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Computer program to talk to the deaf

Author: JT Smith

Mr. Kartik Prabhakara wants to “talk” to the deaf. He has written a program that helps one communicate with the hearing-impaired: key in a word and a
pair of virtual hands displays the sign-language equivalent on a computer. From The Straits Times.

Category:

  • Linux

Cyber catfight — Margolis or Ashe?

Author: JT Smith

It hasn’t escalated to the level of a
Celebrity Deathmatch yet, but two of the
Internet’s most downloaded women are sparring
over who’s really the cyber-fairest of them all. From ABCNEWS.com.

Opinion: QNX RTOS – The Right Way of Doing Things

Author: JT Smith

“I think the QNX RTOS is the future of the desktop OS. It makes hardware driver installation as easy as could be, and most of all it’s responsive – nobody (especially the average user) likes to see his machine grind to a halt as they load up some gargantuan web browser with more bugs than features.”Kelly McNeill at OSOpinion.com.

Intel’s portable Timna to debut at 700MHz

Author: JT Smith

Intel Corp.’s first Timna chip for mobile computers will
be a 700MHz version released toward the end of the
first half of next year, according to sources in this ZDNet report.

Category:

  • Unix

Opinion: Red Penguins and Black Apples

Author: JT Smith

The GNU General Public license has never been tested in court. All the faith being rested on these foundations could turn as useful as helmets were to Japanese kamikaze pilots. It is there as an assurance, but would you jump from a plane with a parachute that hadn’t been tested? Kelly McNeill at OSOpinion.com.

Category:

  • Open Source

Brewing entity Enterprise JavaBeans

Author: JT Smith

This
article at Javaworld.com introduces component developers to entity beans and shows how to channel the beans’ power.

Review: Socket A shootout

Author: JT Smith

Australian IT brings us this review of the latest motherboards.

Category:

  • Unix

Symantec previews Palm antivirus product

Author: JT Smith

Symantec has released a preview version of what it
claims is the first antivirus product to scan applications for
malicious code on Palm computers. From a story at NWFusion.com.

Category:

  • Linux

CyberStar LT98 laptop review

Author: JT Smith

By: Jeff Field
NewsForge Columnist

Last week, I reviewed a full-featured Linux laptop, the Tuxtops.com Quartz 795+. This week, I will again be reviewing a laptop, however, this time I will review a mini notebook, the Cyberstar LT98. Focusing on portability, the LT98 makes tradeoffs in performance for portability. Are these tradeoffs worth it?
The Laptop
Configuration Page
For expansion, this laptop has one serial port, one parallel port, one VGA-out, one IDE-out, one PS/2 and a phone connection for the (Linux incompatible) windmodem, as well as a PC Card (type 2) slot. Curious is the fact that is lacks USB, something that would greatly increase the expansion capability of this machine.

The LT98 uses a Cyrix MediaGXm CPU running at 266MHz. The MediaGXm is aimed at low-end machines and low power consumption machines. Unfortunately, there is a massive tradeoff in CPU power. Other machines support Mobile K6-2 and Pentium III CPUs while consuming similar power and outputting a little more heat.

More impressive are the storage capabilities of this laptop, sporting a 6.5 gigabyte Hitachi IDE hard drive and an external 24x Toshiba CD-ROM. 6.5 gigabytes is more than enough for a machine focused on being a notetaker or strictly on-the-road machine, the tasks this machine is best suited for.

Look and Feel
The keyboard on the LT98 is tiny and cramped, making it difficult to type on this machine with even average-sized fingers, and even more difficult for someone with larger fingers. Typing for long periods of time becomes uncomfortable. This is a definate downside to this laptop for anyone thinking of a serious use for it.

As for the screen, it is also uncomfortably tiny, making it difficult to read text at times. Again, you must sacrifice something for all this portability, and with this machine you will sacrifice comfort and readability, two of the most important things when evaluating laptops.

The best feature may be the Trackpoint, a little eraser-like stick in the keyboard used to replace the mouse. I like it much better than a touch pad, although this certainly doesn’t affect my thoughts on the comfort or usability of this laptop.

As for the weight and dimensions, this laptop is small and portable. Weighing in at only 3.7 lbs. and only 1.4″ thick, 7″ deep and 10.9″ wide, it is easy to fit in any sort of bag or briefcase. Again, the portability is nice, but doesn’t make up for the lack of usability.

Like most machines (unfortunately), it comes with Windows 98 preinstalled. However, with little effort you can remove it in favor of Linux, which is of course what I did. Installation of Mandrake 7.1 was difficult at first because of a somewhat scratchy CD. Although other drives read the disc fine, the one on the LT98 seems overly sensitive to dust and scratches. A new Mandrake 7.1 install went without a hitch.

