Eko Wahyudiharto :: It's All About Works

Actually, this current article has many header titles. As I succeeded uncover several hidden things behind my Aspire One during the installation of Fedora 7. But the great was, it’ll describe how to make Fedora 7 USB boot setup and also revealing what is under the 1st partition of the Aspire One hard drive - the recovery partition indeed. Why I choose Fedora 7 because I already loved it so much, a better performance, quite complete applications including 3rd party additional tools and of course a stable operating system kernel.

What you need to do this is a Fedora 7 boot disk image, an idle USB flash disk at least with 32MB capacity, Fedora 7 ISO DVD image and also a Linux computer system for preparing of USB boot. Anyway, disk partitioning tools such as Partition Magic might be required to restructuring the Aspire One hard drive partition under Windows.

Install disk partitioning tool if you don’t have any dedicated partition for Linux. At minimal, it need 2 system partitions; the root system & swap space. The size is up to you, but in my experiences, 7GB root partition & 500MB swap space was more than enough (see green box on picture below). Anyway, a red box on image referring the Acer recovery partition. This partition is unique. Somehow, we can’t see it from Windows Explorer even that it has been on FAT16 file system. You even can’t reach it from GHOST tool which I though it can. So, it makes me so suppressed & would like to see it physically from Linux.



Back to topic again, after you prepared the partition, put Fedora 7 ISO image on any kind partition with FAT32 file system, so that it readable from Fedora 7 setup. In my experiences, I put it on 2nd partition (drive D under VBOX directory ~ D:\VBOX). Next, it’s time to create the bootable USB disk. Download disk image from this link & extract it on your existing Linux system. Type the command below on current path in terminal where you extract the image.

$ dd if=diskboot.img of=/dev/sdax

The device /dev/sdax refer to your USB flash disk, so make an appropriate for your situation. If nothing goes wrong, now you’re ready to boot the flash drive. Change boot selections from F12 shortcut after you restart the computer. Press Enter to continue.



Then, a welcome screen will appear. Select first menu to begin the installation process. Continue the setup wizard until it asking the installation method screen.



On this chance, simply select Hard drive option then click OK to continue.



Next, the wizard will asking what partition and directory on selected partition hold the image for Fedora 7. On my example, select /dev/sda5 and type VBOX (without the ISO file name) which refer to directory holding image. Click OK again to continue.



The installation will begin. Follow the rest wizard just like the same as you install in normal condition until it completely finished. Now, you have Fedora 7 inside your Aspire One (dual boot with default Windows XP Home). By the way, did you remember when I told you about Acer recovery partition above? Check it out from file explorer (e.g.: Konqueror) after you manually mounting it, you can see the files physically & backup it to safe place.



To gain more additional 5GB space, you can delete it or merge this 1st partition from Windows Explorer to another existing partition using Partition Magic. Be careful, the change of partitions table might caused your Fedora 7 could not boot properly anymore.

Labels: Acer Aspire One, Fedora, Linux, USB Install

How the hell can Google gave me an Acer Aspire One? No no… actually, the money is true from Google but then I exchange it with Aspire One. Fortunately, my Ad Sense checque arrived from Google just for couple weeks ago. And lucky me that this “harvest” time, the amount accumulations from month to month in short was higher than before. So, I guess it’s not too bad that I spent about US$ 520 for a tool to increase my blogging spirit. Yeah, from blog for blog, I though.

At First Sight
There’s so many netbooks present now but I don’t’ know, why I love Aspire One so much? Actually, I was drilling over when it appears for the first time in the middle of the year with that damned 8GB SSD. But, I have to be patient until this hard drive storage version is released officially since I got interested more with large storage. Like others review said that this tiny thing has standard in light weight & also hardware platform, I mean in netbook class. But I was too impressed with Acer cute design, especially with white casing color.



This A105 type released bundled with Windows XP Home & SP3 included. It comes with 120GB hard drive (10GB reserved for recovery partition), 1GB RAM & Atom typically processor. The Aspire One dimension has a slightly built. About 25% smaller than my Acer Travelmate 6291 & 40% littler than my old fatty Micron Pentium III notebook.



