SE Thought

Notes: extending battery life in notebook This is more of a notes to myself.
I bought Samsung Q35 notebook. Looking at the manual and FAQ, Samsung said:

• If you charge/discharge the battery repeatedly for only a short time, the battery use time may be reduced by the difference between the actual battery charge and the remaining charge display. Ok, so I must try to fully discharge everytime...
  
• Some third party vendors offer solutions that fully discharge a battery prior to full charging and Samsung recommend such solutions where the battery usage pattern does not allow for a full discharge / charge cycle to carried out. But Samsung does not state which vendors or products it recommends, and I don't know any (I don't need it, as Samsung Q35 has the feature).
  
• After 12 months or 300 charge / discharge cycles, whichever is sooner, Samsung recommends you replace the battery. This is not good. So if you keep the notebook for 3 years, you are supposed to buy battery on month 13 and 25. 3 batteries for 3 years.
• You should not buy the spare the battery too soon. Samsung batteries are warranted for just 15 months from the date of manufacture. not date of purchase. This reminds me of printer catridge.
• The first battery has 1 year warranty. But the second onwards only carry 3 months. It does not explain the reason behind this logic. "Battery's replaced under warranty within the first 12 months will carry the balance of warranty on the original battery, or a period of 3 months, whichever is greater. " Example: Original Battery replaced in month 11 will be warranted until month 14. Battery replaced in month 9 will be warranted until month 12, not until month 21)
• Even if you have 3 year warranty, battery warranty is not included. They follow the above rules.
  
• The notebook provides a Battery Calibration function in the Boot menu. The battery is discharged forcibly. This operation requires 3~5 hours depending on the battery capacity and the remaining battery charge. Interesting. If it's going to take 5 hours to discharge, I might as well let the it run idle until it dies (e.g. stay in BIOS after battery reach very low, don't boot OS so no 'hard' shutdown effect on OS).
  
• Turn off unnecessary device. I know this. But then it lists 1394 as device to be turned off. I wonder why, especially if I don't have firewire device connected to this port.
• Decreasing the LCD brightness by one level extends the battery use time by 3~5% (10~20 minutes). This is interesting. Just 1 bar in the brightness settings give 3-5% of battery life. BTW, if 3% is 10 min this means 3.3 min for 1%, if 5% is 20 minutes this means 4 min for 1%. This means the delta (2%) is beteen 6.6 min and 8 min can't be 10 minutes. I hope Samsung doc writer would be more attentive next time. 3.3 min for 1% gives 330 minutes, or 5:30 hours, which is pretty good.
  
• Published battery life is measured using full power management features. After 3 months of normal operation the battery's performance will start to degrade slightly, but even after 300 charge and discharge cycles the battery should still perform to 60% of its original life expectancy.

The manuals and FAQ can be found here:
1. http://www.samsungpc.com/products/q35/q35_manuals.htm
2.http://www.samsungpc.com/top_faq/8_faqanswer_understandingbattery.htm
(2006-09-01 08:27:05.0) Permalink Comments [4]

OpenSource: double standard? I seem to be missing the point here.... Appreciate enlightenment or correction.

In a recent c|net interview, an IBM Senior VP states that there is a risk of open sourcing Power. It could lead to forking or incompatibility.

"You don't want the architecture to not be compatible with itself moving forward," Handy said."

Hmmm.... then why IBM pressures Sun to opensource Java, when there is a risk of compabitility? BTW, the Java source code is actually available, so it's not the source code that IBM is after. So what exactly is IBM after? And why the same agenda can't be applied on Power?

Like I said above, I seem to be missing the fundamental. Correction (supported by facts) would be really appreciated.
(2006-08-17 01:01:02.0) Permalink Comments [0]

First child, second child My wife and I are blessed with 2 children, age 4.5 and 2-. Both are girls, beautiful, smart, cute, funny, healthy, tall and naturally naughty (in a funny way). We named both Mary, in 2 different languages. Until today, I still feel that they are fedex-ed directly by the Creator from Heaven. They are not just CRS, but CRS with a lot of extra stuff thrown in (except the manuals).
Before my second was born, I knew that she will equally good, but yet different. In my language as IT Architect, she will be same "great architecture, but different design, and equally beautiful solution". The Creator certainly is master in what He is doing.

First Child (Marie)	Second Child (Marielle)
Beautiful eyes. Calm and round	Beautiful eyes. Sharp and less round
I'm afraid she gets bully at school or playground	I'm afraid she bully other kids
Fussy eater, but can be persuaded or outwit-ed. Even at 4.5, I can still outwit her	Not fussy eater. But if she does not, no amount of trick will work :-)
At 15 months, said a few words, but most of them I could understand.	At 15 months, said lots of words, but most of them I don't understand. She just babble non stop
Daddy's girl	Mommy's girl
Took time to adjust to new environment	Took little time
Rarely cry (in her younger years, before 21 months)	Cry at least once a day, because she is not getting what she wants
Did not put things to her mouth	Eat things that look like food to her.
Round chin	Sharp chin
Straight hair	Curly hair
Fair (white) skin	Darker skin
Teeth grew slowly	Teeth grew very fast
Did not crawl. Walk straight	Crawl a lot first.

It's a privilege indeed to experience first hand that 2 little being can be similar yet so different.
(2006-08-14 05:34:23.0) Permalink Comments [1]

Hello world This is my first posting. I've benefited by reading many good blogs, so I thought it's only fair to start learning about it and hopefully start contributing (just cannot find the bandwidth and it's not really a culture at this part of the world).

A bit about me. I'm an IT Architect supporting Sun partners (the System Providers). Based in this little island of Singapore.

My interest is Solaris & Linux. On the hardware side, I follow the various CPU (Opteron, SPARC, POWER, Itanium).

Ok, that's all for now for first posting. (2004-10-31 06:57:28.0) Permalink Comments [1]