Hardware Vs Software

Bug found in Debian Linux.

2008-05-14T10:16:00.000-07:00

DEBIAN LINUX got a bit of a black eye Tuesday with the announcement that a nasty cryptographic vulnerability exists in its version of the OpenSSL package.

Debian, especially its stable branch, is widely regarded as perhaps the most bulletproof Linux distribution. Legend has it that wizened European Debian gnomes painstakingly fit together each version using well polished hand tools inherited from their watchmaking and marquetry woodcrafting forefathers.

Debian also has the not undeserved reputation of being difficult for those new to Linux to install and manage.

The Debian maintainers apparently created the vulnerability by deleting code that seeded the random number generation used to calculate encryption keys.

The result was that the random number generator used in Debian's OpenSSL package was predictable, leading to cryptographic keys that might guessable.

Debian Security Advisory DSA-1571-1 states: "Affected keys include SSH keys, OpenVPN keys, DNSSEC keys, and key material for use in X.509 certificates and session keys used in SSL/TLS connections. Keys generated with GnuPG or GNUTLS are not affected, though."

The advisory also publishes the URLs for a detector of weak encryption keys, as well as the location of instructions about how to implement key rollover.

The vulnerability only exists in Debian and Debian derived Linux systems, but those also include the Ubuntu versions of Linux that have lately become quite popular among casual desktop Linux users.

The problematic OpenSSL code appeared in the Debian unstable distribution on September 17, 2006 and has since been propagated into the current stable and testing distributions named Etch. The previous stable Debian distribution named Sarge is not affected.

Many Debian Linux desktop users shouldn't be affected by this Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) bug unless they've generated cryptographic keys for Secure Shell (SSH) access between systems or digital signing or authentication certificates.

However, techies who administrate Debian based Linux systems that traffic in certificates might be scurrying about somewhat in coming days as they apt-get the upgraded OpenSSL package and regenerate and roll over cryptographic keys and certificates.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/05/14/openssl-bug-found-debian-linux

Linux mobile wins award

2008-05-02T07:04:00.001-07:00

MontaVista's Mobilinux 5.0 Linux distribution for mobile phones won an EDN Magazine
2008 "Innovation Award" under the software category. The award for
"Innovator of the Year," meanwhile, went to Intel's 45nm semiconductor
process technology team.

The
EDN Innovation Awards honor significant people, products, and
technologies that have shaped the semiconductor industry over the past
year, says EDN. Based on MontaVista Linux Professional Edition,
Mobilinux was released last year in version 5.0, and powers "90 percent of Linux smartphones," according to MontaVista.

In February, MontaVista announced that Mobilinux was a finalist in EDN's software category along with National Instruments Labview 8.5, and Microchip Technology's Graphics Library. Mobilinux also beat out Microsoft's recently renamed Robotics Studio platform, currently available in a free public beta.

Intel's 45nm process innovation team
beat out Innovator of the Year finalists Stream Processors and Linear
Technologies. The 45nm technology, which is used in Intel's new Atom processors, uses new materials that reduce transistor leakage while increasing performance.

Meanwhile, in the development kit category, TI's tiny eZ430-RF2500 ultra-low-power RF development kit, based on a 16-bit microcontroller, edged out the Linux-friendly Xilinx EDK 9.2 and the Altera Nios II kits.

Stated
Jim Ready, CTO and founder of MontaVista Software. "We are pleased for
the recognition of the 'innovation' and the 'significant advance' that
Mobilinux 5.0 has delivered to mobile device designers and their
customers."

7 Interesting and Useful Things to do with your USB Pen Drive 4

2008-02-25T09:51:00.001-08:00

If you've got a USB Pen Drive, you can use it for a variety of things, that includes adding portable apps and lots more.

But, your Pen Drive can serve for some interesting purposes as well - some you wouldn't have imagined about. Put it to some good use, here's a quick list of what you can do with it:

1. Install a Linux Distro

Pen Drive Linux guides you through procedures on loading your USB Drive with a Linux Distro. If you're a geek, you'll love this setup. If you're just a normal user, this may come to your use in a variety of situations - you go to a friend's computer, which is infected with pesky viruses. You need not worry, boot with your Linux-loaded pen drive and do your job, safe and secure.

2. Install MojoPac

I usually don't recommend software that you'll have to pay for using, but this one is something I can't resist myself from recommending to you dear readers. Yes, this is a wonderful app that'll install itself into a pen drive, and run on top of Windows. You can run your favourite Windows apps, most of them run perfect on this MojoPac layer. The advantage is that none of the modified settings affect the original Windows over which your MojoPac is running on. Quite cool, isn't it?

3. Automatic Backups

You're probably using your USB Pen Drive as a backup device to hold your important documents, but why not make the process easier? Install Allway Sync or Microsoft SyncToy. Both can let you sync files on your computer with your USB Pen Drive with ease. You don't have to do manual copy & paste files - just insert, click and you're done.

4. Additional Memory

Vista can use your USB Flash Drive just like your RAM - such a capability is integrated into the OS. Windows XP just can't use it as additional memory - your flash drive is just a flash drive. Not anymore if you have eBoostr installed. This software program aids XP in using your Flash Drive as a memory device. You might want to give this a try if your computer is hungry on resources and needs some speed boost.

5. Perfect for Gifts

Indeed, these funky USB Drives are perfect for gifts. There are lots of creative things you could do with it, and then present it to your loved one. If your friend is a businessman/freelancer who has to work with multiple computers, a USB Pen Drive can serve as a perfect gift for the person will have files to carry around. In case your close friend is just a casual user, you could load it with some photos and gift it to that person. Get a pen drive, put your photos in, let them autorun as a surprise when the thumb drive is put in.

6. Exhibit your Skills

Are you a computer/web based worker? Chances are you want to exhibit your skills - what you've done in the past. Why not load them on to your USB Drive? For instance, if you're a graphic designer - you could use it to present your skills, stuff that you've worked on in the past and show it off to your clients. Probably, they might hire you right away (Thanks Skellie)

7. Enjoy Music, hassle free

If you're a serious audiophile, and still got to work in multiple computers, accessing your music collection can be painful. But there's Winamp to the rescue. You can use Winamp to put your music collection in your USB thumb drive, all still organized and easily accessible. Winamp Portable Edition makes your media library portable, yet organized for hassle free listening.

http://www.killertechtips.com/2008/02/25/cool-usb-pen-drives-software/

Ten Tips To Improve System Speed

2008-01-12T11:58:00.000-08:00

1.Let your PC boot up completely before opening any applications.

2.Refresh the desktop after closing any application. This will remove any unused files from the RAM.

3.Do not set very large file size images as your wallpaper. Do not keep a wallpaper at all if your PC is low on RAM (less than 64 MB).

4.Do not clutter your Desktop with a lot of shortcuts. Each shortcut on the desktop uses up to 500 bytes of RAM

5.Empty the recycle bin regularly. The files are not really deleted from your hard drive until you empty the recycle bin.

6.Delete the temporary internet files regularly.

7.Defragment your hard drive once every two months. This will free up a lot of space on your hard drive and rearrange the files so that your applications run faster.

8.Always make two partitions in your hard drive. Install all large Softwares (like PSP, Photoshop, 3DS Max etc) in the second partition. Windows uses all the available empty space in C drive as virtual memory when your Computer RAM is full. Keep the C Drive as empty as possible.

9.When installing new Softwares disable the option of having a tray icon. The tray icons use up available RAM, and also slow down the booting of your PC. Also disable the option of starting the application automatically when the PC boots. You can disable these options later on also from the Tools or preferences menu in your application.

10. Protect your PC from dust. Dust causes the CPU cooling fan to jam and slow down thereby gradually heating your CPU and affecting the processing speed. Use compressed air to blow out any dust from the CPU. Never use vacuum. RAM IS THE WORKING AREA (DESKTOP) OF THE CPU, KEEP IT AS EMPTY AND UNCLUTTERED AS POSSIBLE!

Top 20 Tips To Keep Your System Faster

2008-01-12T11:26:00.000-08:00

Follow these tips and you will definitely have a much faster and more reliable PC! Most of the below tips works for windows 98

1. Wallpapers: They slow your whole system down, so if you're willing to compromise, have a basic plain one instead!

2. Drivers: Update your hardware drivers as frequently as possible. New drivers tend to increase system speed especially in the case of graphics cards, their drivers are updated by the manufacturer very frequently!

3. Minimizing: If you want to use several programs at the same time then minimize those you are not using. This helps reduce the overload on RAM.

4. Boot Faster: The 'starting Windows 95/98' message on startup can delay your booting for a couple of seconds. To get rid of this message go to c:\ and find the file Msdos.sys. Remove the Read-Only option. Next, open it in Notepad or any other text editor. Finally, go to the text 'Options' within the file and make the following changes: Add BootDelay=0. To make your booting even faster, set add Logo=0 to remove the Windows logo at startup.

5. Restart only Windows: When restarting your PC, hold down Shift to only restart Windows rather than the whole system which will only take a fraction of the time.

6. Turn Off Animations: Go to Display Settings from the Control Panel and switch to the Effects Tab. Now turn off Show Windows Content While Dragging and Smooth Edges on Screen Fonts. This tip is also helpful with Windows XP because of the various fade/scroll effects.

7. Faster Start-Menu Access: Go to the Start menu and select Run. Now type Regedit and hit Enter. The Registry Editor will appear on the screen. Now, open the folder HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop. You should see a MenuShowDelay value. If you don't then do the following: right click on a blank space in the right pane and select New\String. Change the name in the new value to MenuShowDelay. Now that we have the MenuShowDelay value, double click on it and enter 0 in the value data field. This sets the start menu delay to 0 milliseconds.

8. Resolutions: If you are willing to do anything for faster performance from your PC, then try lowering your display resolution. The lower it is, the faster your PC.

9. Turn off Active Desktop: Go to your Display Properties and switch to the Web tab. Uncheck View My Active Desktop As a Web Page. Since the Active Desktop option under Windows 98 uses a lot of system resources, this option can have a dramatic effect on the speed of the whole system.

10. Defragment Often: Windows 98's Defrag tool uses Application Acceleration from Intel which means that when you defragment your drive, data is physically arranged on the drive so that applications will load faster.

11. Take your PC to Bed: Using the Advanced Power Management feature under Windows 98 gives you the option to use the sleep command. That way, you can send your PC to sleep instead of shutting it down and then restarting it. It's as simple as pressing a button and then pressing the same button to wake it up. You can tell Windows after how many minutes/hours of inactivity to automatically sleep the machine in the Advanced Power Management section of the Control Panel.

12. Faster Internet Access: If you use the internet for reference and the sites you visit are rarely updated then try the following. In IE (the same can be done in Netscape) go to Tools, Internet Options. Next, click on Settings... in the Temporary Internet Files section. Finally, select Never for the first option and double the amount of storage space to use, click OK!

13. Benchmarking: Benchmarking can be very useful when run frequently. It can tell you how your PC's components are performing and then compare them to other machines like yours. For example, when you overclock your PC, you want to know how much more speed you have and whether it is stable. All this and more can be discovered using benchmarking. An excellent piece of software for doing this job is SiSoft Sandra which can be found in the Downloads File Archive!

14. Refresh the Taskbar without restarting: If you in some way change the taskbar, either in Regedit or elsewhere, you can refresh the task bar without restarting. Hold down Ctrl Alt Del, and double click on Explorer. Say Yes to close Explorer, but no to closing Windows. This will refresh the Taskbar and system tray.

15. Quick CD Eject: Instead of pushing the button on your drive, right-click your CD drive letter in My Computer and click on Eject. This will also remove any icons that have become associated with the CD drive.

16. Start Up Programs: Windows can be slowed down when programs run on start up. To eliminate this, check your Start up folder. You can access it from the start menu: Start, Programs, Start Up. Another way to eliminate programs from loading even before Windows actually starts is by doing the following: Click on Start, then Run. Type msconfig. It will take quite a long time for this program to load, but when you finally see it on your screen, explore the different tabs. They all have to do with how quickly your PC boots, so select what you want, and uncheck what you don't want!

17. Fonts: When Windows starts, it loads every single font in the Fonts folder. Therefore, the more fonts you have, the slower the booting process. To get rid of unwanted fonts, simply go to the Fonts folder under c:\windows and remove whatever you don't want. Fonts that have a red letter 'A' as their icon are system fonts, so don't delete them.

18. Stretching Wallpapers: Don't "stretch" your wallpaper in Windows 98 since it actually slows Windows down when you drag icons around on the desktop.

19. RAM Matters: If you have less than 32MB then you should seriously think of upgrading it to at least 64MB. Windows runs much more smoothly with 64MB or higher and tends to use less hard disk space for virtual memory.

20. Partitioning: A very nice little thing you can do to boost system performance. By partitioning your hard drive, splitting one physical drive into several logical ones, you can gain several advantages.
1. If you get a virus or you accidentally format a drive, not all will be lost.
2. By placing the swap file (Win386.swp) on a separate drive, The swap file will be less fragmented and thus, faster.
3. Place Windows on a separate drive and whenever you need to reinstall it, you rest assured that your data is safe on a separate drive. Partitioning can be done using a few programs such as FDisk which comes with DOS. However, FDisk formats everything on the hard disk before partitioning. Alternatively, you can use Partition Magic from Power Quest to partition your hard disk without losing your data.

13 reasons why Linux should be on your desktop

2007-10-17T10:57:00.000-07:00

1. Cost -- Linux is free, and that includes all the apps. Microsoft is greedy. Vista Home Premium and Ultimate cost hundreds of dollars, even when upgrading from Windows XP. Moving up to Office 2007 involves handing over another bundle of dollars.

2. Resources -- Even the most lavishly equipped Linux distros demand no more resources than Windows XP. Vista is greedy: a single-user PC operating system that needs 2GB of RAM to run at acceptable speed, and 15GB of hard disk space, is grossly obese.

3. Performance -- Linux worked faster on my Dell Inspiron Core Duo than XP, at least the way XP worked out of the box. After cleaning out the bloatware and trading McAfee's Abrams Tank for the lightweight NOD32, XP and Linux (with Guarddog and Clam-AV) perform at similar speed.

4. No bloatware -- Linux is free from adware, trialware, shovelware, and bloatware. Running Linux is like watching the public TV network.

5. Security -- Last year, 48,000 new virus signatures were documented for Windows, compared to 40 for Linux. Still, most distros come with firewalls and antivirus (AV) software. Programs like Guarddog and Clam-AV are free, of course.

6. Dual booting -- The best Linux distros make dual booting a simple affair, along with the required disk partitioning (so you don't need to buy partitioning software). Windows on my Dell laptop is still intact after installing and uninstalling a dozen distros.

7. Installation -- Anyone who's done it once knows that installing Windows from scratch takes hours or even days by the time you get all your apps up and running. With Linux, it can take as little as half an hour to install the operating system, utilities, and a full set of applications. No registration or activation is required, no paperwork, and no excruciating pack drill.

8. Reinstalling the OS -- You can't just download an updated version of Windows. You have to use the CD that came with your PC and download all the patches Microsoft has issued since the CD was made. With Linux, you simply download the latest version of your distro (no questions asked) and, assuming your data files live in a separate disk partition, there's no need to reinstall them. You only need to re-install the extra programs you added to the ones that came with the distro.

9. Keeping track of software -- Like most Windows users, I have a shelf full of software CDs and keep a little book with serial numbers under my bed in case I have to reinstall the lot. With Linux, there are no serial numbers or passwords to lose or worry about. Not a single one.