Take a look further over their display, the 14” normal screen, 12.1” & 8.9” wide screen. The first display looks too bulky compared with this white Aspire One. It was indeed that non existing of optical drive (and others devices) significantly helping reducing it’s size & weight (almost 4kg on Micron & 1kg on Aspire One). But after all, this is what we call technology, when trends are heading to a smaller & lighter weight devices.



Anyway, using Aspire One to write this article was comfortable enough. The keyboard feels so soft & pleasant to use, even the “weird look” internal touch pad (which some peoples hate it that way). But, I don’t have any trouble as I used both devices. Well, sometime in early, I often hit “=” character when I thought it was a backspace key. But now it doesn’t happened anymore. By the way, as you see on picture below, there’s no more Acer empowerment special key on keyboard panel. The only non standard button is just a power switch.



Having a netbook with 0.3Mpx is more than enough for me, as I rarely (even never) using it as video chat messenger. Anyway, web camera existence in notebook not more than just an accessory (or electronic mirror to self-look for me, precisely). But, it’s all seems alright.



On left panel of Aspire One, there’s 5 I/O connectors available; SDHC for storage expansion slot, 1 USB slot, LAN, VGA out & power jack. Meanwhile on right side there’s 2 USB slot, headset & microphone jack, 5-in-1 card reader (again) & also common Kensington locker. At the front panel, nothing is there except a wireless switch at the right side. Switching on or off as simply as slide it in right direction.



Even that the 8.9” screen looks small, but it’s excellent to display out the 1024x600 resolution mode. Like everybody said, this resolution is standard particularly to seeing website for browsing conformances. You can compared to others which having poor smaller screen (e.g.: 7” with 800x480 resolution) in Asus 1st generation of Eee netbook.



This is my first time having a notebook which has longer age of battery life. With 6-cell, I can make up to 5 hours typing without plugging in the power jack. This is superb for me while I can carrying this over everywhere with no afraid of losing out the power. Unfortunately, one thing I hate is the shape of the battery. It’s too sticky out make it appear being fat. This kind remains me to a local model with this same battery form – which I very dislike it that way.



Core 2 Duo vs Atom: And the Winner belongs to…
Indirectly, the born of Intel Atom has teased me apart. What kind of its CPU performance? Does it match to the price? Is it quite powerful to serve it as programmer machine? Well, here’s the explanation with my style of course. The test environment only involving 2 type of hardware devices; Acer Travelmate 6291 & Acer Aspire One. Please note that this comparison doesn’t purposed to judging device or machine subjectivity but nothing other than “drawing” each of it’s capability in semi-real utilizing. On this chance too, I only use 2 benchmarking application which is SiSoft Sandra Professional 2003 & Futuremark 3DMark 2003.

The first test takes the comparison of both CPU arithmetic benchmarks. SiSoft result explains that Dhrystone ALU & Whetstone FPU/SSE2 in Atom actually is 70% lower than Core 2 Duo. That was surprising me about arithmetic processing speed on Atom. Although, this test still placed Atom more bit powerful than Intel Pentium 4 1.6GHz with 256 L2 cache.



Take a look further to CPU multimedia benchmark; Integer iSSE result on Atom only 20% compared to Core 2 Duo! And Floating Point iSSE is about 60% lower than Core 2 Duo. This means that Atom processor basically has the same performance with Intel Pentium III-S 1.2 GHz with 512 L2 cache.



How about the cache memory benchmark? The result even more fantastic! It shows that cache memory on Aspire One has left about 75% lower than Travelmate 6291. So, all I can said that cache memory on Aspire One typically similar only with Intel Celeron 1.3 GHz on Intel 810E PC100 CL2 SDRAM.



Anyway, memory speed on both systems (the same 1 GB on each) has a bit dispute. Only 10% difference makes Aspire One not too slow when opening an application with huge resources needs compared to Travelmate. With the same references, memory bandwidth used on Aspire One having equal value with SiS 645DX PC2700U CL2 DDR on Intel Pentium 4-B 512 L2 cache.



