Author: Martin

In the past three years I've been using a second generation netbook with a somewhat slow Intel Atom N270 processor while traveling and commuting, which I do a lot. With Ubuntu Linux on it the experience was actually quite good but the hardware still had its limits. The user interface wasn't quite as snappy as on a full notebook and watching videos even at sub-HD resolution was far from perfect. So my hope over those years was to one day update to a faster machine without compromising on the 10 inch size of the netbook, as I use it a lot on planes, trains and in other size constrained spaces where every centimeter counts.

But netbooks remained in that low end category with few performance improvements over time. Then, some time ago, Lenovo launched the Thinkpad X121e, an 11.6 inch sub-notebook in several variants. Most of them include netbook processors such as Intel's Atom or AMD's E-series so I didn't see much improvement there. But one model has an Intel i3 processor and once I found a reliable source that would sell me one (thanks Sebastian for the tip!) it was time to get one and hope Ubuntu would install on it without having too much trouble with the hardware.

The version of the Thinkpad X121e I bought includes the following:

• Intel i3 processor
• 4 GB of RAM
• 320 GB hard drive
• A gigabit Ethernet port
• an Intel N-1000 802.11n Wi-Fi chip (2.4 GHz only)
• 3 USB ports
• a built in webcam
• SD-card slot
• Intel graphics, screen resolution 1366×68 (16:9)
• VGA and HDMI out
• A combined in/out headset jack.
• No operating system included (good, as I want to use it with Ubuntu anyway so I don't have to pay for Windows which I don't want to use anyway).

Not bad for a price €446 including taxes and an additional 4 GB RAM card which, by the way, I did not install because I don't even know what to do with 4 GB RAM in my daily work, as even if I have all my applications open simultaneously, little more than 700-800 MB of RAM is used.

Installing Ubuntu 12.04 was as painless as could possibly be imagined. All hardware was recognized automatically, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, screen resolution, web cam, SD-card slot, everything. Amazing! Also suspend/resume works without any tweaks and function keys to control brightness and the volume of the speakers work flawlessly. Also the headset jack is recognized and speakers are disabled when used. No extra drivers that needed to be installed it just worked. Amazing!

Of course where there is light there is also some shadow. I have to admit I am still not fully happy with Unity. I like the launcher bar on the left of the screen as that makes good use of the 16:9 resolution. But apps that are not adapted to it have a hard time. Some examples: I like to have a copy of Firefox and Thunderbird running from my home directory as I can update them whenever security fixes become available without waiting for Ubuntu to catch up a couple of days later. Unfortunately they don't integrate into the launcher very well as I have two Firefox and two Thunderbird icons now, one for starting the application and one to manage the running instances. Also, launcher icons for Windows Applications that I run in Ubuntu via Wine are not yet integrated nicely into the launcher on the left. Instead of the program icons I can just see the default 'spring launcher' icons. And finally, the menu bar being included in the status bar that is always at the top of the screen drove me crazy so I uninstalled that feature after a while so the menus would go back to the application windows.

Performance wise, the i3 might be an entry level notebook and desktop processor but compared to my previous Atom processor it runs like crazy. HD video on Youtube is no problem anymore, web browsing is just as fast as one could possibly wish for and the GUI is very snappy now.

The compromise for all of this is an additional 2cm of length of X121e compared to my         netbook, while width and height are pretty much the same. From my perspective, a very good compromise indeed!

 

What's quite noticeable whenever I'm in Paris is that the 2G coverage in the Parisian metro is completely unable to bear the storm of smartphones and their hunger for Internet acceess. It could be argued that 2G coverage for voice and SMS, which still seem to work fine is better than nothing but there is a growing number of people that would probably say they'd prefer to have Internet access over voice and SMS in the metro. But relief is near. Telegeography recently reported that SFR will upgrade their network coverage in the metro with 3G and 4G signals. It shouldn't be too hard to do, the cabling is already prepared for it as I noticed back in 2009. What is strange about this report is that it only talks about SFR. What about the other network operators? Should SFR have negotiated an exclusive rollout? If so, I can already see millions of daily commuters switch to SFR.

With Nokia in self destruct mode and having moved away from open source and free as in freedom operating systems I had little choice so far than considering the move to another main stream platform, i.e. Android. But perhaps there is some hope yet, as a number of ex-Nokia employees have taken up the challenge of continuing the appraised but abandoned Meego platform and make something new out of it, outside Nokia.

According to reports such as here and here, the company was founded last October and has recently been named Jolla. With 50 employees already on board, the company aims at releasing details on the first device they want to come up with in the next couple of months. Being based on Meego and 'open source' being mentioned in the interview linked above there will perhaps be another choice for an individualist like me who prefers an open source niche platform over the mainstream. Apart from the obvious engineering, graphical user interface and intellectual property challenges I wonder how they want to make a profit out of a a relatively small number of devices they are likely to aim for at the beginning!? This is something that many other companies have and still do struggle with today.

So based on the few details known so far they surely have my vote and I wish them all the best and great success in their venture!

Recently I was wondering how much data I transmit and receive per month over the Internet and how much that would be on average. Here's the math:

When looking at statistics at home and at work I can see that I transfer around 30 GB a month over fixed and mobile networks. 30 GB, that's 30.000 MB or 30.000.000 kByte per month. Divided by 60 seconds * 60 minutes * 24h * 30 days that results in 30.000.000 [kB/month] / 2.592.000 [seconds/month] = 11.57 kByte per second = 92.6 kbit/s.

Wow, 92 600 bits per second 24h a day, that's much more than I thought!

