System76 Gazelle Professional: Going a bit deeper

This is a continuation from yesterday’s post on the System76 Gazelle. I have now spent about 2 hours with my new Gazelle Professional today and wanted to report on the one issue most discussed on the Ubuntu forum for System76; the heat issue. Some users have commented that the left palm rest gets warm and others have said they did not see the issue. The second most discussed issue is battery life and I did a little bit of work on that as well.

Methodology:

• Took temperature readings every five minutes for 60 minutes using the Smart Data readings (note: this is not reading the core temperature)
• Took a battery life reading at 5 minutes and 60 minutes
• Did not allow any of the three laptops to turn off the monitor (set to go off every 5 minutes – so I moved the mouse)
• All three laptops we on battery power with no AC power attached
• Both Lenovo laptops had Adaptive Thermal Management set to Balanced on battery

Here are the findings.

Lenovo W520 (Intel Core i7-2720QM)
Battery: 8:36
5 minutes – HD Temp:  28/82
10 minutes – HD Temp: 28/82
15 minutes – HD Temp: 28/82
20 minutes – HD Temp: 28/82
35 minutes – HD Temp: 28/82
40 minutes – HD Temp: 28/82
45 minutes – HD Temp: 28/82
50 minutes – HD Temp: 28/82
55 minutes – HD Temp: 28/82
Battery: 8:02
Rate 11.3 W

Lenovo T500 (Intel Core2Duo T9600)
Battery: 3:21 (3 year old battery)
5 minutes – HD Temp:  25/77
10 minutes – HD Temp: 27/81
15 minutes – HD Temp: 28/82
20 minutes – HD Temp: 29/84
35 minutes – HD Temp: 30/86
40 minutes – HD Temp: 30/86
45 minutes – HD Temp: 31/88
50 minutes – HD Temp: 31/88
55 minutes – HD Temp: 30/86
Battery: 2:36
Rate 19.6 W

System 76 Gazelle Professional (Intel Core i7 3720QM)
Battery: 2:11
5 minutes – HD Temp:  29/84
10 minutes – HD Temp: 33/91
15 minutes – HD Temp: 34/93
20 minutes – HD Temp: 36/97
35 minutes – HD Temp: 37/99
40 minutes – HD Temp: 38/100
45 minutes – HD Temp: 38/100
50 minutes – HD Temp: 39/102
55 minutes – HD Temp: 39/102
60 minutes – HD Temp: 39/102
Battery: 1:35
Rate 17.9 W

The conclusion from this one hour test is the System76 runs roughly 20 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the W520 and 16 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the T500. The left palm rest does get warm. I am a curious person so I wanted to get a bit of a look under the hood.

Gazelle Professional heatsink.

System76 Heat Cooling System

System76 Cooling System Fins

System76 Hard Drive Bay

I do not have a good picture of the Lenovo cooling system, but the first noticeable difference is that it uses a side exhaust vent and rear intake vent which avoids restricted airflow issues that bottom intakes have. The other issue is the Lenovo does not use a long heat bar to move heat away; the processor is in the corner of the laptops where the intake and exhaust vents are.

One last note… while using the System76 to post this the hard drive temperature rose to 44C / 111F. at the same time I had the Lenovo playing a really long video and the temperature only rose to 33C / 91 F.

In summary the cooling system on the System76 is not as well designed as those in either the Lenovo T500 or W520

System76 Gazelle Professional

The System76 Gazelle Professional I ordered has arrived; here are my first quick impressions.

• The screen (matte 95% gamut) is incredible. It looks way better than the screen on my T500 (1600×900) and on-par with my W520 (1920×1080) laptop from work. The new System76 at 25% brightness looks slightly brighter than the T500.
• There is a slight heat difference on the left hand side of the palm rest, but nothing I would complain about
• The case appears to be very solid (it is plastic). I would say it has bit more keyboard flex than the T500 and W520, but the build quality is actually pretty close. I grade it above the HP and Dell laptops I have seen in the last two years.
• The T500 and W520 produce more noise (at least to my ears)

Unfortunately I had several meetings today after work so my time with the new machine has been limited, but the initial grade is an A. I will write more over the next few days.

Becoming an Ubuntu Contributing Developer

With Ubuntu Developer Week on the horizon I thought I would hi-light a post I made a while back; Ubuntu: My first code contribution. If you are interested in becoming an Ubuntu Developer I strongly encourage you to check out Ubuntu Developer Week.

