The Digest Team wishes all subscribers best seasonal greetings and a very happy and healthy new year.
With best regards
Itamar Engelsman
The Digest Team
I find SanDisk 8GB cards can be partitioned to 4 x 2GB and work well in the Psion Netbook. The problem is when you try and take a partitioned CF card out of the Psion and into a Windows machine. Sometimes it will only see the first partition.
As far as the lifespan of CF cards is concerned, good CF manufacturers (e.g. SanDisk, Pretec) have smart controller chips that automatically minimise the number of writes to any "sector" of the disk, hence maximising the lifespan. Lifetimes are typically quoted in number of writes, not years.
This is why you should never de-fragment a flash drive under Windows. You are reducing the life of the disk and not increasing the speed of access. Defragmentation is only required for rotating disks, because it is the physical disk access that is affected by fragmentation. I believe Windows 7 automatically stops you from defragmenting flash drives.
Alastair
On 17 Dec 2009, Chris Handley wrote:
> Yes, but "sleep" on a laptop will cause the battery to run-out in a > matter of hours, where Psion's "sleep" (aka "off") will run on battery > for WEEKS (or even MONTHS)! Guess which is more useful for a
> PDA/organiser? :)
>
> This is a combination of the Psion OS being very carefully crafted to > minimise battery use, and the hardware being very carefully crafted to > switch most stuff off & use as little as possible power for the
> remaining stuff.
Im sure Psions last longer than pretty much anything out there - how long a Linux device will last depends very much on the hardware. I should point out again, that Android devices are Linux machines and they most certainly dont run out after a few hours. You can switch off the radio on an Android device and it will last for several days and possibly a week or two.
But this isn't really a good comparison because Psions dont have radios, use only low power cards, use XIP code, use low power CPU, etc etc.
Aj.
On 19 Dec 2009, Lars-Olov Eriksson <address truncated> wrote:
> remark to the Instant on theme. It is not only a matter of hardware and > OS functionality.
IMHO, you can't really make these comparisons without looking at the hardware and the OS.
> What is amazing with my Psion is that it has been
> running over the years without ever having a dead-lock, never having had > to be restarted, never having been restored
When the hardware, drivers, OS, and most of the apps come from the same company you will always get a better, more efficient, more integrated experience than anything else. Psion hardware is very limited, very low power so the OS is much simpler too, which is great for battery life, but not so good for certain tasks.
> The laptop I would not dare to hybernate
> - my experience with laptops is that they finally go to Big Sleep and
> the batteries have to be removed.
Ive never had thos ekinds of problems but then Ive only ever used Mac or Linux laptops :-)
> Necessary updates pour in all the
> time. So, Windows is a distributed software laboratory, in which I am
> invited to participate in the ever ongoing development of a decent
> working environment.
The keyword here is "invited", i.e. not forced. Ive lived Microsoft free for years and enjoy using my computers.
> Psion does not have the pretentions of Windows of
> course, but it deliveres what is promised. So, it is also a matter of
> attitudes among the developers. Thus I do not believe in a Windows based > Instant on PDA till I have seen one, small wonder be it !
I agree!
Aj.
On 20 Dec 2009, Jim Watson-Gove <address truncated> wrote:
> I plan to download eeebuntu from the eeebuntu website. I assume it > will be a zipped file so I plan to unzip it on my desktop,
Nope - most probably it will be an ISO image. Your CD burning software of choice should be able to burn a bootable CD from the ISO image.
> then copy
> and paste it on to a 512 MB USB memory chip (same as a memory stick?)
Copy and paste won't work. You will need to boot the CD on a regular desktop PC; when the desktop comes up you will use the 'USB Startup Disk Creator' in the System menu to make a bootable USB stick/card. Then you'ill plug that into your eeepc, make sure the BIOS is set to boot off it, and when the menu comes up you'ill select the Install to drive option.
Aj.
