Nokia 770 Internet Tablet

My friend Phanidra reddy (Phani) is really a gadget geek. He has so many of them already and he keeps buying them so often.

He introuduced me to this cool device couple of weeks back, the NOKIA 770 Internet Tablet. 



No, this isn't a mobile phone. It is kind of a linux based palm top.. 

http://europe.nokia.com/A4145104

The operating system is customized, called the OS 2006. I know phani did load higher versions meant for the 800 family on to this device. Those are not officially supported on this device..

Interface



OS Version in Control Panel



What is there for you in this device:

• Network aware ( WLAN and Bluetooth) configurable mobile linux device ( need anything more!!)
• A media player. ( I wont call it state of the art)
• Decent enough graphic capability.
• MicroSD support I guess up to 1GB officially.. Phani the great did try a 2GB card and it worked. :-)
• Coolest thing.. It costs around RS 7500 ( was listed in indiatimes shopping sometime back)
• Options are not really limited as the interfaces are still configurable.. :-) I will leave it to your imagination

P.S. : Dr. Manmohan singh to be sworn in as the Prime Minister tomorrow.. Guess who is dreaming of driving the railways.. No prizes for guessing.. No Lalu this time.. It  is going to be Mamata. :-)

Internet Exporer 8: An interesting process handling and Memory consumption behaviour

I and Rejin were testing Internet Explorer 8 when we found this interesting behaviour. I decided to dig it a bit further..

My observations below...

Observation 1:
Opened up an Explorer window, the task manager has shown me  two instances of iexplore.exe running.  I understand this is by design and could  be attributed to the loosely coupled architecuture which enables Internet Explorer 8 to have features like crash recovery.




Observation 2:

Opened up a new tab in the existing window. The number of iexplore.exe processes in the taskmanager becomes 3.
This again is by design. This ensures that once tab if hung will not make other sessions hang.





Observation 3:

This is the most interesting part of it. When I closed down the tab that I just opened, the number of iexplore.exe process ilsted in Task Manager  did not change. It remained at 3. I couldnt believe that such a straight forward memory leak is possible for a tested product like IE 8.





I decided to test this further, opened up 4 more tabs, ensured that 5 iexplore.exe processes were listed in task manager. Then next thing I did was to close down all the additional tabs, and then I proceeded for a 5 minutes coffee break.

Surprisingly enough, when I came back and looked at the Task Manager window,  the number of iexplore.exe processes listed were only 2.  My initial impression was right, a product like IE8 can not have a bug as  straight forward as this.

During the next trial, I turned on the stop-watch and closely observed the additional iexplore.exe processes disappearing timing.. Interesting enough.. it had a pattern... 

The additional iexplore.exe's were dying down after 60 seconds of closing the correspoding tabs. I guess this also has to do something with the session recovery and to the new design..( not really sure)..

Violet Lillies by Mahesh

This man, with a smile mixed with innocence ( dont think he is so innocent though !) and fun, has always walked ahead of the crowd. He amused us with his Eigen, his indigenous project on signal processing, shown his vision and organizational talent during our college event Principia. 

He was my classmate during my graduation. As a lateral entry guy ( one who joins from 2nd year of an already set batch :))  I was initially asked to write couple of papers from the year that I missed by the university. Branded as the 'C' expert of the class, Mahesh's name was suggested by many to ask advice on 'C' exam that I had to appear..

I found him in library one day and voiced the million dollar question, "Mahesh, which book would you suggest for 'C'  ? " The answer was a smile, curious look with some words following after a 20ms delay  " Valleytta.. ( Big Brother, thats how they used to call me) , these are just weired concepts ( ???? what are ???)  If you think about the truth of the life, you do not really need a book to study 'C'. Everything is very evident "

I was not used to such enlightening words earlier.. So I left the task of searching the books to my eyes and found "Let Us C'. From that day, I have been very careful handling this man..

Mahesh alias MRV stories are plenty.. We had many discussions on things that were half practical, however was fun to discuss..

One who already has a craze in technology, imagine the after efects of he being affected with a bad habit of capturing light .. Mahesh has shown reasonable justice to the Canon (or Nikon ?)  SLR that he is owning.  ( Dont ask him what happened in bangalore after he tried to fix his tripod and then adjusted the CAM to shoot one of the important place. Poor Bangalore police thought he was upto something. )

http://www.flickr.com/photos/maheshravivarma/

Was planning to write a little more.. But time to move for me !!!! :-)

P.S.: Mahesh secured 2nd rank in GATE exam 2009 with a perfect 1000/1000 .. Well done Mahesh !!!

Nishant's Query on Windows XP basic networking

My friend Nishant asked me if I can help him configure a network between two Windows XP Systems.

I thought I will put down the common things involved in accomplishing such a task.

First lets see if we have the network card drives loaded for the device. You may right click on  the "My Computer" icon and then select "Properties". 

Select "Hardware" tab and then select "Device Manager"

See if we have the network card driver loaded by observing if we have any error or exclamation icon on the network card entry listing. If you dont have  a network card listed listed, then it might mean that the device is not enabled in BIOS or it does not have the proper drivers loaded.

So lets see if everything is fine here.. If you are seeing something like below with out any exclamation mark (yellow) or error mark (red) then that does suggest everything is fine.





The next thing we need to do is to configure the IP or the Internet Protocol

To do this open the "Network Places" by selecting "Open" as shown below.



This will open up the "Network Connections" Window. Here you will find icons and links for all the basic networking related tasks.

Now lets right click the "Local Area Connection" and then select properties ( Note: The "Local Area Connection" is default name for the local area connection :-). I mean.. if you wish, you may rename it like " My connection to ISP X")




This will open up the "Local Area Connection Properties" window.

Select "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) as shown in the below graphic and click properties.



Now lets assign the IP address for the system. Since we are configuring our system as a private network ( one that is not connected to internet with a valid public IP) we may use the standard private IP address series 192.168.100.1  with a netmask of 255.255.255.0.

Note: An IP address of 192.168.100.1 with a mask of 255.255.255.0 means that I am allowed to change only the last octet ( if w.x.y.z is the ip address then my last octet is z) to be able to communicate with systems in my local network ( provided they too keep their w.x.y same). if I change my w or x or y then I will require a router to communicate)



Now lets click "OK" as many number of times needed and then start verifying the configuration.

Lets open up a command prompt




Now in the newly opened up command prompt, lets type the "ipconfig /all" command.

This will show you the ip configuration of the system.




Dont worry about those 0.0.0.0 ip address and a similar mask. Did you notice one entry above that ? "Media Disconnected". I dont have the cable connected. Hence the system will not be showing up the ip address even if you configure the same.

So If you have the cable conected you should be able to see the IP Address 192.168.100.1 address with 255.255.255.0 mask over here.

Let me run through you about a fanstatic command called PING. This would help me understand if the system is able to reach to and communicate with the other system or not ( conditional: you need to have icmp protocol enabled ( enabled by default ) and your firewall should not be blocking ping.)

Following two graphics show two PING examples

A ping showing system to be un-reachable



A successful loopback ping



Try pinging your loop back ip 127.0.0.1 then your self ip 192.168.100.1 then 192.168.100.2 once we configure this second ip to the next system.

On the second system we need to repeat all these systems. Make sure you are giving a different IP (192.168.100.2 ) in the same series on system II





So once we are through we will be able to access other system and use any services offered including File and Print sharing.