Ubuntu 8.04 LTS

I’ve upgraded my Ubuntu 6.10 to 8.04, because I had problems writing to a NTFS-formatted hard disk…

To be able to use Ubuntu 6.10 for 2 years without feeling the need to upgrade, that’s some achievement, right? Good job to all who have contributed to open source, Linux, and Ubuntu!

Ubuntu 8.04 is another major achievement. This time round, the installation of Ubuntu 8.04 went without a hitch. Remembering my previous attempts, this time round I didn’t have to grapple with SATA issues.

The starting up and shutting down of Ubuntu 8.04 is faster. Ubuntu 6.10’s shutdown process seems to have 2 stages, whereby I had to wait for a second pop-up of the Ubuntu logo and process bar before the PC shutdowns completely. There’s only one now.

On the desktop, the icons are looking more professional. The softwares are looking and feeling snappier, feeling better integrated. When I tried to play a DivX file, the Totem Movie Player informs me that restricted plugins are required, and proceed to install the necessary files when I agreed to proceed. Quite troublesome-free.

Ubuntu 8.04, or rather I should say Gnome’s graphics now comes with transparency support, those nice effects whereby you are able to see a faint image of the other windows below your current one. But that requires your graphics card and driver to be able to support that. Mine is a Nvidia card, and I used their Nvidia accelerated graphics driver, but that caused my PC to hang because of some icq interrupts conflict when the PC is on for some time. I haven’t resolved it yet, so I just unloaded the driver and went back to normal graphics mode.

My final verdict, I like Ubuntu 8.04. No regrets on upgrading. And I can write to the NTFS-formatted hard disk now.

Updates:

1. Gnome with chinese language seems to stall during logout.  Common pattern is when it is used with Pidgin after an extended amount of time.  You can do a Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to kill the session.  It’ll bring you back to the login page.
2. Multiple logged in users through Gnome has a weird problem.  When switching between user sessions, that is User A to User B to User A, and finally back to User B, User B will hear the “Logged In” sound being played repeatedly.  No work around for this yet…

Just one reason for not buying Epson CX6500

I can honestly say why you shouldn’t get a Epson CX6500 simply because I bought one 2 years back.  Since I see that it’s still on the market, this blog entry may still save you from the agonies that I went through.

The main problem with Epson CX6500 (and I’m not sure if it applies to all ink-based models from Epson) is that when one ink cartridge runs out of ink, all functions of the printer are suspended and it will just keep on prompting you to replace the empty ink cartridge.  You won’t be able to scan.  You won’t be able to copy or print in plain black.

If you do not use the printer frequently, then chances are you’ll face clogged ink nozzles, which you’ll have to waste a lot of ink in order to clean them up.  Which means, the cartridges will run out of ink with low frequency (hence low volume) printing.  Which means you are likely to face the same situation as I did.

I’m dunking ink-jet printers for now.  Color laser printers are cheap now, so I’m going to try that out.  Anyone with bad laser printer experiences?

Shure SE420

After 4 grueling months of work, I just consoled myself with a new pair of Shure SE420 headphones. Not that the work gave back me deserving returns, though I hope that’s coming in the future, but I’ve been thinking of getting a good pair of headphones that I can move around with. My Sennheiser HD595 was difficult to bring around due to its size, and ambient sounds leak through when I travel on the train. I’ve been eying Shure’s headphones for the past 2 years. So when Shure launched it’s latest range of sound isolation headphones, I thought it’s a good time to get one.

After using it for a week, here’s my verdict. It’s a good pair of phones. Mids and highs are clear and crisp. Very good for vocals and instrumentals. You could feel guitar strumming messaging your ears. Lows might be a tad weak, if you’re used to stronger lows. After switching between my Sennheiser HD595 and Shure SE420 just to test out the differences, the Shure SE420 sounds more balanced across its lows, mids and highs. With the SE420’s frequency range between 20Hz and 19kHz, I didn’t experience low rumbles and trailing highs that could lift my emotions higher. Shure says that they manufacture headphones to reproduce sounds as close as possible to original recordings. I wonder if the previous experiences with my music was more of an artificial one with impressive technical engineering. Prolong use of the SE420 will probably tell.

With its Ear Canal design, the sealing of the foam buds onto your ear canal will create an environment that seals out a lot of outside sounds, but amplify your own body’s sounds. So it’s not good if you walk, or jog with the phones in your ears. Chewing will definite kill your music. If sealing of the foam buds are very tight, you can even hear your own heartbeat. But if you just use it while you are sitting down, it works better than those active noise-canceling headphones.

The wires are thick and some may feel that it’s stiff. For me, it doesn’t affect me much because the quality of the sounds produced are my higher concerns. But the stiff wires will rub against your skin as you loop it around your ears (as recommended by Shure on the proper method to wear the headphones), and the sounds will amplify into your ears.

That’s my contribution to the review of Shure SE420. Other reviews have covered quite a bit, and you can read it all of them on the Internet.

Yes, I am happy with the SE420. I think it’s worth the money, although I wish it could be cheaper. I’m itching to try out the SE530!

Updates:

My problem with weak bass was with a problem I had with my Linux box used to encode music.  After resolving that, I’m happy to say that my Shure SE420 headphones is able to produce tight strong bass.