Canada seems to be one of the most expensive places when it comes to mobile telephony and mobile Internet services and some people wonder if this might be due to the few people living in such a vast country. But this can easily be dismissed when comparing Canada with Finland, a country that is also thinly populated but has very low mobile telephony and mobile Internet prices:

Canada stretches over an area of roughly 10 million square kilometers. When looking at network coverage maps, however, only a small part of that area is actually covered. Have a look here for details. Let's say 1.5 million square kilometers are covered. Within that area, I would assume that the majority of the the roughly 35 million Canadians lives. If you divide the 35 million people by the 1.5 million square kilometers, that's around 23 people per square kilometer.

And now to Finland. Finland is pretty much completely covered, have a look here. There are 5.4 million inhabitants and divided by Finland's landmass of 0.338 million square kilometers that's roughly 16 people per square kilometer.

In other words, Finland has a very similar population density per square kilometer in the area covered by mobile networks, yet prices are significantly lower. That puts the 'large country + low population density = high prices' myth to rest.

 

Being a Linux and open source fan I always like to see when and where it is used. So despite something having evidently gone wrong in the picture on the left, it's good to know that technology wise, the Basilica in Montreal has gone the Linux way for its advertisement. Seen on a recent field trip to Canada.

Continuing my stream of thoughts on networks and communication in Shanghai I noticed that even with Opera Mini I could not access Facebook service despite the browser tunneling all traffic in an encrypted form to a gateway. A closer look revealed that OperaMini when used over Wi-Fi on my phone selected a gateway in China which explains this behavior.

Then I thought let's deacivate Wi-Fi, restart the phone and try again over cellular. In this setup, the GGSN is in my home country so I am assigned a German IP address and DNS server. As a result, Opera Mini should then connect to a European gateway. But strangely enough that was not the case. Despite the German IP address used for my phone (which I verified), it was still a Chinese gateway that was used!? Not only could I still not access that social networking site but each IP packet traversed from Shanghai to Germany back to the Chinese gateway and then back to Europe or the US to other websites. And the incurred delay and the websites not accessible are quite noticeable.

Recently, I've been in Shanghai for a conference and as it was my first time in China, I was looking quite forward to see how GSM, UMTS, Internet connectivity, speed and access of resources at home through VPN tunnels would work from there.

Cellular Networks

On the cellular front, GSM and UMTS are working fine for me, but a few times when establishing a PDP context, no data would flow afterwards. After tearing it down and reestablishing it, everything was fine. Data transfer speeds don't seem to be very snappy back to Europe, but it doesn't matter much as prices are so prohibitive anyway, that I only use connectivity for downloading emails without attachments and for web browsing by using Opera Mini which does a fair amount of data compression.

Encryption and Tunneling

I am using mandatory encryption for sending (SMTP) and receiving (POP3) emails via servers back in Europe and both over cellular (with a German SIM) and the Internet at the hotel that works just fine. In other words, that's not blocked in any way. Also, my company VPN to Germany works just fine over the hotel Wi-Fi. After all of this working so well I was a bit surprised that the VPN product I use on my private PC would not connect to any gateway around the world, it seems to be blocked. A quick chat with the online support of the company, however, gave me a workaround within 5 minutes and I managed to get a VPN tunnel working to a gateway in the US.

Speed, speed, speed

When accessing servers in China from Europe I always have the impression that things are rather slow. Perhaps, I always thought, this was due to generally limited connectivity to Europe? But when bringing the Internet connectivity for the conference online I got a steady 10 MBit/s in the downlink direction and 10 MBit/s in the uplink direction to servers back in the US and Europe. So, no, it could not have been the transit links that were previously slow. Another thing demystified.

 

A quick thought on small hotels, Internet an Wi-Fi since I've just come across one of those: Like bigger chain hotels the staff also has no clue on how things work or what to do when things don't work around Internet connectivity. The big difference, however, is that it's not so hard to find the Wi-Fi router and the repeaters and get permission to restart them. After that, things work better than in bigger hotels 🙂 Yes, I know, I usually get a local SIM card for 3G Internet access but I didn't this time (in Canada) and was promptly confronted again with mediocre (at best) hotel Wi-Fi in 3 hotels. Back to the local SIMs then.

I've been doing a lot of e-book reading lately in a number of different forms and shapes and thought I'd write down some thoughts about my experiences here.

One form of e-book reading that I find quite useful and fun is on my mobile phone while commuting and also in the evening before going to bed. In both situations the tablet is too large and heavy and while the display is much larger and thus perhaps better for reading I prefer the mobile phone in such situations. Especially for text books where formatting changes are not an issue it works perfectly for me. And by the way there are many ebook reader apps available free of charge as are the books via Project Gutenberg which has huge amounts of classic novels converted to ebooks available. A great service so I made a donation, Paypal makes that quick and painless.

On the commercial side I have given the Kindle app on an Android based phone and an Android based tablet a try.  Again, I like the experience and books bought in the Kindle app or on the PC via the Amazon website are transferred to the device in a number of seconds. In particular I read a technical book with this solution, sometimes on the mobile, sometimes on the tablet and the Kindle app makes it easy to keep my bookmarks and last read page synchronized across devices. Very good! The downside of reading a technical book in electronic version becomes apparent when there is a need to quickly jump between different parts of the book. In a real "paper" book that works much nicer and faster than on a tablet. An advantage of the electronic version on the other hand however, is that it is searchable when one doesn't know the exact place of that piece of information in the book.

So while I like the experience I'm not totally converted. The argument that wins me over for most of my reading, however, is that I can have books with me anytime anywhere without extra space required or extra weight to be carried, both of which are precious commodities during commuting and traveling.