Jamie's Random Musings

It seems to me that the computer mouse is often almost an afterthought, or even gets no thought at all, when configuring or setting up a computer. In many cases (I might even go so far as to say in most cases), when I have been helping someone order or install a new system, they say "I can use the mouse from my old computer", or "I have an old mouse in the closet somewhere, I'll use that". I can thnk of two good reasons NOT to do this - first, both the technology and ergonomics of mouse design have been steadily improving, and a mouse that is a year or two old (or a lot more) is honestly nowhere near as good as those available today. Second, even a mouse that is good in one situation, with one computer, might not be well suited to another situation.

The technology part is fairly easy to illustrate - looking back at obvious things like the switch from mechanical tracking (the little ball that used to be in the bottom of mice) to laser tracking, the development of cordless mice and subsequent improvement in the quality and reliability of cordless connection, and of course the steady improvement in their shape and feel, making them easier and more comfortable to use. When I was cleaning out my office recently, I pulled no less than four old mechanical, corded mice out of one cabinet, and just shook my head as I thought of how much they have changed.

On the other hand, I have recently had several good examples of how choosing "the right mouse for the job" can make things easier and more pleasant. I wrote recently about installing UNR on a very old Eee PC. That system had a touchpad with no buttons, which is a miserable way to have to try to work, so obviously we needed to add a mouse. I used a "standard" cordless mouse when I was loading UNR, and while that worked ok, the USB receiver is about the size of a typical "thumb drive", sticking out of the side of the netbook. Because the point of a netbook is to be very mobile, both around the house and on the road, that thing sticking out of the side is just begging to be broken off, damaging at least the mouse and very possibly the netbook as well. When I gave my neighbor a Logitech VX Nano, which has a very small USB receiver that sits almost flush against the side of the netbook. Besides solving the potential break-off problem, I also happen to like the VX mouse a lot, it is well designed, has a scroll wheel and forward/back buttons, and feels good in the hand. Very nice.

With the HP Mini 2140 netbook that I just delivered to another friend (more on that soon), the situation was a little different. I initially thought of just getting another mouse with a "Nano" reciever (Logitech has several different ones now), but then I remembered that the 2140 has integrated Bluetooth, and that works quite well with Ubuntu. Using a Bluetooth mouse would get the same benefits of cordless connection (convenience and comfort), but would not take up a USB port (the 2140 only has two of them). So this time I picked up a Logitech V470 cordless Bluetooth mouse. It connected to the 2140 perfectly on the first try, it reconnects smoothly after shutdown/reboot, and it works great. Another problem solved! By the way, Logitech has a new Bluetooth mouse the M555b, which looks like it might be even nicer, but it is not available in Switzerland yet, so I can't try it...

My own relatively new nettop (Dual Atom desktop) system also needed a mouse, of course. In this situation, because the computer is simply sitting on my desk, the worries about breaking off a larger USB receiver are much less, and in fact another interesting factor comes into consideration. If I want to change the mouse for some reason, and I am groping around on the back of the system to take out the USB receiver, it is a lot easier to find one that is thumb-sized than the little Nano!

Last, but certainly not least, my own HP 2133 Mini-Note. I have a strong personal preference for a trackball rather than a mouse, so I was very pleased to find the Kensington Slimblade Trackball Mouse. This little gem can actually be used as either a trackball or a mouse, and it connects via Bluetooth so once again it saves a USB port! Good stuff.

If you are buying or setting up a new computer, give a little thought to the mouse (or trackball), rather than just dragging one out of the closet, or just accepting and using whatever low-priced mouse is tossed in "free" with by the supplier. There are a lot of good options available, and they generally aren't very expensive. You can make things a lot easier and more pleasant by choosing the right mouse for the job!

jw 4/7/2009

I have to say first that I am mildly surprised to be writing this. I'm sitting in Starbucks, where I came to spend an hour drinking coffee and using their public WiFi access before going to an appointment (nope, no job yet...). I got my Fujitsu S6510 connected with no problem... and then waited, and waited, and waited. Now, admittedly, this is an obviously poorly equiped, configured and managed access point, but it is also a well known one and frequently suggested one. At the speed it was going, I doubt that I could have fully loaded 6 pages in an hour, and the majority of them just gave up and timed out after a while.