The only amazing point upward to Aspire One is the fastest hard drive. Drive index of it is 13% speedy than Travelmate even that it has same size of partition within NTFS & 15GB of drive C:\. I still wonder why that it happened. Is it caused by the type of Western Digital manufacture used on Aspire One? Anyway, it did resembled with the use of ATA66 2xRAID0 in 7200RPM with 2MB cache.



Overall with those 5 benchmark tests above still bring Core 2 Duo processor as the winner because it’s approximately 3rd time faster than Atom. Such was the case, I think Aspire One still potential purposed for web based programmer machine beside the use of daily office, internet & presentation only. And for me, the price is quite match for it.



One thing for sure that Aspire One has poor index for gaming machine category. It was proven by it’s low score on 3DMark 2003, about 50% below Travelmate 6291. And it even couldn’t playing Need For Speed: Underground smoothly on 640x480 with medium graphic details (I though it was 10 FPS only). No doubt that netbooks (the same class from all manufactures, I though) is prepared to concede the point of simple jobs like office & internet activities such as blogging, browsing or chatting & not intended to gamers or others difficult task. So, be more considerable before you buy this machine.

Labels: Acer Aspire One, Google Adsense, Review

Aspire One was typically netbook released from Acer. The first series – the A110 which released in the middle of the year - was a revolutionary product intended to intercept the existing of Asus EEE PC & HP MiniNote. The plus was the higher hardware specification (the first Atom processor built-in on netbook class) & lower price, but with the minus of 8GB SSD & Linux OS. It was worthless, since the used of Linux significantly decrease the whole price. Somehow, the SSD & Linux just life in harmony, the performance is great & all devices are well known recognized. These things still makes me amazed.

Anyway, for some customers, the uses of Linux just limit their use. Nothing can be done except playing internet, working with several office applications, manage a bit files & having few of funs. Even the user interface looks weird for them (which - some of - familiarly with Windows GUI). Well of course, there’s a way to solve it with upgrading the OS to Windows XP. Thanks to my boss for borrowing his Aspire One as the unit test for this article.



Let assume that you have successfully made a Windows XP setup from USB Flash Disk (UFD). Now, it’s time to practice your work. First, plug-in the UFD & turn on your Aspire One. Press F12 to make USB boot selection. If your UFD is ok then you will see boot menu on the screen. Select menu #1 as you have to prepare the Windows installation. Follow the on-screen wizard just like common XP setup until you face the hard drive preparation.



Note that your existing Aspire One has 2 partitions in a single 8GB SSD; 6.6GB with Linux file system & 1GB of Linux swap file. That’s why that both partitions shown as Unknown & not well recognized from Windows XP setup. The U: drive refer to UFD, so don’t bother with it. What you need to do is delete the first partition, re-create & formatting it with NTFS file system. Anyway, a quick format is fine. After you do so, simply follow the copying progress.



After the copying files is complete, the system will now reboot for the first time. Still plug-in the UFD, select menu #2 (GUI installation) after boot USB established. The installation will now continue in GUI mode.



This time, you need more than minutes to complete the 2nd stage of installation since the Aspire One SSD performance running on Windows is not much better than Linux. So, I suggest you to make a cup of coffee & having relax with 2 or 3 cigarettes.



After it completed, the 3rd reboot continue & the last phase of installation will run. Now, you will see the first Windows XP boot logo but still, the SSD seems work too hard after boot process. The busy led indicators always on, indicating that read & write process established at low speed. Never mind, just wait until to the rest of process.



And here we go, the desktop are now turn up after a long waiting. Everything seems to be normal, but the performance of the SSD is not increasing at all.



On my experience, I checked out the SSD partition with Partition Magic tools & here below the summary.



SSD Tweaking
To get more space, I merged the 2nd partition into 1st partition. So that the SSD now only have a single partition. It’s not too bad to have 4GB free space for others application installation. By the way, many peoples talk about the lack of SSD performance issue on Aspire One. In a quite moment, I only see & apply 3 solutions for this. The first solution required a change on a key in registry. This purposed is to disabled the memory management prefetch. Just pointing to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters & change the value data to 0 (zero).



