oyvindhauge.com – Page 17

Digital distribution will prevail

It is no secret that I like digital distribution over the Internet. I do not have any need to gather hundreds of CD, DVD and game covers which only occupy space and gather dust. To get rid of this problem I have started to digitalize my music and movie collection. I will probably write more about this later and provide an open-source-tutorial to ripping and organizing CDs and DVDs.

The day before yesterday, Metallica released their new album Death Magnetic and I had to get my hands on it. I could have bought just a digital copy but as a long time fan of Metallica I opted for the CD. The CD was delivered actually the day before the release date but I was rather disappointed when this was what I found in a thin envelope in our mailbox. The cover was broken, beat and well perhaps not scarred.

When that is said, I think Metallica has succeed here on two fronts with their new album. They have made very good record but they have also created a successful distribution model. Through Mission Metallica I have been able to see a couple of hours of video from the recording of the record, and download about 10 live concerts and four singles. All this before the record was released. I think this is the way to go to stop or at least to reduce piracy. Provide something extra to the ones who pay. When providing something extra, they also make more money. The record was a bit more expensive than a normal CD (30 Euros as compared to a normal price of 18-25 for a new record) and by releasing material over the Internet, Metallica has managed to create a buzz around the album. However the extra 10 Euros were well worth it. In particular the live material is priceless.

For the future I think I will go for digitally distributed movies, games and music. If the provider offers backup I do not have to fear broken CDs and covers, and I do not have to reserve several meters of dusty shelf space to the covers.

A PhD on Open Source on Open Source Part 4 – Desktop Tools

In the previous parts (1 2 3) of this series I have primarily written about how to write articles and thesis using the typeset system LaTeX. Using LaTeX is very convenient for some kinds of documents, in particular large good looking documents where you want to add references. For simpler kinds of documents a WYSIWYG editor is perhaps a better choice.

My editor or tool package of choice is of course OpenOffice. OpenOffice is very much like MS Office and it contains a text editor, a spreadsheet program and a program for making presentations. These should cover most users needs. I have used both the text editor and the spreadsheets quite a lot and in the latest version of OpenOffice, editing .doc (the MS Word document format) also works like a charm. In previous versions of OpenOffice I have experienced some problems editing the same document with both OpenOffice and MS Word but this seems to be resolved.

Probably the two programs I use the most is my web browser and my email client. Thank you Mozilla for Firefox and Thunderbird. I have been using both for several years and they are in my eyes way better than the alternatives, and they are open source. You should not need any other reasons for using them. Pair Thunderbird with Lightning, the calendar plugin, and you have a very good organizer.

If a calendar isn’t enough to organize your thoughts you might consider, FreeMind. FreeMind is an exelent mind mapping software which I use quite often to brain storm and to structure thoughts.

I will probably come back to other desktop tools when, or if, I write about any Linux distributions. Most such distributions come with a lot of useful tools and applications right out of the box and ready to use.

HTPC/Gaming Rig Step 1

The case

After selecting a case for my new living room computer I had to buy some more parts to piece together a running PC. The case I selected was the Lian Li PC-C32, in black. Overall I am satisfied with the case. It is fairly spacious, it looks good, it was pretty easy to mount everything inside of it. However, when I got the case it was a bit bigger and lighter than expected. The plates used for the case were a bit thin and the top lid had two screws in the front which I did not see and they almost made me force the top off. Other people have said the case comes with one motherboard stand too many. I did not have that problem as I installed a microATX board. The stock fans on full speed were a bit nosier than I would have liked too but it was nothing a replacement of fans and a fan controller could not handle. I chose the ZM-MFC1 Plus controller from Zalman.

The hardware

The computer consist of a Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H microATX motherboard with an on-board AMD HD3200 video chip powerful enough to playback full HD video. The AMD 780G chipset is a favoritte among many reviewrs (1). The motherboard is fitted with an AMD Athlon 4850e CPU which only requires a limted amount of power and 4 GB of Kingston DDR2 memory. Both the 1TB Spinpoint F1 hard drive and the SH-S203B DVD player came from Samsung. The plan is to get another hard drive and install it in a RAID level 1 to have backup of images, music and movies. Hopefully will the prices of solid-state-drives fall while the performance contines to increase so I can get such a drive and use it for the operating system drive. The whole ting is powered by a NorthQ Giant Reactor power supply which I had laying around.

