Friday, September 14, 2012

Dell laptop Inspiron 15R N5010 – first impression


After my previous laptop (HP DV6200 ) ended up as a giant paperweight I’ve now bought a new Dell Laptop. I wasn’t sure about buying a dell after myprevious bad experience with the Dell delivery and helpdesk, but this laptop was the best I could find for the budget available. Fortunately it arrived quickly with no problems this time.
I’ve only had the laptop a few hours so this review is based on first impression with the laptop.

Processor and graphics card

One of the reasons for choosing this laptop was that it includes the new Intel i3 processor which is replacing the previous generation of laptop processors. In the past I’ve gone for AMD processors, but for now Intel does appear to have the edge on performance and value. I expect AMD will overtake again in future, but for now I went for Intel.
This laptop also includes a dedicated ATI graphics processor rather than the on-board graphics on most laptops. In the past I have always bought computers with dedicated graphics, mainly to help with performance when video editing. Dedicated graphics do add a lot to the cost of the laptop and as the processing capacity of laptops is now so fast so I think I could have managed without the dedicated graphics processor. This laptop cost £70 more than a similar laptop with on-board graphics, but it also had a bigger hard disk and more memory which tipped the scale in favour of the more expensive laptop.
This is one of the cheapest laptops to include both the i3 processor and dedicated graphics which was the main reason for choosing this laptop.

Laptop screen and keyboard size

The laptop has a screen size of 15.6″ which is slightly bigger than my previous laptop, but feels a lot bigger. Dell have managed to fit this into a laptop that is only a tiny bit bigger than the HP laptop.
The bigger difference is in the keyboard as the Dell has managed to fit a full keyboard with numeric keypad which occupies virtually the full width of the laptop, whereas on my previous laptop there was no numeric keypad and a large boarder around the keyboard. The keys don’t feel as well shaped as on the HP which feels a little difficult when touch-typing, but I expect it’s something that I’ll get used to after a bit of use.
Unfortunately the Dell does not have any of the backlit multi-media keys across the top of the keyboard instead using the function key with the Fx keys on the keyboard.

External ports and networking

There are the usual VGA and audio ports with an HDMI port for connecting to a HD ready TV. There are 3 USB2 ports and one shared eSATA/USB port. There is also a SD card port.
There is also 100M Ethernet network port as well as Wifi wireless and bluetooth.
There is no PCMCIA / PC Card or ExpressCard slot. These provide a means to add additional connections and are mainly used to provide additional connectivity in the form of USB / Firewire or networking. I suspect most people do not use these slots when installed, but I have used them on older laptops where they have been very useful.
There is no Firewire (iLink / IEEE 1394) port. Firewire was a popular way to connect to camcorders in the past, but has been dropped in favour of USB 2. My recent camcorder has USB 2 connections, but I also have an older camcorder which is Firewire based with a lot of old videos. Unfortunately with no Firewire or PC Card / Express Card slot there is no way of connecting my older camcorder to the laptop.

Windows 7 operating system

The laptop came with Windows 7 64bit pre-installed. This appears to be much faster than Windows Vista, but then that’s not saying much as Windows Vista was incredibly slow and the processing power of this laptop should be quite capable running everything I’ve tried so far.
The Windows Experience Index score is 5.9 with the RAM, graphics card and hard disk transfer rate all having 5.9 subscore.
There are no Windows recovery disks supplied, but the Dell DataSafe application can be used to create recovery disks.
Unfortunately like Vista it still doesn’t run some of the software that I had bought for Windows XP, but I expect to be mainly running Linux anyway.

Installing Linux – Kubuntu 10.10

I installed Kubuntu 10.10 linux onto the laptop. The final release is not due to be released for a few days so I used the Release Client version. The install went straight forward. There was only one issue in that the HDMI driver was selected as the default audio rather than the internal audio driver. This was easily changed and will hopefully be fixed by the time the final version is available this weekend.

Impression so far

So far I’m pretty impressed with the laptop. The only disappointment so far is the lack of Firewire or card expansion to allow a Firewire adapter to be installed. Fortunately I have a desktop machine (although very old) that can be used to capture the video then transfer it to the laptop.
I haven’t really given it anything demanding to do yet, but I’m confident that it’s going to be up to most tasks.