Battery
The Nickel Metal Hydride battery that came with the laptop lasted just under two hours (1 hour 57 minutes) with normal usage (booting, playing MP3s, running X, etc.) which is ok, but for something this small you would hope it would last longer. It did, however, come with a spare battery that you could swap out. For longer usage you’ll need the AC adapter.

Specs
Storage and Expansion:
Hard Drive: 6.5 GB IDE
Floppy Drive: External disk drive
CD-ROM: External 24x Toshiba
Internal Fax/Modem: 56k V.90 Winmodem
PC Card: 1 Type II, card bus support
Audio: Built-in sound, speakers, microphone
Battery: 28.8w/6cells NI-MH battery pack
AC Adapter: 18w, AC 110-240V
Pointing Device: Trackpoint III
Power Management: APM 1.2
Warranty: One Year Depot, Optional 1 or 3 year MWS express warranty

Video & CPU:
LCD Screen: 8.0″ CSTN VGA, 8.4″ Active Matrix screen optional

Resolution: CSTN 640×480, external monitor up to 1024×768
CPU Type: Cyrix Gxm 266MHz
Memory sockets: 1 – 144 pin EDO DIMM
Memory Std/Max/Tested: 32MB/64MB/64MB
Video Controller: NeoMagic 2097 1.2MM + Gxi GX5520

IO
Serial: 1 high speed 16550, 9-pin ports
Parallel: 1 ECP/EPP 25-pin port
Keyboard/Mouse: PS/2 port
VGA: 1 15 pin
RJ-11: 1 telephone jack
IRDA: 1 IR port
AC Power: 1 AC power port jack
IDE: 1 external IDE for floppy or CD-ROM

Dimensions
Height: 1.4″ (3.52cm)
Width: 10.9″ (27.7cm)
Depth: 7″ (17.8cm)
Weight: 3.7lbs (1.65kg) with battery

The Tests
Mandrake 7.1 with ReiserFS was used in place of the default configuration. 64 Megs of RAM was present, this differs from the default configuration of 32 megs.

Kernel Compiles
To test the laptop, I ran a variety of CPU, I/O and memory-intensive benchmarks. The first benchmark is a set of timed Linux kernel compiles (a common action for many Linux users). To do the testing, I used a Mandrake 7.1 installation. I configured the kernel by typing “make config” and selecting the defaults (holding down enter works nicely). I typed “make clean; make dep; time make bzImage” in order to time the kernel compiles.

Kernel Compile Times (Minutes:Seconds)

Cyberstar LT98
2.2.16 2.4.0-test5
400MHz 21:43 31:43

HDParm
Using HDParm measures the performance (cached and un-cached) of hard drives under Linux. This shows the performance of the hard drive in the LT98.

HDParm Results

Cyberstar LT98
Device Read Timings (-t) Cache Read Timings (-T)
266MHz 4.44MB/sec. 47.95MB/sec.

Benchmark Commentary
As you can see, the LT98 did not perform well in the kernel compile tests. This is mostly due to the Cyrix MediaGXm, which isn’t a very powerful CPU. Since the CPU is aimed toward machines used for simple office tasks, anything that really pushes the CPU isn’t going to perform well on this machine. The disk results are average, so disk access won’t be as much of a bottleneck as the CPU in heavy tasks. But for word processing or things of that nature, this machine should perform ok.

A note: These results should be used in comparison with other similar products to see which is faster, and benchmarks should never be your final determining factor. I always consider stability and support before absolute performance — if it doesn’t work, what does it matter how fast it is? So please, take all benchmarks with a grain of salt.

About CyberStar
Cyberstar, founded in 1982, produces notebooks for sale through dealers. They have a lines of low end and high end laptops and subnotebooks.

Conclusion
While it accomplishes what it was meant for, to be a very portable machine, the lack of comfort really hurts my opinion of this laptop. Without a comfortable keyboard or a decent screen, it is a waste of money when for a few hundred dollars more you could get a laptop with a better CPU, larger keyboard, and a larger screen (such as the Quartz 795+ I reviewed last week). If you are looking for something between a PDA and a real laptop, and can deal with a cramped keyboard and tiny screen, then you still might consider this laptop. Otherwise I would stay away from it and put my money into something larger, more powerful and more comfortable

Price: $1,129 (as configured in this review)

Category:

  • News

Next step in Microsoft anti-trust case

Author: JT Smith

The next step in the lengthly anti-trust case against Microsoft is moving to its next step tomorrow, as the Supreme Court decides whether or not to hear the case. The story is at NW Fusion.