Posted by George Wright
Tue, 30 Dec 2008 03:16:00 GMT
Trying out Debian Lenny and its power management seemed to help; I can now get the machine down below 8W, and when using it on half brightness with the wireless card turned on, it sits at around 9W. This isn’t too bad anymore. It’s certainly a lot better than Ubuntu’s 12W in approximately the same circumstances - a saving of 25%!
I’ve now compiled a custom 2.6.28 kernel on Lenny and tried out the ASPM PCI-Express power management code that’s marked as experimental. dmesg reports the following on bootup:
[ 0.172338] ACPI FADT declares the system doesn't support PCIe ASPM, so disable it
After commenting out that bit of code in the kernel just to see what would happen, I then echoed “powersave” to /sys/module/pcie_aspm/parameters/policy, with no noticeable decrease in power usage.
The brightness issue is now sorted. After installing guidance power manager in KDE3 on Lenny things just worked. Sort of. The brightness levels reported by guidance are slightly wrong and the range is wrong. I suspect this is because previous thinkpads have had 7 brightness levels and this one has 15.
The touchpad issue, I’ve concluded, is a limitation of the hardware rather than the software, which is unfortunate. It seems that Lenovo changed the touchpad brand from Synaptics to ALPS with recent models. Unfortunately, ALPS touchpads are nowhere near as good as Synaptics ones, and so I’m stuck with a touchpad that’s a bit of a pain to use. Basically, if you press a button on one mouse, X receives a button press event. However, if you then keep it held down and move the other mouse, the mouse automatically generates a button release event before sending the new motion events. Thank you ALPS.
The fan is now being controlled in userspace using tpfand. I have built debian packages of version 0.94 (from the Ubuntu sources) and I will upload them at some point, along with the fan profile I’m using.
One last thing - the SSD in this machine is blisteringly fast. hdparm brings up around 90MB/s and Lenny cold-boots in about 20 seconds to the kdm login screen.
Posted in Computing | 10 comments
Posted by George Wright
Mon, 29 Dec 2008 01:12:00 GMT
Today I got down and installed Ubuntu 8.10 on this new X300, and things went rather smoothly. I chose to use the ext3 filesystem on the flash disk, and not to create a swap partition (and opted to buy 4GB RAM for it).
In terms of things that work, the list is rather good. The wireless worked out of the box, sleep works, sound works, both batteries are detected, the graphics card works (with 3D acceleration) and general ACPI stuff works.
However, I have noticed a few problems.
First off (and this is really frustrating) - you can’t use the touchpad with the buttons from the TrackPoint (and vice versa). This means you can’t middle-click and drag using the touchpad. It’s frustrating because on my T43p you can, and I got into the habit of doing this because I find the buttons above are more conveniently located than the buttons beneath.
Secondly, it seems that display brightness adjustment sort of works, but keeps tripping over itself. For example, right now my screen is on 75% brightness but I can’t adjust it up or down because the hotkey daemon in KDE 3 thinks it’s on 0% (I’m assuming it’s getting this from ACPI).
Finally (for now) - power consumption seems to be rather high. When I’ve got the display on 0% and the CPU forcibly in powersave and enabled all the powersaving features suggested by powertop, ACPI still reports a power draw of ~12W. In comparison, my X40 drew 6-7W. Whilst I should have tested this before erasing Windows, a quick google search suggests that I should be seeing something more along the lines of 7-8W power draw.
I have also noticed that the fan is pretty much always in the high mode, even when idling, indicating that perhaps the CPU thermal management isn’t working properly. I understand the Intel L7100 is a “special” low-voltage processor that only the X300 uses, so perhaps Lenovo have done some crazy software ACPI hacks to thermally manage these special processors?
This is really bugging me because in Windows on a full charge I was estimated 8h remaining, whereas in Linux I’m being estimated ~4-5 hours.
Posted in Computing | 19 comments
Posted by George Wright
Sun, 28 Dec 2008 01:51:00 GMT
So over the last few days the fan on my T43p has been playing up, and as I’ve had it for about 3.5 years now, I decided it’s probably time to get a new one.