10. Updating software -- Linux updates all the software on your system whenever updates are available online, including all applications programs. Microsoft does that for Windows software but you have to update each program you've added from other sources. That's about 60 on each of my PCs. More icing on the Linux cake is that it doesn't ask you to reboot after updates. XP nags you every ten minutes until you curse and reboot your machine. If you choose "custom install" to select only the updates you want, XP hounds you like a mangy neighborhood dog until you give in.

11. More security -- These days, operating systems are less vulnerable than the applications that run on them. Therefore a vital aspect of PC security is keeping your apps up-to-date with the latest security patches. That's hard manual labor in Windows, but with Linux it's automatic.

12. No need to defrag disks -- Linux uses different file systems that don't need defragging. NTFS was going to be replaced in Vista, but Microsoft's new file system didn't make the final cut. Instead, Vista does scheduled disk defragging by default, but the defrag utility is a sad affair.

13. A wealth of built-in utilities -- The utilities supplied with Windows are pretty ordinary on the whole, that's why so many small software firms have made a nice living writing better ones. Linux programs are comparable with the best Windows freeware, from CD burners to photo managers, memory monitors and disk utilities. PDF conversion is built-in, both into OpenOffice Writer and into the DTP application Scribus. All you do is click a button on the task bar.

Intel open-source project to make Linux better

2007-09-20T13:20:00.001-07:00

Power management in Linux has been difficult to do. On Sept. 20, Intel announced the launch of an open-source community project, LessWatts.org, which is designed to meet the demands for increased energy efficiency from data center servers to personal mobile devices.

LessWatts was unveiled at IDF (Intel Developer Forum) in San Francisco by Renee James, corporate vice president and general manager of Intel's software and solutions group. The LessWatts.org initiative brings together the community of Linux developers, ISVs and users to facilitate technology development, deployment, and tuning and sharing of information around Linux power management.

Linux's core developers agree that there is a pressing need for making Linux greener. At the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit held at the Googleplex in June, leading Linux kernel programmer Andrew Morton said that "power management is no longer on or off." The problem, as always, the developers agreed, is that "Linux needs specifications for devices."

Jesse Barnes, a Linux developer from Intel, added that while Intel has been putting resources into power management, "We don't have enough, and we need other vendors to step up."

James Bottomley, vice president and chief technology officer of Steeleye Technology, a high-availability Linux vendor, said: "We're getting everyone to look at power management strategies." He feels that while power management "will never be perfect, at least we will have the instrumentation and a lot of knobs to twiddle."

Much of the concern for improved power management comes not so much from an interest in green computing as from vendors wanting to use Linux in their mobile devices. Greg Kroah-Hartman, a SUSE Linux developer added: "Mobile is asking for power management. I think the servers want it too, but they don't know it."

Theodore 'Ted' T'so, an IBM Linux developer, said: "A lot of the low-hanging fruit has been plucked on the kernel side" when it comes to power management. For example, many power management problems can be solved by improving Linux ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) support, because most of the power control is currently hidden away in devices' proprietary firmware, where Linux developers can't get to it.

Now, with LessWatts, Intel is seeking to open up power management from large data centers, where server power consumption imposes limits on a center's growth and has significant financial and environmental costs to mobile users who are constrained by power consumption limits, as battery space is continually squeezed with the overall reduction in size of mobile devices.

"We created LessWatts.org to accelerate technology development and simplify information sharing for effective power management across a broad spectrum of devices and industry segments that are utilizing Linux," said James. "A focused initiative that aggregates the disparate efforts into a holistic system and builds on our existing efforts with the industry in the Climate Savers Computing Initiative will serve as a strong catalyst to get energy-efficient solutions into the market segment faster, thereby benefiting the customers who purchase Intel-based products."

The LessWatts.org initiative encompasses several key projects including Linux kernel enhancements (such as the Linux 2.6.21 "tickless idle" feature that takes better advantage of power saving hardware technologies), the PowerTOP tool that helps tune Linux applications to be power aware and the Linux Battery Life Toolkit to measure and instrument the impact of Linux code changes on power savings.

Additionally, LessWatts.org provides Linux support for hardware power saving features being implemented in current and upcoming Intel platforms.

Intel is not making this move on its own. Other vendors have joined in the LessWatts initiative. "Community contributions are a fundamental part of Oracle's long-standing commitment to Linux and our collaboration with Intel in projects such as LessWatts.org is another proof point," said Wim Coekaerts, Oracle's vice president of Linux engineering.

"LessWatts.org can help customers reduce data center power consumption and make use of the latest hardware technologies, while further advancing the development, adoption and deployment of enterprise Linux solutions."

The leading corporate Linux vendors are also on board. "In response to customer demand for power savings across their entire IT environment, we've implemented significant features in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 that allow our customers to minimize their carbon footprint," said Paul Cormier, executive vice president of engineering at Red Hat, in a statement. Red Hat continues to work closely with Intel to provide customers with ecologically sensitive solutions, and we look forward to actively contributing to the LessWatts.org project."

Jeff Jaffe, Novell executive vice president and chief technology officer, said: "Novell is working hard to be eco-friendly and customer-friendly at the same time by providing better power management technologies as part of SUSE Linux Enterprise. We are committed to helping drive the technology forward as part of LessWatts.org and providing value to our customers by incorporating that technology into upcoming SUSE Linux Enterprise releases."

3D Mouse

2007-09-20T09:08:00.001-07:00

Here is an inexpensive way to create a three dimensional pointing device. Take a working mechanical wheel mouse (the type with a scrolling wheel). Remove the ball. Drill some holes in the sides and run a string into the mouse, around the horizontal roller, and out the other side. Reroute the sensors for the vertical roller and the scroll wheel to a pair of external sensors. The easiest way to do this is to take a couple of dead mechanical mice and simply wire their horizontal rollers to the master mouse's vertical roller and scroll wheel. Run strings around these two rollers as well. Attach small weights to one end of each string and tie the other ends together. The result is a computer peripheral which can be used to indicate a point in three dimensions.

My implementation was mostly built out of surplus parts. The board was the sign for the Inverness office of Digital Routes (made obsolete when the company moved to Elgin). The mouse is a Genius NetScroll+ PS2/Serial mouse. This type of mouse uses a four-byte protocol which may be unique to Genius (it is somewhat simpler than the more common Microsoft Intellimouse protocol). The front two rollers were extracted from a long-dead Microsoft bus mouse. They are mounted to the board using brackets cut from the plastic housing for some old telephone equipment. The string was purchased at a local knitting store. The central ring is my key ring. The three weights are built from a stack of washers attached to an alligator clip by a large bolt.

The biggest problem is friction -- or lack thereof. There isn't much friction between the strings and the rollers which means tacking is very poor quality (especially on downward movements when the string loop loosens). Looping the string around the rollers more than once solves the problem, but causes the roller to jam when the string runs over itself. Increasing the mass of the weights also solves the problem, but causes operator fatigue due to having to constantly pull against the weights. The solution was to use hot melt glue to build crude pulleys on the shafts. Hot melt glue has an extremely high coefficient of friction and works very well. Even so, the mouse quickly drifts out of sync with reality and has to be recentred regularly.

Converting the mouse's data into height-width-depth co-ordinates involves rather a lot of math. 3dmouse.py is a Python program which reads the data from the mouse, decodes it and computes the co-ordinates. This program can be used as the basis of more advanced applications such as the 3D Pong game pictured on the left. The 3D Mouse could also be used to manipulate objects in a CAD program, set up planets in an orbital simulator, or control a robotic arm.

Remote Rebooter

2007-09-07T12:30:00.001-07:00

Every system administrator knows the joy of crashing a server remotely, then having to phone someone on-site to get them to hit the reset button. After doing this a few times, the people on-site start to get annoyed. Remote rebooters are devices which allow you to power-cycle a crashed server without annoying anyone.

Commercial remote reboot devices are usually miniature computers which sit on the network. You point a web browser at its IP address, enter your password, and then press a button. This trips a relay which cuts the power to your (crashed) server for a few seconds. If all goes well, the offending server will reboot normally and reappear on the network a few minutes later. This solution usually costs around $300.

Here's a simple alternative which cost about $30 to build. Our setup has two servers sitting side by side. The rebooter attaches to each server's parallel port. And each server's power plug runs through the rebooter. The device is wired such that either computer can cut the power to the other computer. As long as both computers don't crash simultaneously, one can always bring a system back from the dead.

The biggest headache was trying to avoid a vicious reboot cycle. Imagine A is commanded to reboot B. As the power is restored to B, B accidentally happens to issue the command to reboot A. As A is power-cycled, it accidentally issues the command to reboot B. Rinse. Repeat.

The first method of avoiding this was to make the command an unlikely one to appear accidentally. Since all-bits-high and all-bits-low both happen naturally during a PC's reboot, CMOS logic was added so that a specific pattern of four-bits-high and one-bit-low was required to issue a reboot command. The second method was to make sure the trigger pattern would be ignored if it was just a transient spasm. This was done using some analog electronics that required the valid input to be held for five seconds before it would activate the relays.

One quirk of our servers was that merely cutting and restoring power wasn't sufficient, we needed to press the power button as well. So there's a second pair of relay circuits which hooks up to the power button's pins on each server's motherboard. First the server opens the 120v power relay for 15 seconds. Then it closes the power button's reed relay for 5 seconds.

The resulting gadget can be controlled with a parallel port monitor.

Nokia recalls 46m phone batteries

2007-08-15T12:08:00.000-07:00

Nokia, the world's leading maker of mobile phones, said Tuesday it would offer free-of-charge replacements for some of its Nokia BL-5C batteries after around 100 incidents of overheating were reported globally.

No serious property damage or injuries were reported as a result of the incidents, the Finnish company said in a statement.

The batteries were manufactured by Japan's Matsushita Battery Industrial.

Nokia has several suppliers for BL-5C batteries who have collectively produced more than 300 million such products.

The product advisory issued Tuesday applied only to the 46 million batteries manufactured by Matsushita between December 2005 and November 2006.

"There have been approximately 100 incidents of overheating reported globally. No serious injuries or property damage have been reported," Nokia said, adding that the overheating occurred while the batteries were being charged.

Nokia mobile phone users were asked to check the 26-character serial number on the back of their phones to compare it with the identification numbers on the Nokia website, or contact a local Nokia call centre.

Blu-ray outruns HD-DVD in United States

2007-08-15T11:47:00.000-07:00

Blu-ray high-definition movie discs outsold films on the rival HD-DVD format by 2-to-1 in the United States in the first half of 2007, Home Media Research said on Tuesday.

The division of Home Media Magazine said total sales of Blu-ray discs, using a Sony Corp-backed technology, totaled 1.6 million units from Jan. 1 through July 1, compared with 795,000 HD-DVD discs sold in that period.

HD-DVD was developed by Toshiba Corp and backed by Microsoft Corp and film studios such as Warner Bros.

Both formats were launched in spring of 2006. An estimated 3.7 million high-definition discs have been sold, including 2.2 million in Blu-ray and 1.5 million in HD-DVD through the end of July, according to Home Media.

A Home Media spokeswoman said Blu-ray got a further boost in August from strong sales of the "300" title. Stephen Nickerson, senior vice president, market management at Warner Home Video, reported sales of about 190,000 Blu-ray units of the film, versus 97,000 in HD-DVD since July 31.

The industry-wide standards war is reminiscent of the VHS and Betamax battle.

Blockbuster Inc, the largest U.S. provider of home movie entertainment, in June set out plans to line its shelves with Blu-ray DVDs, saying Blu-ray rentals were "significantly outpacing" HD-DVD rentals.

Vatican, CIA edit online entries on Wikipedia.

2007-08-15T11:30:00.000-07:00

Editing your own entry on Wikipedia is usually the province of celebrities keen for some good PR. But a new website has uncovered dozens of companies that have been editing the site in order to improve their public image.

The Wikipedia Scanner, which trawls the backwaters of the popular online encyclopedia, has unearthed a catalogue of organisations massaging entries, including the US Central Intelligence Agency and the British Labour Party.

Workers operating on CIA computers have been spotted editing entries including the biographies of the former presidents Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, while unnamed individuals inside the Vatican have worked on entries about Catholic saints - and the Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams.

And somebody from a computer traced to Democrat headquarters edited a page on the conservative American radio host Rush Limbaugh, calling him "idiotic", "ridiculous" and labelling his 20 million listeners as "legally retarded".

The Scanner says Diebold, a supplier of voting machines, has made huge alterations to entries about its involvement in the controversial "hanging chad" election in the US in 2000. The company was criticised in the wake of the disputed results, but edits made by its employees on Wikipedia have included the removal of 15 paragraphs detailing the allegations.

"In August 2003 Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold, announced that he had been a top fund-raiser for George Bush," the deleted text read. "When assailed by critics for the conflict of interest … he vowed to lower his political profile."

Last year some US congressional staff were found to be removing information from the profiles of the politicians they worked for and this year the computer group Microsoft back-pedalled after it was revealed to have offered money to experts to "correct" entries about it.

The Scanner, built by Virgil Griffith, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology, compares 5.3 million edits on the encyclopedia against the internet addresses of more than 2 million companies or individuals.

The ultimate way to bring your linux to life.

2007-08-08T11:48:00.000-07:00

Linux Live is a set of shell scripts which allows you to create own Live Linux from your installed Linux distribution. The Live system you create will be bootable from CD-ROM or a disk device, for example USB Flash Drive, USB Pen Drive, Camera connected to USB port, and so on. People use Linux Live scripts to boot Linux from iPod as well.

How to build a Live distro:

1. Install your favourite distro to disk partition, or into a folder on your existing system.

Slackware is recommended but not required.

2. Build aufs kernel module and squashfs kernel module (optionally patched to support LZMA)

The step above is not required if you use precompiled Linux Kernel from this website

Install kernel modules to the newly installed distro to /lib/modules/`uname -r`/fs/.

Make sure you are running the same kernel you used to compile modules

3. Remove all unnecessary files (for example man pages and all other files you don't need),

to make your Live Linux system as small as possible (this step is optional).

4. Download Linux Live scripts from this website and unpack it in /tmp

Read ./DOC/requirements.txt to find out what linux-live scripts need

Edit .config file if you need to modify some variables

5. Finally login as root and run ./build

Live distribution's 'directory tree' will be created in /tmp/live_data_1234

where 1234 is a random number

6. To make ISO image, run make_iso.sh

To make a bootable (usb) disk, run bootinst.sh

Working example

If you're just looking for a working Linux Live system, visit www.slax.org

Linux Live scripts version 6 are the most innovative scripts available. AuFS provides better stability compared to old unionfs, squashfs with LZMA support provides great compression ratio and amazing decompression speed. What's new compared to old Linux Live scripts v 5?

- aufs is used instead of unionfs, brings great stability and features
- squashfs is patched with LZMA compression, so compressed filesystems are up to 30% smaller
- no need to patch your distro's startup scripts in order to remove remount of root rw
- no need for udev as the devices are created during live startup
- CD tree is simplified, you may call your distro as you like, eg. slax, knoppix, etc.
- support for booting from USB and PCMCIA/CardBus device
- added a script to create bootable disk (including USB) in Linux and Windows

LINUTOP

2007-07-30T12:45:00.000-07:00

Linutop is a small computer running from a USB key.

Without internal hard drive, linutop is more robust.
It offers a completely silent, low-power operation in an extremely small package.

It comes with a "Plug & Surf" USB key based on Linux for an easy web access.
Linutop is ideal for everyday Internet usage in:

- Libraries, Schools and Universities, Museums...
- Business and Government offices, Factories...
- Hotels, Hospitals, Internet cafés, Living rooms...
Beyond Internet surfing,

Linutop is a developer-friendly platform that can be easily adapted to other uses:
- Public Information Displays, Point-of-Sale Terminal...
- Embedded PC (car, boat, plane)...
Linutop Benefits

Small
Simple
Silent
Light
Low energy consumption
Low-cost deployment and service

Plug & Surf
Linutop is shipped with a 'Plug and Surf' USB key designed for an easy and reliable Internet access.

