Alex Parker

Notebook overheating issue resolved, Again!

alex — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:29:40 GMT

Well it amazed me that this is a typical issue. My Toshiba M400 the other day was running really warm during normal use, 60° C-70° C.

So of course I had to take the whole thing apart and inspect. The first thing I did was to clean out the FAN, again a big yuck! Then I took off the CPU fan and heat sink and removed all the old CPU paste. I then cleaned the surfaces with Isopropyl alcohol, re-applied some new thermal paste, making sure that it is evenly coating the CPU and then re-assembled the notebook.

So now my idle temperatures are more inline with when I got the notebook, 35° C-45° C.

Here is a good article I found on the topic.

Vista file copy performance finally solved!!!

alex — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 09:27:40 GMT

Well it has been over a year since Vista has been released and I have been struggling with poor file copy performance between my Vista machines on a GB switch, since about December.

Poor Network Performance with Windows Vista (RTM)

Poor GB Network Performance on Vista back! =(

Poor Network Performance on Vista resolved?

I don't know how I missed the article about MMCSS (Multimedia Class Scheduler Service) but after reading into it, it seemed to fit my performance issue...my stability issues were due to old network drivers. If you have a Broadcom onboard nic, you should definitely upgrade the drivers.

Mark Russinovich uncovered that MMMCSS is hardcoded to throttle your network performance to 10,000 frames per second or about 15Mb/sec on standard ethernet with 1500 byte frames.

Here is the solution. I have disabled the MMCSS service, updated the registry to remove the Windows Audio dependency and network performance is back to where it should be! CPU utilization is a bit high, I will have to check to see if I disabled TCPChimney, RSS and TCPA (DMA)...Otherwise it looks good!

Case of the bad CPU paste

alex — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:45:57 GMT

The other day I ran into an interesting problem with my ThinkPad T60. For some reason the machine would shut down after about 10-30 minutes. There were no indications to the cause from the error in the event logs in Vista, nor were there any obvious hardware sounds.

Lucky for me I had another laptop at my disposal where I could swap the hard disk out to rule out some Vista related bug.

By chance I noticed that the base of the machine was running very hot, the internal heat sink was running about 90° C (using my Fluke infra-red temperature sensor) around when the machine shutdown unexpectedly. So I suspected that the machine was going into thermal shutdown. The Core Duo CPU is rated at about 100° C, but other components on the system board may not be stable at such high temperatures.

So the first thing I did was clean all that dust out of the heat sink and fan, yuk... Then I fired up the laptop again. This time it took the machine significantly longer to shutdown but the problem was the same.

So instead of arguing with some support rep, I took matters into my own hands (literally). I busted open the laptop, took off the heat-sink and cleaned the old paste off. Lucky for me I still had some arctic silver CPU paste leftover from putting a monster of a head sink on my Q6600. Sorry forgot to take some gory ThinkPad T60 pictures. Maybe I will take some pictures when I change the processor to a 2GHz Core Duo that I removed from my Toshiba M400, that's a topic for another post.

Before I digress even more, I am glad to report, the problem is resolved. The machine not longer shuts down and I am a happy camper.

I wonder why Lenovo put so little CPU paste on the CPU.

$100 oil = $40-$60 speculation

alex — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 15:22:38 GMT

I was always wondering how the Market hype actually affects the price at the pump. Here is what I was able to find out.

One barrel of crude oil makes about 19½ gallons of gasoline, 9 gallons of fuel oil, 4 gallons of jet fuel, and 11 gallons of other products, including lubricants, kerosene, asphalt, and petrochemical feedstocks to make plastics.

The current price at the pump is about $3…

At $3 per gallon * 19.5 gallons in one barrel = $58.50 per barrel. $100 per barrel - $60 actual cost or about $40 in market speculation…

In actuality the price per barrel is much lower considering the actual cost breakdown…

At $3 per gallon the raw cost is about $1.98 per gallon…

($3 * 66% = $1.98 per gallon (Actual cost of crude, 40% plus refining costs 13%, plus distribution 13%, excluding taxes)

The total cost is 19.5 * $1.98 = $38.61 per barrel raw costs.

Source:
http://www.gravmag.com/oil.html

Why I won't buy an ultra-portable notebook (Yet)

alex — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 03:55:00 GMT

Well that is not entirely true, I will by an ultra-portable notebook computer (< 4lbs) if it has the following characteristics (Yes I may be dreaming but by the EOY I think we might see such a beast):

Core 2 Duo Processor (What is the deal with the LV and the ULV, they don't save that much power)
4 GB RAM (Do you really think 2GB is enough?)
1.8" SSD (>50MB/sec performance) or 2.5" 7200 rpm drive
64bit support (Must have support for x64 OS)
LED backlit display
Tablets should have dual touch screens
The power adapter shouldn't weigh more that the notebook ;-)
DVI/HDMI port
2-3x USB2 ports
Express Card Slot
Discrete graphics
Price < $2000

All new notebooks are more than capable of running modern applications but the piece of technology that really needs to be left behind are the slow 1.8" 4200 rpm hard disks. I think we are at a point where the performance of ultra-portable notebooks doesn't have to suffer because of the small form factor. I think manufacturers should stop manufacturing these pathetically slow drives.

