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[Rico]

Well, you want a firm connection between the CPU and the heatsink for transfer, and TIM isn't exactly glue, but the newer Intel option of attaching through holes in the motherboard instead of clips on the socket does that without, you know, the terror. I actually bent a couple of CPU pins getting it off, but the ol' credit card and sewing needle combo still works great for that.

Also, you are completely and absolutely right about solid-state drives. Like, holy shit.

[Ziiro]

Solid state is definitely one of those things where you turn it on for the first time and say "holy shit". I went with Windows 8, which is an even faster boot. I press the power button and I'm logging in five or six seconds later. It's insane.

[Thad]

Welp, getting the same damn crash with games that I got on the Mac, so it looks like it was the card all along and I'm going to have to take back some of the things I said about Apple.*

Guess I should probably check the warranty on this thing.  Sure wish I hadn't had to get a new computer to figure out that it was the card and not wonky Apple third-party compatibility.  Don't get me wrong, I don't regret getting a new computer, but I DO regret that I put up with this shit for the past three years when I could have just gotten the damn thing fixed.

And I guess I might wind up using that onboard video after all.



*Don't worry, I've got entirely new things to say about Apple.  Know how you set your monitor to a 2560x1440 resolution in Lion?  Well, hope you installed Xcode back when they had the Lion version in the App Store, because for some fucking reason (1) you need Xcode to set your fucking monitor to a high DPI*** in Lion, (2) the App Store has the awesome "feature" of only letting you download the latest version of an app regardless of whether or not it will actually run on your computer, and (3) of course you can't fucking download Xcode anywhere else -- but hey, if you missed the boat, there's always some obnoxious-ass third-party nagware piece of shit that'll set it up just fine in about thirty seconds but then keep popping up every two minutes to beg you for money.


MEANWHILE, on the C720 front: Got it today.  It looks a little smaller than the Samsung, and the trackpad is definitely smaller.  I think the charcoal-colored outer shell is more appealing than the Samsung's shiny one, but the bottom of the chassis looks like cheaper plastic.

It's way the fuck easier to put Linux on the thing; no dual-boot script needed, because this thing's actually got a dual BIOS that will let you boot any old arbitrary x86/x64 boot disk.

On the minus side, driver support's not really there out of the box; it looks like you need to patch and recompile the kernel to get the trackpad to work.  There's a nice script to automate the whole thing, but, well, okay, I may have been exaggerating when I said "no dual-boot script needed" because it's actually a piece of the same script.  Also, I'm finding that it's giving me way too many prompts for which file I'm supposed to be patching, and I don't actually KNOW which files I'm supposed to be patching, so I guess I'll let you know how that goes. **

Still, pretty optimistic; lack of trackpad support is of course a nontrivial problem but on the whole it's been way the fuck easier to get Linux installed on this machine than the Samsung and I expect it's going to be pretty smooth sailing once I get the trackpad and video working.

There's a rather wonderful list of fixes on /r/Chrubuntu, if anyone's curious; that's what I'm currently working my way through.


** Edit/Update: Looked up the prompt; found another thread on /r/Chrubuntu that explained it was due to a botched apt-get upgrade (for some reason the Flash installer is hanging on download and that keeps disrupting my upgrades).  Ran upgrade again, then the script; trackpad working now and seems to be working pretty well in the 30 seconds or so I took to try it out.  But it's past my bedtime so I'll fuck with it more tomorrow.

Can definitely confirm I'm having the issue with flaky wireless that others are reporting; there's a fix for that farther down in the post so I'll probably give that a shot next.


*** Edit/Afterthought: To clarify, "High DPI" is what Apple calls it.  I know the difference between DPI and resolution; they're the ones who don't.

[Thad]

SNES9X running at 60fps.  I am totally comfortable in declaring the Acer C720 as a superior computer to the Samsung Series 3.

[Brentai]

Should I take back what I said about Acer then?

(Not that I generally say nice things about Samsung either.)

[Thad]

I don't know, we'll wait a year and see if the chassis starts cracking at the hinges like the last Acer laptop we let in our house.

Speaking more seriously: it seems to be a solid little machine and entirely better than what I expect from Acer.  As I said, I expect that slapping Google's brand on it requires stricter QC than what Acer usually does.

The flaws in the Samsung machine aren't, strictly, Samsung's fault.  Mostly I'm just surprised by how poor ARM support is on Ubuntu.  (Comparatively speaking, I mean.  It's actually really quite good for most standard software.)  And the graphics chip in the thing is just too new and off-brand to be supported properly.

The two major benefits of the Acer are the Intel chips (CPU and GPU) and the legacy BIOS.  Bottom line is, it's a PC that comes with ChromeOS.

