Portability is becoming big business when it comes to laptops these days and manufacturers are starting to cram as much hardware inside these little machines as they can. Intel has really come to the plate with the introduction of the Core 2 line of processors that provide desktop power with very little heat and increased battery life over earlier laptops. My work was nice enough to purchase for me a Dell Latitude D820 to work on, and after a few weeks of using it I'm pleasently suprised by how well it replaces a desktop.

Specs

• Processor - Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 @ 1.66ghz

• Video Card - Intel 945GM Express

• OS - Windows XP SP2

• Display - WXGA 1280x800

• Hard Drive - 120gb

• Memory - 2gb (1gb x 1gb)

• Ports - 1394, 4 USB 2.0, monitor, headphone, microphone, serial, modem, NIC

• Slots - 1 PCMCIA, 1 Smart Card reader

• Optical Drive - 8x DVD+-R

Design and Build

The D820 is built for businesses and it shows. The dark black and gray exterior is nothing to write home about but it isn't the ugliest laptop either. The case itself is rugged and holds up to daily wear and tear very well. The screen hinges stay in place without any wobble, and with a wide opening arc it can be easily positioned.

The laptop include a full-sized keyboard like most other business-class laptops with a bit more natural feeling response from the keys. The handrests are large and give enough room to type for extended periods. Included are both a touchpad and a nub pointer. The pointer seems a bit overly sensative even after playing with the mouse settings, but the touchpad actually seems to be of decent quality. The touchpad isn't as sensative as the ones in the Inspiron series which seem to move the cursor without you even touching the pad, and the mouse buttons are solid without the springy feeling that the lower-end Dells have.

Ports

I only wish that Dell had moved more than just two USB ports to the left side of the laptop instead of putting them only on the right and the back up the laptop, but there are enough ports to go around. The two ports on the right-hand side of the laptop are spaced far enough apart to allow for a jump drive to be inserted while still letting the user plug in a mouse or other normal USB device.

I was pleasantly suprised at the addition of a serial port on the back. Granted, not too many users have a need to plug anything serial into a modern notebook, but there are the times with hardware such as switches need that personal touch that only a null-modem cable will provide.

Screen

The D820 comes in a few different screen types allowing up to 1920x1280 screen resolution, but my model has the lowest at 1280x800. The screen is big enough for normal work but the vertical deficiency of the screen really becomes apparent with some applications that like a taller screen. For programming, like what I do, it is fine as I want a wider screen than a taller screen.

The Intel 945GM Express chipset that is running the screen is, again, nothing to write home about. It runs most 3D software without much slowdown, but this is by no means a gamers laptop. A lot of the slack is picked up by the Core 2 Duo processor and the 2gb of RAM that are installed. World of Warcraft, Civilization 4, and other games of that nature should work just fine, but don't expect the computer to play Halo 3 when it comes out.

As a note though, you can get an nVidia card instead of the Intel 945GM if you want better gaming performance.

Speakers

Meh. Laptops (other than Compaqs/HPs) are not built for cranking out music. The speakers do fine for normal music listening and have a decent amount of bass but are no substitute for higher quality speakers. My Compaq C504US has slightly better speakers.

That said, they do have a good amount of volume but distort quickly. MP3s especially break down quickly on these speakers, and even 192kbps tracks show their compression.

Processor and Performance

The Core 2 Duo processors are some of the best processors that you can buy. While this laptop is not Centrino branded (it has the Broadcom wireless NIC instead of the Intel) I have rarely had a time when the system bogs down because the CPU is being eaten alive. I use VMWare extensively for work and have had upwards of five virtual machines running at the same time with nary a problem. I find it hard that anyone using this in normal day-to-day business use will ever max out the processors.

To stress test, I ran AutoGTK. AutoGTK only maxed out at 60% on both cores but the laptop was still more than usable. With the trend that processor manufacturers are squeezing more cores onto the die instead of attempting to win the megahurtz race, laptops will no longer be slow compared to desktops.

Windows XP runs like a champ. Windows Vista runs fine as well even with Aero turned on and all the visual effects cranked up. I'm sticking with XP as Vista still has some nagging issues that I can't stand, but that's another article. One will not be disappointed if they order Vista on it.

Battery Life

Three to four hours are what is claimed for the laptop, and that is what you will get. Dell, Intel, and Windows XP all work together to wrench every drop of power from the battery. The laptop has a built-in ambient light sensor to adjust the screen brightness, the internal NIC turns off to save battery, the wireless card seems to be low power, and Windows regular power-saving features all contribute to a laptop that won't leave you looking for the powercord every hour.

For example, I have listened to music, surfed the web, and worked in VMWare and gotten around three hours of battery life with a single charge. My Compaq laptop is lucky if you can get half of that time.

Conclusion

If you are looking for a desktop replacement for work, this is a great machine. If you want a nice portable desktop but aren't a gamer, this laptop will work for you as well. If you want a giant gaming powerhouse, look over at the XPS systems and spend the extra money on those. Overall this is a decent buy.