After a quick trip down Tottenham Court Road today, I managed to find a reseller selling the Lenovo ThinkPad X300 which I’ve been pining for ever since its release, and after some bartering managed to get hold of one along with an additional 3-cell battery to replace the CD/DVD drive with.
First impressions of the machine are really positive. The machine weighs less than my X40 did and the screen is much nicer. It’s nowhere near as good as the FlexView UXGA screen on my T43p, but I can’t get everything! Black colours aren’t great and the viewing angle vertically isn’t that good, but for a portable laptop it does the job just fine.
The keyboard is really nice - it gives a decent amount of tactile feedback (it’s better than the one on my T43p I think), and the addition of a touchpad is really helpful (I’ve always preferred them). I especially like that the keyboard is now a full sized one instead of the annoying almost-full size on the earlier X series machines.
In terms of speed, it seems to be pretty zippy. The 64GB SSD is nice and quiet and the performance seems reasonable.
Regarding the build quality - this is the first ThinkPad I’ve owned which was designed by Lenovo instead of IBM. As such, I’m new to such “features” as having a Windows key, an RF switch etc. The case, though, is rock solid and looks incredibly sleek whilst retaining the classic ThinkPad look (which I love). I’m not convinced I like the addition of the LEDs around/under/beside the buttons above the function keys, but I can probably live with that.
I don’t think I’m going to see much of a performance hit going from the 2GHz P-M to this new 1.2GHz C2D, especially given that my usage pattern doesn’t tend to involve single threads munching the CPU for a long time. We’ll see how it fares in due course.
All in all, a very happy bunny and I’d like to say this is the best ThinkPad I’ve owned yet, but it’s probably too early to say.
Next up - Ubuntu installation. Vista angers me.
Posted in Computing | 3 comments
Posted by George Wright
Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:48:00 GMT
I have now joined Twitter! Final year’s going to be a laugh…
Follow me!
Posted in Computing, Misc | 1 comment
Posted by George Wright
Wed, 16 Jul 2008 23:03:00 GMT
My CF card and CF-IDE converter board arrived in the post and so today I started trying to get Linux installed on it.
At first I thought I’d try installing from a USB CD drive, but this was a horrendous mess and ended up wasting a good 8 hours of my life. In the end, I dumped the CF in a USB reader and debootstrapped hardy on, then booted it and installed kubuntu-desktop.
The installation is still going, but I did have a chance to run a quick hdparm -Tt on the disk; seems it’s doing a fairly consistent 25MB/s which is excellent given the old disk only did 18MB/s or so. hdparm also tells me that the disk is in UDMA-2 mode which is not too shoddy.
In other news, I’ve noticed that the batteries on my X40 are clapped out after nearly 3 years of abuse. The main 8-cell I have is down from 61Wh to 35Wh, and my extended battery which clips on the bottom is down from 27Wh to 12Wh. I can handle paying £30 to get a new 6-cell, as that’ll give a good 8 hours or so of life, but extended life batteries for the X40 are very seldom seen on eBay and the ones which do end up on there go for silly prices.
Does anyone have any experience replacing the cells in a ThinkPad battery manually? I just ripped my extended battery apart (luckily I had the correct triangular screwdriver bit…) and the four cells inside there are shaped in exactly the same way as in the normal 4-cell battery, which leads me to believe they share identical cells. My theory is that I can buy a normal 4-cell on eBay then rip the cells out of it then put them in the extended life battery. The only problem I can see at the moment is that ACPI reports design capacity and last known capacity, and I don’t know how to flush these values for recalibration. I’m assuming the charging circuit should be clever enough to work it out for itself?
I’d appreciate any comments or suggestions.
Posted in Computing | 13 comments
Posted by George Wright
Tue, 08 Jul 2008 21:30:00 GMT
So I buckled under temptation and bought myself a 32GB CF card and a CF-IDE converter board off eBay just now; whole lot came to about 74 pounds including postage, which I think is not too shabby for what should be a fairly good 32GB SSD solution.
