OBi110 VOIP device Brief Review

 

So the ooma worked for only about 3 days, then no matter how I tweak it, the voice quality suffered, particularly the upload speed which results people who received my calls can’t hear me clearly. The voice became garbled. Therefore I have to choose my next device – OBi110 Voice Service Bridge and VoIP Telephone Adapter. Apparently, this device works well in my setup. Well, except for some reason, the phone service always disconnect at around 30min on first call. The subsequent call never has this problem.

Most importantly, the voice quality is much better for the upload speed, although there’s still some occasional package delay/dropout as reported by people who got my call. The initial setup of the OBi110 is pretty easy, provided that your google voice account is already setup. Then all you have to do is to sign up account on OBitalk.com and put in google credentials. You can directly access the adapter using the IP address unlike ooma. The setup options however are definitely NOT for newbies. The interface also is a bit laggy. The call history doesn’t seem to be very accurate. But for US users you don’t have to do any changes.

The device supports caller ID, but lacks E911. For E911, you can subscribe to callcentric and pay the tax using the SP2. But some settings are required inside the device.

Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with this device for now. Hope google won’t charge for a lot for the coming year.

Ooma optimization – Connection, Port forwarding etc

Got ooma VOIP device, so far so good. Here are a few things I did following some online discussions:

QoS (quality of service) Explain – The Proper Way:

First of all - it's best if OOMA is installed in-front of the router.
That's a #1 rule for any VOIP service if you want it to be the most reliable.
The difference in quality could be just in that 1 call out of 100 but the difference will be there.
OOMA in front of the wireless router is a MUST if you want to have the best quality of your phone service.
Rule #2 is to then properly setup QoS to ensure your phone voice quality will never suffer under any internet bandwidth usage pattern in your household. No matter how much bandwidth you have (DSL users normally limited with 3mbps in download, cable users vary from 10 to 15 to 25 mbps, FIOS is 50 mbps and higher) - there will be those few (or not so few) times when you'll be using a lot of bandwidth streaming some Netflix movies, downloading/uploading some movies, playing online games and so on.
So reserving bandwidth for OOMA calls is very important.
Below applies only to the configuration when OOMA is in front of the wireless router and thus can control the bandwidth.
The way OOMA does it is exactly as described in the first post of this thread:
- when OOMA QoS is not set and you are in a call - OOMA starts throttling down bandwidth it leaves for everything else very UNINTELLIGENTLY - it simply reserves about 70 to 80% of internet bandwidth for that ongoing call and let the rest to be used by the wireless router (your Internet). I guess the reason it's done is that with QoS is not set (empty or set to 0/0) OOMA doesn't know bandwidth capability of the internet line and by default assumes that it's the slowest line available thus reserving 80% of its bandwidth to ensure quality of ongoing call. I'm sure this not so smart behavior will be fixed eventually via firmware update but until those times not setting QoS or setting it to 0/0 is not recommended.
The way QoS works at this time is that OOMA will reserve approximately 20% of your Internet bandwidth if it's specified in your Upstream and Downstream settings of QoS on "Advanced" page. So if your cable provides 10 mbps on downstream and 1 mbps on upstream setting those settings in QoS to 80% of those values is actually INCORRECT. And the explanation is simple:
80% of 10 mbps = 8 mbps.
OOMA will now assume that your internet bandwidth is 8mbps and will reserve 20% of it when calls are in progress:
20% of 8 mbps = 1.6 mbps
So when you are in call your internet bandwidth of 10mbps will be throttled down by OOMA to (8 mbps - 1.6 mbps) = 6.4 mbps. If you receive a 2nd call and have two calls in progress at the same time - another 1.6 mbps will be used so your maximum internet bandwidth (or speed of downloads) will be decreased to (8 mbps - 1.6 mbps - 1.6 mbps) = 4.8 mbps.
So we are down to a very important question - OOMA had reserved 10 mbps - 6.4 mbps = 3.6 mbps to provide quality of one ongoing call - but does OOMA really needs so much bandwidth for one call? The answer is NO.
The highest amount of bandwidth used by the highest quality call is not more than 0.4 mbps.
You need only 0.4 mbps for one ongoing call or 0.8 mbps for two concurrent and ongoing calls (when you use both lines of OOMA at the same time). This numbers are EXAGGERATED by me - no more than 100 kbps (or 0.1 mbps) is actually required for high quality call.
So how do you setup QoS properly - without sacrificing too much bandwidth and without affecting quality of your calls?
You have to set your upstream and downstream values in QoS to much higher of your actual bandwidth.

