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John Jason Jordan | 1 Dec 2006 05:02
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Bad-mouthing ext3

Several times I have complained here about ext3. It turns out that I
may owe ext3 an apology. 

The other day I was at PSU and my computer would not boot. The Compaq
splash screen came up, then nothing. Of course, this happened when I
had a presentation due in four hours and the Impress file was on the
computer. And I have to run it from the computer through the AV stuff
in the classroom because if I try to run an OOo file from my H drive it
would not likely work. I doubt that the university has OOo available on
the computers in the classroom, let alone the IPA fonts I needed or the
sound clips I had links to in the Impress file.

The help desk in the basement of Smith could not help, but suggested
that the CAT people in the CompSci building could probably assist a
Linux user. On the way to the CompSci building it dawned on me that if
Grub was not coming up, this must be a symptom that the hard drive was
not found. You'd think the BIOS would have the common sense to explain
this to me instead of just hanging, but we're talking cheap HP hardware
here.

When I got to the CompSci building the first thing I asked for was a
small phillips head screwdriver so I could reseat the drive. Believe it
or not, in the entire place no one could come up with a small phillips
head screwdriver. 

Back to the basement of Smith, the help desk people ushered me into the
back room where students were busy putting electronic things together.
The jefe running the place asked a student to hand me a small phillips
head screwdriver, whereupon the student handed me a slot head
screwdriver. There ensued a discussion between the jefe and the student
(Continue reading)

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Elliott Mitchell | 1 Dec 2006 05:10

Re: Low Power DVI video cards?

>From: Keith Lofstrom <keithl <at> kl-ic.com>
> I've got a new LCD monitor.  It looks OK with VGA 15 pin, but it
> would look better with DVI .  Sadly, the video cards in the stores
> are mostly fast-rendering game engines, which burn lots of electrical
> power.  The few low-cost low-power cards I've seen are VGA only.
> 
> Any suggestions for low power DVI video cards (with Linux drivers,
> of course)?  The fastest thing the card is going to show is fast
> scrolling xterms.  I see no reason to waste power and money on
> graphics capabilities I don't need.

I'm a bit surprised, I would of expected AGP vs PCI-E to be more of a
problem than low-end not having DVI. Nearly any card with less than 4 in
the hundreds place of the designation will be a low-power card. The
card number is typically GLRR. Where G is the generation (X1 is current
for ATi, 8 is just out for nVIDIA); the Radeon X are where ATi moved to
PCI-E, for nVIDIA it was GeForce 6, though AGP versions of those are
available. L is level, 8 or 9 for high-end, 5-7 for mid, 0-3 for low-end;
RR is either 00, or 50 for a revised version of some sort.

nVIDIA 5200 or 6200s are the nVIDIA ones you would of been looking for.

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Jeme A Brelin | 1 Dec 2006 08:39

LCD thingies


So, Keith's search for a low-power video card included a comment about his 
screen resolution.  Reading those numbers made me my eyes get all big and 
maybe I sweated a little.  I want a widescreen resolution, too!

So, I looked and found that there are some VERY affordable widescreen LCD 
monitors that would be comparable to my current screen, but actually 
readable and maybe radiating less and certainly taking up less desk space.

There are all kinds of interesting little specifications for each one and 
I have a vague idea of what each of them would mean in terms of 
performance.  However, if a person has an opinion on a drop-dead minimum 
contrast ratio, I'd like to hear it.  I'm seeing that the difference in 
price really jumps between 800:1 and 1000:1.  Am I really going to be 
disappointed with the lesser contrast?

Is there another vital spec?  I'm assuming 6ms DVI is what I really want.

J.
--

-- 
    -----------------
      Jeme A Brelin
     jeme <at> brelin.net
    -----------------
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William A Morita | 1 Dec 2006 16:21
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RE: Bad-mouthing ext3

John,

What self respecting Linux user would not have a Knoppix or live Ubuntu copy
handy to recover a file to a memory stick?
At the very least, it would have shown you the issue with the hard drive
immediately. 

- Bill Morita

-----Original Message-----
From: plug-bounces <at> lists.pdxlinux.org
[mailto:plug-bounces <at> lists.pdxlinux.org] On Behalf Of John Jason Jordan
Sent: Thursday, November 30, 2006 8:02 PM
To: PLUG
Subject: [PLUG] Bad-mouthing ext3

Several times I have complained here about ext3. It turns out that I may owe
ext3 an apology. 

The other day I was at PSU and my computer would not boot. The Compaq splash
screen came up, then nothing. Of course, this happened when I had a
presentation due in four hours and the Impress file was on the computer. And
I have to run it from the computer through the AV stuff in the classroom
because if I try to run an OOo file from my H drive it would not likely
work. I doubt that the university has OOo available on the computers in the
classroom, let alone the IPA fonts I needed or the sound clips I had links
to in the Impress file.

