Button Pusher

A review of the Samsung N220 netbook (UK edition)

2010-05-11T10:42:42Z

Great for a Linux install (Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.04)

I was looking for an attractive netbook with a good screen and good performance whose hardware would work with Linux. I chose the Samsung N220 because of its long battery life (about six hours), lovely matte screen (no reflections from a glossy one), good set of connections for wired and wireless communication, and its large hard drive.

A First Glance and Build Quality

The candy apple red of the N220's top looks really great. I don't like to attract too much attention with my electronics, but I've been forced into it.

The case feels quite solid. It doesn't have anything that creaks or rattles when putting pressure on the case to flex it slightly. The screen hinge is solid and looks like it will perform well for quite some time.

]]> Connections

I think the whole point of owning a netbook is to take advantage of its portability. Some people just want an extra computer for browsing the web on their sofa (me, too), but I need a computer I am able to take with me nearly everywhere, and which is small enough that I actually will take it with me. This basic requirement gives a big advantage to netbooks who have lots of built-in connections so that I don't have to purchase and carry a lot of accessories with me. The N220 has three USB ports, a 10/100 ethernet port, analogue audio input and output jacks, an analogue plug for an external screen, an SD card reader, bluetooth and wi-fi.

I got the wireless adapter to work running Linux by using Windows XP drivers and ndiswrapper. Apparently, the native Linux drivers are ready for prime time, so I'll probably try to install them this week.

Processor and Memory

The N220 uses the newer Intel ATOM N450 (clocking at 1.66GHz, with 667MHz bus speed, and 512KB of cache), so it has plenty of speed for a computer of this class. Just don't expect too much. I have found it to be perfectly sufficient for compiling software under Linux, which tends to be very processor-intensive.

The N220 also comes with a gigabyte of RAM, which is barely sufficient for the Windows 7 installation it ships with, but is more than enough for getting far better performance from Linux graphical desktop.

Battery life

You should expect 6-7 hours of battery life under Linux. The 12 hours Samsung claims appear to be completely mythical, even when used as configured straight out of the box. Windows users report 8-10 hours.

Graphics and Screen

The graphics really do shine on the matte 1024x600 LED-backlit screen. The Samsung is one of the few netbooks that support decoding 1080p video, thanks to the Broadcom Crystal HD decoder chip it ships with in the UK, but despite the drivers for it being available, at the time of this review there is very little software support for it in the Linux world. If playing back HD video is important to you, then I would suggest setting up a dual-boot system with Windows until the Linux community catches up.

You can read more about Linux support of Broadcom Crystal HD at Jarod's Junk Collection on wilsonet.com. I haven't managed to get XBMC--a media centre application--to use it yet, and really XBMC is a bit overkill for the mplayer or vlc support I'd like to see.

Keyboard

I have seen some reviewers complain about the keyboard. Since I use Apple Mac hardware on a daily basis, I am familiar with the N220's 'calculator'-style keyboard. Since it's on a netbook, it's smaller than what I am used to, but quite usable. I think the flattened profile allows the chassis to be thinner overall, which may be the reason Samsung chose this design. For some people who are used to typewriter-style keyboards with deep keys arranged in terraces, the change in style and then in size may take some getting used to.

Track pad

I don't really like the track pad, but I don't really like track pads. The one on my old iBook was better. I'll probably end up buying a small mouse or a trackball, but the trackpad has been tolerable up to now, probably because I tend to use the keyboard a lot more when running Linux.

Power Switch

Another complaint I have seen concerns the difficulty of using the power switch--a ridged spring-loaded slide on the front edge of the unit. I strongly suspect that the designer of the switch intended it to be actuated using your right thumbnail. If it were less resistant, it would be too prone to accidental switching.

Accessories

The N220 ships with a switching power supply whose power lead connector is a grounded three-prong IEC C5 cloverleaf, instead of the more common two-pronged C7 or C8 connectors. The C5 connector is less common than the C8, so that's something to keep in mind if you are like me and prefer to swap out the power cable instead of using an adapter when travelling abroad.

Samsung makes an external CD/DVD-Writer in the same colour as the N220 (Model SE-S084C/TSRS).

The case is really a dust cover, so you should invest in a more durable one if you want any real protection for the netbook. Mine is pretty well protected by the Chapman bag I carry. I've also been keeping the N220 along with its power supply, a headset, an extra USB ethernet adapter and a Cat 5 cable in an old case made for a 12-inch Apple iBook. The N220 fits in the same case quite snugly, which I can then load into the aforementioned bag.