Next, you must convert the NTFS file system to FAT32. For this, you need 3rd party application such as Partition Magic. The last tricks is just disabled the D2D Recovery in BIOS options. Even the speed now has increasing significantly after above tricks, but I though the SSD read & write speed still working under it’s standard percentage. However, for single small task processing in this A105 series, it’s just acceptable. Have a great upgrading.

Labels: Acer Aspire One, Fedora, Linux, My Share, My Tricks

What if you have this situation: you need to install Windows XP into a notebook or computer without any existing optical drive on it. In this case, you only have 3 solutions; 1) Leave the situation & stick to old-dummy OS, 2) Buy an (USB) optical drive or 3) Simply using your existing USB drive to create your own setup. This article below will describe you a trick how to create Windows XP installer using an UFD (USB Flash Disk) & make it boot from any computers that allow you to boot from UFD (including netbook, notebook or PC). All you need is a single UFD with 1GB capacity at minimal & another computer with optical drive built-in to make the USB portable process. Don’t forget to provide device drivers & also an original copy of Windows XP CD (or at least both SATA drivers & Windows installer mixed on a bootable CD). Prepare these 3 tools also (bootsect.zip, PeToUSB_3.0.0.7.zip & usb_prep8.zip) before getting started. Download them all from link available.

First, create a folder named xpusb on C:\. Extract 3 zipped files on each folders name, so that you will have same display on yours just like the picture below. After this, you may plug in the UFD to begin preparing the format session.



Next, copy PeToUSB.exe from PeToUSB_3.0.0.7 folder to usb_prep8. Then, execute usb_prep8.cmd. A common DOS based application will run, press any key to continue.



PeToUSB program will running. If your UFD has plugged in, you may see the destination drive on which drive it will be formatted. On my experience, the UFD assigned on H:\ drive letter. Press Start to begin formatting.



After operation completed successfully, a dialog box will show up press OK to continue.



Okey, formatting process has done. Now, open command prompt & enter bootsect path on c:\xpusb. Execute the following command to updating FAT filesystem bootcode to the UFD (H:\ drive letter on me or depends on yours):

Bootsect.exe /nt52 h:

After the bootcode was successfully updated on UFD, now exit from existing command prompt & close PeToUSB application. Load a copy of Windows XP CD into optical drive then back to first command prompt (usb_prep8.cmd) & the display will change to the following image:



Enter “1” to continue to browse your XP CD drive letter & press OK to continue.



Then, enter “2” & give non existing drive letter as virtual drive for Tempimage. Give it “T” as default drive letter.



Last question menu is entering target UFD drive letter (H:\ on me).



The creation of virtual drive T:\ is started. Continue to proceed with format.



After format process completed, the files extraction from CD to virtual drive will established. This will take couple minutes, so I suggest you go to kitchen to make a coffee & back to your desk with a cigarette.



Files extraction process has done & a confirmation window will show. Press Yes to copy files from virtual drive to UFD.



Copying files now established. Please burn your cigarette, sit back, relax & enjoy your coffee. This will take more than couple minutes.



Press Yes to below like confirmation dialog.



And again, press any key to continue. The process is now releasing the T:\ virtual drive.



Your UFD now is ready to boot. Curious with the disk size? It’s a similar to your CD installation source & get synchronized to UFD!



The fact is, there are more than 300MB free on UFD. Is there any additional way you can do to make the UFD more perfect? Yes, sure! Copy the device drivers or portable application into it. Note that this is an optional & you don’t have to do it. A complete set of portable application can be downloaded from this link. For shortcuts, install it first on your local drive. It’s faster than you install it directly onto USB.



After it finished, create a special folder (eg: _PORTABLEAPPS) on UFD. Then, copy installed files in computer to this new folder. You also able to add or remove the application depend on your necessity.



Now you have a complete “weapon” right on a single UFD. The latest process is plug the UFD in your machine, turn it on & activate the UFD boot from BIOS.



After booting from UFD, here come 2 menu displaying on monitor. Select menu #1 (TXT Mode Setup Windows XP). Use only C: drive of computer harddisk as partition for install of Windows XP & then select quick format with NTFS filesystem. XP install copying files is automatic.