One thing that really helps me code is music. Not that crap that they play on the radio at work or on 90% of the radio stations out there that I can't pick up in the office because I don't have an actual radio, but good music, like what's on my iPod. What do I do when I'm at work and I want to listen to some music?

If you have a broadband connection at home and a somewhat decent upload speed, SlimServer is a great choice for accessing your music when you are away from home. It runs on either Windows or Linux, both of which are completely free. It is also very easy to set up.

Requirements

• A computer running Windows, OSX, *Nix, or an OS that can run perl

• Broadband connection

• A static IP or a Dynamic DNS Service such as DynDNS

Considerations Before Installing

• SlimServer does not read mapped network drives. If your MP3s are on another machine you will need to use the full UNC path (ie: \servername\share\folder)

• The Windows version can get RAM hungry. Make sure that you have around 100+ megs of free RAM when running it, more if you plan on using large playlists.

• Upstream bandwidth is your friend. Most residential broadband users have lousy upload. If you have at least 256k you should be fine.

Installing

Head on over to http://www.slimdevices.com/su_downloads.html and grab the latest installer. At this time there are Windows, OSX, Debian and RPM packages built as well as perl source code. I will be setting the service up on Windows, but the configuration is almost the same on all platforms.

After you have the package downloaded, install it. In Windows you will see a small Slimserver icon pop up in the taskbar and your web browser will open up and take you directly to the Slimserver interface which is located at http://localhost:9000/.

Add Your Music

In the left panel, scroll down and click on 'Server Settings.' The second option down should read 'Music Folder.' Type in the path to your music (either a folder on the local machine such as C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Document\My Music or \server\share\folder) and click the 'Change' button. The page will refresh and the settings will be saved.

On this page you can also force SlimServer to rescan your music folder for newly added music. If should do this automatically, but if not you can scroll down and click on the 'Rescan' button to make SlimServer look.

Add Some Security

I don't know of any vulnerabilities in SlimServer, but one never knows. Under the drop-down menu at the top of 'Server Settings', select 'Network.' The option we want to change under here is the 'Web Server Port Number', which is currently set to 9000. Change this to any high-numbered port that you want, but make sure that you remember what number you change it to.

After that, go back up to the drop-down menu and select 'Security.' Change 'Password Protection' to from 'No password protection' to 'Password Protection', and then fill in a username and password below that.  You also have the option of locking SlimServer down to only letting specific IP addresses connect, but I leave it set to 'Do Not Block' so that you can access SlimServer from anywhere.

Set Up Port Forwarding On Your Router

You do have a router, right? If not, get one. The internet is a dangerous place. Log into your router and head for the Port Forwarding section of your router (see router documentation for this). You will need to forward the port you set SlimServer to toward your computer's IP. This allows you to access SlimServer from the outside world. Once the port forwarding is set up you are all set.

Tricks

Use Port Forwarding to Bypass Firewalls

So you got your SlimServer set up to listen to it at work, but your work has all the ports to the outside world locked down except port 80 for internet traffic? Don't fear. Most routers will allow you to do what amounts to port redirection when you forward the SlimServer port to your home machine. Simply set the external port to 80, and the internal port to whatever you set SlimServer to. Your home router will take care of shuffling everything around so that it works seamlessly.

Be warned, however, that many scanners will find this open port. Make sure that you have set a username and password for SlimServer, or anyone can access your music.

Use LAME to re-encode your MP3s on the Fly to Lower Bitrates

If you have a really slow upload, you can use LAME to re-encode your MP3s to lower bitrates. To do this, simply download LAME from http://mitiok.cjb.net/ which has Windows-compiled versions of LAME. Extract the files and then move Lame_enc.dll and Lame.exe to the server\bin\ folder inside the path you installed Slimserver to (normally C:\Program Files\Slimserver).

Inside SlimServer go to 'Player Settings for your.ip.shown.here', and then in the dropdown menu select 'Audio.' The options for setting up LAME are here.

Have fun listening to all your MP3s from anywhere that you have an internet connection!

At work, we suffer from the inevitable communications problem of "Did X get done last night?" or "When did Bob do such-and-such?" This isn't something that is any single person's fault, especially when the group of people you work with is small. I've done it, my coworkers have done it. With 40 PCs and around 10 servers, it can easily become a nightmare trying to keep track of what you have done. Paper logbooks become a bear as you have to physically keep track of them at all times.I don't remember where I read the idea, but at some point I read about using a wiki as a way to keep a computer logbook. It's easily accessible from any PC on the network, has partial-WYSIWYG editing, and keeps a record of who edited what page and when. I brought the idea up to my supervisor and he gave it a go.

I downloaded and installed MediaWiki, the same software that powers Wikipedia.org. We've been using it for the last couple of months, and it has turned out to be a good idea. We have it set so that anyone can view what is contained in the wiki, but only Systems can actually edit the pages. We could go even further, but that does us fine for now. Installing MediaWiki took under 30 minutes to uncompress and set up with a few basic Categories and a custom navigation area.

If you are looking for a better way to keep track of computer changes across a company, give MediaWiki a look at. All you need is an web server, MySQL, and PHP.