediaWiki have to do complicated DST calculations or worry about the various ways various locales deal with it: the OS takes care of all that.

Still, both Wordpress and MediaWiki require their users to mess around with manually switching timezone offsets twice a year. Why, oh why do users have to deal with this when it would be so easy to implement an automatic solution?!? Such an omission is mind boggling.

I recently noted that my next computer is not going to be a Dell. Boy am I glad I made the decision to abandon Dell. Why? Because today Lionel Menchaca, Digital Media Manager at Dell, reported that Dell is going to hold events in Second Life for the release of the Vostro line of laptops. With this Dell earns a 10/10 for buzz and a 0/10 for appropriateness. When will they learn that Second Life is fluff?

[A note before I start: the impressions and opinions I'm expressing here are based on Dell's offerings at the time I wrote this piece. Things will probably change eventually. I really don't need someone to point to me that "Dell's 1420n has discrete graphics". At the time I'm writing this, the 1420n does not have discrete graphics.]

After nine years of being a Dell costumer, I’ve decided to switch. No, I have not switched to a Mac. A nice friend of mine lent me her Mac for the summer. I’ve tried it but did not see anything there that I need and was willing to pay for that Ubuntu on a PC does not already give me. So I’ve switched from Dell to Sager. The Sager brand is not as well known as Dell but I have no reason to believe that this will translate into problems for me. My problems with Dell can be summarized as follows:

1. Dell’s build quality has gone down over the years. I’ve owned 3 Dell laptops over nine years. The first one was very sturdy but the one I currently own had issues from the start and aged very badly. Most of the issues did not prevent me from getting work done but a few of them were major.

2. Dell’s Linux offering is still not to my liking. But Dell offering Linux is better than nothing, right? In theory yes. The problem is that all the laptops they offer with Linux (Ubuntu) preinstalled do not have the options I want. Dell can offer the same model of laptop for Windows and Linux but the Linux version is severely restricted as to what options are available on it. Now, I understand that Dell uses parts that perhaps Linux does not support. For instance, maybe they use a webcam that Linux cannot handle. Ok, what about switching to a webcam that Linux can handle instead of not making it an option on Linux systems?

Ever since I’ve started using Linux, I’ve bought computers that had features that Linux could not immediately use. Typically, a few months down the road an upgrade would provide all the necessary drivers and everything would then be usable. Is that ideal? Hell, no! The ideal situation would be to have everything work right from the start. However, Dell’s choice to achieve that goal is to decide that if Linux does not support option X, X won’t be offered. That’s the wrong solution to the problem. Dell should instead turn around and select brands that are supported by Linux or tell the companies that produce their parts that they have to support Linux or else Dell buy their parts elsewhere.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I sincerely hope Dell’s Linux offerings are good for a certain type of customer. I could see for instance, businesses that want Linux preinstalled but don’t want discrete graphics or webcams go with a Dell. For me, however, Dell’s warming up to Linux is too little too late.

3. If you buy a Dell you must buy an OS with it. If their Linux offering is not to your liking, you must buy a laptop with Windows. And they sell you a crippled license. Dell sells OEM licenses of Windows and those are not transferable to a new PC.

The Sager has all the features I need so that takes care of point 2, partially at least. I could not buy it with Ubuntu preinstalled but I’ve bought it without an OS installed so that takes care of point 3. For point 1, I have to rely on reviews and Sager’s reputation online. Only time will tell whether their build is better than Dell’s but I’m optimistic so far.

I mentioned earlier that yesterday was my wife’s birthday. The big gift for her birthday this year was an Epson Stylus Photo R380. Yes, she’s that kind of girl (the kind who likes electronics as gifts) and I’m that kind of guy (who is apt to give electronics as a gift to his wife). She had been talking about getting a new inkjet to be able to print photos. We had one that came “free” with the last Dell laptop I bought but it was utter crap. That’s what you can expect with “free” printers.

Anyway, the new printer is good but I found that it has a color balance problem. I’ve been testing it with a of Ice, the best feline companion we’ve ever had, now deceased. Here’s the problem: Ice is white but appears with a pink hue in the pictures I’ve been printing. So now I’m fiddling with the settings to try to see if I can turn off some “feature” which might be messing with the color balance.

Here is a good example of how Apple fanboys are easily prey to feelings of imaginary persecution. According to the author analysts are dissing the iPhone without good reason. The logic is flawed. It is unfortunately the case that it is easier to spew out faulty logic than refute it and I have no time for refutation so that’s all I’m gonna say about this.

In my previous post, I included an image. Including images in posts in Dotclear was a huge pain in the ass. I had to leave your editor, go into the gallery manager to upload the image, come back into the editor, etc. etc. I also had to be careful about image size: too big an image would screw up the page formatting. In Wordpress, you never leave the editing screen and image sizes are taken care of by Wordpress. I’m so glad I switched!

