Developer's Quarterdeck Log

The good news is that OpenSolaris build 54 installed on the Ferrari 5000 and the Nic worked. The bad news is that's about all that worked really well. The big problem for me is that there is no audio which will probably not be solved anytime soon. The ATI audio chip set spec has not been released so the open source world can write a driver for it. I don't expect it to be released either. The problem is with the big "Windows Vista Premium Ready" sticker on the front on the Ferrari. If you haven't read already, Vista has some crazy ideas about protecting copyrighted content. So my advice is that if you are an OpenSolaris or Linux user and looking at a new Laptop check the drivers carefully if it comes with Vista. I think that is going to be a problem for us in the future.

This isn't really a bash against Microsoft, just me complaining. However, I always feel that getting the OS and hardware from the same company is always the best situation. Then the driver problems go away. Unfortunately, Sun doesn't make an x64 laptop, and why is that Sun? Yeah, yeah, I know, economics...

On my last post I mentioned that one of my minor complaints was when I used my new Acer 5000 was when I used an external mouse there was a blast of heat that wormed your mouse hand, if you are right handed. Not a big deal really. But that problem has been completely solved by using a cheap USB powered notebook cooler, it makes big difference. Almost no heat at all now if you use the mouse on the right side. But I am using a docking station and that was a slight problem because of the height of the cooler. But that was solved easily by putting the docking station on top of two hockey pucks.

So far the Ferrari has been one nice machine. I am not a big fan of Windows so I can't wait until I get a "real" OS on it!