In the example above with actual bandwidth of 10 mbps down and 1 mbps up (most common cable bandwidht in the USA) you should set your bandwidth to about 12000 (12 mbps) in downstream and 1200 (1.2 mbps) in upstream settings.
And the calculations will be as follows:
downstream bandwidth allowed for Internet = 80 % of 12 mbps = 9.6 mbps
downstream bandwidth allowed for 1 ongoing call = 20% of 12 mbps = 2.4 mbps
And here is the trick - OOMA will think that it's going to get it's 2.4 mbps for an ongoing call and will happily allow 9.6 mbps for Internet usage. But in reality your internet is limited to 10 mbps so the actual bandwidth you left to OOMA is 0.4 mbps per call which is more than enough to ensure excellent call quality.
If you have any other bandwidth - you can use the calculations above to approximate correct settings for your QoS values.
If you have DSL line and your bandwidth is limited to 3 mbps - I would make the calculations above to allow only 0.1 mbps per call to ensure you don't waste your bandwidth when you are on the call and on the internet (i.e. streaming Netflix movie) at the same time.
Hope this post will help someone to perform proper QoS configuration.

 

If you connect the ooma behind the router, you have to connect an Ethernet cable to its home network port to access the management page. Thankfully there is a way to get around this.

1. Setting Ooma Telo Port Forwarding, with Ooma Telo located behind (LAN Side) of your router. Add Port forwarding so that you don’t have to connect a computer to the Ooma Telo Home Port for viewing or modifying Ooma Telo settings.
a. Access your Ooma Telo home port by plugging in a patch cable from the Ooma Telo home port to a computer’s network card port. Sometimes you have to restart your computer after installing the patch cable, so that a proper connection occurs.
b. Type http://setup.ooma.com in you browser address window and hit enter. The “Ooma Setup” window opens.
c. In the left hand Navigation window, select “Advanced”.
d. At the top of the page record the Home Port IP Address: number (Probably 172.27.35.1).
e. At the bottom of the page under Port Forwarding, select “Add New Rule”. Enter the following:
i. Start Port: block enter 80.
ii. End port: block No entry.
iii. Type: Select TCP
iv. Forward to IP address: Enter the Home Port IP address that you recorded above (Probably 172.27.35.1).
v. Select “Add Rule” with your mouse.
f. From a computer connected to your router, in the browser address window, enter the Ooma Telo Static IP address, or IP address that your router assigned to the Ooma Telo. Looks Like http://192.168.1.199.
g. Ooma setup window should open, without the computer being connected to the Ooma Telo Home Port.

 

There is also another solution which is far more complicated than this, but it didn’t work very reliable. So just stick to this one!

Ooma suggests that you turn off Quality of Service settings in Ooma Setup, by setting upstream and downstream Internet speeds to Zero, if the Ooma device is connected (behind) to one of the router LAN ports. Than if your router provides VoIP priority, the Ooma device IP address is reserved with a permanent lease, in the router, and then the router VoIP priority is set for the Ooma device's IP address.
Ooma uses iLBC (default codec).
Ports:
This is what Ooma lists for ports, but I have never believed the list is complete.
http://www.ooma.com/app/support/advance ... vice-ports
More Information:
Star Commands
*15, *16, *17, *18, *19 - Call number using Bluetooth headset 1,2,3,4,5
*06, *06, *07, *08, *09 - Intercom with Bluetooth headset 1,2,3,4,5
*67 - Do Not Send Caller ID
*69 - Return last call
*70 - Disable Call Waiting Tone
*82 - Send Caller ID
*91 - ????
*96 - Use iLBC Codec
*97 - ????
*98 - Use G711 Codec w/o Fax mode
*99 - Data/Fax call
*#483 - Google Voice
*#*#001 - Speak the current Telo Version
*#*#191 - Unregister all handsets
*#*#501 - Bluetooth Discovery
*#*#511 - Turn off Telo key press sounds
**0 - Line1
**1 - Line2
dial *#*#099 on the phone attached to Telo to issue a factory reset

