Random reviews

Linux Hardware

Sandisk SDDR-88 memory card reader

I recently bought a USB 2.0 hi-speed Sandisk SDDR-88 8-in-1 memory card reader for use on my Linux machine. I am running Debian Sarge on my machine with 2.6.11.5 kernel. SDDR-88 worked flawlessly with 2.6.11.5 kernel. All four slots on the reader were recognized with absolutley no problems. It just worked!!

I then tried it on Debian 2.4.25 kernel and it worked there as well.

Compaq Presario V6000Z

I recently bought this laptop for a family member and installed Ubuntu Linux on it. This is a fairly inexpensive laptop with decent specs. There is a good review of this laptop here. Before buying this laptop, I did a earch on any experiences installing Linux on V6000Z and found these useful links:

• Linux Laptop Wiki
• HP-Compaq Presario V6000z Discussion

I found couple other discussions that indicated Linux would run on this laptop, with some difficulties in some cases though. Encouraging enough. I ordered one. I ordered the Imprint finish which does look nice but shows fingerprints too much. I have to wipe it constantly to keep it looking good.

Booting up Ubuntu Live CD

I attempted initial install by booting off of an Ubuntu Feisty (7.04) CD for 64-bit AMD and Intel processors. Bootup went well until it attempted to start gnome. System locked up upon starting gnome. Further research led to discovery that booting V6000Z with "noapic" does wonders. I booted Ubuntu live CD again, this time with "noapic" option on kernel command line (Press F6 when you get to Ubuntu boot up options screen. This will bring up current kernel command line. Add "noapic" to kernel command line and hit RETURN). Voila, gnome came up and live CD seems to be fully functional. I quickly checked various hardware (sound, wired network, USB etc) and almost everything was functional. Wireless network wouldn't come up and I noticed in dmesg that the driver was complaining about bcm43xx firmware missing. I found out that due to licensing issues, Ubuntu can not ship bcm43xx firmware but it is easy enough to retrieve it using bcm43xx-fwcutter (more on that later).

Installing Ubuntu amd64

I booted laptop up with Ubuntu live amd64 CD and started install. System install was fairly smooth and quick. Upon reboot at the end of install, gnome failed to come up again. Installation did not pass the "noapic" option I had used to boot it with to grub config. I rebooted laptop, stopped in grub menu, edited the boot up command to include noapic and booted up laptop. Once laptop was up, I edited /boot/grub/menu.lst to add "video=vesafb:ywrap vga=792 noapic" to "defoptions=" line (video=... uses higher resolution on the text consoles). I then connected to wired network and updated to latest packages (aptitude update; aptitude upgrade). I also switched from Xorg "nv" driver to NVidia's proprietary "nvidia" driver. Here are steps to do that:

• aptitude install nvidia-glx-new
• Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf, change the line Driver "nv" to Driver "nvidia", comment out the line Load "dri"
• /etc/init.d/gdm restart to restart gdm with nvidia driver

After switching to nvidia driver, I also needed to remove noapic option. I was seeing too many graphics hangs with noapic option.
I do not like the tap to click feature on touchpad. I disabled that using gsynaptics. To do this edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf again and add the following line to the InputDevice section for synaptics which contains the line Driver "synaptics":

Option "SHMConfig" "true"

Restart gnome after this and run gsynaptics to configure touchpad and disable tap-to-click feature.

Getting Wireless Working

I noticed on the console, system was constantly complaining about missing bcm43xx firmware, since it was trying to bring wireless up. To stop these error messages, remove the bcm43xx module (rmmod bcm43xx). Now to get wireless working, first step is to fetch the missing firmware. Install bcm43xx-fwcutter package to do this - aptitude install bcm43xx-fwcutter. In post-install of this package, you will be asked if you want to fetch the firmware. Choose yes and firmware will be fetched. Now modprobe bcm43xx and wireless should be fully functional. You can add it to Network-Manager if you like.

Here is a more detailed install guide for wireless on Ubuntu Feisty.

Adding further functionality

So far everything looks good. So I proceeded to install other software to make this laptop fully functional. acroread package from Edgy installed just fine on Feisty. I then tried to install flash player and realplayer and ran into problems. There are only 32-bit versions of these plugins available. There are three options - Use nspluginwrapper and run 32-bit plugins on 64-bit firefox, run 32-bit firefox, or install 32-bit Ubuntu Feisty. For my laptop, I would have chosen nspluginwrapper option and would have dealt with any problems with it being in beta stage. nspluginwrapper is not a good option for someone with no computer experience. Overall I started getting concerned about running the first release of amd64 Ubuntu on a laptop that I would be supporting remotely. I chose to reinstall 32-bit Feisty.

