n3wblog tech commentary and observations from the early 21st century

Computing

Computing in general.

Dell Mini 10 Trackpad fix for Crunchbang

In Computing on 17 January 2010 tagged Computing, dell, drivers, Linux, mini, netbook, synaptics, touchpad, trackpad with 1 comment

Late last week I was griping about the poor trackpad performance on the Dell Mini 10 and decided to try to fix it. It was usable, but difficult and caused a lot of erroneous clicks and mouse-moves and was a bit like trying to use a Fisher Price toy to perform brain surgery. Clunky, imprecise, [...]

Dell Mini 10 with Ubuntu /Crunchbang touchpad issues

In Computing on 14 January 2010 tagged Computing, dell, drivers, mini, netbook, trackpad with 1 comment

A commenter asked about the horrible touchpad on the Dell Mini 10. Not sure if he was using Linux or Windows, but a couple of quick searches found some mention of a better driver. Top link was on superuser.com and has some hopefully helpful links. I’ll post back with results when I’ve had a chance [...]

Dell Mini 10 and Crunchbang

In Computing on 27 December 2009 tagged Computing, dell, firefox, laptop, Linux, netbook, thunderbird with 6 comments

Over the past week and a bit, I’ve been playing around with Crunchbang Linux on a Dell Mini 10 netbook. The experience has been entertaining at least and Crunchbang works surprisingly well once you get it configured.

Out of the box, Cunchbang is a fairly minimalist desktop environment, using Openbox and Tint as the desktop and [...]

Modifier Keys broken in OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

In Computing on 28 September 2009 tagged Apple, bug, drivers, fail, logitech, Software with 2 comments

I said I wasn’t going to let this happen to me again, but dad-gum-it, I just couldn’t stay away. I like this mouse too much to leave it at the bottom of a bin. So when I upgraded to Snow Leopard this week, I figured there’d be problems. This was a surprise though.
The setting to [...]

Windows 7 Wake From Sleep

In Computing on 2 September 2009 tagged 7, hibernate, howto, pc, problems, sleep, tips, wake, windows with 2 comments

Since installing Windows 7 I haven’t been able to put my PC to sleep either in hybrid mode or hibernate. So I did a little digging and found some useful tips on INTERNET.
If you put your computer to sleep in one of these modes and find it immediately wakes back up again, fans whirring, login-screen [...]

Duplicate Contact and Calendar entries in iPhone OS 3.0

In Computing on 5 July 2009 tagged Apple, calendar, contacts, handheld, iPhone, iPod, mobileme, os3.0 with 2 comments

I noticed something odd when thumbing through my calendar the other day on my iPhone. I noticed I had doubles of every entry in my calendar. I figured it was a sync issue so plugged it into my machine and noticed that I was syncing to the computer as well as to MobileMe. I figured [...]

10.5.7 ongoing weirdness

In Computing on 8 June 2009 tagged Apple, freeze, issues, leopard, osx, problems, sleep, wake with 2 comments

I managed to fix the wake-from-sleep problem that I originally suffered from on my MacPro. A reboot (or two) seemed to fix it and it sleeps without waking up now. I am still seeing some pretty weird issues with other areas though, particularly the Finder. Mapping drives through Finder seems prone to issues, often taking [...]

10.5.7 Breaks Sleep, Hopes and Dreams

In Computing on 17 May 2009 tagged Apple, osx, problems, sleep with 3 comments

Also known as the 10.5.7 sleep problem.
There are a bunch of reports of Mac OS X 10.5.7 update breaking sleep on a variety of machines ranging from PowerMac G5s to MacBooks. I can personally vouch for having issues with my MacBook Pro and MacPro*.
The recommended fixes range from resetting the SMC on MacBook Pros to [...]