After it finished copying files, quit XP setup with F3 or switch off your computer & boot in any case from UFD again & select menu #2 (GUI mode). Let the rest process run as normal as you install from CD. But I noticed, never unplug the UFD until after first logon of Windows XP. Your computer now is ready with Windows XP.

Labels: My Tricks, USB Install

I believe that email is one of communication components that can not be separated from some peoples life. Some persons (including me of course!) think that it seems will be no sunny day without checking an email account. Every day in the morning at the office, I never forget to check it whether only just retrieving or sending something. This will happened too if I were in the middle at weekend on some place or in a time that I must sending someone a file by email. For this necessity, I always counting on mobile phone through GPRS connection (since I don’t have any line to make a dial up, especially in my house).

For me, it’s still a wise idea selecting an email with POP enabled if you are a “price sensitive” type, because it will cost less money compared to login via web based email client (I notice again: if you decide to use your own money to have internet connection). If you has a mobile phone or similar gadget which have email messaging feature, you can utilize it. Article described below will giving you instructions how to setting up email (GMail: Google Mail) on Nokia N95 8GB step by step. I’ll assumed that your GPRS connection is up, having an active GMail account & already enabling POP activation option from Setting menu over GMail web application.

First of all, enter messaging menu from your N95, pick on Options menu & go to e-mail settings.



There’s available 4 objects to set in Mailboxes sub-menu; Connection settings, User settings, Retrieval settings & Automatic retrieval. Now, open Connection settings. This menu only consist of 2 sub-menus; Incoming e-mail & Outgoing e-mail.



Each of it required a specific values regarding to your own account such as User name & Password. Set other values with typical adjustment similar with pictures below (in a series; left is Incoming & right is Outgoing settings).



Note that you have to specify (security) port number each of it which is 995 on incoming & 465 on outgoing. This connection settings is done. Now, entering the user settings menu. Change My name with appropriate to your name.



Leave the retrieval & automatic retrieval settings on its default values (retrieve headers only & disabled automatic retrieval). Once you get back to root menu, your settings has already saved. It’s time to take a send & receive test. If your configuration is well, then now you have an active email client from your mobile phone. Just try & let me see you prove!

Labels: Email, N95 8GB, Nokia

It was beyond my expectation that setting up Bluetooth internet connection from Mac OS seems more simple & easier than any others OS in this world. Since I found this way couple weeks ago, I always waking up my Jaguar from my bed room & get internet connection using Bluetooth cellphone modem to grabbing articles related to my college task necessity. All you need is only a mobile phone and a computer (laptop or PC is OK), both devices must be Bluetooth enabled already. For this test, I using Nokia N95 8GB & my 12” TravelMate.

First of all, open Bluetooth Setup Assistant (upper right taskbar icon from Mac) to pairing the mobile phone. Make sure that Bluetooth on both devices must be enabled before you do this. Click Continue from this window.



Next, select a proper device type & choose Mobile phone option.



After clicking Continue, the computer will searching for mobile phone. Select it in the search result list once the process finished. Next, press Continue.



The wizard will automatically create a passkey random numbers. Next, enter the same number to your mobile phone. Once you have entered it on your mobile phone, the pairing process will be completed.



Make sure that you select second option & let the Jaguar decide it’s default choice or you may want to change regarding to your needs.



On next display, enter the GPRS CID string related to your regional GSM default dial number (*99#) & empty the username & password column since it will be processed automatically.



The Bluetooth Setup Assistant has finished. Next, open Network Setup Assistant to begin the internet connection. Choose I use a telephone modem to dial my ISP option & click Continue.



Focus to Bluetooth selection & click Continue button.



On Bluetooth mini window, just simply press the Connect button.



If the connection has established, you will see a connection status on the bottom left side of the same window referring send & receive signal, connection time & IP public number.



Next, you may now open Safari browser application & start to browse the internet.



That’s it & you’re done. Pretty simple & driverless compared to other OS isn’t it?

Labels: Bluetooth, Mac OSX86, Tips Trik