Ubuntu Developer Week is a series of online workshops where you can:

•     learn about different packaging techniques
•     find out more about different development teams
•     check out the efforts of the world-wide Development Community
•     participate in open Q&A sessions with Ubuntu developers
•     much more…

It is a fantastic opportunity to learn a lot about the development process and life cycle in a condensed period of time. It will also help you establish contacts with developers that are energetic intelligent and very willing to help you on your journey.

I would like to extend a special thanks to mhall119, cjohnston and nigelb

Michael Gartenberg: Apple’s Baghdad Bob

I recently read an opinion piece in Mac World written by Michael Gartenberg; Open versus Closed. There were a few items that made me laugh about how much mis-truth and FUD Apple is trying to spread. Here are a couple of choice quotes from the article with my thoughts after them.

In many ways, iOS devices are probably what the people at Apple had in mind when they created the original Mac. These are appliances that can do magical things without the need for a programmer or computer expert to get involved. The Mac didn’t succeed at that entirely, but today’s iOS devices fulfill that dream.

Say what?

I watched these events as a teenager and I thought Macintosh was about having a computer for everyone. Powerful simple to use computers that would prevent IBM from dominating the personal computer industry and owning the information age. Jobs started out as a computer hobbyist, not a corporate tycoon trying for global domination.

A long time ago, high schools offered shop class. You learned all about cars, how they worked, how they could be repaired. It was necessary information because without it you couldn’t drive.

What? I do not recall any time in history when you could not drive if you did not know how to repair your car. I think Michael might be thinking of one of those Mystery Science Theater 3000 movies.

Open the hood of many of today’s cars and you’ll find vast expanses of plastic, covering parts that are not intended to be user serviceable. Cars have become closed systems.

Really? Certainly they might be more complex, but closed? I can, if I want, replace the factory radio. I can change the spark plugs. It is not closed. No, saying that cars are closed is just down right fiction.

The debate about computers and other tech gadgets — should they be open systems fit for tinkering, or closed that aren’t meant to be cracked open — will no doubt continue for some time come. But I expect it’s a debate that will matter more in the coffee shops of Silicon Valley or in online screeds that few will read and fewer will care about.

The rest of us will be too busy getting work done. We’ll be communicating and collaborating with friends, family and colleagues.

Here is the red herring of his argument.  He implies that those of us who like an open system will get a ‘bad’ system. We will be so busy tinkering that we won’t be able to get work done or communicate with our friends. Wait… I am using an open system. I am using Ubuntu and I am getting work done and communicating with my friends.

Sorry Michael, but just like Baghdad Bob you are practicing mis-information. Could it be because the open system, Android, just knocked off iOS in the smart phone race? Could it be that Apple is afraid of the Android tablets due out in the 4th quarter of this year?

The truth is out there though… people just have to go look.

We can have open, productive, amazing, and magical systems that enable us to do fantastic things with information. All for a lot less than it costs to buy a locked down iToy.

Jono Bacon recommends pyJunior

I posted about my co-authored article on Smartbean yesterday and a very influential mover and shaker commented, indirectly, on the article to recommend a piece of software. When Jono talks I listen. So I checked out the link that Masmad posted about pyJunior.  I was really impressed with the information on the pyJunior… now I just have to get time to give it a more in-depth look. Jono’s article was a call for help in producing documentation. I have yet to follow-up with him, but I certainly would be interested in getting this moved forward.

Computational Thinking: Programming for kids

I contributed to an article on computer science and programming for Smartbean. Smartbean is a resource for smart parents with even smarter kids. It is aimed at parents that are aiming to augment what their children are learning in school or those that home school their children. I currently work in a school district that has no computer science curriculum; which I find unbelievable given the current adoption of computers.

Bottom line, programming should be used as a means to introduce kids to ways of thinking and problem solving that will be useful to them in many different spheres of human endeavor.

I made sure that the article reflected a difference between open source and free.

In the following sections, we will share with you a list of some good open source and/or free programming environments to introduce kids to the idea of programming.

I also promoted Linux as an ideal environment to learn programming in.

Needless to say, an open source environment such as Linux provides many more opportunities for the serious programmer, so consider providing your child with a Linux machine (even if it just means partitioning an existing Windows or Mac machine), if they wish to go deep.