Dear all,
First, thank you very much for the advices on CF cards. I'll probably buy a 2 GB right off the shelve from Kees's weblink. I do not like to try my hand at partitioning bigger ones: my problems started when I inserted a Psion's CF in a PC.
Lately I saw adverts from Duracel regarding their new Lithium throwaway penlite batteries. I started to wonder how many hours I could pull from such a set of batteries in my 5mx. It would probably be as good as the 3a in the good old days... you nearly forgot that it was not a paper agenda and that it needed batteries.
I am actually tempted to pull the 5mx out of the 'archive' and try it...
Yours truly,
Thomas van der Zijden
Re: EEEbuntu installation
- For Jim & anyone else
I believe the EEEBuntu download is an iso image, this is essentially a 'disk' image of a CD or DVD disk.
You need to down load the iso image file from:
http://www.eeebuntu.org/index.php?page=download- You need to decide which version of eeebuntu
- - I suggest trying the NBR (Netbook Remix) edition or the Standard edition (NBR gives you a front end tabbed menu, Standard gives you a normal desktop)
then use another program to create a bootable USB stick from your downloaded iso image.
I use the Unetbootin program, available here:
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/- do have a quick read of the instructions,
you just run the unetbootin-windows exe as it does not need to be installed In unetbootin use the 'Disk Image' option (not the Distribution option), ISO selected
- and browse to your iso image file and select,
Make sure the Type selection (at the bottom) shows USB drive and the
USB drive you want to use -
***Danger Will Robinson ***
- DO make sure the correct USB drive is shown
- DO be aware that the whole of the USB drive will be overwritten
- I suggest 2Gb USB drive or larger (I used a 4GB drive last time - 1Gb
was too small)
& click OK
This should then create a bootable USB drive.
- ignore the option to reboot on completion - unless you are actually
using the computer you want to try eeebuntu
To get the Netbook to boot from the USB drive you may need to change the BIOS boot setting
- so if the Netbook / laptop / whatever does not see the USB stick on initial boot,
reboot again - With the USB stick still plugged in
then amend the Boot priority (If you don't have the USB stick plugged in you probably will not see
the USB as an option for a boot device)
Good Luck
Mike Robins
Simulation Technologies Group
Thales Training & Simulation
t: 01293 563961
m: 07745 057096
I have been trying to write a little utility application in OPL to turn off the sound on my 9300i using the following code:
INCLUDE "system.oxh"
PROC One:
SySetSoundEnabled(0)
ENDP
However, this does not seem to work. What am I doing wrong? On the FileNote forum, Edo has tried this code and confirms that it does not work either - possible due to some error in the OPL runtime. Is Arjen around on the digest or is there anyone else who may be able to help.
Many thanks,
Martin
> I plan to download eeebuntu from the eeebuntu website. I assume it will be a zipped file so I plan to unzip it on my desktop, then copy and paste it on to a 512 MB USB memory chip (same as a memory stick?) making sure it's in the root of the chip. Then try to figure it out from there (I imagine the file or the eeebuntu website will have instructions on booting from the USB memory chip and replacing the OS after successful running from the chip. <
Hi Jim,
No, it's an iso file. You'll need UNetbootin - http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/to make a bootable USB-stick. It won't work to unpack and copy/paste the content.
On my Lenovo ThinkPad and Acer Aspire One the F12 gives me the option to choose the boot device (default is set to harddrive and so I don't have to change the BIOS) - you should have a similar key. Once loaded just choose a guided install (use whole dev/sda). Then Eeebuntu will overwrite Xandros.
Best regards,
/Michael
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8428009.stm
* Craig Pricewrote:
* > Does anyone know of a similar app? I could reluctantly pass up the * today > view if I had to, but the CTRL + Spacebar task manager is
* something just > can't live without.
* Have you tried iDesk? It has task-switching capabilities (which I
* don't use but maybe I should!). It is free from Freepoc:
* http://www.freepoc.org/viewapp.php?id=79
Arjen Broeze wrote several superb programs for the
S80
http://opldev.broeze.eu/
Regards,
Kees.