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MP3 downloads from Ubuntu One – Linux


It’s been a while since I last bought music online, but I wanted a new Album for my daughter so that she can practice a song for a pantomime she’s dancing in. I thought I’d give the Ubuntu One music store a try.
When I first bought music online there was limited choice of retailers and I went with Apple iTunes. Unfortunately theiTunes files included DRM and were in a proprietary format so were unsuitable for use in Linux or on MP3 players without breaking the DRM. Fortunately I believe all the music stores have realised that they were losing customers by forcing DRM on the consumers and so most are available without DRM now. iTunes however has retained it’s proprietary format, so whilst not having to crack the DRM the file still needs to be converted to a more appropriate file for use in Linux or on MP3 players.
As a result of these I used Amazon.co.uk MP3 downloads for a while. Amazon uses MP3 format which is available on most systems (subject to patent, which I believe has now expired in most countries) which is available on many operating systems and devices. The problem with Amazon is that, whilst they created a Linux client to download the music with, it is only available for 32bit operating systems (most modern computers are now 64bit, although some still install 32bit operating systems) and they haven’t updated the client since the version for Ubuntu 9.10 (now a year old with 2 new versions of the operating system since then), so unfortunately I’m not able to use it on my main laptop (more about my issues with Amazon MP3 client on Linux).
I predominately use Ubuntu so the Ubuntu One MP3 store seamed a logical choice. I use Rhythmbox as my music player which is fully integrated with the Ubuntu One music store along with Jamendo and Magnatune. Buying new music is similar to other integrated music stores in that you can browse / search for available music, add the downloads to your basket and then provide credit card details. The only pre-requisite is to sign up for a Ubuntu One account, in my case an existing Launchpad account.
Rather than downloading direct to the computer the file is first copied to your Ubuntu One account, which means that the music is made available to every computer logged in to Ubuntu One which is particularly useful if you have more than one computer you want to play the music on. This also means that, unlike other MP3 retailers I’ve used, there is a backup of the music and it can be downloaded again in the event that the files are lost of corrupted. This is a great feature and means that Ubuntu One leads in terms of functionality.
At the moment Ubuntu One is only available for Linux, but a Windows client is being developed and should be available in beta soon. As these are MP3 files they could be downloaded on Linux and then copied onto Windows.

More about Ubuntu One

Ubuntu One is primarily a web based online backup / file sharing tool. As standard 2GB of disk space is provided, with more available for a very reasonable additional charge. It also offers contact synchronization and music streaming to iPhones or Android based mobile phones, which is a bit more expensive.
Ubuntu One also include contacts, file and bookmark synchronisation. With a Windows client this will be a good replacement for Dropbox, although I’ll be sticking with Dropbox for the Windows compatibility for now.

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Mobile broadband on Ubuntu Linux – O2 ZTE MF100

I’ve already provided details on how to get O2 Mobile Broadband Pay As You go on Ubuntu Linux with Huawei E160. I have now got a new dongle created by the ZTE Corporation known as the ZTE MF100 HSDPA USB Stick.
The process to get this new dongle working is just as easy as with the Huawei E160. Which is to say it’s not completely automatic, but very easy if you have these instructions. The reason for this is that O2 changed their login details since the first generation of mobile broadband dongles, but Ubuntu still uses the old settings.
Here are the details again – with step by step instructions and relevant screenshots. This has been tried on an Eee PC running Ubuntu Netbook Edition with the ZTM MF100, but it should be similar for other Gnome based distributions and other broadband modem dongles. Note if using a provider other than O2 (Orange / Vodaphone / T-Moble / 3 etc.) then the specific settings will be different. Hopefully the configurations for these is already correct, but I haven’t tried any other networks.
Previously I obtained these details from the dongle as it automounted as a virtual CD drive. I couldn’t find any filesystem to mount on this new modem dongle, but as I’d saved the details from last time I used those instead.
Although the modem dongle is detected it doesn’t start the mobile broadband wizard. To start this right click the networking icon on the task bar and choose “Edit Connections”.
Select the Mobile broadband tab and choose add, which will launch the Add Mobile Broadband wizard.
Select the appropriate modem “ZTE WCDMA Technologies MSM” and choose next.
Select the country United Kingdom and Mobile Broadband provider – O2.
Choose the appropriate contract “Pay and Go (Prepaid)” and choose forward.
The form will be pre-populated with the out-of-date information which needs to be changed.
Change the values as follows:
Number: *99#
Username: o2bb
Password: password
APN: m-bb.o2.co.uk
Note that the word ‘password’ is used for the password.
Although this sounds like a security problem this is just used because the PPP protocol requires a password to be sent. The real authentication is done based on the SIM card inserted into the dongle.
After applying the changes right click on the network connections icon on the Gnone top menu bar and Enable Mobile Broadband.
Then left click on the same icon and choose the profile that was created earlier “O2 Pay and Go (Prepaid) 1″.
The network connections icon will pulse for a few seconds whilst it connects and assuming there is sufficient network coverage it will then connect.
To purchase credit you then need to visit: https://mobilebroadbandaccess.o2.co.uk/.
You will need your mobile phone number (ie. the virtual mobile phone number associated with the mobile broadband SIM card) to purchase credits.