If you would like to read the rest please go to the full article. My hope is that more schools will introduce computer science and programming as part of their curriculum. It is hard for me to believe that such courses are not required today, but it is reality that many schools do not even have a computer science program and think of computer science in terms of the business department.

FOSSCON 2010: eight images

chatting with Luke Macken: creator of liveusb-creator

Linode booth

Ubuntu LoCo members and Jorge Castro

people at the Linode booth

Jorge Castro: Lightning Talk

Jorge Castro: Lightning Talk

Jorge Castro: Lightning Talk

the lighting talk audience

FOSSCON 2010: New York State Ubuntu Local Community Team

The New York State Ubuntu Local Community participated in the first FOSSCON at RIT in Rochester, NY. Rochester, while not as large as New York City or Buffalo, was an ideal location for the convention. I have to give special thanks to Landon and Don who managed to mobilize on short notice to cover the conference booth for the team. Don and Landon are from Syracuse and traveled out to Rochester for the event. I am always amazed with their energy, friendly demeanor and willingness to drive long distances to advocate for Ubuntu and the Ubuntu Community.

FOSSCON 2010 @ RIT is just over a month away

The inaugural FOSSCON is just over a month away. The slate of speakers is set and our very own Jorge Castro will be in attendance. I am also very pleased to see a fantastic turnout by FOSS women amongst the ranks of speakers. I hope to finally meet some of the folks I know only by their IRC handles.

The Journal: State Leaders Weigh In on Open Source Assessment

I opened my email today to find a headline of State Leaders Weigh In on Open Source Assessment; perhaps the time is truly now for getting schools and other governmental entities to consider open source. The article start off with a fairly positive opening.

Open source assessments have great potential for cost savings, collaboration, and standards adoption, but there are also some perception barriers that stand in the way of wider adoption in the immediate future, according to a new report exploring the attitudes of state assessment and technology leaders.

The barriers are detailed in a report entitled “A Report on Education Leaders’ Perceptions of Online Testing in an Open Source Environment,” completed by a marketing firm Grunwald Associates. I have to read the PDF download when I get the chance, but the article summed it up as follows:

Perceived benefits of open source assessment:

• Potential cost savings based on absence of licensing fees;
• Common formatting, data standards, and development standards improve/would improve adaptability and, subsequently, efficiency; and
• Collaboration benefits, including shared resources, ideas, testing standards, and even risks

Concerns about open source assessment:

1. Possible hidden costs, including maintenance, technical support (sometimes a cost when using an open source product), product development necessary to make modifications, and ongoing professional development for educators using original and modified versions;
2. Perception of security risks to both source code and content; and
3. The potential downsides to collaboration, including lack of leadership, lack of alignment in thinking among those recognized as experts for the purposes of development and modifications, and both inherent and unforeseeable inefficiencies.

Additional observations:

1. The greater a state’s current investment in open source technology and its education leaders’ and educators’ awareness of what it offers, the greater the prevailing interest in increasing its use, in advancing its quality, and in becoming better educated about the technology and the content it propagates and has the potential to offer;
2. Education leaders need to be better educated about both the benefits and risks of open source technology and its related issues;
3. Quality, security, ease of use, and access to effective support are of far greater concern than cost savings to users and potential users of the technology;
4. Because effective evaluation of students’ comprehension, progress, and potential requires more complex and in-depth assessment, in order for the education community to embrace the technology for the long term, it must evolve to include more than multiple-choice and short answer options; and
5. Many of the prevailing issues surrounding the use of open source technology for assessment can be addressed with strong leadership, reliable structure, and a well organized approach.

As an advocate for open source the additional observations left me feeling good because I can assist with many of them. I currently present at educational technology conferences about FOSS and how it provides greater value to education than merely lowering costs. This addresses both items 2 and 3. One of the greatest pitfalls I have seen other advocates fall in to is focusing solely on the ‘cost’ portion of FOSS. You can see the slide deck from my latest presentation that talks about 21st Century Skills and FOSS on the New York Team Site. This presentation also included material from the new NETP 2010 recommendations from the US Department of Education that was released on March 5th. I am a strong believer that Canonical or another vendor of a Linux distro could work with the US DoE to meet some of their goals. I am glad to see that more mainstream educational media are picking up the stories about FOSS as it will increase awareness amongst education leaders.