Mini-review: LG GGC-H20L Super Multi Blue Blu-ray Disc & HD DVD-ROM Drive on Ubuntu
Optical storage certainly has come a long way, and with each new advance brings new affordable hardware to help nudge it along. The HD-DVD and Blu-ray disc formats brought along with it the ability to store and distribute high-quality, full high-definition 1080p movies.
Unlike when DVD first appeared, and probably thanks to the battle that was waged between the HD-DVD and Blu-ray formats, the provision of high-definition media and associated players has dropped in price rather dramatically to drive acceptance. I have a fairly large original DVD collection, but I am a quality freak and in light of high-definition releases, I loathed the idea of buying a DVD version of a given movie knowing that for about the same price I can buy a high-definition version.
So I decided to buy a Blu-ray drive. One of the cheapest options on the market is LG’s internal drive option called the “Super Multi Blue Blu-ray Disc & HD DVD-ROM Drive”, model GGC-H20L for about AUD$150. This review is my experience using the drive under Ubuntu 8.10, Intrepid Ibex.
Mini-Review: Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000
Well, it’s post-Xmas sales time again and vendors everywhere are struggling to get rid of their stock in readiness for 2009. Whilst I wasn’t in any specific need for something, I found JB Hi-Fi selling Microsoft’s Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000 series for AUD$45. This isn’t the cheapest I’ve seen it, mind you, only a few months ago Officeworks sold them for a brief period for only $35 in conjunction with a Microsoft promo, but I digress – I decided to purchase one of these mice for my EeePC 701 since they’re some 35% cheaper than its nearest rivals such as Logitech. But does that cheaper price come at a cost?
HowTo: Pair your Bluetooth mobile phone with Ubuntu Intrepid for file transfers etc.
While connecting a Bluetooth mobile phone to Ubuntu was not terribly difficult, Ubuntu Intrepid brings with it a new Wizard for connecting all manner of Bluetooth devices without the user having to touch the command line at all.
So, to that end, here is an update to my previous HowTo for connecting a Bluetooth mobile phone to Ubuntu Gusty or Ubuntu Hardy.
Mini-Review: The Fujitsu Dynadisq III 320GB USB Portable External HDD
Actually, I tell a lie – the full title for this product is the “Dynadisq III High Speed USB 2.0 Portable Storage & Backup Solution for Fujitsu 2.5″ SATA Disk Drives” (say that in one breath 5 times)!
Title aside, this is one of yet another series of pre-packaged drive & enclosure solutions being bandied about the market today. These solutions are gaining interest with a lot of consumers because they generally manage to undercut the combined cost of buying the same hard-drive and enclosure separately, so much in fact that many users who only need the drive, buy the solution package, rip out the drive and discard the case because in some cases (pun not intended), it can be cheaper this way.
Cost aside, what if you simply need to have a cost-effective external portable backup solution with minimal hassles? That immediately calls for a notebook hard-drive that can be powered by the USB data cable.
HowTo: Image your hard-drive for transfer or backup using dd
Imaging, also known as Ghosting in the Windows world, is the act of creating a sector-by-sector copy of a hard-drive and saving it to a file, or transferring it to another hard-drive. Such uses for imaging include:
- Backup to an image file
- Clone to another hard-drive (eg: building multiple identical workstations) either directly or via an image file
- Data recovery (it’s safer and easier to examine an image file than risk further damage to the hard-drive itself)
Linux has a neat little command that can do this for us called simply “dd”. It is completely filesystem independent, so you can backup any hard-drive regardless of whether it was Linux formatted, Mac formatted or Windows formatted. It copies the drive bit by bit, sector by sector, not file by file.
Mini-Review: Benq E2200HD widescreen monitor on Ubuntu
I’ve been waiting a long time to replace my aging, yet faithful Compaq 17″ LCD monitor for the last 6 years with some high-definition, widescreen goodness, but have always balked at the price of any display 24″ and higher. For a long time, these were the only displays that offered true high-definition at 1920×1200, but now Benq have released a 22″ display that does full high-definition for less than AUD$300! It was too tempting – I had to get one!
