Musings on Instant On and a Plea for OEMs

It's no secret that flash storage is getting cheap and Linux can be tweaked to boot pretty fast. Put the two together, and you get implementations like Splashtop, most commonly commercialized as ASUS ExpressGate and Phoenix' HyperSpace close behind in the race to market. The combined cost is low enough to be able to justify for most systems beyond the budget end of the spectrum. The goal is to be able to get a very basic OS with several key apps up and running in five seconds or less. We'll revisit those apps later.

The whole idea that we can have even a basic OS up and running in 5 seconds is amazing enough, but the concept of using part of the computer without taking the time to boot into a full featured OS isn't entirely new. By the late 90's, several manufacturers offered rudimentary audio controls on the outside panel of laptops so that they could be used as extremely large and overpriced CD player. That's not so much of a real OS, but baby steps... By the Athlon XP era, some of the highest end motherboards from manufacturers like DFI included enough extra BIOS functionality to boot into MemTest86-- we're getting closer, and probably the first precursor on the Phoenix side. Baby step number two.

I point these two out because you see a fundamental difference between these two approaches. One is a pure media/entertainment option, while the other is about geting work done in a very specific way. Having a second OS to boot into to troubleshoot, test or repair is a common and critical need when doing various computer tasks.

Maybe this made more sense when a full OS boot took two minutes and various suspend options were half-baked. I won't say that there are never problems with suspend and hibernate, but modern OSes and hardware have come a long way. I can bring back an already booted OS fairly quickly.

The current implementations favor entertainment and communication apps. There are certainly times when having Firefox up and running quickly would help troubleshooting, but I suspect there's a better way to go than getting quick access to Skype and MP3s. Building a troubleshooting-oriented OS would help tremendously more than a media mini-OS.

Imagine having the ability to:

Work with hardware before a hard drive is installed or with a blank hard drive before the OS is installed.

Have a trustworthy OS to assist with data recovery when the installed OS isn't working properly.

Have an OS to boot into in order to perform diagnotics away from the installed OS.

Boot into a "safe" OS while attempting overclocks without the risk of damaging an installed OS.

A Media-centric OS gets you a browser to help look stuff up when troubleshooting, but not too much more than that. I respectfully submit that having a work-oriented OS is far more useful than a limited media OS.

Google Datacenter Video

As a supplement to the earlier post on Google's Servers & Datacenters, here's an astounding video.

It's just amazing how out-of-the-box the datacenter thinking is, and yet how scalable and reliable it is as well.

We see a lot of the software side of Google as the glamorous side-- Google Earth, GMail-- hell, even Blogger. It's good to shine some light on the awesome work the IT Infrastructure guys do.

Google's Server... the secret is revealed

This one's not an April Fool's joke. Google has finally presented their server design as well as their modular datacenter plans. It's quite a bit different than most large datacenter providers, and I think there are some really good lessons both on how to design a datacenter as well as the individual server units-- both in what to leave in and what to take out. The goal here was to help other companies with power saving initiatives, but we got a lot more information than just that.

I think the most important take-aways are:

Simplify your systems! The design cuts to the bare bones of what is needed. They're then able to expand with lots and lots of simple units. The designs look an awful lot like a motherboard on a tray that they were using in the beginning.

The nodes are really, truly generic. They've gone through 5 generations of these simple systems, and it doesn't matter what they do. Each one is a compute unit with no differentiation.

Since Google has the ability to build their own systems really and truly to spec (including entirely custom motherboards) they can do away with unimportant bits to save cost and add costs where necessary (e.g. the motherboad does the 5v step-down instead of the power supply-- a few dollar feature that is worthwhile for their specific design as it saves on power efficiency in the PSU, saving more than a buck or two in the long run.)

While Google is rumored to be not interested in repairing servers (they were famously supposed to leave broken servers in place and not bother fixing them), the most failure-prone stuff is very easy to service.

Batteries on each unit vs. a large UPS is a brilliant move. These guys won't last long enough for battery aging to be a big deal, and even if it is, they're small, discrete, and easy as hell to service compared to any UPS battery. Saving space, money, weight, etc. on UPSes really helps.

The whole containerized, customized datacenter design is so radical, I'm not really sure I fully appreciate it yet. It's got all the basics of a hot aisle system, but fantastic density. I'm going to have to think about this one it's so radical.

Anyway-- very cool stuff Google.

Computer built under slave-like working conditions in China?

Looks like it's darn near slave labor, according to BoingBoing

I have a new appreciation for the Dell keyboards as shown in the photo...