Linux Distribution

I recommend the Ubuntu Netbook Edition for installation on this netbook because it mostly just works, and because a load of packages to add device-specific functionality are available on the Voria Launchpad repository.

Conclusion

I wanted a netbook for a long time before I actually bought one--I was waiting for the right hardware to come along at the right price. The Samsung N220 definitely fits the bill with its great connectivity and flexibility.

Reaction to "All dogs to be insured in proposals on dangerous breeds"

2010-03-09T06:46:22Z

This is a comment on the BBC news article "All dogs to be insured in proposals on dangerous breeds"

Once again we see misguided breed-specific legislation that further restricts the rights of the majority of dog owners who act responsibly with their pets. There is no such thing as a 'dangerous' breed of dog--all dogs can be dangerous if their owner makes them that way. The frequent perception that certain breeds of dogs are dangerous is a result of the popularity of certain breeds among owners who want their dogs to be aggressive to humans and other dogs.

It should be a self-evident truth that the problem is the owner, not the dog.

It would be a similar injustice to ban ownership of dogs among certain classes of people, such as 12-20 year-old males living in cities, but at least it would reflect more accurately the actual source of the 'problem'.

Yahoo Finance Exchange rates off by 1000%

2010-01-27T11:55:20Z

I just noticed that the currency exchange trading data on the Yahoo Finance site under "Last Trade" is off by 1000%, while the currency trading chart on the same page has the correct values. For example, the Last Trade for Danish Kroner is 11.66, which is 0.1166 on the chart. The chart has the correct value. It's the same for Swedish Kroner (SEK)--and it's off by exactly the same percentage as well.

Someone ought to fix that.

Sunday Dinner at the Landseer

2010-01-20T20:09:41Z

The Landseer
37 Landseer Road
London
N19 4JU

020 7263 4658

http://www.thelandseer.net/

Vic Chestnutt (1964-2009)

2009-12-26T23:04:44Z

We got one phone call on Christmas Eve, and another on Christmas Day. The first reported that Vic was in a coma and things looked grim. The second told us of his passing.

I last saw Vic perform in late 2007 at Koko in London. Southern was distributing Constellation at the time, so it was a mixture of business and pleasure.

I took a few photos that evening and, on a whim, recorded some video on my phone.

A particularly egregious example of a download "blogger"

2009-12-19T09:16:29Z

So this morning, I performed my usual checks on various projects we have running. One of the things I do is check up on sites where we've found links to illegal downloads of our music and see if anything has changed. (I'm in the process of fully automating this.) Anyway, it turns out that one "blogger" didn't get the message when I sent takedown notices to all the sites he had hosting downloads. This one is particularly pernicious because he's not only uploaded one of our new releases, but he's uploaded an ultra-limited new release from a series we just don't make much money on at all (because it's limited and because the pricing is quite low), but still do because we love it. Anyway, he's now gone and uploaded the release again and I've had to re-issue takedown notices for everything.

It's not like the poster even reviewed the release or created anything of his own. He just copied the release text that I wrote, pasted it into his blog, and linked to the actual release he uploaded elsewhere.

I get really angry about this because it ruins the limited nature of the release, and makes it harder for us to be able to afford doing the series. I know that people look for the illegal downloads first because on our last release from this series, the first searches that landed on our site were all "release +filesharingsite" searches. So before many people even look for a legitimate way of getting the music (which in this case, they've very, very likely heard live), they're looking to download it for "free".

Insight into download blogs from a label's perspective

2009-11-11T16:57:23Z

Earlier today I was reviewing the statistics from the our web shop and noticed that quite a few people/sites have been linking to our shop release images directly (so-called "hotlinking"). This is an irritant because it means that our bandwidth gets used for things that don't really have anything to do with the shop and that costs us some money if it happens a lot, and worse yet, at least one of the hotlinks was from a blog that is used to distribute illegal downloads.

It's hard to get statistics about how much illegal downloading actually takes place, but since they linked to our image, our server faithfully kept track of how many times someone loaded that image on the blog. In the month of October, that image was downloaded 31,000 times and so far in November, it's at 12,300 hits. That's a lot of hits for one release on a small independent label.

As an aside, I've since taken steps to make sure that hotlinking on our site doesn't work very well. I'm sure they'll be surprised to see the images have changed.