Finally Completed My Laptop Mouse/KB set using Logitech Unifying Technology

So my laptop was equipped with Bluetooth, I was thinking of using Bluetooth mouse and keyboard to save an USB port. But it looks like there are a couple issues:

1. Price. Bluetooth mouse and keyboard are pretty expensive, I’m not willing to spent so much.
2. Battery Life. Bluetooth radio, at least v2.0 consumes too much energy.
3. Performance. Looks like I can’t find a single good Bluetooth mouse on the market based on the reviews I have read. Most of the issues are connections, it appears Bluetooth tend to drop connections more often.

So I have to go back to the traditional 2.4G RF route. I’ve been using a Logitech M310 mouse for months now. It does support Logitech’s Unifying technology, just look for the unifying logo. It’s just that the mouse doesn’t come with a Unifying dongle. Last week, Staples offer a cheap K360 keyboard, so I was able to complete my Mouse/KB combo. The pairing of unifying devices are super simple, all you have to do is to download the software, turn off/on the devices, and you are all set. It’s far easier than Bluetooth, so I was pretty impressed. Also the unifying dongle performs the same as the non-unifying dongle with great range.

The K360 features a laptop like chiclet keyboard, very compact. It has exactly the same layout as on my SONY laptop, including the sucking PgUp and PgDn. But I guess it’s a good thing, I don’t have to get used to yet another layout. The FN function keys it provided performs a different set of task than my laptop keyboard. And there are six multimedia keys which are good compliment to the laptop keyboard. The only thing it’s missing is the backlight. But currently only K800 has that feature, and that’s $80 which is way too expensive.

HP touchpad webOS 3.0 initial impression

So I’m one of the fortunate ones who got a HP touchpad 16GB during their fire sale last week. I’ve been using this device for the weekend. And here are some of my impressions, with comparison to my phone which is powered by Android 2.2.

Overall I wasn’t super satisfied with the performance compared to my Android phone. Operations as simple as swiping between screens when multiple cards (HP’s way of multitasking) are opening. App launching speed is generally slow. Most operations require clicking the home button. There are instances when the OS prevent you from creating more cards (equivalent of force close on Android). All of these happen even after disabling logging and overclocking the device. This is very unacceptable since the hardware seems pretty good: 1.5Ghz dual core processor, 1GB memory seem all wasted. Even my 600Mhz 256MB Android phone can run multitasking very smoothly!

First about the booting time, there are two kinds of booting:
1. Normal booting, takes a long time. (My laptop with win 7 could probably boot faster)
2. LUNA restart which is required when you install patches from preware.

Wifi connection - apparently I can connect it to both 2.4G and 5G mode. Three days into using it, I figured I want to change the wifi connection, but when I’m sitting right next to my router, the damn thing cannot detect the WiFi signal (2.4g) Touchpad WiFi seems defective? Can't find any network! Sure a simple reboot will fix this problem, but it’s really not very acceptable.

The screen is 1024*768 4:3. The aspect ratio isn’t optimized for widescreen movie viewing, nor good for general web viewing. Maybe it’s just me used to the widescreen monitors… The screen is glossy, and if you look at the screen with tiliting when it’s off, you can somehow see the dots for the touch panel. The screen has a lot of backlight bleeding when viewing in the night. Overall the screen is mediocre at the best.

The storage, I got the 16GB model. When I got it, I have only around 11GB available space. The app size is usually pretty big, could be about the same size as windows program. And webOS has a limitation of 2GB file size. There’s no expandable storage option, but it seems the device does support USB host?

On the software side, first the webOS lacks support for a lot of languages. It only gives the usual English, Spanish, and French support. There’s no asian language support (IME), but it does support unicode. You can get apps from both official HP App Catalog or Preware (homebrew). Only very few apps are optimized for Touchpad, majority of them are for small screen mobile phone, if viewed under Touchpad, they will be in simulation mode which only occupies half of the screen. The useful apps on HP App Catalog are usually paid program, could range from 0.99 to over $10, averages about $5, and most don’t offer free or trial version. So you have to be fairly rich to use this device. HP has been offering some free code for the paid apps, but they run out in a few hours. The ones on Preware are mostly for older webOS, therefore they mostly don’t run well. The most useful ones are a few patches such as unthrottle the downloading speed, overclocking the device. For optimizing the device, just follow this one.