Falling back to Ubuntu Feisty 32-bit

I restarted install with Ubuntu Feisty 32-bit and went through the same steps as before to get all the hardware configured and functional.Flash and realplayer plugins went fairly smooth. More info on flash player plugin is available in Ubuntu Guide. I also installed software from medibuntu for some of the software not in Ubuntu Feisty. Everything works well so far. The only weirdness I saw was when visiting a web site that uses fonts not installed on the laptop, it froze up. It wasn't just firefox that froze up, rather the whole laptop froze. There was no response to any keys, couldn't switch to text consoles either. Installing right fonts fixed the problem.

Problems found

Sooner or later I was going to find some problems. Here is what I have discovered:

• Microphone does not work. ried making a call with Gizmo project and other side could not hear me. Wondering if microphone was working, I tried sound recorder and sure enough microphone does not work. I am investigating this and have found a few reports of audio problems on this laptop but they all seem to be from older releases of Ubuntu, Fedora etc and older kernels. Resolution: It turned out I just had to unmute all the right inputs on volume control panel. There was an "Int Mic" and another "IntMic" input. I can't say what the distinction is between the two. I simply enabled both of them and turned up the volume. I muted Line In input as well. After this microphone worked fine.

GPS

Garmin StreetPilot 2610

A good review of Garmin SP2610 is here.

My own observations from having used SP2610 for almost two years are below:

• CompactFlash card: I have been using a basic Sandisk 1GB card fora year and it works flawlessly. Since SP2610 is a read-only device, there is no need for a high speed CF card.
• Routing: SP2610, in general, comes up with fairly decent routes. There have been times when it has generated really weird routes for me. There were couple of occasions when it asked me to go off of the main street only to come back to it after one block and continue going in the same direction I was already going in. At one time, it wanted me to drive along a figure 8 route only to come back to exactly where I was and then continue along a more appropriate route. These incidents happened with firmware version 4.30. Overall I am still failry happy with SP2610. I have been on many road trips with no maps, including one 4000 mile long, and used SP2610 for routing completely. I have not had any noticeable problems with SP2610 dropping signal lock. I do use an external  amplified antenna which has made a very noticeable difference in reception and signal strength. I have placed external antenna on the trunk. It usually does not lose lock even in narrow canyons with the external antenna.
  
• Elevation reading: Elevation readings tend to vary constantly even when car is stopped but generally readings tend to be fairly close to what is posted at various points (for example mountain passes).

Audio/Video

Philips HDRW720 DVD Recorder

Updated: Jul 12, 2005

Philips HDRW720 is a DVD recorder with a 120 GB hard disk. The primary reason I bought this recorder was this was one of the few DVD recorders that can record from component input and IEEE-1394 input. So far my exeprience with this recorder has been a mixed bag. Here are some key points:

Good

• Excellent picture quality: This recorder has Faroudja DCDi de-interlacer. The picture quality in progressive scan mode from component output is very good. I thought the picture quality on my Sharp 32" LCD TV was quite good when tuned to cable channels but the picture from HDRW720 is even better. I attribute this to better tuner and scaler in HDRW720.
• Convenience factor: Hard disk recording is very convenient. There is no need to search for blank tapes and time slip function makes my life lot less dependent upon TV schedule. TV programs are always stored in a buffer even when watching a program live. This allows one to not only pause a program but also go back by as much as 6 hours. If after watching a program you decide you would like to keep a copy of it, that program is still in buffer (provided you have not turned the DVR off which causes buffer to be flushed) and you can simply mark it to be saved permamnently on hard disk.
• High speed DVD recording: All programs are recorded on hard disk first. You can then archive any program to a DVD. Archival happens at fairly high speed, for example it records a 90 minute program to a DVD in about 15-16 minutes. It only records to DVD+R/RW media but considering abundance of DVD+R/RW media and low price, I hardly consider that to be a limitation. Before you archive a program to DVD, you can edit out any portions of program, break the program up into multiple titles and insert chapter markers as you see fit.  I have been using it to transfer my 8mm video tapes to DVD and it has been fairly good for that.
• Decent editing features: As mentioned above, this DVR has enough editing features to allow one to edit out commercials and extract segments of a recording. I have found these to be useful features. It does not break a title cleanly at the frame you position the marker at. It almost always pulls in another 8-12 frames before the frame you try to break at. I have simply learned to adapt to this behavior and place the title break marker appropriately.
  

Bad

• TV Guide does not work: HDRW720 comes with a built in TV guide. This has never worked for me and customer support has not been able to resolve it. Without TV guide, recordings get a title made up of channel number and time. VCR Plus recording is also not possible without working TV Guide.
• Convoluted user interface: HDRW720 has the worst user interface of any electronic equipment I have seen. Menus do not have consistent look and feel. Menus are fairly non-intuitive. This is system menu when invoked from HDD mode. This system menu comes up when invoked from DVD mode and this is the setup menu. Each menu has its own look  and navigation style. On top of that, remote control has 4 colored buttons whose function is dependent upon what is on the screen. Their functions are listed at the bottom of the screen if you press Info button. Be prepared to use this with user manual in front of you for a couple of weeks before you can get comfortable with user interface.
  
