[ltp] New T61. Some questions (32 vs 64, kernel, DVDs), some answers (esp. keyboard noise)...

[Ben Pearre]

First: MANY thanks to all of you who pointed me to knetworkmanager.
It works for me, although it took me a day to figure out that I needed
the firmware-iwlwifi package... and apologies for the flamewar for
which I feel strangely responsible.  The only thing that doesn't work
for me is that the knetworkmanager icon sometimes vanishes from the
KDE system tray (the tray (and ps) still thinks it's there, but just
refuses to display it), and it won't come back no matter what I do.
Is there another way to access the damn thing?  Is there a Gnome or X
or etc. control that will talk to the underlying mechanism and do
similar stuff?  (Running latest Debian Sid).

More questions:

1) Power!  I have the Core2 Duo T8300 @ 2.40GHz, 15.4" wsxga+ screen,
   Intel graphics, 3G ram, fingerprint reader, 160G 5400rpm disk (with
   encryption), the standard battery, etc.  Kpowersave's "Powersave"
   profile is set up for 60% brightness, Dynamic CPU, ... (no way to
   set hard disk spindown time with this tool, but let's assume the
   hard disk is spinning).  CPUs are idle.  I'm running the 2.6.25-1
   kernel from Debian Sid.  I let the computer die on battery power
   and recharged to make sure that the gauge was calibrated.  And
   Kpowersave claims that I can expect 3.5 hours of runtime.  Is that
   reasonable?  How can I improve that?

2) 32 vs. 64?  I installed the 32-bit version of Debian.  It seems to
   me that this ought to be the faster one for <=3G RAM, since
   pointers and instructions and whatnot will be half the size, which
   should tie up the memory bus less, give me effectively twice as
   much cache, etc., and let's not even consider swapping :) Is this
   not so?  Why would I want to run the 64-bit version?  My main
   performance requirement is Matlab.

3) Which packaged kernel?  Given that I'm on 32 bits, which kernel
   from Debian Unstable should I be running?  I've been rolling my own
   kernels since 0.98.5, but I thought I'd see how far I could get
   without worrying about that anymore (more time for "real work",
   whatever that means).  I'm on the 686 one now.  Would I do better
   to build my own?  I might have a few CPU cycles around here
   somewhere...

4) I have the 8x dual-layer DVD-burner.  I can't play DVDs.  Do I need
   to set the region code on the drive first?  Does that mean that the
   bastards won, and I can't play DVDs from anywhere but Region X even
   with libdvdcss?  Or will setting the region code advance me to the
   state of the art achieved 4 years ago when my player could play any
   DVD?

Oh, and a couple of observations, in the hope that someone finds them
useful:

1) Cooling fan: fantastic!  Running both cores at full steam (2.4GHz)
   for a couple of days while giving the RAM a run for its money, the
   fan was barely audible.

2) Fingerprint reader: very confusing when tf-tool --verify is happy
   but nothing else works.  Until I figured out that the uinput module
   doesn't autoload...

3) Keyboard / Mic: at first I had to mute the mic device, or keyboard
   noise got played back through the speakers.  But just turning down
   the internal mic gain takes care of that, and audacity and skype
   work fine.  Indeed, if you get playback noise, chances are your
   input gain is too sensitive--audacity was clipping inputs
   dreadfully until I fixed this.  The control you want is "Internal
   Mic Boost".  Turn the damn thing to 0!

4) SuSE: the system came preloaded with SuSE.  Many apologies for
   those of you awaiting my report, but it turns out that I can't
   stand SuSE (I'm just not used to it, and I'm getting old).  Debian
   and I are old friends, for all its (and my) quirks.

9) On an unrelated note---I'm so excited about this that despite its
   irrelevance I just have to tell you---Does anyone out there still
   use Sanjay Ghemawat's magnificent Ical?  I just discovered that
   Tcl/Tk 8.5 is in Debian Sid, and Ical compiles against it, and Lo!
   it now plays nicely with antialiased fonts :)))

Again, many MANY thanks to all of you for making ThinkPads that much
better!

Cheers :)
-Ben

--
Ben Pearre     http://ml.cs.colorado.edu/~ben      PGP: CFDA6CDA
Don't let Bush read your email!             http://www.gnupg.org