Linutop can be used in a waiting room; bedroom, office, factory, ... an always open web access.
Easy
The 'Plug and Surf' USB key contains all the necessary software for surfing and chatting.
Nothing to install, just plug the key and surf.
Reliable
The 'Plug and Surf' USB key cannot be altered by a virus or a mishap.
At each restart you will recover the initial state.
Flexible
If you master linux, it will be easy for you to create your own distribution or customized version on a USB key or a USB hard drive.

Porn Industry in Japan Embraces Blu-Ray Disc

2007-07-30T10:58:00.000-07:00

Japanese adult film makers have turned decisively to Blu-ray Disc, breathing new life into its bid to replace DVDs as the disc of choice for home movies.

The HD DVD high-definition movie format may have the lead in the U.S. porn industry, but Japanese adult film makers have turned decisively to Blu-ray Disc, breathing new life into its bid to replace DVDs as the disc of choice for home movies.

Sony Corp. has started offering more technical support to the adult film industry in Japan, movie makers said at the Adult Treasure Expo 2007 in Chiba, Japan, and the problem of finding companies to mass produce their movies appears to be over.

It's an important step for Blu-ray Disc. HD DVD has already won over the U.S. adult film industry through its lower costs and ease-of-use. People in the industry say they've received plenty of help from backers of the format, including Microsoft Corp. and Toshiba Corp. But Blu-ray is different. Sony and one of the biggest movie makers in the world, the Walt Disney Co., object to pornography, and Disney maintains a policy against having its own movies replicated by any company working with adult movie titles.

Until now, only a handful of companies operated the stampers needed to copy thousands of Blu-ray Disc movies at a time. But the Japanese company handling most of the early Blu-ray Disc adult film releases in Japan says it has partnered with a Taiwanese company able to secure the necessary equipment from Sony.

"In Japan, there are some problems. Companies cannot press Blu-ray discs because they cannot touch adult-related contracts," said Kiyotaka Konno, director of administration at Assist Corp., a Japanese company that authors and replicates DVDs for the adult industry in Japan. "So we asked some makers in Taiwan to do the work, and then we import the discs back to Japan. The Taiwanese company was able to obtain a pressing machine from Sony and will start mass production in August."

Sony says its policy of not allowing its disc replicating subsidiary, Sony DADC, to copy adult films has not changed. But the company is offering technical support to any film makers looking for help, no matter what industry, a spokeswoman said Monday.

The adoption of Blu-ray Disc by the Japanese porn industry could make all the difference in the format war. The adult film industry has long been a first mover in using new technologies, and many analysts say the industry played a key role in making VHS the winner in the video cassette fight against Sony's Betamax video tape standard years ago. Blu-ray Disc, also a Sony technology, is now vying with HD DVD to be the high-definition disc of choice in the 21st century.

Japan's adult film industry already has ten movies out on Blu-ray Disc (BD DVD), including "JK," "Sex Vacation in Guam" and "Eroist." More are on the way, said Yoshimasa Nozu, a producer at Total Media Agency Inc. His company plans to release at least one more movie per month on Blu-ray for the rest of this year.

By contrast, only one HD DVD adult film has been made in Japan so far, "Perfect Slave Rin," by Glay'z productions.

"HD DVD is popular overseas, but it faces a tough market in Japan," said Takeshi Kobayashi, head of operations at Taisei Co. Ltd., which distributes films under the trade name Glay'z in Japan. "Sony is really pushing the industry to adopt BD DVD."

Price is one issue. HD DVD movies sell for %6,090 (US$51.37) each in Japan, while BD DVD movies cost less, %4,935. The main difference is that every HD DVD comes with a DVD as well, so users who want to buy the new format but don't yet have an HD DVD player can watch the DVD until they buy a new player.

Sony's PlayStation 3 also presents a challenge for HD DVD. The game console comes with a built in BD DVD player, giving adult film producers an incentive to put their movies on Blu-ray. Japan has long been a stronghold for Sony in the game console arena, and despite stiff competition from Nintendo Co. Ltd.'s Wii, it has sold 4.3 million players worldwide. That puts at least the same number of Blu-ray Disc players in people's homes.

Microsoft, which is part of the HD DVD consortium, has tried to counter Blu-ray in game consoles by offering an add-on HD DVD player for the Xbox 360. But since the players aren't built in, users can opt to forego them, unlike PlayStation 3 users.

HD DVD does have an advantage in the cost of its stand-alone players. Toshiba Corp.'s HD-A2 costs just US$234.99 and comes with five free mainstream HD DVD movies, according to Amazon.com. A similar machine by Sony, the BDP-S300, costs US$499, the same as a PlayStation 3 with a 60G-byte hard drive. The two devices also include five free movies.

Several U.S. porn studios have also come out as strong supporters of HD DVD. Wicked Pictures released the first U.S. feature-length adult movie in HD DVD in January, "Camp Cuddly Pines: Powertool Massacre," while the first Blu-ray Disc title in the U.S., Vivid Entertainment Group's "Debbie Does Dallas...Again," didn't follow until nearly four months later.

Still, despite the head start, HD DVD isn't exactly taking the porn industry by storm. Several U.S. companies interviewed earlier this year have not made good on their plans to release titles in HD DVD, while Blu-ray Disc appears to be gaining ground with its new initiative to work with Japanese adult film makers. The result could be a shift in Blu-ray's favor. U.S. adult film makers said they would use whatever makes sense, and only favored HD DVD early on because the format is less expensive to make movies with and they received extensive help from HD DVD backers.

A friendlier face from the Blu-ray Disc camp appears to be working with Japan's porn industry. Perhaps it could work in the U.S. as well.

Dell starts Eliminating trialware from its PCs.

2007-07-12T10:45:00.000-07:00

At the launch event for Dell’s new line of Vostro PCs and laptops today in New York City, Michael Dell admitted that “customers really hated trialware” and that Dell is making a major move toward removing trialware (what we call “crapware“) from the desktop and laptop systems that it sells to small businesses.

Of course, this is not just an altruistic move on Dell’s part. Dell makes a lot of money from companies that place their trialware on Dell systems, so Dell loses money by removing that crapware. However, Michael Dell explained that Dell also saves a lot of money in customer support by removing it. “Trialware is a support issue. You click on it, it’s not working and you call. Just take it all away and you don’t have those problems.”

The intangible factor here is customer satisfaction. Removing crapware will undoubtedly be a popular move with small business IT pros, who typically have to remove it all manually after the systems arrive. Dell’s corporate desktops are already free of crapware. However, it doesn’t look like Dell will be removing crapware from consumer systems any time soon, according to ZDNet (TechRepublic’s sister site).

For more, read:

* Michael Dell: Anti-crapware poster CEO? (ZDNet)
* Dell rolls out SMB notebooks dubbed Vostro sans ‘Trialware’ (ZDNet)
* Dell Lets Small Business Users Decline PC ‘Crapware’ (PC World)

Could this be the beginning of the end for pre-loaded crapware? Will other vendors follow suite for small business systems? Will this soon spill over to consumer PCs? If you are a small business IT professional, how does this move affect your opinion of buying and deploying Dell machines? Join the discussion.

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=521&tag=nl.e019

How to Install Linux with no CD-ROM drive or modem

2007-06-21T12:03:00.000-07:00

Most Linux distributions come on a CD-ROM. You can also download them from an FTP site, but that requires an Internet connection. What if you have a system with no CD-ROM drive or Internet connection, like an old 486 laptop? The trick here is to have another desktop system with a CD-ROM drive, and a
null-modem serial cable.

I will show you how to do it with Slackware. It is also possible with most other Linux distributions. Insert the Linux CD-ROM in the drive on the desktop and copy the A (base) and N (networking) packages on diskettes. You need at least those in order to use a serial cable to transfer the rest of the packages.

Now you need to enable NFS networking on the desktop, and allow the laptop to connect. You can give a temporary IP address to the laptop, like 192.168.1.11 that you need to add to your /etc/exports file on your desktop.

To link the two systems together, this is what you need to type on the laptop:

/usr/sbin/pppd -detach crtscts lock 192.168.1.11:192.168.1.10 /dev/ttyS1 115200

And this on the PC:

/usr/sbin/pppd -detach crtscts lock 192.168.1.10:192.168.1.11 /dev/ttyS1 115200

This is assuming the cable is linked to ttyS1 (COM2) on both systems.

With NFS, you can mount the CD-ROM drive remotely and tell the installation program to use a specific path to install the remaining packages. Mount the CD-ROM with a command like this:

mount -tnfs 192.168.1.10:/cdrom /mnt

Then run the installation program:

setup

and enter the new path for the packages files.

You can still run linux on your 286.

2007-06-20T04:05:00.000-07:00

Linux is a multi-user, multitasking operating system which requires a 386 processor or more to run. This is because the lower PC processors don't have what is needed for the Linux kernel.

Linux being open source, is being ported to many architectures. And one group decided to modify the kernel
so it would run on a 286 processor. The project page is http://www.uk.linux.org/ELKS-Home/index.html.

Using Windows special keys in Linux

2007-06-20T03:39:00.000-07:00

Why are all the new keyboards sold with Win95 keys on them? How about making them do real keyboard functions while in X Window? Here is how.

First you need to find out which key mapping you are using. Usually it will be US, it might also be en_US, ca
or else. Locate the file, usually in /usr/X11/lib/X11/xkb and edit it with your favorite editor. For me the file is called /usr/X11/lib/X11/xkb/symbols/ca.

The file lists all the key codes and what they do. The key codes for the Win95 special keys are LWIN, RWIN and MENU. All you need to do is add them to the list, with the functions for them. I decided to map the left WIN key to "@" and the right WIN key and MENU keys to "{" and "}". Here are the lines I added:

key (RWIN) { [ braceleft ] };
key (LWIN) { [ at ] };
key (MENU) { [ braceright ] };

By browsing the file you can find all the other symbols and what they do. You can also add multiple functions to a key, by using ALT and SHIFT.

The changes will take effect when you restart X Window. With the XKB extension (you do need to have it enabled in /etc/XF86Config btw) it's easy to change the mapping of any key.

How to find a Linux CD-ROM at low cost

2007-06-20T01:42:00.000-07:00

The Linux market started from a few distributions available only from FTP servers, to full feature commercial distributions available in stores and online including a printed manual and phone support.

Here are the main choices you have when looking for a Linux distribution:

You can download any Linux distribution from its FTP server. To take a few examples,
RedHat can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.redhat.com, Slackware from ftp://ftp.cdrom.com and Debian from ftp://ftp.debian.org. That method is free, but requires you to have a fast Internet connection. Downloading a full Linux distribution over a 56Kbps modem will take you quite a few hours.

An other way is to buy a full distribution. RedHat, for example, can be bought online for about
$50. This will include a box, a CD-ROM, a boot diskette, a manual and support from RedHat.

The last way is to buy only the CD-ROM. There are a few places selling CD-ROMs of various distributions for $2. One of them is http://www.cheapbytes.com. You will only get the
CD-ROM, but this is all you need to install Linux if you are comfortable with the fact that you don't get a printed manual or free support. You can find the manual and other documentation
on the CD-ROM.

Microsoft aims mothers with Xbox 360 price fall.

2007-06-11T13:39:00.000-07:00

Earlier this morning, Bloomberg first broke the news that Microsoft was planning to lower the price of the Xbox 360 by this holiday season. The reason for the lower price would be to target the growing market of consumers who are snapping up consoles based on price, and the leader of that pack is the Nintendo Wii. How exactly do they plan to do this? Target the person most likely to buy the console, dear old mom.

Microsoft is reported as planning to revamp in-store displays, add new family orientated titles to their already impressive lineup, and make the children’s titles easier to find. They are doing this with the goal to make the mothers of the world, who do most of the holiday shopping, customers. The lower price will allow them to compete with Nintendo in the family oriented vertical market, something that Nintendo is doing quite well, allowing it to maintain the lead in the console wars. The Xbox is a console for the serious gamer, ask any hard core gamer what they play and most will answer 360 with excitement and proceed to tell you why.

When the Wii was released last holiday season, Nintendo took aim at the casual gamer, women, kids, and according to some reports the elderly. This is a Market Microsoft wants to get into and the price drop is one way to do it. According to the Bloomberg article, “If we don't make that move, make it early and expand our demographic, we will wind up in the same place as with Xbox 1, a solid business with twenty-five million people,” said Peter Moore, a vice president who oversees the Xbox. “What I need is a solid business with ninety million people.” Adding that Microsoft is loosing money on each unit sold, which might be true, but it is nowhere near what rival Sony is reported to lose.

The other point for the price drop is the “sweet spot” price that Nintendo appears to have hit. “We are well aware that the sweet spot of the market is really 199 bucks,” said David Hufford, a director of Xbox product management. Bloomberg then added that Sony sold 75 million PlayStation 2s at or below that price. “Wii costs $250 and makes a “strong value proposition,” Hufford said. “When mom walks into the store and sees she can get a console with a game for $250, she sees it as a $300 value. They've done a good job.”

Now, Hufford refutes the quote as misleading and taken way out of context. “Some are getting really spun up about the Bloomberg story and inaccurately reading tea leaves that don’t exist. I spoke to Bloomberg nearly two months ago and we were talking about NPD data that had just been released, and chatting generally about price points of consoles in the market. The comment, which is accurately reported, unfortunately has now been taken way out of context and being reported as if I am signaling a price drop. I was not, I am not,” he said on the Gamerscore Blog. Adding, “With Xbox 360s selling well at their current price point, Elites selling out at $479, and an insanely great portfolio of games in the market, there’s no reason to announce any kind of price drop anytime soon.”

Just as the rumor and hype surrounding the release of the Xbox Elite, some call this more Microsoft spin, but until the price drops officially then the entire story, and related reports are just rumors. One comment on the Gamerscore Blog, a Microsoft approved blog ran by a Microsoft staffer, one person called it just that.

“I thought MS doesn't comment on rumors and speculation? Anyway no one buys your load of crock. Of course MS would deny a price drop right now because it would stall sales until the price drop happens and that could be months away. Price drop is confirmed and I'm telling everyone to wait for it. You guys are getting stomped by the Wii and need to do something before you lose the console lead and price drop around the Holidays is exactly what MS plans to do,” said user Shamrock.

John Porcaro, a Sr. Group Manager in Microsoft's Global Games Marketing Team, responded to Shamrock and said future price drops were imminent, “Shamrock, the point is that he was being misquoted, and lots of sites were saying he said we were dropping the price this holiday. If you read the original article, that isn't the case. I/he was just clarifying that. Of course, [we will] drop price at some point in the future.”

Therefore, while the reports of a holiday price drop are somewhat misleading, according to a Microsoft source, another Microsoft source says they are coming “at some point in the future.” So where does that leave the consumer? Just maybe it leaves them inline to buy a Wii, or if they can afford it a $479 Elite.

New Arrival 64Gb SanDisk Drive

2007-06-06T08:32:00.000-07:00

SanDisk Launches 64 Gigabyte Solid State Drives for Notebook PCs, Meeting Needs for Higher Capacity

New Products on Display at Computex 2007, Taiwan's International Information Technology Show
Reaching for the "sweet spot" of memory storage for laptop computers, SanDisk(R) Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK) today expanded its line of solid state drive (SSD) products with the introduction of
a 64-gigabyte (GB)(1) SSD aimed at both enterprise users and early adopter consumers such as gamers. SanDisk 1.8-inch UATA 5000 and 2.5-inch SATA 5000 SSD products, which already are available in a 32GB capacity, are compatible as drop-in replacements for hard disk drives in most mainstream notebook computers.