In disgust, I gave up, disconnecdted from the WiFi, and put in my Swisscom (Option) HSPA Express Card. This is on my HP 2133 Mini-Note, running Ubuntu 9.04. I had never put the HSPA card in since fresh loading 9.04, so it went through the new Mobile Broadband device setup, which took less than a minute. I clicked Connect, and in less than another minute, it was connected and zooming along at a very nice speed. A quick speed check says I am getting 2.5 Mbps down and 250Kbps up, which is plenty for me.

The moral of the story is, it is no longer valid to assume, as I did, that WiFi will be faster and more reliable than Mobile Broadband; more importantly, consider your costs and the kind of mobile internet plan you have. Mine is a fixed-cost-per-day-used plan. The cost for a full day of unlimited use is less than the cost of a cup of Starbucks coffee. I sure wish I had thought of that about an hour ago!

jw 2/7/2009

I have been wanting to get my hands on an HP Mini 2140 netbook ever since I read the first announcement for it. I already own an HP 2133 Mini-Note (wouldn't it be nice if they would be more consistent about naming/numbering similar models?), and the packaging is nearly identical - in particular, it has the same sturdy case, and the same wonderful keyboard. There are crucial differences in the internals, though, the most significant of which is the Intel Atom 270 CPU, rather than the VIA C7-M, and their associated chips. Of course, in terms of avoiding headaches and difficulty, at the top of the "associated chips" list I would put the Intel GMA 950 display controller, rather than the VIA Chrome in the 2133. These differences should make installing Linux a LOT easier on the 2140 than it was on the 2133... SHOULD make...

Grrr. Sometimes things are easy. Sometimes not. This one is a definite NOT. Because the 2140 came with a relatively old SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) 10 installed, I decided to just skip that and go straight for the throat - install Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and be done with it and ready to work in 30 minutes or less. Yeah, right... Unfortunately, it wouldn't boot UNR from a USB stick. No idea why, it just wouldn't. Fortunately, it would boot the same image from an SD card. Still no idea why, but at least it boots and I can run the UNR installation process. Very smooth, very fast, looks good... installation done, time to reboot... and CRASH! GRRR!

GRUB comes up, but as soon as the Linux kernel tries to boot, it crashes in a huge mess. Repeated tries, repeated failures, it looks like it's always the same crash, but there is way too much info dumped to the console for me to see it all go flying past. Maybe a BIOS problem... well, the BIOS in this (brand new) system is indeed one revision out of date. Download and install the new BIOS... no problems... try to boot... no dice, still crashes! Reinstall, just in case the BIOS change has some effect on installation (I know, I'm grasping at straws here)... nope, still crashes miserably on boot.

Now I'm getting irritated and desperate. Try booting the Ubuntu LiveCD, still crashes. Maybe it's something unique to Ubuntu... try booting the Mandriva LiveCD... still crashes. UGH. Go back and restore the original SLED distribution from the recovery DVD, to make sure this isn't simply a defective 2140. Restores fine, boots, loads and runs fine. On the positive side, that whole process didn't really take all that long. On the negative side, having seen and worked with UNR and Moblin for a while now, I wouldn't want to give this netbook to someone with the bare-bones SLED 10 distribution!

Ok, so this is something about the newer Linux distributions. No idea what. Search the web for 2140, Ubuntu, Netbook Remix and such, until I stumble onto this post from someone who had the same problem. They say it is because the 2140 BIOS is shipped with Dual Core support enabled, even though it only has a single Atom. Hmmm. That could be. Check the BIOS.. yup, Dual Core enabled. Change that, reboot... HOORAY! It works, and it looks as beautiful as I had expected it to a couple of hours ago when I started this!

There has to be more to this, though. Why was that option enabled in the BIOS, why are there so few notes about it on the web, what are the consequences of disabling it in the BIOS... Ok, I found an Ubuntu bug on launchpad about this. It seems the Dual Core option is enabled to support Hyperthreading in the Atom CPU. That sounds familiar, my Dual Atom nettop shows as having four CPUs because of Hyperthreading... The bug thread ends by saying this is fixed in Linux kernel 2.6.29, but that kernel is in Ubuntu 9.10 (currently in Alpha), not 9.04. I'm preparing this for a friend, so I am certainly not going to give it to her with either an Alpha distribution, or an updated non-standard kernel... sigh. I'll have to leave Dual Core disabled in the BIOS for now. It looks like there are relatively few reports of this on the web because it was not a problem with earlier Ubuntu releases (i.e. pre-2.6.28 Linux kernels). I suppose that I could have gotten around this by loading Ubuntu 8.10, but my enthusiasm for using an older distribution is not much higher than it is for using an Alpha of 9.10...