Explaining Input Lag

Bit-Tech.net has an excellent explainer on input lag on a modern LCD monitor. A good monitor will techncially have some input lag, but at a tiny delay imperceptible to anyone. Poor-qualitiy displays are a diffrent beast entirely. Probably the best part of the article is explaining a methodology for detecting input lag. They're able to illustrate the problems clearly in video and pictures.

Seagate Drive Debacle, Take Two.

Seagate has now formally admitted that there is a problem. They even say so on their own support site. We're definitely looking at lots of drives affected, with what looks like all models of the 7200.11 and ES.2 affected. Seagate's got utilities up to detect the affected drives, but they don't have well-tested firmware to fix the problem before your drive bricks. What's more (and especially egregious considering the intended use of an ES.2) is that the detection and patching utilities are not only Windows-centric, but require the drive to be directly attached to a non-RAID SATA controller. Detecting, let alone fixing, nearline Enterprise drives is going to be a cast-iron b*tch.

On a lighter note, Seagate is reportedly going to be doing free data recovery on drives now that have bricked. That probably means just swapping the circuit board for one with a theoretical fixed firmware since the bits on the platters are just fine.

Does anybody have a catchy name yet for this disaster?

Hardware: High Failure rates on Seagate 7200.11 drives

I had seen inklings of this before, but now it's getting very close to official. Seagate 7200.11 1TB drives, primarily ones out of Thailand are bricking themselves with no warning. This typically happens a few months after the drive is installed, so we're seeing this get critical now that the drive has been out a while. This is on top of other firmware and related issues with the 7200.11 and ES.2 family. If you've got valuable data on a 7200.11 drive, be warned and get your backups sorted ASAP.

I don't know for sure whether or not the ES.2 1TB drives are affected or not, and if they are, to what degree. I've got my eye on both, as I manage both.

Since this failure is happening without warning, it's not clear yet how big this might be. We might be looking at the biggest batch of drive failures since...well, you know.

Seagate has recently cut its warranty on consumer drives to 3 years (in general) down from 5 years (across the board).

Dell: Musing on the XFR D630 (Review)

I know the D630 is an old model, and I'm getting a hold of the highly specialized XFR very late in its lifespan... but the XFR D630 is still the pinnacle of Dell's Fully Ruggedized lineup. I'm going to give my impressions, but some basic familiarity with a D630, or similar Dell D-series Latitude notebook would be helpful to understanding the contrasts. Unfortunately, I don't have a Panasonic Toughbook-- the primary competition-- to cross-compare.

The first thing you notice about this guy is the heft-- it's big and very heavy. At roughly twice the height of a D630, you almost get the feel that the case of the notebook is a throw-back to a notebook of the mid-90s. Once you get past the greatly increased size and weight, you realize that you're looking at a totally different beast compared to a garden variety D-series. In fact, superficially it bears no resemblance to a D630 whatsoever. So, why is it still a D630? The guts are all still there. While the chassis is completely overhauled, if you remember basically where the ports, drives, access panels, and buttons were, they'll be in approximately the same locations on the XFR. While it's arguably different enough to be its own model, it still has to make-do with the D630 motherboard and the layout dictated by the basic D630 design.

So about this chassis? Is it rugged? In a word, yes. The outer casing appears to be hardened plastic with rubber bumpers around the sides and corners-- think Pelican case. Also in common with a ruggedized case, there's a nice Every single port can be sealed with a water-resistant hatch. The access panels in the bottom are secured by a simple screw, and then a lever to lock them down into place. The keyboard looks like a fairly standard D-series keyboard, but there's an extra water-resistant membrane visible underneath. The touchpad is still there, recessed, and the two buttons for the touchpad are underneath a rubber membrane.

So while on the subject of the keyboard, let's talk about usability. Obviously this is all subjective and heavily biased in relation to my experience with the D630, but I have to start somewhere with a baseline.

Input: The keyboard at first seems a bit mushier than a standard D630, and flexes quite a bit more towards the edges. There'e even significant flex evident when pressing down on the chassis panel directly above the keyboard. Even though it doesn't seem great, the center of the keyboard is fairly rigid and while not as good as a standard D630, it passes as acceptable. The touchpoint (nipple) mouse is retained between the G, H and B keys, but the left and right mouse buttons directly under the spacebar that normally work with the nipple mouse have been deleted. That makes it somewhat of a useless appendix. The recessed trackpad makes it a little harder to press on accident, but it also makes it feel fairly small. The option for scrolling hot-zones is preserved, but they're much harder to hit with the frame around the touchpad. The mouse buttons underneath the touchpad are mounted under rubber domes as noted earlier. I've got some very mixed feelings about this: The feedback is acceptable, and it's fairly comfortable to use the rubberized buttons, but at the same time, you're trying to push your thumbs down into a recess rather than just pressing on a button on top. My ultimate impression was that they were too short, top to bottom. If they had extended maybe 5mm towards the front of the case, my big meaty thumbs wouldn't have felt cramped when trying to press the buttons.