The announcement was made at Computex Taipei 2007, where SanDisk is showcasing its comprehensive line of storage products for use in industrial and system-level embedded applications. SanDisk's new 64GB SSD will be on display in Hall 1 in Booths C1000, 1002 and C1004 along with other SanDisk OEM embedded flash storage products such as iNAND(TM) and mDOC H3.

"Laptop manufacturers have requested more memory capacity for systems that use the Microsoft Vista platform, which can require a number of preloaded accessories and security suites," said Doreet Oren, SanDisk director of SSD product marketing. "Also, there is interest in developing laptops for gaming, and the SSD is well-suited for the performance and memory requirements of those users. Thus, by offering greater capacities on our SSD products, we are making our products more appealing to a wider customer base."

Compared to conventional hard drives still found in most notebook computers, SanDisk SSDs offer key benefits to computer manufacturers and their customers:

-- Durability and reliability. SanDisk SSDs deliver 2 million hours mean time between failures (MTBF)(2), approximately six times more than notebook hard disks. With no moving parts, SanDisk SSDs are also much less likely to fail when a notebook computer is dropped or exposed to extreme temperatures.

-- High performance. With no moving parts, the flash-based SSD starts working almost immediately to achieve far better access speeds than a conventional hard disk drive. For example, in notebook computers, data moves to and from an SSD more than 100 times faster than data moving to and from a hard disk. SanDisk SSDs offer a sustained read rate of 67 megabytes (MB) per second(3) and a random read rate of 7,000 inputs/outputs per second (IOPS) for a 512-byte transfer(4). As a result, notebooks equipped with a 2.5-inch SanDisk SSD can boot Microsoft(R) Windows(R) Vista(TM) Enterprise in as little as 30 seconds(5) and access files at an average speed of 0.11 milliseconds(6).
A notebook using a hard disk requires an average 48 seconds to boot and an average 17 milliseconds to access files.

-- Low power consumption. Compared to a typical hard disk drive, which consumes 1.9 watts(7) during active operation, SanDisk SSDs consume 1.0 watt (0.5 watts for 1.8") while active and as little as 0.4 watts (0.2 watts for 1.8") while idle. This difference in power efficiency is particularly important in extending battery life for road warriors, enabling them to remain productive while in transit.

Gartner projects global consumption of SSDs in consumer and business notebooks to leap from about 4 million units in 2007 to 32 million units in 2010(8).

SanDisk SSD products are available now to manufacturers. The company plans to offer 64GB engineering samples in the third quarter, with mass production planned to commence prior to the end of the year. More information about SanDisk SSD products is available online at www.sandisk.com/ssd.

SanDisk is the original inventor of flash storage cards and is the world's largest supplier of flash data storage card products, using its patented, high-density flash memory and controller technology. SanDisk is headquartered in Milpitas, California, and has operations worldwide, with more than half its sales outside the U.S.

(1) 1 megabyte (MB) = 1 million bytes; 1 gigabyte (GB) = 1 billion bytes.

(2) MTBF is calculated based on Parts Stress Method of Telcordia SR-332

(3) H2BENCH 3.6: average access time = average seek time + average latency time

(4) IOMETER 2003.12.16

(5) Stopwatch test performed internally at SanDisk; notebook computer (Intel Core 2 Processor T7200, 2.00GHz, 997MHz, 1.0GB RAM DDR2-533 SDRAM); Microsoft Windows Vista

(6) H2BENCH 3.6: average access time = average seek time + average latency time

(7) MobileMark 2005; notebook computer (Intel Core Duo Processor ULV U2500), 1.20GHz, 533MHz, 1.0GB, DDR2-533 SDRAM

(8) According to "Dataquest Insight: Expect PCs to Impact the NAND Flash Market after 2008," 15 December 2006, page 21-22.

SanDisk's product and executive images can be downloaded from www.sandisk.com/corporate/media.asp

SanDisk's web site/home page address: www.sandisk.com

SanDisk and the SanDisk logo are trademarks of SanDisk Corporation, registered in the United States and other countries. Other brand names mentioned herein are for identification purposes only and may be the trademarks of their respective holder(s).

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements, including expectations for new product introductions, applications, markets, and customers that are based on our current expectations and involve numerous risks and uncertainties that may cause these forward-looking statements to be inaccurate. Risks that may cause these forward-looking statements to be inaccurate include among others: market demand for our products may grow more slowly than our expectations or there may be a slower adoption rate for these products in new markets that we are targeting, product introductions may be delayed, our products may not perform as expected, and the other risks
detailed from time-to-time in our Securities and Exchange Commission filings and reports, including, but not limited to, Form 10-K and our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. We do not intend to update the information contained in this press release.

How Inkjet Printers Work.

2007-06-06T08:12:00.000-07:00

Origins

Although inkjet printers were first mass-produced in the 1980s, it was only in the 1990s that prices dropped low enough for that technology to be brought into the mass consumer market. Canon claims to have invented what it calls 'bubble jet' technology in 1977, when a researcher accidentally touched an ink-filled syringe with a hot soldering iron and the heat forced a drop of ink out of the needle. And so began the development of a new printing method.

Inkjet printers have made rapid technological advances in recent years. First, the three-color printer succeeded in making color inkjet printing an affordable option; but as the superior four-color models became cheaper to produce and sell, it wound up being the standard and users' choice.

Inkjet printing has two chief benefits over laser printers: lower printer cost and color-printing capabilities. But while inkjet printers are priced much less than laser printers, they are actually more expensive to use and maintain. Cartridges need to be changed more frequently and the special coated paper required to produce high-quality output is very expensive. At a cost per page level, inkjet printing costs about 10 times more than laser printing.

Operation
Inkjet printing, like laser printing, is a non-impact process. Ink is emitted from nozzles while they pass over media. The operation of an inkjet printer is easy to visualize: liquid ink in various colors being squirted onto paper and other media, like plastic film and canvas, to build an image. A print head scans the page in horizontal strips, using the printer's motor assembly to move it from left to right and back again, while the paper is rolled up in vertical steps, again by the printer. A strip (or row) of the image is printed, then the paper moves on, ready for the next strip. To speed things up, the print head doesn’t print just a single row of pixels in each pass, but a vertical row of pixels at a time.

For most inkjet printers, the print head takes about half a second to print the strip across a page. On a typical 8 1/2"-wide page, the print head operating at 300 dpi deposits at least 2,475 dots across the page. This translates into an average response time of about 1/5000th of a second. Quite a technological feat! In the future, however, advances will allow for larger print heads with more nozzles firing at faster frequencies, delivering native resolutions of up to 1200dpi and print speeds approaching those of current color laser printers (3 to 4 pages per minute in color, 12 to 14ppm in monochrome). In other words, declining costs for improving technology.

There are several types of inkjet printing. The most common is "drop on demand" (DOD), which means squirting small droplets of ink onto paper through tiny nozzles; like turning a water hose on and off 5,000 times a second. The amount of ink propelled onto the page is determined by the print driver software that dictates which nozzles shoot droplets, and when.

The nozzles used in inkjet printers are hairbreadth fine and on early models they became easily clogged. On modern inkjet printers this is rarely a problem, but changing cartridges can still be messy on some machines. Another problem with inkjet technology is a tendency for the ink to smudge immediately after printing, but this, too, has improved drastically during the past few years with the development of new ink compositions.

This is how Your Printer Work.

2007-06-06T08:03:00.000-07:00

Impact printers, as the very name implies means that the printing mechanism touches the paper for creating an image. Impact printers were used in early 70s and 80s. In Dot Matrix printers a series of small pins is used to strike on a ribbon coated with ink to transfer the image on the paper.

Other Impact Printers like Character printers are basically computerized typewriters. They have a series of bars or a ball with actual characters on them, which strike on the ink ribbon to transfer the characters on the paper. At a time only one character can be printed. Daisy Wheel printers use a plastic or metal wheel. These types of printers have limited usage though because they are limited to printing only characters or one type of font and not the graphics.

There are Line printers where a chain of characters or pins, print an entire line, which makes them pretty fast, but the print quality is not so good. Thermal printers are nothing but printers used in calculators and fax machines. They are inexpensive to use. Thermal printers work by pushing heated pins against special heat sensitive paper.

More efficient and advanced printers have come out now which use new Non-impact Technology.

Non-impact printers are those where the printing mechanism does not come into the contact of paper at all. This makes them quieter in operation in comparison to the impact printers.

In mid 1980s Inkjet printers were introduced. These have been the most widely used and popular printers so far. Colour printing got revolutionized after inkjet printers were invented. An Inkjet printer’s head has tiny nozzles, which place extremely tiny droplets of ink on the paper to create an image. These dots are so small that even the diameter of human hair is bigger. These dots are placed precisely and can be up to the resolution of 1440 x 720 per inch. Different combinations of ink cartridges can be used for these printers.

How an Inkjet printer works

The print head in this printer scans the page horizontally back and forth and another motor assembly rolls the paper vertically in strips and thus a strip is printed at a time. Only half a second is taken to print a strip. Inkjet printers were very popular because of their ability to colour print. Most inkjets use Thermal Technology. Plain copier paper can be used in these printers unlike thermal paper used for fax machines. Heat is used to fire ink onto the paper through the print head. Some print heads can have up to 300 nozzles. Heat resistant and water based ink is used for these printers.

The latest and fastest printers are Laser Printers. They use the principal of static electricity for printing it as in photocopiers. The principle of static electricity is that it can be built on an insulated object. Oppositely charged atoms of objects (positive and negative) are attracted to each other and cling together. For example, pieces of nylon material clinging to your body, or the static you get after brushing hair. A laser printer uses this same principle to glue ink on the paper.

How Laser Printer works:

Unlike the printers before, Laser printers use toner, static electricity and heat to create an image on the paper. Toner is dry ink. It contains colour and plastic particles. The toner passes through the fuser in the computer and the resulting heat binds it to any type of paper. Printing with laser printers is fast and non-smudge and the quality is excellent because of the high resolution that it can achieve with 300 dots per inch to almost 1200 dpi at the higher end.

Basic components of a laser printer are fuser, photoreceptor drum assembly, developer roller, laser scanning unit, toner hopper, corona wire and a discharge lamp. The laser beam creates an image on the drum and wherever it hits, it changes the electrical charge like positive or negative. The drum then is rolled on the toner. Toner is picked up by charged portion of the drum and gets transferred to the paper after passing through the fuser. Fuser heats up the paper to amalgamate ink and plastic in toner to create an image. Laser printers are called “page printers” because entire page is transferred to the drum before printing. Any type of paper can be used in these printers. Laser printers popularized DTP or Desk Top Publishing for it can print any number of fonts and any graphics..

This is how the computer and printer operate to print

When we want to print something we simply press the command “Print”. This information is sent to either RAM of the printer or the RAM of the computer depending upon the type of printer we have. The process of printing then starts. While the printing is going on, our computer can still perform a variety of operations. Jobs are put in a buffer or a special area in RAM or Random Access Memory and the printer pulls them off at its own pace. We can also line up our printing jobs this way. This way of simultaneously performing functions is called spooling. Our computer and the printer are thus in constant communication.

Configure Yahoo in Outlook Express

2007-06-04T00:02:00.000-07:00

Regarding Yahoo mail account download, Yahoo Mail disabled free access to its POP3 service sometimes in April 2002. So you have to install a third-party application to access Yahoo mail into your Outlook Express client.

YPOPs! is an application that provides POP3 access to Yahoo Mail.
This application emulates a POP3 server and enables popular e-mail clients such as Outlook, Netscape, Eudora, Mozilla, etc., to download e-mail from Yahoo accounts. This application is more like a gateway. It provides a POP3 server interface at one end to talk to e-mail clients and an HTTP client (browser) interface at the other that allows it to talk to Yahoo.

YahooPOPs is a freeware (GPL) application.
You can download YahooPOPs!/Windows version 0.6 (filesize 1.13MB) from the following URL: http://yahoopops.sourceforge.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=Downloads&file=index&req=viewsdownload&sid=2.

1. To download Yahoo mail into your Outlook Express, please follow these steps: First, you will have to install YahooPOPs application. Then start yahoopops by start - Programs - YahooPOPs - YahooPOPs.
This will sit on the system tray.
2. Next, you will have to configure Yahoo mail account into your Outlook Express e-mail client.
3. Open your Outlook Express e-mail client. Click on Tools - Accounts. Click the Add button, select Mail from the popup.
4. In the Display name text box, please type your full name or whatever you would like people to see in the `From' field and click Next.
5. Enter your Yahoo e-mail address and click Next. Select POP3 as `My incoming mail server.'
6. Please type `localhost' as your Incoming mail (POP3, IMAP or HTTP) server and type `localhost' as the Outgoing mail (SMTP) server and click Next.
7. In the Account name field, type your full Yahoo e-mail address (accountname@yahoo.co.in). In the Password field, enter your Yahoo password. If you do not wish to type in your password every time you check your mail, please tick the Remember password box and click Next. Then click Finish.

Now in the Internet Accounts window,
8. click on the new account named localhost and click Properties. Select `Servers' tab and in the bottom tick the checkbox of `My server requires authentication' and click Settings button.
9. Select `Log on using' and enter your Yahoo Mail address as the Account name and your Yahoo Mail password as the password. Next select the `Advanced' tab and increase the Server Timeout to `Long' (5 minutes).
10. Click OK and close. Now your configuration settings are ended.

Please note that when you check Yahoo mails on Outlook Express, you will have to make sure that the YahooPOPs stay on system tray. If you do not invoke YahooPOPs application, you will get an error message.

Now just by clicking the Send/Recv button of Outlook Express, you will receive Yahoo mails in your inbox folder.

If you would like to receive Yahoo mails separately, either use mail rule to move Yahoo mails to one folder or Add new Identity in Outlook Express and repeat the above procedure on the new Identity.

A Chain Reconfiguration Robot

2007-05-26T05:14:00.000-07:00


PolyBot G2 with 24 modules in a four-legged spider configuration.

PolyBot is made up of many repeated modules. Each module is virtually a robot in and of itself having a computer, a motor, sensors and the ability to attach to other modules. In some cases, power is supplied off board and passed from module to module. These modules attach together to form chains, which can be used like an arm or a leg or a finger depending on the task at hand.

This is the most versatile form of modular reconfigurable robot that we have shown so far. We have demonstrated a wide variety of tasks from moving boxes to riding a tricycle.

PolyBot Design

PolyBot has gone through many variations with three basic generations.

Generation I

The first generation of PolyBot has the basic ideas shared in all the generations of repeated modules being about 5 cm on a side. The modules are built up from simple hobby RC servos, power and computation are supplied offboard. The modules are manually screwed together, so they do not self-reconfigure. The G1 modules showed the first instance of simple reconfiguration for locomotion in 1997. This design has been made available to other researchers, most notably the NASA snakebot (so far).

Generation I version 4 (g1v4)

This module was made to be a testbed for adding sensors and for testing the functionality of various configurations. Although it is not self-reconfigurable, it is very easy to manually reconfigure with a simple push and a twist. These modules do have a simple 8-bit processor and batteries on board.

Generation I version 5 (G1v5)

This version was built after the second and third generations and took the learning from building the G2 and G3 versions further. It is more reliable than the G2 and G3 versions, and more robust and scalable than any of the other G1 versions. This comes primarily from using more robust servos with more reliable output stages and using a higher voltage power bus. The increased robustness was demonstrated at an IROS03 tutorial putting the modules in the clumsy hands of robotics researchers.