People who think Apple is the second coming should read this article. The announcement of security vulnerabilities in Safari was made in the context of the release of the Windows version but those vulnerabilities also exist in OSX. Apple’s software more secure… hmm… yeah, and unicorns too. Choice quote:

Two of the researchers blamed Apple’s “false claims” about security and what they called its “hostile attitude” toward bug finders for the rush to dig up flaws.

Apple surely wins points for its elegant hardware design but that’s the only place where they win points. OSX is a mixed bag: great UI features juxtaposed with inefficient (if not downright confusing) UI misfeatures. Their software is clearly not secure. And they are not your BFF, that’s for sure.

Update: Apple has fixed the security issues. Can’t say they are slow. That’s for sure.

Great news: Dell now sells desktops and laptops with Ubuntu (a distribution of Linux) pre-installed. No MS tax! Hurray!

I’m planing to buy a new laptop this summer but I’ve been unhappy with my last Dell machine. So Dell is not quite high on my list of potential brands. Their move towards Linux could reverse this situation but they need to get their act together quickly. I’ve looked at the current offerings and I must say I’m not blown away by what is available right now. A laptop without bluetooth? Not in 2007. No way!

Rewind a few years back at the time when one button mice were standard on Macs. Apple and Apple zealots were foaming at the mouth that multi-button mice like those found on PC’s were just too darn confusing for ordinary people. I’m keeping a friend’s Mac at my house while she’s on the other side of the world. Guess what I found? The Mac’s mouse now has multiple buttons. It just hides most of them but the are there. What happened to the notion that multiple buttons were too confusing? Do the Mac zealots have an answer to that one?

Well, the 40GB hard drive on my laptop had died! I gotta say, my Dell Inspiron 600m is the least durable machine I’ve ever owned. Dell used to make nice, relatively rugged machines but quality has gone down a few years ago and it shows. This machine had had to have its power supply replaced, its mother board replaced and now the HD is crap.

I’m beating myself over the fact that I should have been much more proactive about this problem. Early this year, I was no longer able to boot my Windows partition. I just brushed that off since my main OS is Linux and circumstance led me to believe that the problem with not booting was probably due to software. I’ve used computers with hard drives in them for about 20 years. This is only the second time I have a drive die on me. In the same time-frame I’ve seen plenty of software problems so it’s not like a hardware problem is my first hypothesis when something goes wrong. Besides, Linux was still working fine and the Windows partition was still readable. In retrospect, I now think that that was the first sign of the ultimate demise of my drive.

I received a clearer warning recently when my drive started clicking periodically. It happened pretty rarely so I did not think much of it. It nevertheless caused me to do a backup of my data files but I did not take it as seriously as I should have. I should have backed up more than I did, saved more information about my Linux setup (which is pretty well documented except for one thing: I do not regularly backup the list of packages I have installed), shutdown the machine and jump onto the web to order a new drive. Everything would have been better if I had done that.

I’ve tried to revive the HD as best as I could but I think at this point I’m going to call it quits, except that I’ll try one or two things later. I’ve lost some data but nothing that warrants paying for recovery or that warrants spending much more time and money than I already have (a full 2 days of work spent on this; had to buy new tools to work with the drive). I’ve inspected the drive visually and did not see anything amiss. I’ve downloaded tools that try to talk to the drive at a low level but none of those tools are able to talk to the drive to any useful extent. The best info I got was that MHDD tells me that the drive is not able to find track 0 but that could be a problem with the logic board or a problem with the heads or the platters could even be damaged. I’ve downloaded some tools to upload new firmware but the drive is not alive enough to be detected properly by those tools. I’ve chilled and warmed up the drive but nothing worked.

I’ve stopped trying to fix this for the moment and I have temporarily accepted that this drive is dead. I will try a few more drastic tricks once I get my IDE to USB interface on Monday.

Fortunately, it is not a complete disaster since I have relatively recent backups of my critical data. It is annoying because I need to deal with getting a new Linux installation to the level I need to work. It is also annoying because I’ve lost part of my work on a paper I’ve been writing and I have completely lost the files of a recent scan job. I will be able to rescan later.

So what are the lessons learned? First, I should pay pretty darn serious attention to any unusual HD noises even if they are only intermittent. My past experience with failed hard drives involved spectacular failures. (As I said this is only the second time one of *my* hard drives that has failed in 20 years but I’ve seen other rare failures on very old hardware.) Those failures were very sudden and were very clear. This was more gradual so I was not worried enough. Second lesson learned is that I need to update my backup habits. I’ve been relatively good about it but not good enough. My current habits have been developed in an environment in which backups occurred naturally as part of my work routine. In those days, I would transfer my work environment between a laptop and one or two desktop computers on a nearly daily basis. My files ended up being replicated in 2 or 3 places at a reasonably short interval. My work environment changed since then because I now use one laptop pretty much exclusively. So nothing *forces* me to replicate my files anywhere else. So I backup whenever I remember to backup which is not often enough. I’ve also not paid enough attention to hardware advances. There are now much better and cheaper solutions that exist for backing up. I need to rethink my backing up strategy so that I can backup frequently and easily and integrate that into my work habits.