It took some time!

Finally, after a maybe 6 or 7 years wait, I can finally suspend/
resume my laptop!

What I am saying? Ok, this story need some background. Again, those
who are reading this blog on a regular basis, knows that I have quite
a few computers. I am talking laptop running linux this time.
According to an article at linux.com: http://www.linux.com/article.pl?
sid=06/05/24/1716222, it should be possible to suspend/resume a linux
laptop with only ACPI bios, as long as a recent kernel is used. This
is something I searched for for years, but eventually gave in and
installed software suspend (and later switched to MacOSX). But I
still have the small FSC P1510D, which only supports ACPI, no APM.

To make the story short, I grabbed the script from the article,
checked that I had the necessary commands available on my system, and
gave it a try. And guess what, it works quite nice.

The strange thing is that recent distribution, like Debian unstable
which I am running, does not come with a thing like this preinstalled
and integrated. These days, all it should take really is to shut the
screen down and put the laptop in your bag. But, hey, we're approaching!

To be fair, this could have been supported on my laptop for a few
months, I have not upgraded my kernel that recently. I discovered
this now due to the mentioned article. But it is true that I have
tested this in the past (of my 5 last laptops all but one have
supported ACPI only) without any sucess. It's essential stuff like
this which make people switch to MacOSX. But as I am not putting in
any effort to help the development of Linux in this direction, I
can't really blame anyone - that's the nice and bad thing about open
source!

Take care in the summer folks - Norway is getting really hot these days!

OS X upgrade and M600i

For a small moment, we kept our breath, as we installed the update to Mac OS X, v. 10.4.7. Eagerly, we started up iSync to check whether support for our new cool phone was added - the Sony Ericsson M600i.

But, no. Not this time. On to something else. Maybe the M600i must rest in the drawer until either Apple or Sony Ericsson releases some updated software.

Take care!

Amobil :: Telenor tester super-3G

Amobil :: Telenor tester super-3G

Yet another option for decent net connectivity not to far into the wilderness... (The rest of this goes in norwegian, as I link an article in norwegian).

Som en oppfølger til 3G løsningen basert på NMT-450 som jeg kommenterte for noen dager siden, skriver Amobil idag at Telenor har satt igang tester med HSDPA, en utvidelse av 3G (UMTS) teknologien. Jeg vet lite om dette, men går utifra at det dreier seg mer eller mindre enn software som man kjører oppå den eksisterende infrastrukturen, kanskje på samme måte som EDGE i GPRS. Det skulle i såfall tilsi at rekkevidden på HSDPA blir tilsvarende rekkevidden i 3G; ikke fantastisk, men ikke helt ille heller. Og mer interessant, så langt ut i ødemarken som jeg holder til til daglig, er det ikke usannsynlig at 3G støtten snart er ok (det er av og til 3G dekning i dag, litt avhengig av atmosfæriske forhold virker det som).

Så, hva snakker vi om? HSDPA skal kunne gi 3.6Mbps, altså langt bedre enn de 1.2Mbps'ene som ADSL leverandørene klarer å pushe på linjene ut til meg idag. Vi får vel regne med at dette også er en asynkron tjeneste, men det er sikkert mulig å få noen hundre Kbps den "andre" veien. Dermed skulle HSDPA være en bedre løsning enn det som kan tilbys av ADSL idag.

Alt dette er selvsagt helt i det blå, siden Telenor ikke har sagt noen ting om om og i såfall når noe slikt kan bli lansert for sluttbrukere. De skal selvsagt melke kua maks først, sånn de har gjort hele veien, fra før ISDN tiden. Og jeg lever sikkert godt med crappy ADSL fra Bluecom en stund til jeg - helt til flere i familien blir aktive surfere og skal dele båndbredden med meg. Det blir ihvertfall spennende å se hva som blir første teknologi som gir noe mer enn 1.2Mbps ut i villmarken.

Bondehilsen fra ødemarken Follo!

take care,

Don't buy M600i if you're a MacOSX user!

Today, I received a brand new cellphone, Sony Ericsson M600i. It's a business oriented phone, which should be strong on messaging and keepting track of appointments and the like. It also comes with an RSS reader, which is quite cool, and decent Web (Opera) and email software.

Unfortunately, there is no support for this phone in iSync on MacOSX (10.4.6). Hopefully such support appear in the near future, but for now I will advice you MacOSX users out there to avoid this phone.

Also, the software in the phone seems to be a bit buggy. While I was doing some experiments with the webbrowser it seg.faulted a couple of times. Among other places, I tried to visite calendar.google.com, which wasn't especially sucessfull. Compared to other SonyEricsson mobiles I owned in the past, this one also seems to operate quite slow; this may be to buggy and bloated new software. So, stay away from this one for a while and wait for software updates, both in the phone and on MacOSX. The idea with this phone is so great, so hopefully it wouldn't last to long before we see the necessary updates. I'll report on this later on (if what I need ever appears, before I move on to something better :-)

Take care!

digi.no - Snart får Norge sitt tredje mobilnett

digi.no - Snart får Norge sitt tredje mobilnett

Kanskje det endelig er en mulighet til å få noe mer enn 1.2Mbps ut på bondelandet! Bor man litt lengre enn et par kilometer fra nærmeste adsl sentral i dette landet, er det jo umulig å få noe særlig hastighet på ADSL. Og all utvikling (ADSL2+ osv) dreier seg om å få stadig raskere linjer, på bekostning av linjelengden. Det er fint å se at noen forsøker å få til noe annet av og til - bedre dekning i grisgrendte strøk.

Det hører med til historien at jeg bor rett øst for Oslo, i Ås kommune, så man skal ikke så veldig langt ut på landet før problemene dukker opp!

Take care,

The Macbook Pro has arrived

Hey folks, 

just a quick note to let you know that I am now playing with a brand new Macbook Pro with 17" screen. Pretty unusual stuff for me; the largest screen on any laptop I have used in the past was 14", and I thought that one was actually a bit to big. So this is huge...

Anyway, I'll let you know more about the setup and how it works later on. 

In other news, the oldest niece of mine, my older sisters oldest child, turned 18 yesterday. It's actually quite odd - it's a new generation coming up and we are soon the oldtimers. Old the best to you, Trude, and God Bless; may you have many, many, many great years.

Take care,

Confused about my recent posts?

You are with good reason. Somehow, a draft I thought was accidentally was deleted from the server actually showed up as published today. So there you are, two different versions of more or less the same post; written with a few days in between and with the content recreated from memory because the original post was lost (but wasn't anyway...)

Now, I'll read both posts my self and compare ;-)

Take care!

Me and my computers

For those faithful readers of the blog, you know that I currently use an AMD64 computer at work, running Ubuntu linux, and small FSC P1510 laptop running unstable debian and an dual G5 PowerMac at home.

It's time for updates! Allthough I used to be a strict Linux person, over the later months I start liking MacOSX quite well, and even though my home computer is a dualboot (MacOSX and Ubuntu linux), I tend to prefer running Mac on it for different reasons. In addition to that, more people in our company start running apple computers, so the sysadmin folks need to update their knowledge.

Fast forward - I have ordered a 17" Macbook pro, it should appear hopefully this week. I will probably not install linux on it at all, at least that's the plan right now... I'll report on who the machine feels for me anyway, later on.

As that's a quite big portable computer, I will need something smaller. But the difference between the P1510 and the Macbook is probably not big enough to justify keeping both. Therefore, I will probably try to get my hands on the new Sony UX (check out UX at sonystyle).

As this is not easy to get hold of in Norway, I'll probably try to pick up one when I'm in San Francisco in august.

Take care