Notification system, I think the notification bar is too thin, it’s very hard to press the buttons accurately especially when it wear the ipad folio case (not fitting perfectly). The system incorporates web search, email, music, general setting (screen rotation lock, airplane mode, wifi, etc). I think it generally works OK, especially the email notifications, but I still prefer Android’s pull down style.

The power button, it doesn’t support reset, vibration, etc via long press of the power button like Android or Symbian. There is a patch on Preware, but it didn’t work for me. So to restart the device, you have to go to Settings->Device Info->Reset Options. It’s just way too long process.

Pre-loaded software are minimal at the best, includes web browser, email, calendar, contacts, Skype video, picture video browser, music player, Amazon Kindle, youtube, maps, memo, PDF, office, but none of them are perfect IMO. The web browser loads webpages very slow and almost fails loading external links EVERY SINGLE time. The browser is NOT multi-tabbed, to switch between tabs is a pain. Also there is no way to adjust text size, the text on a 10in device is just way too small IMO. The email is all right, but again since the web browser fails loading external links or emails with pictures, I can’t really check some of my emails. The calendar works OK, it syncs with Google calendar, I installed the default to month view on Preware. The contact feature is not super useful, but it does sync with Gmail. The Skype video has very inferior quality, the video just breaks up, I don’t think the either the device or the OS can handle it. The picture and video browser, I’m not sure why they combine these two together. It can sync with Photobucket and Snapfish for the online photo. I happen to use Photobucket a lot, so I definitely appreciate this feature, it’s far more convenient than the individual app on Android. But unfortunately the picture browser doesn’t support sorting, the pictures appear in random order (maybe by creation date?), while I generally want to to be in name ascending order. Sadly it doesn’t include syncing with Picasa which I use a little bit on the Android phone. The video player, I haven’t tried it yet since I don’t have any mp4 format (which is the only one that’s compatible), majority of my encoded videos are avi, wmv, and mkv. There is a 10Mbps and max 2GB limit on the video. They have a handbreak preset for Touchpad on precentral. I’m not sure if the h.264 this device support is main or high profile. The music player is good enough, it doesn’t play APE or FLAC. Amazon Kindle works fine here, but it doesn’t offer dictionary like the one on Android. Youtube, there’s no separate app, instead it’s just a website link. The device can play 720p video with adequate framerate, but chock on 1080p. Maps, I’m not sure which service it’s using, doesn’t look like google maps. There’s no GPS equipped on these WiFi only models. The only thing I’m pretty satisfied is the account management, which they call synergy, it offers a lot of services which you can manage multiple accounts easily. The box.net and dropbox accounts are only integrated with Quickoffice though, meaning only word, excel, PDF files can be pulled. In order to have full access to every file, there is a separate box.net app. (You get free 50GB storage for box.net as an HP Touchpad owner). There’s no dropbox app though.

For productivity, the touchpad comes with Adobe PDF reader and Quickoffice. For the latter, the new update 8/29 enables local word and excel editing, functionality is very limited. Not as good as thinkfree office on android, my cellphone could do more than what quickoffice offers such as inserting pictures and drawing pictures.

And the system doesn't come with a native camera app, instead you have to pay .99 for an app with only a single button - capture. No zoom, no white balance, no contrast, nothing. And the camera is front only. Both the camera and the Skype video quality are very poor.

Aug 2011 BD Purchase – Rurouni Kenshin OVA Tsuiokuhen

 

 

Thanks for Aniplex US to import this, otherwise we would have to pay far more than $65 due to currency conversion issue.

 

It’s pretty much the Japanese edition plus an English translated booklet. The booklet is not as fancy as the original Japanese one, but gets the job done I guess. The packaging is digipak, and arranged from right to left. The spec includes 1080p 4:3 video, LPCM, DTS-HD 5.1, and English DTS.

 

PS3 firmware 3.55->3.56->3.60->3.61->3.65->3.66 Nothing but Security Patches!

Haven’t updated for the firmware for quite some time, but nothing notable new features have been introduced since 3.55, because SONY has been busy combating with hackers. But thanks to that we all get some free games.