The software

I have I have been using Windows Vista 64 because I had a license and I eventually plan on getting a better graphics card to be able to play games. Currently the cards are either too expensive, too noisy or not powerful enough so I think I will be waiting until the next generation arrives or until someone starts selling better cooling solutions for, for instance the AMD 4870X2. If I wasn’t planning on gaming I would have used a Linux distro for sure.

The problems

I wish I could say everything went accoring to plan. Unfortunately it did not. First, the PSU is a bit too noisy. The 850W version of the Zalman ZM1000-HP could be a possible solution. Second, the DVD is way too noisy. I do not plan on using this much but it sounds like a plane taking off. Third, the stock fans were too noisy on full spead. This has been solved by using a fan controller. I might also replace the fans. Fourth, I will certainly get a modular PSU the next time I buy a new one. I hate all those cables. Finally and most annoying. The graphic chip has some problems with HDMI and TVs. If I select the right input on the TV and then turn on the PC I get an image and everything works perfectly. However if I change the input on the TV to something else and then back again to the PC, I do not get any image. It seems it is a problem with the Catalys driver and the handshaking with the TV. I hope this will be fixed with the release of a new driver. As a consequence of this problem I have not used it as much as originally planned. I have not moved neither movies, images nor music to the PC.

The future

As mentioned I have planned to get another disk and a new graphics card. This is however somewhere down the road. It would have been nice to get a quieter PSU as well but with the noise level of the graphic cards of today it is no point of getting a silent PSU before I know which graphics card I will be pairing it with. When new and more powerful CPUS are comming I will probably update those too. However until later the two core AMD should do the job.

The thing that should not be sold (like it is): Tkort

According to the local newspaper, commuters in Trondheim has been unhappy (1 2) with the public monopoly situation and the local bus company for a long time. Team-Trafikk (the buss company) says, not surprisingly that the travelers are happy. Some of the discontent has came from the introduction of an electronic transit pass. This has been going on since 2000 and it has had a problematic inception, costing the travelers several millions NOK (1 2). After seven or eight years of planning and failing, Trondheim has now finally gotten an electronic transit pass.

As a daily commuter and a techno lover I had to try the new card which was released July 1st. I did of course buy it online from tkort.no. The web shop has unfortunately been developed by someone with less computer skills than an eight year old. It is hard to find information about the products and in particular about the prices. I did not have problems but I would say it was difficult to figure out what to get and how much it costs. I have been using computers for more than twenty years and I wonder how it is for old people with limited knoledge of computers and web shops.

When I finally found out what to buy I could not pay using the web shop. Most decent web shops allow you to pay with Visa, Paypal, Mastercard or similar but tkort.no requires you to wire money to their account using your (internet) bank. I did so and the process took 12 days, involving several conversations with customer “support”. They did not provide a lof of help and they almost blamed me for losing the money and wanted me to prove that the money was transferred. They had no or only very limited information about how the system was supposed to work and they had no idea of where my money had taken its way. After 12 days it was ok, and the transit pass was working.

Then two days after the money appeared they called me because they had drawn too much money from my account and wanted me to come to their office so they could correct their bookkeping. They wanted me to fix their problems. I said I was sorry and that I could not help them at that moment and the woman calling me got upset.

After using the pass for some time I must say it works quite well. However, the introduction of the web shop was a disaster and the information given to both the bus drivers and the customer support was not existing. All in all a very good example of hopeless project management. It is not strange they have had several time and cost overruns. Nevertheless, I hope they will sort out the problems as I believe that electronic payment is the future and far supperior to good old cash.

Selecting a HTPC/Gaming Case

Building a combined HTPC and gaming rig for the living room is according to a lot of people a stillborn idea. Nevertheless, I have a HDTV and a surround setup and I want to enjoy PC games using it. Where the HTPC is slim, cool and silent the gaming rig is big, powerful and noisy. Finding a good compromise between these two extremes is challenging and much like trying to cross a cat with an elephant.

To build a good HTCP you would want a PC with a decent storage, capable of high definition (HD) video playback. It should look good in your living room, be small, slim and silent and have a high WAF rating. Most modern computers with an integrated graphic chip coupled with a CPU with low power requirements are able to do the job. Low power requirements mean limited heat which again means no or only very few fans for cooling. Platforms based on AMD’s 780 or Nvidias GeForce 8300 based chipsets have for these reasons been popular.