Generation II

This generation of PolyBot includes onboard computing (Power PC 555) as well as the ability to reconfigure automatically via shape memory alloy actuated latches. Docking of the chains is aided by infrared emitters and detectors. The black cylinder sticking out of the module is the motor. The motor with gearbox is about 5 times stronger than the G1 modules.

Generation III

The first prototypes of the Generation III (G3) have been constructed as of December 2001. A short run of 200 modules is in progress. The modules are very similar to G2 using the same processor but has the following exceptions

•	Fit inside 5x5x5 cm box
•	Approximately 1/2 weight and volume of G2
•	Lower power than G2
•	Integrated active brake
•	More sensors G2

How to build a two - wheeled balancing scooter.

2007-05-26T04:18:00.000-07:00

Self-balancing scooters, like the Segway™ are often thought to be technological miracles, but it is not actually very hard to build one. I built the one described here in about a week using off-the-shelf parts. I spent another week tweaking the high-speed stability, improving the steering control, and writing about it.

Although the Segway has several exotic components, mine is built from common low-tech parts like wheelchair motors and RC car batteries. The parts, even at small quantity retail prices, cost less than half of a genuine Segway. It also doesn't need complex or high-performance software. The first version was written in Python and used serial ports to talk to the gyroscope and motor controller. The current software, now in C running in an onboard 8-bit microcontroller, is only 500 lines of code.

Riding the scooter is definitely fun. Things I like about it are:

It's easy, when riding down the street, to stop and chat. Somehow on a bicycle or a regular scooter, it's a huge nuisance to stop. But on this scooter, it seems very natural to pull up and chat while standing on it.
It's pretty easy to drive around inside the office. The low-speed maneuverability makes it easy to go through doors.

Things I don't like are:

It's fairly tiring to ride. Standing still on a hard, bouncing platform makes my feet tired. Not as bad as rollerblading, but a somewhat similar feeling. The body is really evolved to be in constant motion, and the combination of static posture (even more static than standing normally, since you try to keep your weight centered) and being jolted by bumps is probably bad for your spine.
I feel like a total techno-dweeb riding it around. It just screams "Silicon Valley nerd," even more than having 3 cellphones and a PDA strapped to your belt. OK, I am in fact a Silicon Valley nerd, but I don't want everyone to know it.
I get stopped every few blocks by someone ask about how it works. I don't mind telling people about it, but it does take an awfully long time to get to the coffee shop and back in the morning. And I can't quite drink a cup of coffee on it while moving at any speed, so the net result is that I arrive back at the office, 30 minutes later than if I'd just walked, with a cold coffee. A small sacrifice for Science.
Its speed and terrain handling is an uncomfortable middle ground between walking and bicycling. When walking, I usually go in pretty straight lines, over grass and curbs. Biking is fast enough that I don't mind going around on the road. But the scooter is neither fast enough to make going the long way round feel right, nor maneuverable enough to go up and down a lot of curbs.
It's not relaxing and conducive to having deep thoughts the way walking is. Riding it is fun but tense.

Rolls Royce vs Model T

The Segway is made with quite high-quality, high-tech, and expensive components. Overall, the components I used are a lot lower-tech and cheaper than the ones in the Segway. Yet, mine seems to ride just fine. It suggests that there's room for a Henry Ford of balancing scooters to develop and sell a low-cost everyman's version. Here's a quick comparison. Quotes below are from segway.com

	Segway	My Scooter
Motors	Brushless servo motors with neodymium magnets. "The highest-power motors for their size and weight ever put into mass production".	Conventional DC motors with gearbox, widely used in powered wheelchairs. $286 each from National Power Chair or from Robot MarketPlace.
Gearbox	"Like a precision Swiss watch". Engineers designed the "meshes in the gearbox to produce sound exactly two musical octaves apart."	Part of the wheelchair motor above. When going up a ramp, they sound kind of like the starter motor on my old Dodge Dart. Rrrrr-rrrr-rrrr-rrrr.
Batteries	2, 60-cell custom-designed NiMH packs producing 72 volts. "the highest power of any currently available chemistry".	20, 6-cell NiMH packs made for RC cars. They have "IDEAL SOLUTION FOR RC TOY" printed on them.$15 each from Powerizer.
Wheels	Wheels are "sophisticated engineering-grade thermoplastic." Tires by Michelin, with a "unique tread compound (a silica-based compound instead of traditional carbon-based materials)".	Wheels are stamped steel. I think they're made for utility trailers. Tires made by Cheng Shin tire works. They make startlingly loud squelching sounds on tile floors. Tire and wheel are $79 each from NPC, and hubs are $20 each.
Controller	"Sophisticated controller boards from Delphi Electronics" with "Texas Instruments digital signal processor, monitoring the entire Segway HT system and checking 100 times per second."	An 8-bit microcontroller from Atmel, running code written in C using floating point arithmetic. It sends speed control commands out the serial port at 9600 baud in ASCII to the motor driver. $10 from Digikey.
Motor Driver	"a set of 12 high-power, high-voltage field-effect transistors (FETs)".	The controller has 16 MOSFETs and can handle way more current than my batteries can supply. Made by RoboteQ, it's $485 from Robot MarketPlace. It's a popular part for use in Battlebots.
Gyroscope	"packed with five solid-state, vibrating-ring, angular-rate sensors"	One ceramic rate gyro, of the same kind that's in your camcorder (to detect your hand jiggling and stabilize the video) or RC helicopter (to stabilize the tail), and a 2-axis accelerometer to correct for drift. $149 from Rotomotion complete with the Atmel microcontroller.
Structure	Plastic and aluminum in smooth swooping shapes. "Chassis withstands 7 tons of force."	Two pieces of aluminum plate with holes drilled in them, and a standard aluminum extrusion for the handle.
Safety features	Everything is dual redundant. For example, "in the unlikely event of a battery failure, the system is designed to use the second battery to operate the machine and allow it to continue balancing until it is brought to a safe stop."	There is no redundancy or backup system. It is not even robustly made. Loose wires literally dangle out the bottom. In the fairly likely event of the software crashing, a wire coming loose, a component failing, or the batteries running low, the wheels will stop and the entire kinetic energy of the system will be used to accelerate my head toward the ground.

Despite being able to build my own, I'm still impressed with the Segway™ and with the courage it takes to bring such a product to market. Like with cars, it's pretty easy to put together a motor and wheels and make it go. But building a safe, comfortable vehicle is a serious effort.

Warning

There is one very important difference between what can be built as an experiment and the commercial Segway: The commercial one has a lot of safety features, redundancy and fool-proofing. Mine has none whatsoever (Well, it does have a kill switch so it doesn't go zooming away if I fall off, and it does shut down if it finds itself tipped more than 45 degrees.) This is pretty darn important, and you should think about it very carefully before considering building such a thing yourself. With a scooter like this, if it stops working for any reason (software crash, hardware failure, low battery) you will fall, hard, and probably on your face. Imagine zipping along at 10 MPH, and suddenly the platform you're standing on stops dead. Oh, and there's a T-bar in front of you to trip you up if you start to run. So you really shouldn't try to replicate this experiment, and I can't be responsible for what happens if you read this and try to build something.

A scooter that you ride on is not the best place to learn how to build a two-wheeled balancing device. Getting them working properly is quite subtle, so you should really start with a two-wheeled balancing robot and then scale up. See my notes on safety if you're considering trying to build something.

Another caveat: I am not a lawyer, but beware that the Segway folks have a US patent on the whole idea of a balancing scooter. Note that this is not a set of instructions for building one, it's just notes on how I built mine. I built this one for my own amusement and to satisfy my personal curiosity about how balancing scooters worked, but in the US building such a thing with any kind of commercial motive without a license from the patent holders could get you in legal trouble.

Construction

The mechanical construction is incredibly simple. Just a plate to stand on bolted to the tops of the motors, a support across the bottom, and a handle. Hanging from the foot plate are two pieces of hand-bent sheet metal to support the batteries. The batteries are just taped and cable-tied to the sheet metal.

Mechanically it's much simpler than any other kind of vehicle. With only two wheels side-by-side, there is very little structure. With no steering it doesn't need complicated pivots and linkages. It is literally just two motors bolted to a frame and a stick to hold.

The electronics and footrest all fit entirely within the 14" wheel diameter. Without the handle, it can roll end over end. But the ground clearance is pretty small. I should go up to 16" wheels, hopefully a bit lighter than the big tires I've got now. Currently it weighs about 90 lbs with its full load of batteries. The wheels alone must account for 20 lbs of this.

Dashboard

The dashboard is an electronics chassis box with knobs for steering and balance feedback loop gain. This shows the early version of the dead man's switch, which really is not adequate. I found this out when I fell off, but the wire pulled apart instead of yanking out the connector. When it pulled apart, the exposed strands ended up touching to complete the circuit and keep it going. Fortunately, a safety feature in the software shut it down before it ran over my head.

Power

The motors I used are made for wheelchairs where they are driven from a 24 volt battery. I want a little more speed, so I drive them from 36 volts. My wheels are also a bit larger than the wheelchair's. It should reach 15 MPH flat out. I got 36 volts by putting 5 standard 7.2 volt RC car battery packs in series. The batteries are rated for 30 amps discharge and I wanted over 100, so I put 4 strings of 5 in parallel for a total of 20 packs or 120 cells.

There is a a complication with multiple NiMH batteries in parallel. You want to avoid current flowing between them when their voltages are a bit different. So there is a bridge rectifier for every pair of batteries, with both + and - terminals connected to the motor driver. That way the voltage on the 4 strings of batteries can differ by up to 1.5 volts without current flowing.

The batteries can be disconnected by the 4-way connector for safety, and for charging. I use an Astroflight model 112 charger, which delivers 5 amps charge current at the 40 volt charging voltage.

The system pumps energy back into the batteries when it's decelerating or doing downhill. I had worried about the frequent current reversals harming the batteries, but I'm assured by a number of people who've had experience doing this with NiMH batteries that it works well. There might be some extreme case, like starting at the top of Pike's Peak and riding all the way down, where it could overcharge and destroy the batteries.

Balance and Control

Balancing is easy. Just keep the wheels under the center of gravity. It's just like when you pick up a stick and balance it resting on the palm of your hand.

Actually, there are some complications. You don't know where the center of gravity is. You don't know exactly which way up is. And you may not be able to move the wheels fast enough to keep under it.

I discuss knowing which way is up under "Gyroscope" below, but for now assume it's known. Technically what it knows is the angle between the scooter's chassis and the direction of gravity. And instead of keeping the wheels below the center of gravity, it keeps the stick vertical (ie, the angle equal to zero.)

With the stick vertical, if you stand in just the right position, the center of gravity will be right over the wheels and the scooter will be stable. But if you lean forward, the center of gravity will be in front of the wheels and the scooter will start tipping forward. The computer senses this and moves the wheels to keep the stick vertical. But by then it has fallen some more, and it needs to move the wheels faster.

The net result is that when you lean forward, the scooter accelerates forward and when you lean back it accelerates back. It's surprisingly intuitive. Most people find they can control it within seconds of getting on it. If you're used to riding busses or subways, you're used to leaning forward when the bus is about to accelerate. Well, this scooter follows your lean instead of you having to follow it.

There is another complication. What happens if you keep leaning forward until the scooter is going so fast that the wheels can't keep up? It has to change the tilt of the scooter so instead of keeping the bar vertical, it tilts back. The bar is at waist level, so it pushes you back until the center of gravity is no longer in front of the wheels and it stops accelerating. If you lean farther forward it keeps tilting back in order to keep the speed down. In order to be able to tilt the scooter back it needs to speed up the wheels and get them out in front, so the speed limiter needs to kick in before the motors are maxed out. I currently have the limit set to 50% of maximum speed.

Keeping the Stick Vertical

Keeping the stick vertical is easy. If it tilts forward, it runs the wheels forward until the bottom of the stick is under the top.

Here too there are complications. It has to move the wheels just the right amount forward. Too much and it'll have to move them back, then forth, until the thing is bucking widly. This is pretty much the default thing that happens until you get it tuned just right.

It needs to know both the angle of the stick and how fast it's changing. Knowing how fast it's changing lets it slow down before it overshoots the mark. Technically this is known as a PD loop. The amount of drive it sends to the wheels is proportional (P) to the error in angle, and also to the derivative (D) of the error.

I mentioned above that when it's going too fast it needs to tilt the stick back. This is tricky to do, because in order to tilt back it needs to accelerate the wheels forward to get them a few inches out in front. It then seems like it's going even faster, and it tries to tilt even farther back. This is called "positive feedback" and it's a recipe for uncontrollable oscillation. Making this stable was the trickiest part of the whole project, and the fact that it can only be tested at high speed resulted in several moments of terror and a few bruises before I got it right.

Wheels and Steering

Steering is done by making one wheel go faster than the other. Because all the mass is centered between the wheels, it can spin around quite quickly.

When not moving, maximum turning corresponds to having one wheel at about 10% forward and the other at 10% reverse. This spins it around pretty fast. You wouldn't want to turn this fast at high speed because it would tip sideways, so it reduces the maximum turning speed as the forward speed increases.

The wheels have 0.5 degrees of toe-in, meaning that they are both angled slightly inwards. The front wheels of most cars have a similar amount of toe-in. Pneumatic tires are inherently flexible sideways, and it makes it more stable to have them always flexed slightly. I don't know if 0.5 degrees is the right amount and I haven't tested any alternatives. But the steering is quite stable despite not having any active correction in software.

Putting it all together

What takes many paragraphs to explain is surprisingly simple to code. Here is the basic pseudocode of the balance algorithm, complete with the numbers which made my scooter feel stable and responsive.

Inputs: angle, angle_rate: the tilt angle of the scooter in radians and its derivative in radians/sec
steer_knob: the reading from the steering knob, between -1 and +1.
Balance: balance_torque = 5.0 * (angle - rest_angle) + 0.4 * angle_rate
Limit top speed by tilting back: overspeed = max(0, cur_speed - 0.5)
if (overspeed > 0) { overspeed_integral = min(0.4, overspeed_integral + min(0.2, overspeed+0.05) * dt) } else { overspeed_integral = max(0, overspeed_integral - 0.04*dt) } rest_angle = 0.4*overspeed + 0.7*overspeed_integral
Steer. Decrease steering rate at high speed: steer_cmd = 0.07/(0.3+abs(cur_speed)) * steer_knob
Track current speed: cur_speed += 1.2 * balance_torque * dt
Differential steering: left_motor_pwm = balance_torque + cur_speed + steer_cmd right_motor_pwm = balance_torque + cur_speed - steer_cmd
Outputs: left_motor_pwm and right_motor_pwm directly set the duty cycle of the pulse width modulator for the wheel controller, and range from -1 to +1 (+1 is 100% forward, -1 is 100% reverse.)

Gyroscope

In order to keep the handle vertical, it needs to know which way is up. Humans, other mammals, and even lobsters have a nifty little sensor in the inner ear which does this, and it's possible to do something similar mechanically. The simplest way to know which way is up is with a pendulum. A pendulum at rest points down.

Unfortunately, the scooter is not at rest. If it's accelerating forwards a pendulum will swing backwards. It may also get swinging back and forth. It needs a much more stable notion of up.

A gyroscope made from a spinning wheel is the classical solution to keeping a vertical reference. They are still used in airplanes to remind pilots which way is up when they're in the clouds. But having an actual spinning flywheel is clumsy. They take time to spin up, they need expensive precision bearings and lubrication and use a lot of power, and occasionally the flywheel explodes (they have to spin pretty fast) and sends little bits of shrapnel into the rest of the system.