3.55 and 3.56 are pure security patches to disable jailbreak.

3.60 adds online storage (manual) and controller save setting.

3.61 forces user the PSN login password after the infamous hacking which caused the network down for almost two month.

3.65 and 3.66 are security patches as well. 3.65 is not mandatory, while 3.66 is, not sure what new has been added.

Scenasrist BD, x.264, qpfile chapter points

 

So I’ve been doing some experiments with x.264 encoding for Scenarist BD. I’ve been encoding with x.264 for a while, but pretty much for subtitling purpose since playback on raw BD while subbing is still too much to ask, even for my 1st gen i7 setup. And for professional production, I’ve been using Sonic CineVision 100%. Not that I’m super satisfied with the result, I can’t seem to find a better choice. But for anything under 10Mbps, the performance is really terrible.

So I decided to try x.264 by following this site. It’s pretty self explanatory. The only difficulty is putting the chapter marks on I frames. CineVision and Scenarist BD use very similar *.csv format for chapter marks, while x.264 requires qpfile which is somewhat different. The former ones use HH:MM:SS:FRAME#, and they have to be 24000/1.001 sped up ones (have to do 23.976->24 fps conversion, same goes for 30fps 30000/1.001), while qpfile uses total frame#. My NLE software is SONY Vegas, and I use frameserver as output, then create avs file, finally serve into megui. Unfortunately, this route doesn’t honor the chapter marks set in Vegas. So the qpfile is required. And if the chapter marks don’t match, you’ll get warnings in Scenarist BD (exact wording: PlayListMark is not an I-Picture). Although this is allowed in BD spec, you’d always want the chapter marks to be on I frame. In my experiment, the timecode in Vegas matches Scenarist BD format. SO here is what I’ve been doing:

Sample *.CSV file for CineVison is:

The timecode is copied from Vegas:

Same clip, just change the time format in Vegas, then copy it to a newly created qpfile (with notepad *.qpf):

0 K -1
4882 K -1
7075 K -1
10660 K -1
11062 K -1
14824 K -1
17700 K -1
21357 K -1
23359 K -1
25134 K –1

As for the timecode in Scenarist BD, you can use *.csv or *.tsv. The former is simpler, while the latter supports chapter name. The difference here between CineVision and Scenarist BD is that in Scenarist, you have to specify framerate and nondrop or drop frame.

Timecode Format    23.976    NonDrop   
Chapter Number    Timecode    Chapter Label    Mark Type
1    00:00:00:00       
2    00:03:23:10       
3    00:04:54:19       
4    00:07:24:04       
5    00:07:40:22       
6    00:10:17:16       
7    00:12:17:12       
8    00:14:49:21       
9    00:16:13:07       
10    00:17:27:06       
11    00:18:19:19       
12    00:20:31:05       

So for timecodes directly from Vegas, there’s no need to do frame conversion, but frames from DVD ifo or BD mpls files, it’s very likely that frame sped up is needed.

Cisco Linksys E2500 Router Review

 

So my old D-Link router bit the dust, I had to get a new one. This time I thought it’s better to make a change since I’ve been using three D-Link routers for the past six years. So the new router I get is the Cisco Linksys E2500 Advanced Simultaneous Dual-Band Wireless-N Router. It’s a pretty new product and it’s the upgrade from the E2000 line. I’ve been using this router for two weeks now, so here is the review.

On the physical design, this E2500 doesn’t have gigabyte ports unlike the E2000. I have a D-Link 8 port gigabyte switch so it didn’t bother me, plus I have at least five wired connection devices, so even if it does come with gigabyte ports, I’m still in short. It has odd shape which you can’t place it vertically or stacking with other device on top very easily. When placing horizontally, it takes up a lot of space. I don’t see a mounting option either. It doesn’t have front LED. And they call this “next-generation industrial design”… The old E2000 series seems to have some heat issue where they get lots of refurbished units. So far this E2500 has been working extremely fine without any disconnecting issues. Also the heat generation seems fine.

