New PC or just defrag?

We have one Windows XP system in the house. Over recent months it was getting slower and slower. Once booted up, which was taking longer and longer, the performance rapidly degraded.

I was in the habit of looking at the thing darkly and imagining the day I would replace it with a "real PC".

Instead, I went through it and freed up about 15% of the disc space, including wiping out all but the in-use *.tmp files. Then, I booted to Safe Mode and ran a defrag...hoping this would allow the files normally in use in a conventional boot to be movable.

The defrag ran for hours as the disc I/O in Safe Mode is a fair bit slower than in a normal boot.

But it was well worth it. The system now runs like a fresh install. It's responsive, moves between apps quickly and we can switch between users in seconds instead of minutes as had been the case.

The system is a 1.6Ghz AMD Athlon with 512MB of RAM. I'm guessing the amount of memory used for disc caching is now being used much effectively once the file system was defragged.

Now WinXP feels almost as fast as Ubuntu Linux 9.10 on the same system.

Dlink Wireless G USB Adaptor DWA-110

Google fodder: After upgrading the firmware on my DLink Wireless 108G Storage Router (XH0414) to v1.11, I found that a couple of my systems - one linux and one WinXP - were having trouble maintaining a stable connection with WPA encryption. More offline than online.

I was using WPA because the old DSE 802.11g USB WiFi adaptor (XH8227) I had didn't support WPA2. It also doesn't work with Linux, so I had the USB adaptor for Windows and an Atheros-based PCI WiFi card for Ubuntu.

As WPA2 was stable and worked just fine, the firmware upgrade forced the issue of WPA vs WPA2, so I went over to PB Tech in Wairau Valley and picked up a DLink Wireless G USB Adaptor DWA-110 for about $50.

The install on WinXP was trouble free, though as usual everything in the box had big warnings on it NOT to plug the device into the system before installing the drivers. OK...been down that path before and know not to ignore those warnings.

The new device worked just fine with WinXP, so I rebooted to Linux to see what would happen.

I soon found that I was connected to the WiFi AP with TWO adaptors - both the USB adaptor and the PCI card. The new device just worked out of the box, acquired an IP address via DHCP and went for it. Now I can retire the PCI card if I want and go with just the one device.

I love that. Yet again, Linux was easier than Windows.

2009-07-30 UPDATE: This device has not worked automatically with any 'standard' Ubuntu 9.04 kernel revisions after 2.6.27-14. I continue to use 2.6.27-14 and related modules.

2009-03-10 UPDATE: I removed the PCI card and now use the USB WiFi on both sides. Had to add the options statement to /etc/modprobe.d/options to get the device to see channels 12 and 13. (My AP is on channel 13). Then I was away laughing!

"The Cloud" and Ten reasons why Linux will triumph over Windows

Jack Whalen, of TechRepublic, blogs 10 reasons why Linux will triumph over Windows. Most of them are pretty good in my humble opinion, but I'm left wondering what the nature of the 'triumph" will be.

I ponder that point because more and more I find myself computing in "the cloud". My first choice for word processing and spreadshets is now Google Docs. I use Gmail for all my Internet email. My video comes mainly from YouTube and conventional shows are often via bittorrent rather than wait a year or three (if!) to see them where I live. For work, over the past 18 months, Google has more than proven itself to me through two campaigns involving dispersed teams of volunters. Google Docs doesn't care what your OS is as long as you have an adequate web browser.

My Apple iPod Touch is now my favourite portable computing device. Waaay sub-netbook! It provides ready, easy access to all the most important stuff the Cloud has to offer, either as-delivered or via downloadable applications that extend its function and capability. If it could cut and paste it would be perfect...and even there, there are work-arounds already. I think that soon there will be many such devices running a variety of operating systems: Linux, Android...whatever.  

It probably won't matter.

Absolutely there will still be a big market for conventional  PCs in roles like gaming and multimedia and as application and data servers, and for systems in environments where poor connectivity renders the Cloud too diffcult to employ for large amounts of data.

But the computing world is steadily creeping toward the kind of system that fits easily in your shirt or hip pocket....and the OS that devices run won't be of much concern to anyone. Most of the OSes will be open platforms in order to build the kind of ecology that will deliver choice, innovation and quality.

In that sense, the Cloud will likely be based on Open Source software of one ind or another....so in that sense, yeah, linux will be kicking kick ass, in spirit, as the greatest forerunner of the re-assertion of community and sharing for the benefit of all people in a given community....like human society usually was (technologically) for millenia prior to the stifling confinement  - even ownership - of knowledge in 'closed' sysems of all kinds from single vendors. If your neighbour made a better bone fish hook, he probably showed his family and his neighbours how to make it, too. That is how it should be. Thanks to Open Source.....that is how it is becoming once again - at least in the world of the Cloud.

'Linux beats Windows' is a metaphor for community trumping monopoly.

Pinnacle PCTV Nano Stick (73e)

Google Fodder: I bought a PCTV Nano Stick yesterday at DSE for $129. Yes, it was an impulse buy. The sexy thing about this half-thumb sized USB device is it provides Freeview digital TV on your computer for barely more than third of what it costs to buy a stand-alone Freeview box for the telly.

It comes with software for Windows XP and Vista. Even better, it also works on Ubuntu 8.10 Linux out of the box and you need only install a digital-TV capable app like Kaffeine or VLC. It took 3 minutes and 21 seconds to download Kaffeine and install it. The Windows drivers and software took about 30 minutes to install. I'm not joking. Linux takes the lead. In either case, reception of the channels was no problem with the wee antenna provided with the PCTV Nano Stick.

But....and don't you grow to hate those "but"s?

The system this device needs to drive it properly is much more grunty than anything I own. All my systems are between 1.6GHz and 2.0GHz, mostly AMD CPUs of one sort (32-bit or 64-bit) or another, though my laptop is an Intel M430 at 1.73GHz. These systems are more than fast enough for everything else I use, so I have not seen any need to buy anything faster (and more expensive).

Systems like this can - at best - reliably play Internet radio and the radio available via Freeview (National Radio, BaseFM). For TV, they can handle the test patterns on the Parliamentary channel. But absolutely no way is anything remotely dynamic watchable.

On my 1.73Ghz laptop, the Windows software (TVCenter Pro) warns me my CPU isn't up to the job, and when I continue anyway, it simply seizes up after about a minute or so and you have to use the Task manager to kill it. On the same laptop, booting to Ubuntu Linux, Kaffeine will merrily play the (usually) fragmented, pixelated and essentially unwatchable video for as long as I care to watch. The video looked like I squashed a pile of blueberries on a mirror. The sound dies after about 10 seconds. Apparently I need a newer version of the FAAD sound support for the AAC-encoded sound. Or something like that. Google was my friend.

Bottom line for this device is: Don't buy it unless - as the box says (who reads the box? Lol!) you have a system with at least the CPU rating listed below.

• Intel Pentium 4.2Ghz or
• Pentium M 1.3GHz or
• AMD Athlon XP

I have none of those at the moment....but I plan to soon, so the device won't be going back to the shop. I also note that PB Tech sell it for $89. Oh well.