I'd like to give special mention to the (non-optional) fingerprint reader. It's located on the right wrist-rest, next to the touchpad. The mechanism is in a recess under a recessed plastic door. It's wide enough to comfortably use, but it gets a bit in the way when touch-typing.

The screen, however is the bright (har har) spot of the whole experience. The outdoor-viewable screen is glossy, but it's also polarized and transflective. Indoors, it's bright.... VERY bright, with a very crisp picture. It's a huge step up from some of the grainier D620/D630 screens out there. It really is viewable outside in direct sunlight. Light colors show up better, with a somewhat "3D" type effect visible with a dark item on a light background. While it's not "goregous" outdoors, at least it does work fine in bright, direct sunlight. For work in the dark, two red spotlights are built in to the top of the screen bezel. The only difference from a standard keyboard is that Fn-RightArrow turns the lights on and off.

In terms of ports, it has all of them, and in pretty much standard locations. A minor quibble with the switch to turn wireless on/off-- it's now under a door on the left side. That's fine, but that reduces the convenience factor somewhat. The USB ports on the right side and in the rear are recessed to the point where bulky devices will probably have clearance issues-- obviously a hub or extension cable is needed here. The biggest issue is the optical-- what looks like a standard D-bay has been re-labeled as an X-bay and is not user-removeable at all. You'd have to tear the system down to swap in another device. That means that using the bay as a 2nd battery isn't an option, but I think that's also what was intended. While water resistant, a battery compartment needs to be really, really waterproof. I think that was part of the design decision that locks you into a single optical drive. A 9-pin serial port is retained as is a 4-pin, non-powered Firewire port.

For power and accessories, standard D-series accessories work. The power adapter is a standard 90-watt. Worth noting if you have a >90w unit floating around from a Precision-- the housing on those are too wide, and won't fit into the recessed power port on the back of the XFR. Those of course do work fine on the garden variety D630, but because the port isn't recessed.

Beyond looking things over, I didn't have a chance to test the anti-shock mounted hard drive, the ability to take the computer to a hose and hose it off, etc. Sorry in advance if you were looking for a torture test. With these things priced the way they are, it's comforting to know they are rugged, but I'm not going to put it to the test needlessly. I like my job and don't want to lose it. Lemme know if you have any questions.

Industry: ABit to exit the motherboard market?

TweakTown is reporting that ABit is leaving the motherboard market on 12/31/2008. Things have been bleak for the once beloved motherboard maker for quite some time, but with a lack of products shipping and all signs pointing towards failed product launches, the best outlooks are all pretty bleak. Perhaps ABit will be able to reorganize itself as a company hawking more consumer-oriented wares like Soyo... But with just a few weeks to go, the death watch awaits the news.

Unless things change, this will count for my eulogy. The recent boards were pretty much fine, but the fondness I have for the NF7-S v2.0 and BP6 does not fade with time. Of course, your capacitors did, but to be fair you were not alone...

Dust Bunnies are Evil

I know this seems like a mundane task that most of us are admonished to do on a regular basis, but it really does need to be repeated: Blow your computers cases out once in a while, especially if they get dusty.

We all know that heat sinks and fans lose their effectiveness when dusty leading to potential overheating, but there's a worse possibility. I ran into a system last week that had dust bunnies in it-- nothing out of the ordinary, except that one of them had lodged itself into the video card's tiny fan. The user reported a blue screen indicating video driver failure. I was busy and asked him to reboot since this was a first time thing. He came back shortly after reporting that it happened again, and now the system couldn't POST. A single dust bunny had lodged in a tight fan, causing the fan to jam, burning out the motor. The video card (a Quadra, unfortunately) then overheated to the point of death. Odd stuff like this can absolutely happen, without showing general signs of overheating.

To be fair, the opposite is true. It's possible you might dislodge some conductive dust which might land in an inopportune spot, causing problems. That can typically be fixed pretty easily with a second cleaning. A burnt out video card, northbridge, etc. can be a lot more costly.