Fast SSDs from SanDisk and MTron will eventually come down in price where ultra-portables can really benefit from the performance previously only available to notebooks larger siblings...

Lately a few ultra-portable notebook PCs have gotten a lot of press, namely the Lenovo X300 and MacBook Air. I think the X300 has gotten it very close to right. I still would ditch the low voltage processor but for the most part this notebook has most of my criteria. From the many reviews, it looks like Lenovo didn't skimp on the performance of the SSD.

Latitude Tablet XT, nice but pricey tablet from Dell

alex — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 11:40:57 GMT

The Dell tablet is an very sleek looking 4 lbs notebook. As with most of the tablet PCs this one foregoes the optical drive, opts for a low voltage processor, uses a 1280x800 LED display, has a capacitance touch N-Trig digitizer, and has a 100GB 1.8" 4200rpm hard disk.

All in all, I like the build quality and the quality of the keyboard. The LED screen is exceptionally bright, with an ambient light sensor to help adjust brightness and extend battery life.

Over all this machine is a great tablet. But due to the Low Voltage processor, slow 1.8" 4200 rpm hard disk, it may not be able to satisfy those in need of fast performance. The Toshiba M700 (btw, I own a M400 so I may be biased) would be a better machine for this as it has faster Core 2 Duo processors and support for 2.5" SATA disks which can go up to 7200 rpm. The Tablet XT's battery life is fair, with 2+ hours with the default battery. In my mind the Lenovo Thinkpad X61 Tablet would be a better choice if battery life is most important to you.

One other thing. The price is out of control. Come on $2600+, what were you thinking Dell. This should be in the sub $2000 range w/o SSD.

If I had to choose only one notebook, I would have to pass on this one. But if I had the luxury of having two notebooks, this would definitely compliment a faster one with a faster processor and hard disks.

Sorry no Comcast (NJ) download performance increase

alex — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 20:21:41 GMT

Nope it doesn't seem like the increased speed lasted that long. I am now back to my 10Mbit. :(

Comcast (NJ) download performance increase?

alex — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 12:48:52 GMT

This morning I was downloading the latest Vista with sp1 (x86) and I noticed that my download speed has doubled to about 20Mbit/sec...Awesome.

I wonder if this is in response to the upcoming competition from Verizon FIOS. They have just started digging in my neighborhood and laying the fiber.

I think Comcast is going to have to speed up their next generation channel bonding technology...I hear in some areas, Verizon is offering 50Mbit/50Mbit symmetrical upload/download speeds... Look out Comcast...

Tweaking mobile wireless performance on Vista

alex — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 21:35:50 GMT

The one thing I have to say is that I am addicted to being connected to the net. From my smartphone to my laptop I kind of wish that every device had the ability to plug-in to the net.

I any case, I currently have a Verizon USB727 USB wireless modem. Overall I am very happy with the performance. But it seems that performance seems to vary a bit from minute to minute and hour to hour. I have been finding myself disconnecting and reconnecting to the Verizon network, multiple times of the day. My performance would vary from 50-60Kb all the way to 800-1000Kb. A big variation if you ask me.

I had to install the following hotfix...
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940646

Additionally I setup my USB727 modem to use the NDIS interface. This allowed me to utilize the OpenDNS DNS servers.

I then renamed the connection to "EDVO" and set the OpenDNS servers

If you want to set the DNS servers on the command line you can use the following syntax

netsh interface ip set dnsserver EVDO static 208.67.222.222
netsh interface ip add dnsserver EVDO 208.67.220.220 index=2

My TCP settings

Now my connections are very stable and fast 500Kb-1.3Mb....Yippee!!!

Poor Network Performance on Vista resolved?

alex — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 19:15:58 GMT

I hope everyone has had a good new year. I just wanted to let everyone know that I have partially resolved my large file copy issue by installing the recently released Vista SP1 RC Refresh.

My file copy woes are not completely over, see picture...I only get about 28 MB/sec performance across the GB interface.

If anyone has any ideas please let me know. I recently switched to Intel GB NICs in hope it was due to the on board broadcom cards, but it didn't make a difference. The next thing is to replace my linksys switch.

One other thing, I needed to turn ECN Capability off.