The Samsung purchase was a miscalculation on my part.  I've been so consistently blown away by the support of (1) binary packages available through Ubuntu repos and (2) software available for ARM devices that I expected there would be a lot more overlap between those things than there actually is.

Basically: It's not so much that the specs of the Acer are better (though they definitely are, and the machines cost the same) as that the hardware is better-supported.

Ubuntu really has come a fuck of a long way.  I'm pretty impressed by how painless it's been to get all this set up now that I'm on a proper x64 system, and how little space it all takes up.

[Thad]

PS1 emulation: I fired up Suikoden 2.  Audio sputters on the opening cinematic and the animation's less than perfectly smooth in-game, but nonetheless it's not just playable but pretty gorgeous.

EDIT: Spoke too soon; as soon as I used Unite in the first fight Retroarch started using 100% CPU and froze up.  Looks like it'll need some tweaking, but this is still a pretty good sign.

I'm curious what, if any, graphics filter libretro applies by default, because I haven't applied any but the 16- and 32-bit games look pretty good anyway.

[Brentai]

Iirc the default ini file has bilinear filtering turned on.  I'm using Retroarch on my Raspberry Pi (haven't tried any PSX on it yet though - I hear it's barely doable but you have to do a lot of tweaking).

[Rico]

One of the weirder computer problems I've run into:
The computer won't power off. When you shut it down, it shuts down then immediately boots back up. If you pull the plug, it auto-boots as soon as it's plugged in. Checked all the Wake-on and APM after power loss settings in BIOS, changed to several different BIOS versions, no change. Computer works fine in every aspect.

So, uh, what the hell?

[Classic]

Can you do a hard shut-down by holding down the on button?
It could be that dealie is stuck?

[Rico]

Yes, it immediately restarts after shutdown that way, too, whether from Windows or during the POST.

[Lottel]

Hey, uh.
What's a good image viewer for Windows that has .gif support? Because apparently Windows 8 doesn't have one.

[François]

I like XnView.

[Classic]

Yes, it immediately restarts after shutdown that way, too, whether from Windows or during the POST.

A quick google pulls up this guy: http://www.sevenforums.com/bsod-help-support/52072-doesn-t-shut-down-only-restarts.html. But I'd guess you've already tried these remedies?

[Thad]

Iirc the default ini file has bilinear filtering turned on.

Hm -- it looks a lot sharper than I usually associate with bilinear filtering, but could be.  At any rate, I like it enough that I probably won't monkey with it.

I'm using Retroarch on my Raspberry Pi (haven't tried any PSX on it yet though - I hear it's barely doable but you have to do a lot of tweaking).

Yeah, I bet it'll be easier to set up on a Celeron.

The existence of RetroArch on the Pi was one of the reasons I expected the ARM version to work better.  Didn't count on the newer, not-well-supported video hardware.

Can you do a hard shut-down by holding down the on button?
It could be that dealie is stuck?

Hm, there's a thought.  What happens if you disconnect the power button entirely?

Obviously this is not a long-term solution, but it could help isolate the problem.

I suppose some pins could be shorted on the MB, but I can't think which ones; if power or reset were shorted then the computer wouldn't come on at all.

Could be some arcane power management setting somewhere.

[Classic]

I suppose some pins could be shorted on the MB, but I can't think which ones; if power or reset were shorted then the computer wouldn't come on at all.

I don't trust that I'm super-fixated on the power button. It feels like this is exactly the kind of thing I get completely wrong.
...
I suppose it doesn't need to be a full short to get this kind of behavior. It could be a short that's unstable. Giving a high long enough to hit the power, but not high long enough to trigger a fault or shut down.

But yeah, I just wanted to log my madness for posterity. I don't have any additional ideas.

[Mazian]

I suppose some pins could be shorted on the MB, but I can't think which ones; if power or reset were shorted then the computer wouldn't come on at all.

Could be the pin pair on the 20-/24-pin ATX power supply connector that actually turns the power supply on: the light grey wire to any ground wire.  That could be a fault in the PSU itself, and the easiest way to check would be to unplug that connector and see if the PSU still turns itself on when you plug it into the wall.  That won't catch a short on the motherboard, but that seems like a less likely failure to me.

[McDohl]

Try explaining how the cloud works to your 88 year old grandmother.

Go on.

[TA]

Okay.

Think of the computer as a desk.  Think of the cloud as a bookshelf.  You can have books on your desk, but if you keep them on the bookshelf, it can hold a lot more and you can just walk over and get the book you need, without having them all on your desk at once.  It makes for a cleaner desk, and it's easier to organize, especially if more than one person is using that bookshelf.

[patito]

Except local computers can usually hold more storage space than cloud storage and it takes longer to get things from the cloud. But maybe that's just me.