Virgin Media Customer Service Nightmare

2009-10-06T19:02:46Z

So, when I returned home from the shop, there was a confused Virgin Media installer standing outside my house. Apparently he was there to repair a problem with our neighbour's cable modem. I didn't think anything of him being there until I turned on my television an hour or so later and found out that our V+ box wasn't receiving any signal, or at least not enough of one for it to display an image.

I immediately called Virgin Media and spoke to someone in their Scottish call centre, using the "thinking about canceling my service option" because I'd rather speak to a Scottish drone than an outsourced one in the Third World somewhere (no offense, but I believe in local call centres). That person listened to my problem and said she was going to transfer me to someone who would help. It turns out that her "transfer" involved dropping me into a queue for the Virgin Media call centre in, er, India, I guess. So I go through the motions and find out that the next appointment they are offering me is on Monday, i.e. in six days. At this point I said that if I don't get an appointment tomorrow, I will cancel. (It seems like if their installer is responsible for ruining my service, they should be a little more responsive.) The drone wasn't budging, so I hung up.

I called the cancellation service again and got a message saying they're open from 8am to 8pm, and I'm too late to speak to them. It looks like it was getting late for the first person I spoke to, and she just decided to get rid of me.

I'm now looking at what Sky are offering these days. Virgin seems less and less of a deal since they hiked their prices and since their customer service is just as bad as Sky's.

They will rue the day. Don't they know who I am?

Travel and Fashion Cocktail in Portugal

2009-08-09T11:18:09Z

I recently attended the Perl conference YAPC::EU::2009 in Lisbon. Apart from learning a lot of things about Perl and meeting a lot of interesting people I haven't seen in quite some time (my last YAPC was six years ago), I took the opportunity to set up a photoshoot with a stunning local model named Ana Tomás and the very skilled British expatriate makeup artist Laura Hamilton. Working with both of these wonderful women was an absolute joy, and frankly I would have been happy if the images we got from the shoot had been half as good.

The idea was to create some images that one might find in a glossy travel magazine. One of the tricks I've seen magazines use is adding interest by featuring a model or two in their photos of scenery. People are attracted to images of people, especially images of beautiful people in fabulous clothes.

]]> On the day, everything went really well except for two small regrets. It would have been better to get a really early start to the day, but scheduling didn't permit that and we ended up shooting towards midday, rather than during the magic hour. Since I didn't have my full kit with me (my second regret), that meant that I had to direct Ana very carefully relative to the main light source, i.e. the sun. Harsh shadows were also partially mitigated by the light reflected off the sand. It also did not hurt at all that Ana has lovely skin and that Laura improved on this with her amazing makeup skills. I say it's her theatre experience that makes her so fast.

We shot three different outfits which had sourced the day before: a hot pink silk dress from India, a cotton summer dress, and a pink and white gingham retro dress, all of which were acquired at Truz on rua Augusta after hitting a load of other shops along the way.

At the beach, we had to deal with a few problems, apart from the harsh sunlight mentioned above. The wind was very, very strong and carried salt spray quite far inland. Since salt spray does not help with photo optics, this can be considered a major drawback. Needless to say, I had to clean my lenses quite a few times during the two and a half hour shoot. Another problem was people. This is a beach in Portugal, in summer. There were a lot of people there and a few of them were in the way. Luckily, most of the people we encountered were very considerate.

Net::NPR::Query project for talking with the new-ish NPR interface

2009-06-29T16:26:02Z

If any Perl hackers out there are looking for a small project, you might want to take a look at a module I've been working on to talk to the NPR API that was opened up last year. I'm a really big fan of NPR--at times its been my only regular connection to the US--and having the ability to access all their content since 1995 is a pretty cool thing.

The current implementation of my module is a class that will help you do keyword searches for NPR content and delivers a list back with article IDs, titles and links. This is still a toy. Once I get the query and response classes sorted out (i.e. written), you should be able to do things like ask for content in a certain date range on a certain programme, and query the API for its various content lists, which show, for example, all the music artists that have appeared on various NPR programmes, or all NPR contributors.

I'd be happy to get some help with this since this is a project I'm only able to work on in my spare time, and I don't have much of that.

http://allolex.github.com/Net-NPR-Query/

Allergy medication just not working? Try one with another active ingredient.

2009-06-03T15:03:45Z

Here's a list of active ingredients in allergy tablets available in the UK. If you're not having any luck with one of them, you could try one with another active ingredient.