The router comes with one Cat5e cable and an installation CD only, no printed manual. It doesn’t list any default router address and password on the package or the router itself, which is kind of odd since all routers I’ve been used (D-Link, Buffalo, Trendnet) list them. I guess they want users to use their Cisco connect app. But I opted out to not install since I don’t want another piece of useless software. I found the router address on internet anyway: 192.168.1.1, user name: admin, pw: admin. There’s no way to create sub accounts, you can only change the admin account’s password.

For performance on accessing from web browser, in IE9 there’s slight hiccups, it’s just take longer to load for some reason. But in firefox, it’s pretty smooth.

For the interface, it’s about the same design as D-Link, except it’s not as attractive as D-Link. One thing I don’t like is there’s only a big help button, when you click it, it opens on another webpage which is kind of inconvenience. I like the ones which list help the same page. On the security side, there’s no timeout, which is kind of unsafe. Also I can’t find any button to log out? Once you login, you stay login until you close the web page… And there seems no limit on the number of users you can access the router, which is what I wanted. (The Buffalo one only limits one user at a time which could be extremely frustrating). Another potential security issue is that for wireless password, it just list them there without any protection whatsoever. So if someone gains access to your router, they can easily change the password…

There are all the standard features you can expect: DDNS, firewall, port forwarding, VPN, DHCP reservation, QoS, etc. The port forwarding and QoS settings seem a bit more straightforward than the D-Link. The only new feature is the guest access. It lists as an unsecured connection, users have to open in a web browser and enter password to gain access to your wireless network. I don’t find this feature to be useful so I turned it off. This is not what I thought based on my first impression. I thought you are getting two wireless SSIDs which you can secure both. But well, I don’t need it anyway. Well, another small feature is the parental control which you can restrict access to certain website at specified time period. It’s not useful for me either.

Firmware updates: The firmware it came with is 1.00, but there’s already an update 1.01, so I proceed updating it. The process is fast and smooth, all the settings are retained which is a surprise.

Wireless connection: Another reason I need an upgrade is of course the 802.11n standards. This router supports simultaneous 2.4G and 5G mode, but sadly I don’t have any compatible device for the 5G. So I’ll just comment on the 2.4G performance. I have three devices I need to wirelessly connected:

1. a SONY laptop with Atheros AR9287 chip (supposed to support full 300Mbps), but it connected this router at 144Mbps only, no matter how I tweak the settings on both sides.

2. a Toshiba laptop with Realtek chip (support upto 144Mbps), but it connected to this router at 72Mbps.

3. LG optimus T android phone (wireless G).

For the SONY, after fiddling in win7, I found once enabling the AdHoc 11n option. With this enabled, I can finally stream full Blu-ray rips upto 48Mbps without any hiccups over the wireless network.

And most important, the router has been rocking solid. I recently switched ISP, and I was told there’ll be lots of signal loss due to the length of the cable coming to my apartment. But apparently the signal loss wasn’t much a concern. The only problem is I need to reboot the previous D-Link router almost everyday, otherwise the internet will get disconnected and never back up until reboot. After the D-Link stopped working, I changed to my backup router, a Buffalo, but this one has the same problem of disconnecting everyday. So I thought this was a line problem and almost made me to call the ISP. But fortunately after I get this router, I haven’t had any disconnecting issues at all. So I’m pretty happy with the switch. Hopefully it will be this way for a long time.

My Playstation 3 Hard Drive Change Experience

 

So I finally made the decision to upgrade the Playstation 3 hard drive. I got the Hitachi travelstar 750GB drive. It’s a standard 2.5in 9.5mm height, 5400RPM drive. Unfortunately, it’s a 4k advanced format drive, which from the information gathered, the PS3 OS is supposed to not support it and have some performance issue which causes game stuttering. But still I took the bite, worst case I can always return it… My Playstation 3 was the original 60GB. I’ve been wanted to upgrade the hard drive for a while, but never made the decision until the recent PSN hacking incident where I can get a few games for free. That pushed me to switch out the hard drive, pretty in desperate of needing one. And here’s the story:

Frist found a used drive, formatted it with large fat32, and performed a backup, the went well. Then went out to get the drive, and here’s where the adventure started… The screws! I never thought the screws would cause so much trouble! Without the right size screw driver, it’s impossible to unscrew these damn 5 screws. Well, the blue screw isn’t that bad for the tool I have. But for the 4 small screws that mount the drive, it’s virtually impossible to make them move! I fought them for a good two hours, after getting tips online using the plier since I stripped two of them. After replacing the drive, I replaced the two stripped ones with the standard screws which have the rounded head and sticking out on the latching side. These two will fit into the case, on the other side, I just screwed the original ones with again the plier… The standard ones don’t fit. And I think I’ve overcome all the trouble. But no, the last step which restoring the backup failed mysteriously. I got error message 800283E7 around 21%. Upon researching, it’s probably some issues with external hard drive, or game DRM. So lessons learned, never trust the software. When backup, you should perform a system backup, AS WELL AS a manual backup. The system backup files are just a bunch of encrypted *.dat files, it’s useless since there’s no way to stripe them out… Fortunately I don’t have much loss since the original hard drive was 60GB only (an OEM seagate), and my backup size was 32GB with mostly games, mp3, and pictures. The games I can always retrieve from the downloading list. For the mp3, it’ll take a while for me to re-rip though.

The process which originally I thought was really simple, took me a whole damn day to do, and still failed miserably. It’s THE most frustrating thing I’ve encountered with my Playstation 3.

As far as the new hard drive performance, I can’t say much yet. I’ll keep updated. But right now, I’ve copied around 100GB video files onto the hard drive through TVersity’s DLNA server, and it’s been really smooth.

SONY VPCF13UFX/B Laptop Review 06-28-11 Update

 

06-28-11 Update: Some comment on the Atheros AR9287 PCI-e wireless card after switching a wireless n router. See at the back.

06-12-11 Update: It’s been another month, the laptop has been running pretty smoothly. The AC adapter seems fine for now. And almost no incident of BSOD after I figured out the driver conflicts except one incident where a kernel crash occurred one morning due to ntoskrnl.exe. But this is after almost a full month continuously running without shutting down. I’ve also upgraded the display driver to 270.61, which I had only encounter the driver kernel crashing for once. I’ve also tried encoding some video on this machine, while there’s definitely some speed boost, it’s not as significant as I had hoped. But I have to admit that my encoding parameters are quite demanding…

05-11-11 Update: First major follow up after two month and a half of heavy use. OK, bought this machine on Feb 25th, AC adapter started making constant high pitch buzzing noise on May 4th. Have to call SONY support on May 6th (Friday) to get a replacement AC adapter. Was told that it will arrive within 7 days. But received it on May 9th (Monday). That was pretty fast, but still disappointed at how unreliable the product was…

So the left is the replacement model VGP-AC19V45, the right is the original shipped model VGP-AC19V15. As you can see, the replacement is much larger, which translates to much heavier than the shipped one. But they did have the same spec (input, output). The replacement is still NOT entirely “quite”, you can hear the electronics (presumably a fan?) running if you stick your ears to it. It became more obvious in the night when everything is quite, you can hear it within a short distant. The packaging indicated that the replacement may or may not be refurbished. Upon checking, the 45 is indeed an old model that shipped with laptops manufactured last year, the 15 comes with the new ones shipped this year! One minor improvement for this replacement is that it handles the interference a lot better, you can barely hear the noise from headphone port, well, still a little during the night… So maybe the old adapter was DOA right out of the box? That’s what I want to say about the adapter for now. But I’m sure I’ll request another one AND the battery by the end of the one year limited warranty.

Another quality issue I have recently is the BSOD in Win 7 caused by drivers. The two types of BSOD I’m encountering are the netio.sys caused by the nic (not sure if it’s the Marvell Yukon gigabit or the atheros wireless) and nusb3xhc.sys caused by NEC USB 3.0 driver respectively. It would almost BSOD every single DAY, completely randomly! So I reinstalled the system from scratch, actually installed Win 7 Ultimate this time. But before that I went to the SONY website to pick up all the drivers, have to download that retarded taxi driver program… I opted to not install a lot of the unnecessary software this time, the installation is apparently smooth, every component worked fine except I didn’t install the hardware diagnose program and VAIO media gallery so that I can’t use the ASSIST and VAIO button. I didn’t install the auto update program as well since at this point I can no longer trust the “official” drivers from SONY. But as I had expected, this didn’t stop the machine from BSOD with the nusb3xhc.sys from crashing! Then I suspected it must be the “official” drivers! So I uninstalled it, and grabbed the driver from NEC directly. Now it seems to be working fine, at least for the past week I haven’t restarted the machine! I never installed the two network drivers BTW, therefore haven’t encountered any BSOD from netio.sys crashing. The atheros driver is from win7, the Marvell driver is from the manufacturer since win7 has a really old driver. So anyway, here are the drivers for NEC USB 3.0 controller (2034) [the official one from SONY is 2040 or 2041, but somehow 2034 is newer?] and Marvell Yukon gigabit (11.41.3.3).