A gaming rig should produce as many polygons as possible per second. To do this you need a very power hungry CPU and GPU. Power means heat, and to move this heat away from the CPU and the GPU you will need large coolers and a lot of fans. This combined with the fact that most graphics cards are quite long you would want a quite large case for this gaming computer.

For fans there are some simple rules. The larger the fan is the more hot air does it move per second. The higher the velocity of the fan is the more air does it move per second but the noise will rise to unbearable levels.

Requirements

So let us look at the requirements for a HTPC/Gaming computer. I’ll start with the one which are absolute. Since I have a girlfriend it has to look good! Looking good would in this case mean black (to match the other equipment), small and probably shiny.

Second, it should be powerful enough to run modern PC games at resolutions up to 1920*1080. This would include a large and hot graphics card which requires cooling and a pretty deep case. I will also need a decent CPU which would require good cooling. Big tower coolers like TRUE could reach up 160mm but they could be fitted with one or two 120mm fans.

Third, it should be silent. This would include water cooling or really big coolers and several large fans at low velocity. Water cooling would have been fun but it is a bit expensive and I don’t really bother right now. Since I am no millionaire it cannot be too expensive either.

To sum up, it should be a large good looking case which looks small and has room for large coolers, large fans, long graphics cards and a couple of hard drives. Most HTPC cases are small so it is a bit of a challenge to find something which matches all these requirements. However, after searching the web for a long time I found some candidates. And the nominees are:

Antec Fusion 430 Black

This case looks great, uses two 120mm fans for cooling, the critics are great and the price is quite good (about 1200 NOK = 150€). Unfortunately, a bit too small (445mm (W) x 146mm (H) x 414mm (D)) for my planned PC.

Review:

Bjorn3d
Silentpcreview
Tomshardware
3dGameMan (if you can call these reviews 🙂 )

Antec Performance One P182

Another case from Antec. I really love this one, it costs less than 1000 NOK (125€), it is big (520mm (H) x 210mm (W) x 510mm (D)) and has a lot of space for hardware, coolers and five 120mm fans. Unfortunately it is a tower, not a desktop case. If I was looking for a pure gaming rig I would have gone for this one but since it has to fit in the living room it is a no go.

Reviews:

Silverstone CW02

This case is another beauty, at least in my eyes. It is quite tall (435 mm (W) x 225mm (H) x 440 mm (D)) and a large cooler should fit inside. It has quite large fans with one 120mm fan and two 92mm fans. Unfortunately it got a pretty low WAF rating, it is a bit expensive (3800 NOK = 450€) and it could be a problem to fit long graphics cards so was not a winner.

Reviews

Silverstone LC-20

This case has room for in total two 92mm and three 80mm fans. It is fairly large (430 mm (W) x 170 mm (H) x 430 mm (D)) but neither really large coolers nor long graphics cards would fit. It got an overall good WAF rating and the price is attractive (about 1000/1500 NOK or 125/200€ without/with the LCD ). However, there is something to it which I did not like. 80mm fans are perhaps a bit small and there is not plenty of room inside of it.

Reviews

Lian Li PC-C32B

This is the case I selected. It is no way near flawless but it is a decent compromise. It is very deep (426mm (W) x 167mm (H) x 530mm (D)) which would allow long graphics cards, and standard ATX motherboards and power supplies to enter. It has room for two 120mm and one 80mm fans. Coolers up to 140mm should enter according a very helpful forum user at hw.no . The fans should according to some reviews be replaced with some, less nosier ones. The fact that the case is pretty deep is also somewhat of a problem because it will take a lot of space in the living room. Hopefully this will not be too much of a problem. The price was about 1700 NOK (210€). It looks great (without the rack mount handles) and it got a very good WAF rating.

I am eagerly waiting for it to arrive in the mail tomorrow or one of the next few days and I will probably post some images when I get my hands on it. Having decided on the case it only remains to decide on all the other parts of the PC …

Reviews

Some Case Providers

I found several other nice cases when searching for this one and I recommend you to check out the following if you are looking for a HTPC case yourself.