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Wireless networking – Wifi slow or broken – try changing channel

In the good old days of wireless networking the world was a wonderful place. You bought a wireless router plugged it into your broadband and it just worked. There was an issue of not enabling security, but that just made it easier for others to borrow your network (good or bad depends upon your personal opinion).
The problem is that now everyone has got these your network connection may not be working quite as well as it did before. I noticed this recently when my wireless network at home slowed down to the point where it was unusable taking a second for a single PING (tiny bit of information) to fly over the airwaves. This is the second time I’ve encountered a problem of this type (the other with a friends computer) and I expect this is going to be a bigger problem in future.
The reason for these problems is that the network range that is being used is quite small and with lots of other people installing wireless routers the number of people trying to use the same frequency goes up resulting in lost information and a slowdown. In the case of a friends computer the network connection completely refused to work.
Fortunately if you know what to look for the fix is quite easy, but it may only fix it until the next house decides to go wireless and you end up with the problem again. Anyway here are the details of how you may be able to fix a wireless problem related to wireless network conflicts.
In this case I am actually using a wireless access point (WAP), but wireless routers are more common and are more likely to be in most homes, so I’ll refer to it as a router, but it’s similar for a WAP as long as you can connect to it via a wired connection. First you need to connect to your wireless router. If you have a wireless problem then you probably can’t do this via wireless so you’ll need to use an Ethernet networking cable.
Most modern wireless routers use a web-browser to configure so you then point your webbrowser at the address of your router. This is normally the default route so if using Linux you can use
route -n
and look for the entry 0.0.0.0 which in the example below connects to router 192.168.1.2
0.0.0.0 192.168.1.2 0.0.0.0 UG 100 0 0 eth0
Windows users can use ipconfig and the address is shown as the default gateway:
ipconfig
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :192.168.1.2
You then plug this into your browser and you should get to a page for configuring the router (see below).
You will need to supply the router password to make any changes. This may be blank, or specified in the user manual or on a sticky label attached to the wireless router.
Then look for the option that specifies the Channel or the Wireless Channel and you should be able to manually select a different channel (you should have 11 to 13 options depending upon the router). You can find an unused channel by using a WiFi scanner application, but you could just use trial and error. You may need to try a few to find one that's not being used, but hopefully that should be enough to fix the wireless problem for now.
There are only a few channels, but as wireless normally only extends as far as a few houses it's not normally a problem finding a spare channel. I suspect it may be a problem for some people living in flats or apartments where there could potentially be lots of wireless signals in a small distance.

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Belkin N Wireless Router F5D8236UK4 802.11n cable router and 4 port switch


I’ve been having some problems with my wireless Wi-Fi network connection at home for the last couple of months. Most of the time the network works fine, but occasionally the network slows down to the point where it becomes unusable. This happens mainly in the evening and I believe is due to interference from a neighbour’s wireless network.
At first I found that I could get around the problem by changing the wireless channel on my Belkin Wireless Access Point / Wireless router which worked for a while, but the problems came back again and again. The impact varied between what computer I was using and seamed to be particularly bad on my Dell Inspiron 15R laptop. The distance between my wireless access point (WAP) and my computer didn’t make much difference either.
My wireless access point was a Belking 802.11g 54mb device and as my laptops now have 8.2.11n 100mb built in networking I thought it may be worth trying with a new wireless access point. I therefore bought a Belkin N Wireless Cable Router with integrated 4 port switch. The upgrade in bandwidth / speed is not a big issue, the main use for the network is to share the broadband connection which is at 10mb much less than the wireless network. I do use the network to create a backup copy of my photos which will benefit from a speed increase. Ths version is capable of speeds higher than the standard 100mb, but that is a draft standard and I have not tried that functionality.
Note that the Belkin N Wireless router is available in two types. One referred as the cable version is for use with cable broadband where there is a cable modem (also useful where used on an internal network port as in my case) the other is the ADSL version which includes a built in ADSL modem where the broadband is supplied as ADSL over a standard phone line (using ADSL splitters).
If connecting directly to the Internet connection then Virgin Media cable customers will normally need the cable version, whereas BT / Sky customers will normally need the ADSL version:
  • Belkin N Wireless Cable Router
  • Belkin N Wireless ADSL Modem Router
The Belkin N Wireless Cable Router was reasonably priced (around £ 40). Although it comes with a setup CD for Windows I performed all the configuration from a Linux laptop that I connected directly to the wired port on the router. To connect was as simple as connecting to the laptop and then pointing the browser (Firefox) to 192.168.2.1. Note that this may be the more common 192.168.1.1 on a new setup / connected directly to the broadband cable modem, but in my case I had connected it to my home network which was already running on 192.168.1.0/24
I could then configure the various options through the web interface. This router has all the functionality that you would expect from a wireless router (eg. NAT / routing / port forwarding), but in my case I disabled all this and set it to work as a Wireless Access Point so that I could use it to replace my previous WAP without needing to change my home network setup.
One thing that was a little frustrating is that the router needed to reboot, or at least spend time doing a soft reset when each change was made. This even included just changing the administrator password. This meant a lot of time during the install waiting for the router to reboot. Once the router is configured then you don’t normally have to make many changes, but this does mean taking down the internal network for some minor changes.
I’ve not overly stressed the new router so far, but at least it seams to cope much better with the interference. The wireless network connection does still slow down at times, but the performance is much better than previous and it is now possible to continue working which was not possible before.

