cyfinity

According to an article at geek.com, Fujitsu reckon they are going to demo a PC at CeBIT 2009 which will idle/sleep at zero watts ie: no current draw whatsoever.

The article speculates that this system will still be able to interact with LAN/PAN devices while ‘asleep’. This definitely runs into ‘believe it when I see it’ territory for me. It’s not that I don’t want Fujitsu to have accomplished this; computers definitely need to draw much less power when idle, but it’s a hell of a technical mountain to climb.

The whole notion of a NIC being able to respond without power only when polled intentionally just seems ever so slightly far fetched.

If you’re going to CeBIT on 3-8 March 2009, you’ll probably be treated to a demo of just how this works. Still I hope they demonstrate the device as coupled up to a proper metering device. I wouldn’t want to think that this is all just marketing and spin

If you’re a WordPress blogger who finds themselves out and about while blogging, you may benefit from the addition of secure/encrypted SSL logins and administration of your blog.

Lets say you are in a hotel for the night after a conference and you want to post an update on the days proceedings for your readers. The delightful 5-star hotel you booked yourself into has thoughfully provided free WiFi internet access in the rooms and your laptop can see the access point and has connected. Well, this is great but consider what that connection actually is for a moment.

The chances are that the connection used no authentication and is entirely unencrypted. Any data you send or recieve over the connection goes in the clear; including your WP login and password. Remember that wireless internet is a radio connection. Anyone with ill deeds on their mind a ‘radio’ of their own (ie: a wireless laptop) can record your data transmission and pick through it at will. They probably wont even have to spend much time or effort at it; I am lead to believe there are tools which specifically search packet streams for login credentials.

The hotel may have provided you with an authenticated WiFi link or even a Cat5 drop in the room but this may still cause issues. Can you trust the hotel’s own network? On at least one occasion when connecting to a wired connection in a hotel, I have discovered myself to be on a LAN consisting of all the other guests.

What you need is encryption.

If you establish and maintain an SSL connection with your blog’s webserver, the risks of digital eavesdropping are negated. If your server/host already has SSL installed, reconfiguring WordPress to work with it is pretty trivial. You can ask your host to install SSL and assuming you’re not on a shared host, this shouldn’t be a problem. You don’t even have to buy a certificate as you can sign your own. Self-signed certificates do have a drawback in that they cause an initial error message in the browser until you import the certificate. You should ensure that you import your self-signed certs over a trusted network.

To get WordPress (2.6+) configured for SSL, open your wp-config.php file and add the lines:

/** Force SSL login and administration */
define('FORCE_SSL_ADMIN', true);

…and save the file back on the webserver.

This forces the login window to go straight to an SSL connection and maintains the admin interface in one too. All data passed between your client machine and the admin interface, including your login credentials will be encrypted.

Have fun & be safe

The other day, I took a walk into town and purchased one of these plug-in power meters. A relatively simple affair which you plug into the socket and then plug your device into. It has a digital display which, amongst other things, can display the instant Watts drawn by the connected device. This is exactly what I needed as I’ve been eager to find out how much power various devices around the home and office draw (and hence how much they cost to run )

The meter seems fairly accurate on the Watts front. I tested it with some normal filament bulbs and the reading was just a few Watts higher than their ratings as is to be expected.

I then went on to test a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device which I had recently thrown together using an old Via Epia 800 Mini-ITX motherboard, a 80GB Maxtor* hard drive, a CD-ROM drive, a USB key and a Mini-ITX specific case with a 90W ATX PSU.

The software I used was FreeNAS 0.686.4. I used this version rather than the ‘bleeding-edge’ beta as I wanted to have the Wake-on-LAN functionality which now apparently missing on the latest version. FreeNAS boots from the CDROM and stores it’s configuration settings on the USB key. The whole lot runs headless and is configured by a lovely web interface.

Now; back to the power meter

I plugged the NAS into the meter and started it up. During boot, the system was drawing 50-55Watts and settled back to about 39 Watts on completion of the boot. This would tally with a reduced load on the CPU and the CDROM having spun down. When copying files at full-speed – the network interface is 100Base-T, the power consumption reaches the high 40s.