Although it's hard to visualize, it turns out that if you have a tuning fork vibrating and rotate it, it will cause a measurable vibration in the perpendicular direction. By measuring the vibration you can tell which way it is rotating and how fast. The scooter uses a very small ceramic tuning fork in just this way. They are a standard electronic product called a piezoelectric rate gyro, used in handheld camcorders to detect your hand jiggling and subtract out the motion from the picture to make it stable. One of the first successful applications of nanotechnology, they're a vital enabling technology for TV shows like C.O.P.S.

Unfortunately, these rate gyros are not perfect. They tend to report a small rate of rotation even when they're perfectly still. And if the balancing software integrates this small rate for long enough, it'll think it has rotated a lot. So it needs to compensate for that, and it does it with a pendulum. While a pendulum may swing around and wobble back and forth in the short term, the long-term average of its position is straight down.

Again, it doesn't use an actual pendulum. It uses a "micromachined silicon accelerometer", a silicon chip with a sort of diving board etched into it. This diving board bends a tiny amount in the direction of gravity, and some electronics detect how much it bends. With two of these arranged perpendicular to each other, it can compute the angle of gravity by computing the arctangent of the ratio of the bending measurements. And unlike a pendulum they don't get swinging around.

So now it has to combine the short-term reading of the rate gyro and the long-term reading of the pendulum. There is a theoretically optimal way to combine these pieces of information into a good estimate of actual tilt angle. This is called a Kalman filter. Such a filter was a good place to start, but I found I got better results with a hand-tuned feedback loop.

Sound complicated? It's not as bad as it sounds. In fact, the whole code, including stuff to read ADCs and manage serial communication is about 500 lines.

Microcontrollers

All the software needs somewhere to run. Not so long ago this task would have required more computer than you could lift, but now it runs in a tiny chip costing $10. The one I used is from Atmel. They're fast and very easy to write software for; I wrote the code in C using floating point arithmetic and trigonometric functions, and it has plenty of speed for this kind of application.

The Atmel chip I'm using has built in analog data converters to interface with the gyroscopes and steering controls so it's a nearly complete solution. There are only about 5 chips in the whole scooter.

Motor driver

The software needs to exert precise control over the speed and torque of the motors. Under worst-case conditions, like going fast up a steep ramp, the motors need to work very hard to keep up and can consume a tremendous amount of power doing so, as much as 5000 watts.

The torque generated by the motor is directly related to the current flowing through the motor. The current is controlled by alternately switching the motor across the full battery voltage, then short circuiting it. If it did this slowly it would do just what you'd think: alternate full speed, then full stop. But it alternates very fast, about 4000 times per second, and this produces a smooth output from the motor. If it spends 37% of the time with the motor connected to the battery, the motor runs about 37% of full speed.

The scooter uses a device made by RoboteQ to switch all this power around. It's a popular unit among Battlebot builders since it's small and handles a lot of power. It receives commands from the microcontroller over a serial port, such as "left motor 37% forward, right motor 35% forward" (but in a compact binary format) and it gives the motors that much power. This command would correspond to going about 5 mph in a gentle right turn.

Limits

In theory, balancing is quite simple. Just keep the support under the center of gravity. Where it gets complicated is in handing the limitations of the motor & battery system. The simple control strategy may require much more power than the motors & battery can deliver. If it lets the scooter get into a situation where the wheels can't keep up with the center of gravity, the rider will be thrown.

If you're going fast and then run into something like a ramp or speed bump, it may require a lot of power for a short time to keep the wheels going up the ramp. As batteries get low and motors get warm, the amount of available power goes down. It's hard to predict exactly when it doesn't have enough to run safely. There's certainly a large gap between when it couldn't handle hitting a speed bump at 10 MPH and when the batteries actually run down.

I plan to experiment with using a bank of capacitors to provide enough short-term oomph to handle hitting a major bump at high speed. It's much easier to calculate the amount of energy needed to handle a bump safely than the maximum speed for a given battery condition. It just needs enough to get the wheels out ahead of the center of gravity, so it can slow down. My back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest about 2500 Joules delivered in 0.5 seconds. The new carbon aerogel ultracapacitors (not to be confused with mere supercapacitors) can store this much power in small 4" x 4" x 2" package costing about $250.

Or, I could just stick a wheel in front of it. But that would seem like something of a compromise.

Performance and Testing

When I first built this, I had never been on a Segway or even seen one close up. You'd think with all my geeky friends I'd know someone with one, but I didn't. I tuned the system according to how I thought it should work. A few days after I put up this page, I got to try a genuine Segway and I realized two things: it felt better to have a stiffer feedback loop so the handle didn't move back and forth so much, and that it should limit maximum speed by tilting back. I changed both, and it feels much better now. These videos are from the original version:

I'll try to get some videos of the current performance up soon. It still doesn't quite match the Segway in two respects. First, my gyroscope drifts a bit especially when accelerating hard or going up a ramp, so the handle position wanders around a bit. This is tiring on the arms, and makes it harder to limit top speed. Second, my balance feedback loop isn't quite as stiff as the Segway's, so it still feels a bit mushy. I can't make it any stiffer without getting oscillations. It may need a higher-performance gyroscope, but I think the main difference is that the Segway's wheels have a large moment of inertia which allows it to apply a reaction torque to the chassis. My wheels are smaller and have most of the mass in the center, so it only gets reaction torque between the ground and the mass of the scooter body. The soft rubber tire adds a large spring between the wheel and the ground, and the mass of the scooter is not very stiff either since the batteries flop around.

The Segway is also bigger, stronger, lighter, and has more ground clearance and battery power. But I still like mine pretty well.

Cupholder

I like to use the scooter to go for coffee, but it's very hard to hold onto a cup of coffee and ride it at the same time. It needed a cupholder. I tried a very simple design, basically some cable ties on the main bar, but it didn't work well. I lost about 3/4" of coffee in 1/2 mile and got coffee spatters all over my pants. But, the great thing about publishing your experiments is that you get lots of minds thinking about the problem and one of them will probably suggest the right answer. Bob Beichner, from the physics department at North Carolina State University, wrote:

...all you have to do is make a little "hammock." Take a large drink coaster or other disk and drill three small holes near the rim, 120 degrees apart so they are equal distances apart. Run a string through the holes and tie together a foot or so (the distance depends on the size of your cup and the coaster diameter) above the center of the coaster. Support the hammock from the knot where the strings come together by hanging it on a hook or something. As long as the coaster doesn't bump into anything (it has to be able to swing freely) it is pretty hard to spill anything, regardless of how you move around the knot. You can even spin the thing in a big vertical circle so the cup is sometimes upside down, and nothing comes out. (Hopefully you won't do that with your scooter!)

Sure, I thought, in theory. I think I saw that demo in Physics 101 too. But it can't possibly work in practice, with 3D wobbling, swerving and bumping. With no damping, the cup will swing around wildly. But, I tried it anyway. Instead of the plate Bob suggested, I used a large cup that a normal coffee cup will fit into. As well as keeping it from sliding off when it's jiggling up and down, it should also help keep the coffee warm in the fast-moving air. As a worst case test, I just filled it with water and put no lid on.

The first version used a string about 30" long. It worked as long as the cup didn't bump into anything, but the string was so long that it was hard to avoid hitting obstacles or the scooter itself. For version 2 I shortened the system to about 14" including the cup and hung it about 15" out in front of the handlebars. It swung around crazily, but didn't spill. It's quite amusing to watch: it looks wildly improbable and out of control.

Current Problems

These are the things that are currently bad about my prototype.

The ground clearance is very low. Even large acorns get stuck under it. Using larger wheels is one solution, and I think with more clever mounting of batteries I could get them at least 1.5" higher. If I make the wheels much larger, I'll want to find a way of getting the foot plate below the center of the wheel since I'm already 8" off the ground.
It should detect when I've stepped off it, so it doesn't simply zoom away with no rider. My big worry is that I'll shift my feet around and it will erroneously detect me having stepped off. At high speed, this could be Really Bad.
It really should give some indication of battery charge, other than by falling over when it gets too low. The voltage of NiMH batteries isn't a good indication of charge, so there's no easy way to do it.
It doesn't detect when the wheels are off the ground or slipping. Once when leading it down a curb, I got it twisted a bit and it hung up on the battery supports. With the wheels free, they started spinning very quickly and it gave a huge lurch when it got back on the ground. I don't know what the general solution is. Probably it should limit the speed to 1 MPH when the rider is off.

Things Learned

You don't need high-tech low-inertia motors for adequate responsiveness. Regular old copper-wound motors work pretty well even though they have a lot of rotating mass that acts like a flywheel. This might actually help with handling a bump, as the inertia helps keep the wheels spinning up the incline.
You don't need low-backlash gearboxes either. The conventional non-precision spur gear units give about 1/8" backlash at the wheel diameter. You can feel a tiny clunk sometimes when the torque reverses, but it's hardly noticeable. They do make some gear whirring noise which is noticeable indoors. It'd probably be quieter if they weren't bolted to a big aluminum sounding board.
I didn't need any feedback in yaw (left-right steering) to keep it heading straight. I just give equal motor drive voltages, and it keeps nice and straight even on slopes or going over bumps.

Future Work

Things I'd like to try, if I had more time:

I can take both hands off the control bar and control with my feet, at least at low speeds. Handy when going through doors. I wonder if I could learn to control it without a handlebar at all. Perhaps with some sort of ski boots & bindings for greater control.
Put the vertical handle bar off to the side, instead of in front, and hold it with one hand.
Make wacky new vehicles on the same principle. Why not go for coffee in a miniature dragster, doing a wheelie all the way? Or in a greco-roman chariot, without the horses? You could also make improbably tall vehicles, like a phone booth that zoomed around upright.
Take a regular 3-wheeled "mobility scooter," and make it do wheelies all the time. You might even be able to use its original motor driver, and just add a gyroscope and feedback controller. Seeing one of those 3-wheeled scooters, normally associated with geriatric mall cruisers, doing a wheelie would really surprise people. And if it fell, you'd at least have a wheel to land on.
The ideal vehicle might be something that rides like a motorized recumbent 3-wheeled bike on roads, but tilts back to balance on sidewalks. You'd have to get off to change modes.
Build one with a small gas engine and generator instead of batteries to power the electric motors. It'd probably need a substantial capacitor bank to smooth out the power demand. The engine and alternator might even be lighter than the batteries, and it'd have tremendous range. It might go faster too.
Build a balancing scooter without any batteries at all, but instead control the braking force on the wheels to keep it balanced. It would only work going down a hill. You could use the same motors and dump their power into a bank of big resistors. Mountain boarders might dig this.
Build a real experimental platform with 20 or so knobs to control each of the feedback parameters. It's very interesting to adjust a parameter and feel the difference in real time under your feet. It'd need to have some fail-safe scheme for returning to a reasonable set of parameters if the user adjusts them too far.

Top 6 reasons for random, fatal crashes in Windows XP/2000

2007-05-19T12:12:00.000-07:00

Have you been experiencing random crashes in Windows XP or Windows 2000, and you can't find any reason for them? Windows XP and Windows 2000 are both supposed to be (and typically are) much more stable than Windows 9x/Me, but there are still things that can bring down the entire system in a heartbeat, displaying the BSD (Blue Screen of Death) or simply restarting. Go over this checklist and see if any of these apply to you.

* Power Supply - a bad (or insufficient) power supply is the most common cause for random crashes, especially if you have a lot of cards, drives, or fans, or have a dual-processor motherboard. A 350W or 400W power supply is recommended if you're experiencing this problem.

* A mix of FAT32 and NTFS drives - If you have more than one hard disk, and there are different file systems on each one, try converting them all to NTFS.

* Audio Card Drivers: - try removing your sound card, or at least uninstalling and then reinstalling the drivers.

* USB Hub: - if you have a USB hub, try eliminating it and see if that solves the problem (especially if you have a USB-based Palm cradle and your system crashes every time you hotsync).

* Overheating: - a computer will crash if the processor overheats. Make sure the CPU fan/fans are working, and that the processor temperature (read in the BIOS screen) is within normal limits. Make sure your computer case has adequate ventilation.

* Bad memory: - a bad memory module can cause this problem. Try removing one of the modules (if applicable) to see if that solves the problem; rotate through all modules until you've found the culprit. Note that some computers require memory to be installed in pairs, so, for example, if you have four modules, you'll have to remove two (no more, no fewer) for this test.

Note: these things aren't necessarily problems in and of themselves, so if you're not experiencing random crashes, don't waste your time solving problems that aren't there.

The Ultimate Boot CD for Windows

2007-05-19T11:53:00.000-07:00

UBCD4Win is a bootable CD which contains software that allows you to repair, restore, or diagnose almost any computer problem. Our goal is to be the ultimate free hardware and software diagnostic tool. All software included in UBCD4Win are freeware utilities for Windows®. UBCD4Win is based on Bart's PE©. Bart's PE© builds a Windows® "pre-install" environment CD, basically Windows® booted from CD. We include many free hardware and software diagnostic tools that allow you to fix almost any problem you will face with your computer. With network support, the ability to modify NTFS volumes, recover deleted files, create new NTFS volumes, scan hard drives for viruses, etc. this project includes almost everything you need to repair your system problems. This project has been put together to be the ultimate recovery cd and not a replacement OS (Operating System). Please visit the "List of Tools" page for a complete list of what is included in the latest version of the project.

There are requirements for building this CD which can and may make it difficult for everyone to build the project. Please understand that these requirements and restrictions are due to copyright laws, etc. When starting this project I wanted it to be as easy as possible. I wanted it to be a simple ISO file download just like the original Ultimate Boot CD. I had to weigh the ease of build and functionality very carefully. After much thought and research I decided that Bart's PE© was the best way to accomplish this task. That decision required a different type of build and more steps for the end user. Yes more complicated, but I prefer to think of these additional steps in a positive way. We provide detailed instructions, email support, and the forum for help. Inexperienced users will feel a sense of accomplishment and gain knowledge when they successfully build the CD.
How did this project start?

This project was started because of requests from members of the original Ultimate Boot CD yahoo group. Several members wanted a "Windows®" version of the Ultimate Boot CD. After a few days no one had volunteered! So I decided that I had enough time to do this and it was my way to give something back to the computing community. The "true" and "pure" ideal of helping people quickly spread, after 2 1/2 years the project continues to grow.

April 2, 2004, I created the UBCDWindows group. The first few weeks consisted mostly of discussions on how to accomplish this. We had to decide what should be included and searched for great stuff. After searching and reading a lot of web pages I finally decided that Bart's PE© was the best option.
One of the first issues I saw was one of the requirements for Bart's PE©, an XP CD with SP1. I personally had upgraded to XP right when XP came out so I did not have SP1 on my XP CD. I found several solutions for this issue but manually slipstreaming required several applications and would add more complexity to the project. I didn't like this added complexity but figured we would be able to do something about that. A better solution was created and is discussed below.

April 20, 2004 was an exciting day for me, I launched this site. After a few days of getting everything setup I realizing it was easy to setup a forum. So I announced the imminent closing of the yahoo group and requested that everyone join the forum. The project and forum have grown since it's start. Member registrations continue to grow and new teams have been created to help the development and support of the project.

The slipstreaming problem needed addressed so I contacted one of my friends that is a programmer. Raptor was glad to help and we started working together on creating a slipstreaming application. We worked pretty hard for several weeks creating the application. Well, he did all the coding work and I just helped with testing, minor details, and the dialogue for the prompts. On July 9, 2004 we released AutoStreamer 1.0!!