So, now I can continue with software installation and configuration. More on that, the 2140 in general, tomorrow.

jw 1/7/2009

The Moblin steering committee has announced the "release" of the Moblin 2.0 Beta for netbooks and nettops. I have a couple of questions and comments about that, before I get into the last few observations about the software.

First, what are they "releasing" with the announcement yesterday? The current download image has been available for nearly two weeks. I've noticed that several batches of updates came through in the past couple of days, so maybe there were some fixes implemented prior to this announcement. But if that is the case, then why not make a new build available for download, with all the latest updates? Seems a bit odd to me.

Also, I find the addition of "nettops" in the announcement interesting. Not only as the proud owner of one, but also as a sign that they are keeping an eye on their target users.

Ok, now for my last few comments about Moblin. I've already written about the Moblin desktop, so this time I just want to fill in some details about how specific things work. Right at the top of the list is the browser. Now, I know that they say the Moblin browser is based on "the latest Mozillabrowser technology", but is it really necessary to invent yet another browser which looks, feels and works completely differently than Firefox, Chrome, Safar, IE or whatever? Maybe it is - maybe they think that their target users are so different from traditional computer users that they really need to design a new and different browser. But for experienced users, or really anyone who has used a browser before, the Moblin browser is likely to be the source of a lot of confusion and frustration at first. It certainly was for me!

I like the idea of "Pinned pages", especially because of its consistency with "Pinning" applications to the Favorites area. But that brings up the thing that confuses me - what is the difference between "Pinned Pages" and "Favourite Pages", and how do things get moved between those two? I looked high and low for Bookmarks before I finally realized that pressing the push-pin in the address bar would add the current page to the "Pinned pages" list. How and why do pages get added to "Favourites", how long do they stay there, how could I add my own to that list, or remove unwanted ones from that list? It looks to me like recently visited pages automatically get added, but it doesn't take much thought to realize that isn't a very good idea at all - in fact, it is just the opposite of the "private browsing mode" that IE and Firefox have been working on recently. If I visit the American Greetings page to create a birthday card for someone, and I don't particularly want her to know about it until I give her the card, why would I want that page added to my Favourites? How would I get it out of there after it was automatically added? You get the idea...

Second, Moblin seems to have decided to minimize the number of mouse/button actions. There are no "Minimize/Maximize" buttons in the window title bars, and there are only the simplest of "Backward/Forward" buttons. Also, I haven't found anyplace where right-clicking the mouse does anything at all... it's almost like someone from the original Apple Lisa/Mac group was involved, the ones who said "An N-button mouse has N-1 too many buttons". Again, this is a significant problem for experienced users, but might not be so serious for users who were first starting with Moblin.

One thing Moblin does not do which UNR does is start every window full-screen. Most of the top menu items are full screen, such as myZone, Internet and Media; others start with less than that, but may expand depending on what you do with them, such as Status, People and Pasteboard. I think both Moblin and UNR are going to have to rethink this a bit if they are serious about adding nettops to their target list. Automatic full screen is probably good when you only have a tiny netbook screen, but with a 19" screen on a nettop, there's not much that I want to see full screen, thanks very much.

Finally, the entire concept of desktop management seems odd to me. No task bar or system tray, or any other kind of always (or automatically) visible display of active windows. I suppose you are supposed to do all window management (or desktop management) by going to the "Zones" menu item, but that seems rather tedious to me, and besides I once again don't understand what gets put into which zone or why. Experienced users want to click an icon to go directly to whatever window they need. It looks to me like the "Zones" display will get pretty cluttered and confusing very quickly - but then again, maybe you aren't supposed to have a lot of open windows simultaneously, so it shouldn't matter.

All of the comments above, and some that I have made previously, lead me back to the same conclusion about Moblin. It looks like they have chosen novice or inexperienced computer users as their target audience. The entire setup, organization, desktop layout and options of Moblin seem to be geared toward using it as the center of your "Social Networking" activities. I think this is significant because there is a big difference between concentrating on netbooks and the like which have limited hardware, both input (small keyboard and touchpad), output (small display) and processing power (Atom CPU), which is what the Ubuntu Netbook Remix has done, and developing for a totally different target user group.

As I have said before, Moblin may well turn out to be exactly right with their approach. The success of Social Networking so far makes it obvious that this target group is very large. If Moblin appeals to them, and the netbook/nettop market continues to grow rapidly, they might end up in a great position. It might well be that if your target hardware is netbooks and nettops, then specifically not targeting experienced users is a good idea. We have had several discussions here on ZDNet UK about the fact that experienced users are frequently dissatisfied with the inherent limitations of netbook hardware. But if my own experience is any indication, nettops might confuse that, because I really like my Dual Atom nettop, but I would never consider running Moblin on it for my own use.