The help desk in the basement of Smith could not help, but suggested that
the CAT people in the CompSci building could probably assist a Linux user.
(Continue reading)

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Michael Rasmussen | 1 Dec 2006 16:59
Favicon

Re: LCD thingies


Jeme A Brelin wrote:
> So, I looked and found that there are some VERY affordable widescreen LCD
> monitors

How affordable?
  or
How much for what where?

--

-- 
   Michael Rasmussen, Portland, Ore, USA
  Be Appropriate && Follow Your Curiosity
        http://www.patch.com/words/
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Brent Rieck | 1 Dec 2006 17:08

Re: LCD thingies

Jeme A Brelin wrote:
> There are all kinds of interesting little specifications for each one 
> and I have a vague idea of what each of them would mean in terms of 
> performance.  However, if a person has an opinion on a drop-dead minimum 
> contrast ratio, I'd like to hear it.  I'm seeing that the difference in 
> price really jumps between 800:1 and 1000:1.  Am I really going to be 
> disappointed with the lesser contrast?

My 2 year old LCD monitor has a 400:1 contrast ratio and a 16ms response 
time and I find image quality to be sufficient, I don't play movies or 
twitchy video games on my computer though.  I'm also not doing anything 
like pre-press color proofing but I do photography as a hobby and I find 
it to be good enough for my needs.  Oh yeah, and it works great for xterms.

--Brent
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Jason Martin | 1 Dec 2006 19:04
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Re: LCD thingies

On 12/1/06, Brent Rieck <bsr <at> spek.org> wrote:
> Jeme A Brelin wrote:
> > There are all kinds of interesting little specifications for each one
> > and I have a vague idea of what each of them would mean in terms of
> > performance.  However, if a person has an opinion on a drop-dead minimum
> > contrast ratio, I'd like to hear it.  I'm seeing that the difference in
> > price really jumps between 800:1 and 1000:1.  Am I really going to be
> > disappointed with the lesser contrast?
>
> My 2 year old LCD monitor has a 400:1 contrast ratio and a 16ms response
> time and I find image quality to be sufficient, I don't play movies or
> twitchy video games on my computer though.  I'm also not doing anything
> like pre-press color proofing but I do photography as a hobby and I find
> it to be good enough for my needs.  Oh yeah, and it works great for xterms.

Indeed, my 2-year old LCD with 500:1 and my wife's brand new
widescreen LCD with 800:1 are not really noticeably different to my
eyes.  The biggest difference is hers has a glossy screen while mine
is matte.

You should also look at the brightness.

FWIW I think the model she got is an Acer AL2051W.  Although I don't
remember it being as expensive as the prices I'm seeing now.  Maybe it
was the previous generation or something.

Jason
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Jeme A Brelin | 1 Dec 2006 19:55

Re: LCD thingies


On Fri, 1 Dec 2006, Michael Rasmussen wrote:
> Jeme A Brelin wrote:
>> So, I looked and found that there are some VERY affordable widescreen LCD
>> monitors
>
> How affordable?
>  or
> How much for what where?

Well, they seem affordable to me compared to the last time I checked 
prices on such things.

A 20-inch widescreen LCD capable of a native 1680x1050 resolution can be 
found for under $300 if I am reading the ads correctly.

Considering that I have been running the same old semi-broken NEC 
MultiSync XP17 for the past ten years (it was used and focussed badly when 
I got it), the upgrade seems worth whatever I can put into it.

Now, I watch movies on my computer all the time.  But it seems like this 
level of quality will be fine.  If anyone has different experience or even 
if you just have a problem with what you have, let me know.

J.
--

-- 
    -----------------
      Jeme A Brelin
     jeme <at> brelin.net
    -----------------
(Continue reading)

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Richard C. Steffens | 1 Dec 2006 21:36
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Delay when leaving power save

It used to be, on other machines, and on the first install of SuSE 10.1
on this machine, that moving the mouse resulted in a nearly instant
display of the desktop after the system had blanked the screen (what I
use instead of a screen saver). Now, there's at least a one second
delay, and perhaps a bit longer (I'll time it next time). Is there a
setting for this somewhere?

--

-- 
Regards,

Dick Steffens
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Galen Seitz | 1 Dec 2006 23:13

Re: LCD thingies

Jeme A Brelin wrote:
> 
> There are all kinds of interesting little specifications for each one 
> and I have a vague idea of what each of them would mean in terms of 
> performance.  However, if a person has an opinion on a drop-dead minimum 
> contrast ratio, I'd like to hear it.  I'm seeing that the difference in 
> price really jumps between 800:1 and 1000:1.  Am I really going to be 
> disappointed with the lesser contrast?

Unless things have changed, there isn't a standardized spec for 
measuring contrast.  Different manufacturers may not measure contrast
in the same way.  Hence contrast numbers should be taken with a huge 
grain of salt.

> 
> Is there another vital spec?  I'm assuming 6ms DVI is what I really want.

Because you are watching movies, a monitor with faster response may be 
desirable.  You probably want something with a sub 10 ms number.

galen
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Gmane