February 23, 2006 is another great day in the history of this project. Only a week after starting a "donation rally" to purchase an OEM license for Bart PE©, we hit our goal!! We now own a license for Bart PE©! This has helped simplify the project in many ways. Now when you download the project it is ONE download. There are no extra or complicated extraction steps, no "extract this here....delete....extract here", etc. Having the license has given us the ability to change and simplify many other things also. I thank all the great users who helped us purchase the license in order to make it better and easier for EVERYONE!!

February 2007, another donation rally and another OEM license for the project!! Thanks to everyone who donated towards our RamDrive license. That annoying little "popup" asking people to purchase RamDrive or error screen are gone. This is a newer version with few restrictions and is capable of creating up to a 2 Gigabyte RamDrive. Thanks again everyone for helping to make the project better and easier for everyone.

April 3, 2007 yet more capabilities are added to UBCD4Win. After over a year of my development team working with BTS driverpacks driver team, BartPE support is added to the BTS driverpacks! I can't congratulate or thank the members of my development team that worked on this enough. Bashrat has a great driverpack that he has been working hard on for years and we greatly appreciate his help and support. Kudos to OverFlow for all of his work and time spent working on this implementation.

Is Microsoft windows Vista the right choice?

2007-05-19T04:46:00.000-07:00

Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system is a giant step backward for your freedoms.

Usually, new software enables you to do more with your computer. Vista, though, is designed to restrict what you can do.

Vista enforces new forms of “Digital Rights Management (DRM)”. DRM is more accurately called Digital Restrictions Management, because it is a technology that Big Media and computer companies try to impose on us all, in order to have control over how our computers are used.

Technology security expert Bruce Schneier explains it most concisely:

Windows Vista includes an array of “features” that you don't want. These features will make your computer less reliable and less secure. They'll make your computer less stable and run slower. They will cause technical support problems. They may even require you to upgrade some of your peripheral hardware and existing software. And these features won't do anything useful. In fact, they're working against you. They're digital rights management (DRM) features built into Vista at the behest of the entertainment industry—And you don't get to refuse them.

DRM gives power to Microsoft and Big Media.

* They decide which programs you can and can't use on your computer
* They decide which features of your computer or software you can use at any given moment
* They force you to install new programs even when you don't want to (and, of course, pay for the privilege)
* They restrict your access to certain programs and even to your own data files

DRM is enforced by technological barriers. You try to do something, and your computer tells you that you can't. To make this effective, your computer has to be constantly monitoring what you are doing. This constant monitoring uses computing power and memory, and is a large part of the reason why Microsoft is telling you that you have to buy new and more powerful hardware in order to run Vista. They want you to buy new hardware not because you need it, but because your computer needs it in order to be more effective at restricting what you do.

Microsoft and other computer companies sometimes refer to these restrictions as “Trusted Computing.” Given that they are designed to make it so that your computer stops trusting you and starts trusting Microsoft, these restrictions are more appropriately called “Treacherous Computing”.
Even when you legally buy Vista, you don't own it.

Windows Vista, like previous versions of Windows, is proprietary software: leased to you under a license that severely restricts how you can use it, and without source code, so nobody but Microsoft can change it or even verify what it really does.

Microsoft says it best:

The software is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all other rights. Unless applicable law gives you more rights despite this limitation, you may use the software only as expressly permitted in this agreement. In doing so, you must comply with any technical limitations in the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways.

To make it even more confusing, different versions of Vista have different licensing restrictions. You can read all of the licenses at http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/useterms/default.aspx.

It's painful to read the licenses, and this is often why people don't object to them. But if we don't start objecting, we will lose valuable freedoms. Here are some of the ridiculous restrictions you will find in your reading:

* If your copy of Vista came with the purchase of a new computer, that copy of Vista may only be legally used on that machine, forever.
* If you bought Vista in a retail store and installed it on a machine you already owned, you have to completely delete it on that machine before you can install it on another machine.
* You give Microsoft the right, through programs like Windows Defender, to delete programs from your system that it decides are spyware.
* You consent to being spied upon by Microsoft, through the “Windows Genuine Advantage” system. This system tries to identify instances of copying that Microsoft thinks are illegitimate. Unfortunately, a recent study indicated that this system has already screwed up in over 500,000 cases.

Free software like GNU/Linux does not require you to consent to these absurd licensing terms. It is called free software because you are free to make as many copies as you want, and to share it with as many friends as you want. Nobody will be monitoring your actions or falsely calling you a thief.
What you can do to help protect your freedom

There is a battle underway between those who value freedom, and corporations such as Microsoft who wish to profit by taking that freedom away. DRM and absurd licenses are at the heart of that battle. Please join us on the side of freedom by saying NO not just to Windows Vista and other DRM-enabled products, but to proprietary software in general. Instead, use non-DRM, “free” software such as the GNU/Linux operating system. You can get your work done while ensuring that your rights and freedoms will not be restricted now and into the future.

As more and more of our lives become digital, it is vital that we protect our digital freedoms just like we have always worked to protect our freedom of expression in print and speech.

Intel Corp to upgrade its Centrino laptop

2007-05-10T04:48:00.000-07:00

Intel Corp. is set to launch new hardware for laptop computers that the world's biggest chipmaker hopes will keep it at the top of the fastest-growing segment of the personal computer market.

Intel's new product is not a processor but is instead a platform -- a whole package of components including the main processor as well as all the secondary chips that add features such as the ability to connect to a wireless network.

Platforms rarely grab attention outside of technical circles, but Intel is generating wider interest this time because its new products are the first to use flash memory chips, which should translate into faster performance and longer battery life.

"Santa Rosa" is the code-name for the latest big overhaul of Centrino, Intel's hugely successful laptop platform brand that helped popularize the Wi-Fi wireless technology now standard in the industry.

"Intel has done a lot of things to save power here and there and the overall message of Santa Rosa is more features, more performance with little or no impact on battery life," said Nathan Brookwood, head of consultancy Insight 64.

Intel, which has about 80 percent of the overall PC market, has traditionally been even more dominant in the laptop segment and updates Centrino about once a year to try to maintain its lead over rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

Laptop computers are the hottest part of the PC business. Last year, worldwide PC shipments rose just over 7 percent, but sales of laptops jumped 26 percent, compared to just 2 percent for desktops, according to market research firm IDC.

The new hardware will boost performance and battery life by storing some data on flash memory like that found in digital media players and digital cameras. Flash chips can be accessed more quickly than a hard drive and also use less power.

Intel says it has also improved the integrated graphics of Centrino laptops, adding features and software that make video richer and more akin to what people would see on a television.

In addition, Intel is supporting the latest version of the Wi-Fi wireless technology that can deliver a maximum access speed of 300 megabits per second, about five times faster than the current popular version.

"There are probably a greater number of improvements on this platform and they are spread all throughout," Mike Trainor, Intel's chief technology evangelist for mobile products, said of Santa Rosa.

"I think we'll look back on this and say there were lots of fundamental capabilities that came out here," Trainor said.

So far, PC manufacturers have drawn up 230 system designs using Santa Rosa, about 50 more than the last Centrino update, Trainor said. Intel is set to release more details about Santa Rosa on Wednesday at an event in San Francisco.

Are you ready to open your life to the world with Wi-Fi?

2007-04-28T11:32:00.000-07:00

No one in the evening crowd at a Starbucks here knew Humphrey Cheung. But Cheung, working on his laptop, knew things about them.

Several tables away was a guy sitting alone with his own laptop.

“He's starting a business,” Cheung said.
And the young couple in the far corner?

“They're getting married,” he confided.

Cheung isn't psychic. He had hacked into the coffee shop's wireless Internet connection on his Toshiba laptop. It took about five minutes to do so, using free software available online.

Public Wi-Fi, or “wireless fidelity,” is very handy for perusing the Internet away from the office or home. Just remember that you may have company while surfing.

Once hooked into the system, Cheung was able to monitor the online activity of other laptops in the shop. Luckily for the people around him, he wasn't snooping for any reason except to make a point: As wireless hot spots proliferate, the tools for secretly monitoring these Internet connections are becoming more sophisticated.

“When people are on a public wireless connection, they have the same expectations about privacy as when they are on the Internet at home,” said Cheung, 32, a computer security expert and an editor for TG Daily, a technology news Web site.

“But it doesn't work that way. Someone could be listening in.”

Cheung was using a “sniffer” program that intercepted online signals as they flew back and forth from the laptops to a wireless modem hidden somewhere amid the coffee paraphernalia.

Mostly, the monitoring was limited to tracking the Web sites being visited. Numbers correlating to Web addresses flew across Cheung's computer screen, allowing him to see that the couple was viewing pages at a wedding-planning site.

The man a few tables away started with sites selling high-speed broadband service, then went to a page about managing Web sites. Like a mystery yarn, the clues kept coming in.

“You start to get a story about someone,” Cheung said.

The company that provides Wi-Fi signals at Starbucks is T-Mobile USA Inc. It manages about 7,600 HotSpots nationwide, including in coffee shops, hotels and airports.

On its Web site, the company warns that communications in HotSpots “may be subject to unauthorized interception and are not inherently secure.”

But good luck in finding that security warning. The link to it is in small print at the bottom of T-Mobile's HotSpot Web page, grouped with 18 other links to various company Web pages.

T-Mobile offers a free software program, Connection Manager, to improve browsing security, said Mike Selman, the service's marketing director.

“You can use this to make sure you are connected properly to our network,” Selman said, “and that communications are encrypted from the laptop.”

But the security program also seems to be more or less a secret. Not only does the name of the program not mention security, but the link to download it also is grouped with other items in a dropdown menu. If you have a Macintosh computer, you're out of luck: The software comes only in a Windows version.

At least Cheung couldn't read e-mails.

Except in one case.

Most major e-mail sites on the Web — such as those run by AOL, EarthLink, Google and Yahoo — are protected by encryption. This is signified by the site address beginning with “https” instead of “http.”

Major banking and e-commerce pages that ask for financial information are https, too. But the Web e-mail page for Internet service provider Charter Communications Inc. is plain old http and not secure.

“You definitely want to make sure that if you are using Web e-mail on a wireless connection,” Cheung said, “that it's on an https page.”

On home Wi-Fi setups, password protection can be implemented on the modem, which offers a lot of security — although some hackers say they can break through the most basic protection regimen, known as WEP.

Public Wi-Fi setups, whether paid or free, don't have the luxury of using passwords. That would defeat the purpose of allowing a great many people to use them.

T-Mobile, which charges about $10 a day for HotSpot use, is working to get more people to use them. In March, the company finished installing a system at Los Angeles International Airport that covers 3.8 million square feet of space, making it one of the largest Wi-Fi deployments in the world.

Also, free Wi-Fi hot spots are being added to more outdoor areas by cities.

So, enjoy the freedom of Wi-Fi. But maybe you shouldn't surf to sites you wouldn't want people to know you're visiting.

“If you watch where people go, one site after another,” Cheung said, “it's almost like you can read their minds.”

Dell Latitude D420 Adopts SSD

2007-04-28T11:11:00.000-07:00

And so the flash memory revolution begins. Dell has announced that they will now be offering their Latitude D420 Ultra-Mobile Laptop with a 32GB Solid State Drive (SSD) in place of a conventional hard drive. This is an option, of course, so if you still want a magnetic spinning platter to store your data, that will still be available.

The 32GB SSD (1.8-inch) comes courtesy of the good people at SanDisk and has the same shape and size as the old HDD, except that it uses flash memory and has no moving parts. This means that it has a higher shock tolerance (up to 1,300Gs). As you recall, SSDs are also said to provide a 23% increase in system performance and a 34% improvement in boot time.

Dell announced that the 1.8-inch SanDisk SSD will be available for the rugged Latitude D620 ATG too. In either case, the flash-based drive will cost you $549.

Download Free SuperAntispyware

2007-04-28T10:08:00.000-07:00

SUPERAntiSpyware Free Edition is 100% Free and will detect and remove thousands of Spyware, Adware, Malware, Trojans, KeyLoggers, Dialers, Hi-Jackers, and Worms. SUPERAntiSpyware features many unique and powerful technologies and removes spyware threats that other applications fail to remove. SUPERAntiSpyware Free Edition does not include real-time blocking or scheduled scanning.

Interface and Functionality Changes
* Resolved issue on Windows Vista where registration would be required over and over
* Last definition update time/date is displayed on the main screen
* First Chance Prevention now allows individual settings for startup/shutdown/services scanning (Professional Version Only)
* First Chance Prevention will now notify you when items are/were detected and removed on startup/shutdown
* Resolved 12/24 hour time issue with scheduled scanning - it should now default to the time display set in the Control Panel
* Note that First Chance Prevention is not available on Windows Vista currently and will be available shortly.

Technology Changes
* Enhanced Windows Vista Scanning
* Additional repairs for Windows Vista
* Improved detection of packed/compressed threats
* Resolved issue where a zero byte file could be created on desktop under rare circumstances
* Enhanced detection and removal of in-memory threats
* Improved kernel direct scanning. This allows us to see more items even if they try and hide with kernel drivers.

http://downloads2.superantispyware.com/downloads/SUPERAntiSpyware.exe
http://downloads2.superantispyware.com/downloads/SUPERAntiSpyware.exe

Acer is recalling 27,000 Laptop Batteries

2007-04-26T13:55:00.000-07:00

Acer, one of the largest computer makers in the world, is recalling 27,000 lithium-ion laptop batteries made by Sony.

More than 10 million batteries worldwide have been recalled since the problem was traced back to Sony last year. Other computer makers such as Dell, Lenovo and Apple issued similar recalls.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has received dozens of reports of the batteries overheating. Acer says it doesn't know of any incidents that involved any of their computers but that they were going to go ahead with the recall anyway.

Affected Acer models were sold in the U.S. and Canada from May 2004 through November 2006. Acer says that consumers should immediately stop using the recalled batteries and contact the company for a free replacement. Acer says the computer can still be safely used with the use of an AC adapter.

The laptops possibly containing the recalled batteries were the
TravelMate series with four-digit model numbers beginning with 242,
320, 321, 330, 422, 467, 561, C20, and the Aspire series beginning
with model numbers 556, 560, 567, 930, 941, 980.

VERY GOOD REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD OWN A SONY VAIO FE.

2007-04-06T10:09:00.000-07:00

The Sony VAIO FE is a 15.4" multimedia full featured notebook. This review covers a Core 2 Duo and Nvidia Go 7600 powered VAIO FE-91S purchased in Japan.

Reasons for buying

Over the last few months I have been spending a lot of time searching for which laptop to buy. I have never owned a laptop before, but I wanted a computer with everything integrated. I wanted a sturdy case, outstanding performance (enough to last a long time), portable size, good battery life and of course as cheap as possible. When I started searching I didn’t know which category size I wanted exactly, but I excluded 17 inch and 12 inch displayed sizes. The 17 inch because it would be too hard to carry around and the screen resolution of the 12-inch size laptop would not be enough.

After a time my requirements became clear. I wanted a fast Core 2 Duo processor, a quality brand, and dedicated graphics card capable of running DirectX 9c as I use this for programming purposes. I didn’t care about the speed of the graphics processor, just the hardware compatibility with DirectX 9c.

Searching was a big problem due to the fact I’m Hungarian and the variety of laptops we have in Hungary is much narrower than in the US. Furthermore, the price of laptops that reach Hungary are much more expensive than those in the US – often double the price. As fate would have I found out I’d soon be moving to Japan and so decided to make a laptop purchase there instead. After researching laptop options in Japan I finally settled on Sony’s 15.4” VAIO FE-91S. The VAIO FE can be considered as a desktop replacement style notebook while still being portable. One cool thing is that this model in Japan even includes Sony’s FeliCa system, which can be used for money transfers using certain bank cards.