Cetirizine (Hydrochloride): Benadryl one a day (Pfizer), Zirtek (UCB), Piriteze (GlaxoSmithKline)

Loratadine: Clarityn (Schering-Plough)

Acrivastine: Benadryl allergy relief (Pfizer)

Chlorphenamine Maleate: Piriton (GlaxoSmithKline), Pollenase (Peach), Haymine (Forest), Galpseud (Thornton & Ross)

Fexofenadine (Hydrochloride): Telfast / Allegra (Sanofi Aventis)

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Adobe (Photoshop) Lightroom Feature Request: Extended Keyword Management

2009-05-26T07:47:17Z

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform
Brief title for your desired feature:

Extended Keyword Management
How would you like the feature to work?

I would like there to be a module for managing keywords within Lightroom.

Why is this feature important to you?

The current drag & drop keyword management is clunky and does not work very well at all for large numbers of keywords. This is such an irritant that I and a number of other photographers I know have let our keyword hierarchies become disorganized.

The window is too small, even when all the other sub-panes are minimized. Dragging a keyword from one location to another in the list is very slow--you have to wait for the list to scroll. Spelling mistakes are common, here should be an option to change one keyword into another even when the target keyword already exists.

There should be a better way of organizing keywords, or at least a means for accessing LR's keyword metadata from an external application (i.e. a keywording API) so that someone else can do it.

Morsels: A Bit of This and a Bit of That

2009-02-11T08:25:13Z

We were talking about a "morsel" of food while making a huge mess in the kitchen. Anyone who knows Latin could probably guess that the English word morsel has the Latin verb mordeo somewhere in its history. And of course mordeo means 'I bite' and its noun form is morsus. Without getting overly academically investigative about the origin of the word, my best guess is that morsel is dervied from a Latin diminutive of morsus, morsellus.

The notion of a bite has long been used as a metaphor indicate a small amount, as in the English word "bit" and the German word Bißchen and the French word morceau a 'piece (of something)' (both derived from diminutives as well), but without an etymological dictionary handy and armed with some knowledge of historical sound changes, I'll guess that "morsel" entered the English lexicon from Norman Old French after said Normans conquered England in the 11th century. It was unlikely to have arrived later due to the modern French development which resulted in final /l/ becoming /u/. Of course that wouldn't stop the word entering then and later on, such as leal/loyal/legal and real/royal/regal (Norman/Modern French/Latin).

By the way, Mexican Spanish mordida '(a) bite' is also '(a) bribe'.

Anyway, I'm going to use the word 'morsel' as a category in my blog for the scattered thoughts that I have that might be of vague interest to someone.

Digital distribution options for small labels

2009-02-08T16:18:39Z

One of things that is interesting about alternative digital distributors (i.e. aggregators) like TuneCore, ReverbNation and CD Baby is the retailers they service. Compared to IODA and The Orchard, they distribute to relatively few digital retailers--ten or fewer instead of the hundreds that the largest distributors service.

It's much easier for IODA to aquire new retailers than for a smaller digital distributor for the simple reason that the digital retailers are willing to do all the technical work (converting files, especially metadata, into the format required by their shop) in order to be able to sell from the vast IODA catalogue, whereas for a smaller digital distributor like ourselves, we end up doing the work ourselves because the retailers are usually unwilling to put in the work required to import a smaller catalogue.

Of course you have to ask yourself whether having your catalogue available in every little digital retailer is important to you. As of 2005, Apple was said to have 70% of the digital retail market share. This is probably lower now, with all the competition from other retailers that have entered the market, e.g. Amazon MP3, but you can probably cover 90% of the market with just a few retailers, especially if your label's genre is well-represented by a certain site, e.g. Juno for dance music.

At one point, Apple was actively looking for labels to submit their music to iTunes via iTunes Producer, an application that looks and acts much like iTunes. iTunes Producer is supposed to make it easy to send Apple your content and controls the ripping, metadata entry and upload phases of content delivery to iTunes.

Another business model is that used by Consolidated Independent (CI) in London. If you negotiate a contract with a digital retailer, they can do delivery for you. The main advantage to this is that once your catalogue is submitted, you still retain control over it. This contrasts with digital distributors who still retain control over your catalogue because the retailer has no direct agreement with you. If you change your digital distributor, your catalogue has to be taken down and re-submitted.

As far as I know, none of the other retailers is really interested in dealing with smaller catalogues because it is simply too much trouble for too little gain.