When idling, FreeNAS tries to conserve power. Unfortunately, the Epia 800 doesn’t seem to have any frequency stepping features and presumably maintains it’s normal 800Mhz clock speed. The hard drive does spin down and this brings current draw down to about 28 Watts – not too bad considering this is one of the older Mini-ITX boards.

Power meter - Sorry for the manky looking plug!

Shockingly, however, when switched off the system is still drawing between 3 and 5 Watts. I haven’t been able to ascertain what causes the fluctation (signalling on the NIC perhaps or a dodgey PSU?) but it’s less than ideal to have it draw so much power when it is not in use.

I think I’ll spend some time looking at other hardware options for FreeNAS, possibly booting entirely from the USB key and eliminating the 5.25in CDROM would help. Other than that, I’d probably be looking at newer Epia boards to increase the energy saving.

*Yeah, I know, I wouldn’t normally use a Maxtor either but this one was donated.

We recently had a Packard Bell Easynote (model identified as ‘Argo C2′ which seems to correspond with Packard Bell series MZ35 and MZ36 laptops) with a broken spacebar in for repair. We presumed it to be a complete keyboard replacement job so for your benefit, we detailed the procedure for getting the keyboard off the laptop.

Tools required are basically a Phillips head screwdriver of suitable dimensions and a narrow, flat blade or similar prying tool.

We started out by turning the laptop over and removing the battery. The battery is located on the back edge and has a thumb-operated spring-loaded latch on the bottom surface of the laptop. The battery withdraws to the rear.

Next we needed to remove the keyboard retaining screw which (IIRC) is marked with a small keyboard legend. It is found roughly centrally on the underside of the laptop. Note that we had actually forgotten to remove the battery at this point /me smacks hands all round.

After putting the screw somewhere safe, we turned the laptop back over and with the lid closed, removed the hinge-cover retaining screws from the rear of the laptop.

Next, we carefully opened the laptop lid all the way.

Once fully open, we used the prying tool to carefully lift the hinge covers which are an integral part of the upper cover on the laptop.

The whole cover should hinge from the keyboard side. We lifted the cover slightly and withdrew it away from the keyboard, towards the screen. The cover just removed acted as a secondary retaining feature for the upper edge of the keyboard.

The keyboard was lifted from the edge nearest the screen, slight screenwards motion was employed to release the keyboard from the lower edge.

The keyboard ribbon cable is now visible. The ribbon is fastened using a black locking tab/collar.

We very carefully release the locking collar with a screwdriver. Usually working it back from each edge in turn works well.

The keyboard could now be fully removed. The exposed internals of the laptop at this point are shown below.

The keyboard refitting procedure is the reverse of the removal procedure. Special care is to be taken when re-seating the ribbon cable and cover clips.

The usual disclaimer applies plus the caveat that it was a couple of months ago when this procedure was performed and my memory may be slightly rusty on it. Don’t forget, if your device is still under warranty, you’re best off getting a service call.

We’ve had a Dell Precision M90 laptop kicking around here for a fair while now with faulty Quadro FX 2500M graphics output. When the machine is powered on, the laptop’s LCD remains blank although the backlight is obviously powering up. If an external screen is connected, a picture is displayed at the POST screen but it is overlaid / disrupted by strings of what look like dots, commas or exclamation marks.

Since the machine is out of warranty and what we clearly have is a faulty graphics card, the question is now – why?

On extensive searching of the web, it seems that this problem is common to many of Dell’s high-end laptops with discrete GPUs and to date there does not seem to be a solid fix from Dell other than to change the graphics card (which may again fail) and update the machine’s BIOS to alter the fan’s duty cycle in the hope of reducing the thermal load.

This post and selection of comments on popey.com gives a little insight with people who have had warranty exchanges on their Dell laptop graphics cards reporting repeat failures later on. One interesting comment mentions the possibility of the components expanding significantly due to the heat and coming into contact with one-another where they shouldn’t causing an electrical short. Having looking at images and diagrams of the graphics card installation which attaches to a socket in the face of the motherboard, I’d be inclined to agree that it is a possibility.

I will hopefully know more once I have dismantled the M90 and gone fishing inside.

Time to wake up.