• Technical support: I have spent 5-6 hours with customer support for various problems with this unit. Tech support people are quite helpful but their training seems to be limited to user manual. So inspite of their efforts, I have not been able to get much help with this DVR. Email support is non-existent inspite of what one sees on Philips web site. Every time I have sent in a request for email support, I got a reply back asking me to call their toll free number.
• No power down at the end of instant recordings: This DVR has Instant Timer Recording (ITR) feature where you can start recording a program you are watching instantly by simply pressing the OTR button. First press of OTR button schedules a recording for the next 30 minutes and each press of OTR button extends recording time by 30 minutes. I have used this feature on my VCRs for a number of years. On all of my VCRs, at the end of ITR, VCR is powered off automatically. This DVR does not power itself down at the end of ITR. I used this button to record rest of the program I was watching as it was getting late in the night only to find the DVR still on in the morning. As long as the DVR is on, hard disk is spinning and is being written to. So ITR not shutting off DVR only shortens the life of hard disk.
• No DVI output: Only video outputs are composite, S-Video and Component.
  

And the ugly

• Software bugs: There is no dearth of software bugs on this DVR. I will try to list the ones I encountered:
  
  
  • I power up the DVR, it starts its power up sequence. After power up it always goes to TV Guide screen. About 10-20% of the times (depends upon software version), it instead goes to tuner input and fails to go to TV Guide screen. When this happens, it powers itself down. Powering up again almost all the time is successful.
  • Schedule a program to record using timer. Every now and then, it records less than what was scheduled. This behavior is unpredictable. Sometimes it would record 40 minutes of a one hour long problem, some times only 30 minutes or so. I saw this with CF2.6 firmware. I have not seen this again with CF3.1 firmware.
  • Timer recording stops at just before 6 hours. When scheduling a timed recording, it will warn you it can not record more than 8 hours using timer when you try to schedule recording longer than 8 hours. Real limit however seems to be 6 hours as I have scheduled it to record 7 hours a few times and always got only 6 hours of recording consistently. I noticed this with CF3.1 firmware.
  • Once I had three scheduled recordings on a saturday. On saturday morning, I noticed it was not recording when it should have been. I checked the schedule and it had decided to delete the entire recording schedule for saturday. I had verified those schedules the night before. So I am pretty sure they were in there on Friday night. This was with CF3.1 firmware.
    
  • An upgrade to CF3.2 firmware completely broke timer recordings. Less than 10% of timer recordings happened with CF3.2. Going back to CF3.1 reduced the number of missed recordings. It still skips some of the scheduled recordings.
    
  • Twice the DVR froze in middle of a program being played from time-slip buffer. It stayed frozen for a while and then powered itself down. This happened with CF3.1 firmware.
    
  
  Philips releases periodic software updates and updating this unit is fairly easy. You simply burn a CD from the ISO image from Philips web site, stick it in the DVD tray and it is done in 30-45 minutes. Downgrade is entirely different story. DVR simply refuses to downgrade. When timer recording broke with an upgrade to CF3.2, Philips customer support said I would have to send it back for depot repair to downgrade it. That is how my DVR was downgraded to CF3.1. I had to send it in for other problems any way, so it was not a big deal. I wish I had written down the exact versions of different components it shows when you look at the firmware revisions. Nevertheless from my memory, versions of various compnents looked newer after my DVR came back from depot repair. I am afreaid to upgrade to CF3.2 again. If something breaks, I can not downgrade back to CF3.1 without sending it in for depot repair.
• Slow repsonse to remote: There is a very noticeable delay between the time you press a button on remote and the time when DVR responds. It feels like a 0.5 second delay almost. It drives me crazy, especially when I am trying to type in a title and trying to cycle through letters and symbols.
  

UPDATE Oct 1, 2005: I tried an update to CF3.2 again and this time it worked. Since this recent upgrade, it has not skipped any recording. I have not experienced any freezes or spontaneous power down immediately after power up. When you display firmware version, it displays a lot of numbers. I wish I had written all of them down before I sent it in for depot repair. From memory, all of the version numbers reported on firmware version screen seem to be newer after depot reapir. Philips also claimed they found a faulty laser assembly (even though I never had any problems writing to a DVD) and replaced it. Somehow whatever changes deport repair made combined with CF3.2 firmware seem to have stabilized this unit significantly.

UPDATE Nov 19, 2005: Well, the party with last CF3.2 upgrade lasted only so long. Theproblem of DVR powering down itself soon after powering up is back. It has also skipped a few timer rrecordings in the last couple of weeks.

UPDATE Dec 10, 2005: Another new problem has now cropped up. While buffering a program, picture at random time freezes. Once the picture freezes, DVR continues to record frozen picture. This DVR has become too unreliable for recording and buffering now. Definitely one of the worst piece of A/V equipment I have owned.

Photography

Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D

An excellent review of Minolta Maxxum 7D is posted here. I will add my own observations here.

Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D image gallery

• Sunset over rockies
• Robin at her nest
• Colors and textures