Here's another metric. I think it would be interesting to give a netbook with Moblin to a novice user, and see how they get on with it. But I am so uncertain about Moblin myself that I would never risk it with anyone who came to me for help. As I've said recently, I just set up a neighbor with Ubuntun Netbook Remix on an old Eee PC, and she is very pleased with it. I was just asked for similar help by another friend, but this time she didn't have a netbook yet, so I have ordered a new HP Mini 2140 for her. I will load UNR on it as soon as it arrives - I wouldn't even consider giving it to her with Moblin on it. Has anyone else done just the opposite, perhaps? I know there have been one or two comments to my previous blog posts about Moblin from people who were considering using it, or setting it up for other family members or friends. If anyone actually did that, I'd love to hear how it worked out, and what the user comments, successes and failures were.

One last thing. I'm still very disturbed by the lack of a "Stop/Shutdown/Off" button on Moblin, and I don't think I am the only one bothered by that, especially with experienced users but also with novices. I can see the argument about other devices simply turning off with the switch, such as cell phones, smart phones, PDAs or whatever. I've also heard the arguments about how conceptually difficult or confusing designing such a button or menu can be - there was a fascinating article about the internal workings at Microsoft that focused on the design of the "Shutdown" menu for Vista. But would it be so difficult, or dangerous, or confusing, to put one more button on the menu bar? There are plenty of hieroglyphics on there already, adding one more isn't likely to suddenly put the confusion factor over the top, is it? Especially if it is one that simply looks a lot like a power switch, sort of like the Gnome or KDE Stop/Shutdown buttons do?

Maybe I'm wrong - if there is anyone out there who thinks the lack of a Shutdown option, and having to use only the computer power button to shut down Moblin, is a good idea, I'd love to hear from you, so speak up!

jw 30/6/2009

Although I have been mostly occupied with UNR and Moblin for the past week or two, I have managed to take a little time to look at the new Fedora release. The results have been decidedly mixed.

The first hurdle I had to get over was the installation quirk that I wrote about recently. Once I got that worked out, I was able to install Fedora 11 on both of my notebooks (Fujitsu S6510, Intel, and Fujitsu-Siemens S2110, AMD/ATI), and it works very well. Support for all of the various integrated devices and controllers is just fine, including the ATI display controller, Broadcom and Marvel wired network and Atheros and Intel wireless network. Speed seems good, although I have the feeling that it actually doesn't boot quite as fast as Ubuntu 9.04 - I haven't tried to time it yet to see if this is true, though.

I was also able to install it on the Dual Atom nettop system with no trouble, The performance seems much worse than on the laptops, though. The display in particular seems very sluggish; admittedly, that system only has an Intel 950 display controller, but Fedora is noticeably slower on screen updates and such than any of the other Linux distributions I have loaded on it. Two examples - when the login screen comes up, and I click on my name, it is very noticeably slow in changing the display to the "Password" prompt - I can actually watch most of the screen changes taking place; also, if I leave the system idle until the screen saver comes on, then touch the keyboard or mouse to wake it back up, it takes 5 seconds or more before it finally prompts me for the password. Now, to be fair, this is only an Atom-based system, but as it is a pretty well equipped dual CPU Atom system, I suppose this means that I wouldn't be rushing right out to put Fedora 11 on a netbook...

Which brings me to the last problem. I wasn't able to install it at all on my HP 2133 Mini-Note systems. It boots and starts the installation process just fine, but about halfway through it gets an "unexpected exception", and the installation process crashes. I've tried both the LiveCD and the Installation DVD, and both do the same thing. I've tried a few things to get around it, but I didn't really have much time to spend on it, so I gave up fairly quickly.

So, in summary, if you are a Fedora fan, and you have a more or less "standard" desktop or notebook, you will probably be able to install Fedora 11 without too much trouble, and you're very likely to be happy with the results. But if you have a netbook, with either an Atom or VIA CPU, I don't think you'll have much luck - I certainly didn't.

jw 28/6/2009

Update: After writing this (on Ant under Fedora 11), I let it install all the latest Fedora 11 updates. The display is clearly faster now. It's still not spectacularly fast, but the Intel 950 is not a spectacularly good display chip. It is certainly good enough now, though.

jw