Summary

A cheap and easy to use router capable of high speed networking if required. Easy to setup and works well with Linux.
Only complaint is the fairly minor issue that it needs to reboot the router when making changes to the setup.

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Lock computer when leaving it unattended

An essential part of computer security is to always lock your computer whenever you leave it. It only takes a couple of minutes with your back turned for someone to access your personal information or change your Facebook status (frape).

Logging out can be a bit of a pain, so luckily there is a quick keyboard shortcut that allows you to lock your computer without logging out. Use the following key combinations to quickly lock you screen.

On Linux

Ctrl-Alt-L

On Windows:

Meta-L
The Meta Key is sometimes called the Windows key. It is a key which often has the Windows logo on and is normally between the Ctrl and Alt keys at the left hand side of the keyboard.
Some keyboards may use different symbols, particularly if they are available with other operating systems. On my EeePC the meta key has a picture of a house on it rather than the Windows logo (home key).

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Ubuntu Linux – slow wireless network speed – force adapter speed

In the past I have had very poor networking performance on my wireless network (Wireless LAN / WiFi) which appeared to have been caused by interference from other networks. I’ve since upgraded to a Belkin N Wireless Cable router which has certainly improved performance, but I notice that I’m still get some quite slow WiFi speeds on my home network.

Wireless Network Standards

First here’s a bit about the different standards for Wireless Networks.
Or if you want you can skip direct to the solution of how I doubled my network speed with a simple command.

11Mbps to 54Mbps – IEEE 802.11 a/b

The first standards in common use were defined in 1999 when the IEEE created the 802.11a and the 802.11b standards. These were both for wireless networking with the two working at different frequencies and the 802.11a at 5Ghz with a maximum speed of 54Mbps and 802.11b working at 2.4GHz.
As 802.11a worked at a higher frequency it was harder to manufacturer (and hence more expensive and less reliable) and it was also initially not available in Europe due to regulatory issues. Therefore the 802.11b became popular.
There newer standards (listed below) are backwards compatible with 802.11b.

54Mbps IEEE 802.11 g

The next significant standard was the IEEE 802.11g in 2003, but many products were available prior to ratification, which were usually called g-pre or g draft. 802.11g works at the same frequency as 802.11b but increased the speed to 54Mbps.
This was hugely popular and most wireless equipment these days supports at least 802.11g. Much of the equipment being sold is still designed for 802.11g and are often available cheaper than the 802.11n products.

100Mbps+ IEEE 802.11n

The latest version is IEEE 802.11n which works at either 2.4GHz and 5GHz as a replacement for the previous network standards. It provides speeds of up to 100Mbps and even faster with the draft standards.

The speeds provided above are all theoretical maximum speeds. There are many factors that will affect the actual throughput, this includes other wireless users, wireless CCTV cameras, wireless keyboards and mice and even microwave ovens. The speed also changed depending upon the power saving status if using a laptop. Typical speeds may be half of the theoretical maximums or less.