Specifications: Sony VAIO FE-91S

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T5600 1,83GHz, 2MB L2 cache, 667MHz FSB
Chipset: Intel 945PM chipset
Memory: 1GB DDR2-533 DDR2 SDRAM
Screen: 15.4" WXGA "glossy" screen at 1280x800 resolution.
Graphics: nVidia GeForce Go 7600 128MB (up to 512MB with TurboCache) at 350/700MHz core/memory speeds
Harddrive: TOSHIBA MK1032GSX 100 GB (5400rpm, 16MB cache, SATA)
Optical drive: 8x Super Multi DVD±RW and DVD-RAM optical drive (PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-K16M)
MemoryStick Pro Duo reader
Express Card slot
PC Card slot
Wireless: Integrated Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG 802.11a/b/g + Bluetooth
LAN: Intel(R) PRO/100 VE Network Connection
Battery : 53280 mWh battery
Weight: 2.8 kg

Where and How I Purchased

I purchase the VAIO FE on the Sony Japan website as I wanted to configure it to my needs. The final cost was 214,000 Japanese Yen, which is around $2,000 US dollars. This included the computer and a Sony Protection plan of 3 years. If something were to happen with the laptop Sony would pickup the machine and return it upon fixing the problem. It seemed like a good deal for the latest technology, and a better price than I would have got in Hungary. After I ordered the laptop online it took 2 weeks for delivery.

Build and design

As you can see in the pictures, the look of the machine is quite elegant. You can take it anywhere you go and be proud of the look – be it a meeting or coffee shop. The body is constructed of a high quality rigid plastic. It feels very sturdy, it is not like some Fujitsu laptops I’ve seen where you can push the plastic in at the front of the keyboard.

The color of the keyboard and the surrounding area is silver and black. There is a white keyboard option, but if you select the GeForce Go 7600, then you have to go with black.

The closing mechanism is quite unusual in my opinion, but it works well. If you close down the lid then you have to set the switch to lock mode which causes a clamp to come up and lock the lid firmly. It is comfortable even with one hand to close it. It is neither hard nor easy to close it is just optimal.

Screen and Webcam

Before buying I was afraid of getting a glossy screen because I have seen the reflective nature of some of my friends laptop screens, some are like sitting in front of a mirror. But after getting it the glossy screen is fine, I don’t even notice any reflections most of the time and the colors come out bold and beautiful. The screen resolution is 1280x800, which is fairly standard for widescreen displays.

The viewing angles are pretty good horizontally, but not so good vertically. This is a common down side, but usually we don’t watch from wide vertical angles anyway. The brightness level of the screen is very good.

I was a little afraid of dead-pixels, as you can’t see the computer before buying it. But luckily I didn’t have any.

I was really happy that the VAIO FE came with a webcam so you don’t have to carry a web cam around seperately. The picture quality is very good and you also get the Vaio Camera Screensaver, which is fun.

Speakers

The speakers are located above the keyboard. I think they are better than many other laptops, this is meant to be a multimedia laptop after all. They’re not loud enough to disturb your neighbors of course, you will need good external speakers to be able to do that! The integrated sound card, hasn’t fulfilled my requirements, so I bought a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 NX USB external card. If I’m at home, I absolutely do not use the built-in sound system.

Keyboard and touchpad

As I bought the VAIO FE in Japan the keyboard is Japanese, with a lot of extra buttons for Japanese language typing. If you are buying your computer in Japan, you can also get an English keyboard and English operating system for some extra money.

At first look the keyboard seems good, but after using it, it turned out not to be so sturdy. The M key does not work sometimes. The interesting thing is that the guys at Sony know about this problem, as I read an article on Sony’s website about it.

Otherwise the location of the keys on the keyboard is good, and the typing is comfortable. I only have issues with the location of the direction keys. They should have separated them more from the other keys. On the other hand, I like the large size of the Enter key.

The machine has 6 hardware buttons. There is a Power ON, Mute, Volume-up, -down key and then two more customizable program launcher keys. I setup one of these keys as a brightness switch where I can switch from maximum brightness to 2 notch brightness.

Heat and noise

I expected that this machine would be hot everywhere due to the processor and graphics card. But I was surprised, after hours of working on the computer, only around the fan outtake at the back of the machine became hot. The keyboard was only mildly warm to cool. The under side of the machine becomes warm after excessive use, but not uncomfortable.

Noise is also not an issue with this machine. It has only one very silent fan. It only turns on when I’m using really resource hungry applications. So far I haven’t heard the fan turn on when using the laptop on battery.

Processor, Performance, benchmarks

The processor clock frequency is 1.83 GHz. This is the second lowest possible speed for the Core 2 Duo, but I didn’t want the fastest as it consumes more power. Of course the official TDP (Thermal Design Power) is 34W, but if you have a different clock frequency, then the actual power consumption is a little different.

I was not fully satisfied with the benchmark results. The machine is fast in applications (discussed later), but the slow hard drive and the junk programs on the machine ruin some of the performance. The bootup is relatively slow, which is a result of the above mentioned circumstances.

Comparison Results for 3Dmark05

Notebook	3D Mark 05 Results
Sony VAIO FE-91S (1.83GHz Core 2 Duo, Nvidia Go 7600)	2,978 3DMarks
Asus Z96Js (2.0 GHz Core Duo, ATI X1600)	3,842 3D Marks
Alienware Aurora M-7700(AMD Dual Core FX-60, ATI X1600 256MB)	7,078 3D Marks
Lenovo ThinkPad T60 (2.0GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400 128MB)	2,092 3D Marks
Asus V6Va (2.13 GHz Pentium M, ATI x700 128 MB)	2,530 3D Marks
Fujitsu n6410 (1.66 GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400 128MB)	2,273 3DMarks
HP Pavilion dv4000 (1.86 GHz Pentium M, ATI X700 128MB)	2,536 3D Marks
Dell XPS M1210 (2.16 GHz Core Duo, nVidia Go 7400 256MB)	2,090 3D Marks

I saw some tests before with the GeForce 7600 and the benchmark I got met my expectations. The results are also correct if you compare it with a GeForce 7400, as the 7600 is 50% faster, just like the amount of the pixel pipeline difference.

PCMark05

Notebook	PCMark05 Score
Sony VAIO FE-91S (1.83GHz Core 2 Duo, Nvidia Go 7600)	3,779 PCMarks
Fujitsu LifeBook N6420 (2.00GHz Core 2 Duo, ATI X1600)	4,621 PCMarks
Fujitsu LifeBook N6410 (1.66GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400)	3,487 PCMarks
Sony Vaio SZ-110B in Speed Mode (Using Nvidia GeForce Go 7400)	3,637 PCMarks
Asus Z84Jp (2.16GHz Core 2 Duo, Nvidia Go 7600)	4,739 PCMarks
Asus V6J (1.86GHz Core Duo T2400)	3,646 PCMarks
Alienware M7700 (AMD Athlon FX-60, Nvidia Go 7800GTX)	5,597 PCMarks

HD Tune

I was a little disappointed with the result. I expected the average read speed to be over 30 megabytes per sec.

SuperPI

Notebook	Time
Sony VAIO FE-91S (1.83 Core 2 Duo)	1m 19s
MSI M677 (1.8 GHz Turion X2)	1m 53s
Fujitsu LifeBook N6420 (2.00GHz Core 2 Duo)	1m 02s
LG S1 (2.16 GHz Core Duo)	1m 11s
Dell Inspiron e1505 (2.0GHz Core Duo)	1m 16s
Lenovo ThinkPad T60 (2.0GHz Core Duo)	1m 18s
Toshiba Satellite M100 (2.00GHz Core Duo)	1m 18s
Samsung X60 (1.66GHz Core Duo)	1m 29s
Sony VAIO FS680 (1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 53s

Ports

The port selection is okay. The only problem is with the alignment of the USB ports, and their number. 3 USB port is not enough as I have an external sound card, a mouse and an external hard drive so I cannot connect my usb flash drive. The only solution is buying a USB hub. The location of the USB ports are all on the right side, which is not the best solution if you are using a mouse.

1 x Headphone jack
1 x Microphone-in jack
1 x RJ11 Modem jack for phone line
1 x RJ45 LAN Jack
3 x USB 2.0 ports
1 x IEEE1394 port
1 x TV Out (S-Video)
1 x VGA Port
1 x ExpressCard54 slot
1 x PC Card slot
1 x Memory Stick Pro Duo slot

Left view of VAIO FE

Right view of VAIO FE

Front view of VAIO FE

Back view of VAIO FE

Battery life

I wanted good battery life, but I’m not really using it from battery very much, only sometimes if I’m on a train. The manufacturer rates the battery life from 2 hours up to 4 hours. My expectation was lower than the high limit, as these rates apply for all the FE series and this machine has a pretty hungry graphics card. While surfing the internet with wireless on and medium brightness, I got just over 2 hours of battery life. My expectations were correct, but still, it is disappointing.

Operating software and programs

The machine comes with a pre-installed Japanese Windows XP and with no other CDs. That’s quite common nowadays, but I don’t like it. Unfortunately haven’t had luck with Windows, it is always crashing after a certain amount time. I’ll probably do a clean install of Windows or another OS eventually.

The Windows image has all drivers and unfortunately a bunch of bloatware pre-installed. At work on my desktop computer I have 350 running threads. On my VAIO I have 700. That’s a huge difference. May be you think that’s: okay, I have a good machine it can handle it. But the truth is that every extra thread wastes computer resources.

On the laptop I looked in the task manager, and I figured out that the problem is with wireless drivers. The WLAN, Bluetooth and the FeliCa had 200 threads. The biggest problem is that I don’t know what I can do with these drivers. Everything has to run in order for everything to work properly. This disappoints me, I bought a powerful laptop and I cannot feel the speed due to software installed. The hard drive is a problem with slowness too due to its slow spin.

Optical drive

The placement of the drive is excellent, it is on the left of the machine. I never liked having a drive on the right side, where I usually use my mouse.

The specifications of the drive are promising, but in fact using it is not very enjoyable. When the disc spins up it is usually comes with a lot of noise. When it is copying data at full speed the whole drive starts to shake, which suggests something about the build quality. I don’t think that this is a common problem with laptops. I wish it came with a slot loading device honestly.

Another software problem worth mentioning, I could only use the bundled Roxio software to write DVDs -- Nero didn’t work.

Wireless

The VAIO FE-91S comes with an Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 A/B/G. It is connected to one of the PCI-Express lines. This is the standard wireless network connector for all Centrino Duo platform machines. I’m satisfied with this card, it works well. Of course now you can get Intel’s next generation wireless card, the 4965agn, which is capable of using the draft specifications of 802.11n.

I’m using this card to connect to my wireless router. The router is placed one level below my room and the wireless application always reports maximum signal strength. The application is just the common Intel utility. The machine also has Bluetooth, but I haven’t tested this yet because I don’t have any devices that use Bluetooth.

Guarantee and Customer support

The guarantee comes as a 3 year Sony Protection plan. Anything that happens with the computer, even if you drop it, is covered. They will come and repair it or replace it.

Fortunately, I haven’t had to test support yet, but considering the fact that they’ll come and pickup my computer if problems occur, I feel pretty good about it. Since I’m in Japan, every sales or help person is extremely helpful and kind. They will try everything to help you!

Conclusion

Outright I’m satisfied with the machine. There are some compromises that I had to make, such as with battery life and the hard drive. But I think the processor speed, the quietness of the machine and the screen absolutely compensates the downsides.

Pros

Great performance (If you delete all the unnecessary Sony programs), more than enough for Vista
Extremely silent
Runs cool
Superb screen

Cons

Problems with keyboard
Battery life
Problems with DVD drive
Too many Sony programs, they are slowing down the machine
Slow hard drive

ABOUT SONY VAIO SZ4 NOTEBOOK.

2007-04-06T09:45:00.000-07:00

It’s been a strange old year so far, weather-wise. In the last few weeks, we’ve zig-zagged from snow to rain to blazing sunshine. Either the Weather God’s having a laugh, or it’s the planet’s way of telling humanity we’re on our last warning, environment-wise. Your choice.

Anyway, if this year sees a repeat of last summer’s heatwave, you won’t want to be chained to your office desk. And why should you be? Surely modern technology offers a way to get yourself down the park to lounge in the sun, yet STILL keep up with those all-important emails and PowerPoint presentations?

And lo, there is. Sony’s VAIO SZ4 Series series is a lightweight laptop with a battery life that’ll ensure you flake out before it does on a sunny day. Better still, it comes with an HSDPA/3G card, plus a 30-day free trial of T-Mobile’s Web’n’Walk service, giving you broadband speeds in the open air, without a wire in sight.

TOP ON THE LIST SPYWARE REMOVAL - SPY SWEEPER.

2007-04-05T12:53:00.000-07:00

http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloadget.php?id=3263&file=10&evp=fd3b5f03...

Webroot Spy Sweeper offers the most advanced spyware protection available. This award-winning program can find and remove spyware anywhere on a PC, even in the hard-to-find areas. Plus, Spy Sweeper is backed by the leading spyware research team that watches out for new threats as soon as they emerge.

I personnally run this software to keep my computer safe. If you are like me and spend any amount on the internet, then spy sweeper and anti-virus programs are a must to keep your computer safe.

THE TOP 5 VEHICLE LAPTOP DESKS.

2007-04-05T06:13:00.000-07:00

Using vehicles as mobile offices is becoming more common. Mobile professionals must ensure they have stable work surfaces to use their laptops on and that these vehicle laptop desks can be securely stored when not in use. It's important to remember that using your laptop while driving is advised against. Even passengers should be careful if they are using their mobile gear while the vehicle is in motion.

1) Auto Exec FileMaster Laptop Mobile Car Desk
This auto laptop desk support your laptop but it provides file storage space. The Auto Exec FileMaster has a space designed to hold hanging files while keeping them protected and tidy. The FileMaster laptop car desk has plenty of storage for additional mobile peripherals and supplies. The dimensions of the Auto Exec FileMaster are: 25.5" W x 25" L x 10.5" H when in the open position. In the closed position, the dimensions are: 17" W x 25" L x 10.5" H.

2) Wheelmate
The Wheelmate connects directly to your steering wheel which provides a secure surface to use your laptop on. This vehicle desk is not intended to be used while a vehicle is in operation. The Wheelmate is double-sided, one side is non-skid to hold your laptop in place and the other side is smooth for writing. It can be stored in the storage slots of any of the Auto Exec models.

3) Jotto Desk - Computer Mounts
Jotto Desk offers a variety of computer mounts for any type of vehicle. There are universal mounts which can be used in any vehicle, or computer mounts for specific brands and models of vehicles. Many computer mounts can be easily adjusted so that a passenger can be using a laptop while the vehicle is in use. Vehicle computer mounts create a more ergonomic work environment inside your vehicle. There are also optional accessory holders for your other mobile gear.

4) Rear Seat RAM Laptop Tray
The RAM rear seat laptop tray can easily be attached in any car or truck back seat. It is advised that the rear seat laptop tray should not be used when the vehicle is in motion. It can be folded up to the back of the seat or removed and stored in a safe place. The rear seat laptop tray is height adjustable so you can work comfortably.

5) Telescoping Computer Mounting Bases
This style of laptop desk are quite often seen in utility and law enforcement vehicles. They are height adjustable, have sturdy floor mounts and can be tilted for comfort. As more mobile professionals begin to use their vehicles as offices, secure and sturdy support for their laptops is a must. Havis-Shields telescoping computer mounts are constructed of welded tubular steel and have lifetime warranties. This style works well in limited space.