 

BTW another issue I have is the Nvidia driver seems to crash from time to time, then had a kernal recovery. During the crash, there will be a split of second that the screen would go black, sort of like win7 switching from aero effect to no effect. But since this doesn’t happen too often and didn’t BSOD, I haven’t taken any action on this one. Well, the only thing I could do is to install a newer driver I guess. And hope for the best, it’s not a hardware issue! The driver from SONY (259.03) is apparently a special Tesla driver.

Also I’ve enabled Virtualization permanently in BIOS since I need to use VMware. There’s apparently very little impact on the fan noise unlike I said earlier.

04-07-11 Update: Minor follow up. Now I discovered that both running on AC or on DC battery, this machine will output some constant humming noise ALL the time, this is particularly noticeable if you are in a very quite environment. The noise comes from the power button area on the right.

When on AC, there's also the noise from headphone port which I'm fighting with since day one. However, I found that if the battery level drops below 75%, even if you're recharging (means on AC), the noise disappears! But when charging above 75%, the noise starts returning. I don’t think there is any fix on this problem except attaching an external sound card!

03-07-11 Update: I’ve got the Realtek audio mystery mostly figured out. It’s more of a problem from my environment. Mainly the interference of the noise issue is from the power supply due to my building is NOT properly wired. When attaching the power plug in, the noise IS there, but when using internal battery, the noise is NOT present! Also, the SPDIF does support ac3 and DTS pass-through, but by default it’s off. 

I’ve been looking for a laptop for some time now. So I finally decided to bring home a SONY VPCF13UFX/B last week. Got it from local retailer store with somewhat OK price. I was actually waiting for the sandy bridge ones, but this Sony seems nice and have all the features I want. So I splurged some money on it, $800+tax to be exact, the most –expensive laptop I’ve ever bought so far.

Specifications:

Operating System: Genuine Windows^® 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-740QM, 1.73GHz with Turbo Boost Technology up to 2.93GHz, 6MB Cache

Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® 310M with 512MB dedicated video RAM

Memory: 4GB DDR3 SDRAM Memory, Max supported = 8GB

Storage Drive: 500GB SATA Hard Drive

Optical Drive: DVD-Super Multi Drive

Display: 16.4" Display, 1600x900 resolution

Audio: Intel® High Definition Audio with Dolby® Home Theater Technology

Webcam: Built-in MOTION EYE® camera and microphone

Communications: 10baseT/100baseTX/1000baseT, Bluetooth with Integrated Stereo A2DP (2.1 + EDR), Atheros® 802.11b/g/n

Expandability: Memory Stick® Media Slot: 1, Express Card®/34 Slot: 1, Secure Digital (SD) Slot: 1

Ports: Headphone Jack: 1, Microphone Input: 1, VGA Output(s): 1, e-SATA: 1, HDMI™ Output(s): 1, USB 2.0: 1, USB 3.0: 2

Battery: Standard Lithium-Ion (5000 mAh)

Software:

Microsoft® Office Starter with reduced-functionality versions of Word and Excel, VAIO Care™, Media Gallery™ , PMB - VAIO Edition, Norton Internet Security™ 2011 30-Day Trial Offer

Some highlights are i7 740QM processor with quad-core 8 threads, 16.4” with 1600*900 resolution, Nvidia GF310M dedicated video card with HDMI output, 500GB 7200RPM Hitachi HDD, 2 USB 3.0 ports, 1 USB/eSATA port, backlit keyboard, bluetooth, crappy realtek HD audio with SPDIF digital output (shared with headphone), which are basically the things pushed me over to make the purchase. Another reason I got a SONY is because the PS3 leaves a very good impression, I hope this second big SONY product could work magic for the another time.

So here is my initial impression about the machine after a week of use.