Real Wi-fi network speeds

The majority of network traffic does not need the high speeds quoted. Most of my network access is to the Internet which is limited by my 10Mbps broadband, which in reality runs at nearer 5Mbps download (much slower upload). The high speed can be useful if streaming data over the internal LAN and in my case for transferring backups, but the speed is much better than before.
I have two portable computers that I use at home. I have a Dell Inspiron laptop with 802.11g/n built-in and a Asus EeePC netbook with 802.11n. Both of these are capable of running at 802.11n network speeds, but in reality I have only been able to get these to work at the equivalent of 802.11g speeds.

EeePC

My Eee PC works better with the wireless network at home compared. It worked well with the 802.11g wireless access point and performs the same on the 802.11n router. On Unbutu Linux the wireless driver loaded is the rt800pci and the interface known as wlan0. It appears to show that it is running between 1Mb/s and 54Mb/s, but in tests gave an actual throughput of around 20 to 23Mbps.

Dell Inspiron Laptop

The following is based on Ubuntu Linux.
It is my Dell laptop that had the performance issues that I now solved. The driver loaded is called wl providing interface eth1. Initially it was giving speeds shown as between 1M and 8M, but is now showing as connected at 54Mbps and running at up to 14Mb. This is still much slower than the network is theoretically capable of and less than the speed of the Eee PC, but is adequate for what I need.

Testing the speed of the Wireless network

Before attempting to fix the problem the first step is to check the current performance of the network to quantify the improvements.

Wireless connection information – speed setting

The first place to look for the wireless network speed is in the network manager. Right click on the wireless icon in the top right of the screen and choose “Connection Information”.

The above screenshot shows the speed as 54Mb/s which is typical of an 802.11g network. A low reading (eg. 1Mb/s, 8Mb/s or 12Mb/s) in this speed field does not necessarily mean that it is running so slow as the speed will vary depending upon actual activity and relevant power saving settings. Instead monitor the applet for a period of time whilst performing something that places a large demand on the network (eg. watching a YouTube video).
If working normally then you should see the speed increase.

Testing speed of the local network (Netpipe-tcp)

The value from network manager gives an approximate guide, but to check the actual throughput involves transferring some data over the network and monitoring that. This is exactly what netpipe-tcp does.
To use NetPipe-tcp needs another Linux computer over the network. Fortunately I have a Linux server as my firewall & router using the Wireless router as a Wireless Access Point (WAP) instead of a router.
To use Netpipe-tcp it first needs to be installed on both computers.
This can be done using:
sudo apt-get install netpipe-tcp

On the server run the command
NPtcp

On client run
NPtcp -h <serverip>

It will take a while to run. It’s the later values that show your true network speed as they put a significant load on the network and will have increased the speed if power saving mode is enabled.

Solution to network speed issue

If the speed is less than you expect and the network manager is showing a speed of less than 54Mbps then you can try forcing it to use 54Mbps using iwconfig.
There is no point though if it is already showing 54Mbps in Network Manager (even if it keeps dropping down when inactive) as that is the normal operation already.
First establish the name of the interface. This can be taken from the Connection Information panel in Network Manager. It’s in brackets on next to the interface information.
Or you can find out by running iwconfig with no options.
This is eth1 on my Dell laptop, but wlan0 is a common interface name which is what it is on my EeePC net book. I’ve used eth1 in the example below.

Change the setting dynamically using the following command:
sudo iwconfig eth1 rate 54M

If you have 802.11n you could also use 100M, but on my system this made it slower. Also 54Mbps is a good value to use as this will work with 54g networks if you travel to another area (I’m not sure what the effect is of trying to force 100M on a 54M network).
After making the changes try using NetPipe again and see if the speed has increased.

Making the network speed changes permanent

When running the iwconfig command it will be forgotten when the system next restarts.
To make the changes permanent a file should be created in the /etc/network/if-up.d directory.
On some systems (eg. Fedora / Redhat) then there is instead a single file per interface:
eg. /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1

In Ubuntu create a new file in /etc/network/if-up.d
you can give it any name, but try and make it meaningful (eg. wireless-speed)

Contents should be as follows:

#!/bin/sh -e
#
# Sets speed of interface to 54M

if [ "$IFACE" = "eth1" ] ; then
        iwconfig eth1 rate 54M
fi
obviously changing the entries form eth1 as appropriate. The command should be made executable:
sudo chmod 755 wireless-speed

The scripts in the /etc/network/if-up.d directory are all run whenever a network interface is brought up. The script checks to see if it is the interface in question and if so runs the iwconfig command that we ran earlier.

Summary

Actual results may vary, but on my system this provided almost a doubling of network throughput speed.

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