Of course, I’m not the only one who has problems with hibernate and standby on Kubuntu and Thinkpad X22. I saw this post at an Ubuntu forum. Which in turn led me to this post at ThinkWiki which led to the solution. In a nutshell, you just need to change your video driver to VESA and the monitor to 1024×768 LCD panel. That’s it. Hibernate and standby works now. Don’t you just love the net?
Kopete Or Milk?
Alex lent me a DVD of Kubuntu 7.10. Kubuntu is the version of Ubuntu that is packaged with KDE. For some reason he likes it and since he’s the Linux guru, who am I to second guess him? Hehe.Soon as I got home, I installed to Selene, my Thinkpad X22. The installation went without a hitch and in no time I was in Kubuntu. Everything else does though. I updated everything, played around with the look-and-feel, and was browsing (with a separately installed Firefox) and chatting (with Kopete). Almost everything worked. But unfortunately, both hibernate and standby don’t work! Argh. Now I’ll have to wait for Mr. Linux guru to to help me fix the problem.
Ubuntu
I’ve been playing around with Fedora 7 on Selene, my Thinkpad X22, and I must say I was disappointed. Hibernate and standby didn’t work. Not even with Software Suspend 2. I consider those two to be critical features for a notebook so their not working just won’t do. Upon the recommendation of Alex, I installed Ubuntu 7 Feisty Fawn. Well what do you know? Almost everything, including hibernate and standby, “just works” as advertised out of the box. The two things I noticed didn’t work is the sound and the PCMCIA WiFi. Sound is not critical and the PCMCIA WiFi card is a 3rd party device so it’s no big deal. I like Red Hat and Fedora but does Ubuntu rock! I think I’m a convert.
UPDATE: Alex logged on to Selene and fixed the sound and the WiFi. Thanks man!
Notebook Malfunction
Encountered a malfunction with my new Thinkpad T60. When I got to work this morning, I plugged it in and opened the lid. Normally, this should wake it up from standby mode. Nothing. So I pressed on the power button to power it down. Nothing. I unplugged it, removed and reinstalled the battery, plugged it back in and pressed the power button. It started up and started making beeping sounds. Not good. Jon and I thought it’s a memory issue, so I opened the notebook up, removed and reinstalled the memory but to no avail. I called up the supplier and they, to their credit, immediately sent in a technician to fix it. Apparently I didn’t try hard enough, because it turned out that a loose memory module was indeed the culprit. How it got loose (bumps? vibrations?) I don’t know. I certainly expected more robustness from a notebook and a Thinkpad to boot. Is this a deterioration of quality due to the handover by IBM to Lenovo? I certainly hope not.
A4Tech X-710 Gaming Mouse
I bought a new mouse last sunday. I decided to get a new one because although my previous mouse is still working, it is not ergonomic and not responsive because of its ball mechanism. It was also already scraping material off my tabletop because the mouse “feet” had already fallen off. My friend Vinz, who was also looking for a mouse because his mouse is also not ergonomic and was probably a major contributor to his shoulder ache.
I had wanted a Razer or Logitech gaming mouse but they were either hard to find or too expensive. Luckily we chanced upon some A4Tech gaming mice at one shop. We tested a few. They felt right and the price is also right so we each got one. I also had good experience with my second mouse ever, also an A4Tech, so the choice was easy.
The build was excellent. Almost as good as a good Logitech mouse. Mine has a matte black finish with glossy black trim. It is symetrically shaped: important for a lefty like me. It has the usual primary button, secondary button, and wheel. In addition, it has 2 thumb buttons on its left side for additional functions. Unfortunately, it is only easily accessible to right-handers. Somewhat disappointing but no matter, I mostly just use the standard controls anyway. At the bottom is not 4 but 6 mouse feet, for better gliding. Finally, it has a thin mouse cable to reduce drag.
Its optical mechanism can be switched between 400, 600, 800, and 1200 dpi resolutions with just the press of a selector button situated unobtrusively behind the wheel. When you change dpis, the wheel changes color from white, to green, to yellow, to red. This dpi switching mechanism allows you to easily and quickly switch mouse responsiveness depending on your needs e.g. office applications, to RTS (real-time strategy) game, to FPS (first-person shooter) game. I kept mine at red or 1200 dpi. Not only because I like the response at that resolution but the red glow is so cool and sinister as befit a gaming mouse.
As expected, the mouse was very responsive in actual use: office applications and Starcraft. Unfortunately I couldn’t test it with an FPS game since my laptop doesn’t meet system requirements. However, I’m sure it would perform just as well.
Rating: 5/5