Laptop Info Today

Posts Tagged ‘linux’

It’ been a very …. very long time since I blog anything and it feels good to be back.

Well one thing I’ve discovered after that long absence is this device : A Portable Hard Disk Duplicator

Sometimes using software might be the easiest solution, but it can be a lengthy one and corruption of data might occur if not done properly.

Aleratec came up this solution and its very useful if you got lots of things to backup in a short time.

Well this HDD duplicator is portable and it supports 2.5 & 3.5 inch hard disks (IDE & Sata I/II). Not only that you can also access your drives via a USB connection to your pc with RAID0, RAID1, JBOD Spanning or Normal disk configuration.

This device is compatable with Microsoft Windows 2000 or above, Mac & Linux systems.

What if you can move your C and D drive together without the loss of data?

Sounds like a tough one to answer, right .

Well, I’ve been busy finding a solution on this problem and I can tell you that most windows based applications do not work too well on this.

Yes, there’s Symantec Partition Magic, Acronis Disk Director and many others but when dealing with C dive ( which is where the main program files are kept) …. changes are you will an fatal error during the process.

I’ve tried Symantec Partition Magic ….. and it hits an error when the process reach 55%. I repeated this process again and again (for about 8 times to be exact) and the same error pops out ; you can sense how frustrating it becoming. 

I did a google search and check forums for answers but to no avail.

It is till I came across GParted Live ……

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I was approached by one of my colleagues today for whom is having difficulty on how to edit and export his music (from .wav to .mp3) on his laptop.

He wanted to have this done using a freeware and of all the softwares he stumbled, it is all pay per use.

Well, I recommend a software called Audacity.

Audacity is a tiny music editor that works very well (even if it is running on a laptop) and the trick about getting your .wav file to export to .mp3 format is that you need to patch the software with a file (dll) called lame_enc.dll which is available for free at dll-files.com.

It is a cross-platform software which means it works on Microsoft Windows, Mac OsX and Linux operating systems.

There is a lot of features that Audacity has to offer like :-

• Record live audio.
• Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
• Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files.
• Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together.
• Change the speed or pitch of a recording.
• And more!

But if you are into serious sound editing, softwares like Sony’s Soundforge for example is a great and value for money software.

Yeah, as ever, I can’t be satisfied with Microsoft Windows yet again.

I’ve tried 2 distributions of Linux so far, Vector and PC Linux OS, which seem to be a downward spiral and somehow or rather, I failed and went back to Windows.

This time around I will be a bit precautious in my next act.

I’ve been reading a lot about Wine and stuffs on how you could actually get Windows application on Linux platforms and this time around I’ll be doing a lot more research before I “walk the plank” .

There’s a couple of distros that might attract me so far …. Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Sabayon and Puppy Linux.

(Note : Most of them are on Gnome)

I prefer KDE environment actually but having tried both the latter and XFE (Vector Linux), I will try my luck on this environment this time around.

Hopefully it will work OK (for the third time of my experience) and if you have any suggestions on which distro I should install on my laptop, drop me a comment …… best yet (which distro has Wine running Windows applications perfectly).

Onward to the Penguin …. till next post.

The mini notebook or mini laptop is the biggest buzz recently and it is quite interesting to see almost majority of the laptop manufacturers out there leveraging on this market.

Asus has started out with the Eee PC series and soon you see a bunch out there …. that include laptops heavyweights HP, Acer and Dell who released the Netbook, Aspire One and Mini9 respectively.

However China’s own HiVision ain’t far behind either.

Recently they released a series of mini notebook series at an extremely shocking price ($98) !

How do I know about this?

Just check out the video below.

Talk about being affordable ….. THIS IS DEFINITELY THE ONE !

Comments welcome .

Recently (well its yesterday actually), I did a post on the new Open Office 3.0.

One of the functions that thrills me with the new Open Office 3.0 is definitely the PDF Importer.

Finally a freeware that allows you to edit your PDF file (well it’s a long wait really ).

Unfortunately this is NOT part of the installation files but it is an extension or add-on to the Open Office 3.0 suite. Do note this extension does not work with earlier versions of Open Office.

It is one of the hottest downloads of the moment; so HOT that it has already reach 254749 downloads at the moment and 58382 downloads from this week already.

What’s more users from various platforms are able to enjoy this breakthrough function. Windows, Mac OSX, Solaris and even Linux (x32 and x64) users can use this powerful tool on their already FREE Open Office 3.0.

To download the PDF importer for Open Office 3.0, click here.

To enjoy enhancing your Open Office with new extensions (if you are familiar with Firefox style of add-ons, this is very much similar) , Click here.

The alternative office suite for PCs (laptops included), OpenOffice.org, has now released version 3.0 of its office suite.

There are many new features in this new suite and for the first time ever ” a PDF importer”.

Which means you can import you pdf files …. edit them up and save as a document, spreadsheet, presentation or draw file (something Microsoft haven’t come out with ).

Though Microsoft has been working with third party ….. Able2Extract on this function to be in the future releases of Microsoft Office suites, Sun Microsystems has leapfrog a step further with this release.

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Some of might have new laptops recently and might be surprised that you are not given any cds from your operating system.

This happens and is something quite normally …… so to speak.

It is something not out of the blue as certain manufacturers are cutting down their own cost by placing the operating as restoration backup at the D drive, something I find absolutely ridiculous.

One common brand is HP or Compaq ( which is now a sister company of HP) .

Hey, I’m not try to blast companies here but sometimes you may wonder what if the hard disk itself is faulty. How are you going to recover the operating system from there?

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