IBM Customer Services

My new battery for my Lenovo arrived this morning. It works, and I'm happy. I might have bitched quite a bit about LENOVO in the past, but the IBM customer services experience was fantastic. I think the longest I was on hold was a couple of minutes, and they sorted out the courier to swap the batteries within one day. Nice one!

Unfuck my keyboard (from the PFY)

Yesterday I send a patch to hal-devel describing a patch to add nvram polling to HAL to abstract the buttons. I did this basically for comments, and so people can try the addon and see if nvram polling worked for them. And then, feeling less dirty, I wrote a kernel patch. I want to convert the thinkpad_acpi module to use INPUT rather than export random hotkeys using acpi events. The idea being the INPUT keycodes can be mapped using a keymap, and we can make the keys work for people without using some random custom session or system daemon. This means you can do KEY_FN_F2 and then you can map the button in gnome-keybinding-properties just as if it was any other normal AT button, or choose a keymap in gnome-keyboard-properties so all the buttons work. We need to automate this somehow, and I've a funny feeling it might involve HAL. The NVRAM keys (volume, mute, thinkpad) will have to be done a little more carefully as they are tied to hardware, although I think I can do that polling in the kernel quite cleanly. I intend on submitting patches for all the machines that I can get my hands on, first in my sights is toshiba_acpi. Plan?

Last exam

Today I finished my university education. I took my last ever exam (which went well) – I can't believe I've finished my masters. I think my blood pressure must have dropped 10mm. For the next few days I'm off-grid, relaxing. On Monday I start work for a couple of months with Red Hat UK, so I really haven't got much time to chill. So now, I sleep for a few hours, and I'll then grab some Chinese food and a bottle of wine for my girlfriend and myself. If I've been ignoring your email – apologies, I'll get back to you on Monday.

SoftIce

Long shot: Anybody got any advice on how to use a tool such as SoftIce to log all EC and ACPI accesses during the Windows XP suspend? I can't believe I'm reverse engineering a closed source windows DLL just to find out why resume won't work in Linux…

New macbook?

Hypothetically, if I was to buy a new laptop for geeky work I'm thinking I might go crazy: An Apple Macbook.
I'm avoiding the Macbook Pro due to the non-free video and significant price increase, and also that I could do with something more portable than what I have now.

So far, I'm thinking:

  • [X] Dual core, lots of memory
  • [X] Suspend and Hibernate work
  • [X] Screen brightness works
  • [?] Ambient light sensor
  • [X] DVD burner
  • [  ] Wireless without ndiswrapper
  • [?] Second monitor out working with VGA and DVI
  • [X] Intel GMA graphics card
  • [?] XRANDR support for video driver
  • [X] Bluetooth that works
  • [X] Integrated camera
  • [X] Can blast OSX off the drive completely.
  • [?] Can run xen or vmware

So, does anybody know if:

  1. You can retrofit another pcie wifi card?
  2. madwifi_ng will actually work reliably in F7?
  3. the super-reflective screen will annoy me?
  4. you can run vmware or xen on a macbook?
  5. the macbook has a brightness sensor like the pro?
  6. The keyboard is any good?
  7. You can actually cope in GNOME having one mouse button?

Now, I'm thinking I might buy this in the US rather than the UK… It's still significantly cheaper (about £200) even after taking into account the stonking exchange rate. Bad plan?

Anyone got any success or horror stories? Thanks.

p.s. two exams down, two to go. So far, so good.

Lenovo – AHHHHHHH

My Lenovo 300 N100 laptop is now not charging the battery. The laptop also won't turn on when on battery power alone as the cell is 0% charged. Removing and reinserting the battery sometimes makes it charge for a few seconds only.

This laptop is a hunk of shit.

EDIT: IT GETS WORSE. According to this lenovo document  the battery isn't covered under the warranty. This laptop is less than 6 months old…

If you have an ACER laptop, please read this battery recall notice.

If you are affected by the recall or have a similar TravelMate, please email me the output of lshal to richard_at_hughsie_dot_com (and state if you are affected) – and then I can add the DMI data to hal-info. Many thanks.