Claimed read/write speeds for the card are 36/40MBps which would be very nice if true, but I’m expecting it’ll probably be around half that at best. Still, I’ll do some rudimentary tests with hdparm to see how it is; hopefully it won’t be slower than the 4200rpm 1.8” disk that’s currently in there!
I also hope the battery life improves… I’ve only ever had the X40 down to about 7 or 8W power consumption at minimum; with this setup I hope to inch an extra watt out of it!
Posted in Computing | 8 comments
Posted by George Wright
Fri, 04 Jul 2008 08:37:00 GMT
Has anyone seen this - it seems to be fairly interesting. I’m tempted to do it myself as the disk drive in my X40 has died on me..
eBay seems to have the relevant components for about 70 GBP.
Posted in Computing | 5 comments
Posted by George Wright
Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:28:00 GMT
So I’ve been working at Cendio for a week now; I must say it’s been one of the best times of my life.
Sweden’s a great place, especially Linköping; it’s clean, cycletastic and everyone is so friendly here. Our office is a fantastic place - it’s spacious, cosy, has a hot chocolate machine (!!!) and my colleagues are awesome! I especially like that I get my own office as well.
Over the evenings and weekend I’ve been on the bike a fair bit, having nearly been run over by several buses (silly traffic driving on the wrong side…) and tomorrow I’m going with Inge Wallin (of KDE fame) on some boat thing on the canal which should be great fun.
The cycle routes around here take a bit of getting used to; in the UK I’m quite happy to cycle alongside cars on dual carriageways and take on large roundabouts without any trouble, but with the combination of being on the other side of the road, and not knowing the customs on the road here, I’ve been sticking to country lanes and cycle paths for the time being. I’ve had no crashes so far this year (as opposed to six last year, including 3 pretty major ones…) and I intend to keep it that way!
I shall be sorry to leave on the 15th July.
Posted in Computing, Misc | no comments
Posted by George Wright
Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:48:00 GMT
Today’s been a somewhat hectic day for me; after getting up at 0500 to get to Heathrow by 0700, I managed to get on my 1030 flight to Arlanda and arrive in Stockholm just after 1400. After hopping on a train to Linköping, I was greeted by my contact at Cendio, Peter Åstrand, who has been exceptionally helpful and accommodating with my moving in.
I’m staying in university accommodation which is rather nice; it’s a bit Ikea-y, but not too shabby. There was a particularly bad dead fly infestation in my room but a dustpan and brush seems to have taken care of most of it, and I may have to vacuum around when I can get hold of one. The luxury of an en-suite is always welcome, and I have a 10Mbit/s internet connection which is definitely most welcome!
My room
As for my job out here, I’ll be working on the next release of ThinLinc, Cendio’s flagship remote desktop product. At first I believe I’m mainly doing testing of the upcoming release to ensure it meets quality standards, but Peter is keen for me to dig into the coding side soon.
In my spare time, I decided to bring my bike over and I’ll hopefully spend most of my evenings racing around the roads on it. It really is a delightful little machine. When I’m not on the bike I hope to get some work done on nxcl/qtnx as well.
The bike
Posted in Computing, Misc | 10 comments
Posted by George Wright
Mon, 26 May 2008 21:26:00 GMT
With my parents going on holiday to Taiwan last month I asked them to pick me up an Eee PC to play with. It’s a really nice little machine; I got the 8GB flash/1GB RAM model, and I’m very impressed with how responsive it is. Even Open Office is fairly nippy…
The keyboard is a little small and takes a bit of getting used to, but I can just about touch type on it now. The machine as a whole is very sturdy and seems solidly built, and the touch pad is just about usable (the mouse button isn’t too great though). The screen is a little grainy but very crisp - it seems better than the screen on my X40 (albeit at a lower resolution) - and the default Xandros distribution is quite nice.
Anyway, I’ve built qtnx debs for the Xandros that is on there (I added the Debian Etch repositories to /etc/apt/sources.list to complement the default Eee repositories) and uploaded them to my server if anyone wishes to use them (hit ctrl-alt-T to bring up a terminal, then use dpkg -i to install them). The configuration dialogue doesn’t quite fit on the screen but you can use the alt+mouse button trick to drag the window around.
Posted in Computing, NX | 3 comments
