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The Lounge What is on Your Mind? What brand is your primary computer? Post 302809701 by alister on Monday 20th of May 2013 01:04:28 PM
Old 05-20-2013
dgcc has been available without xcode for many years through fink and macports (package managers for open source software).

Please don't misconstrue that as an Apple or OS X endorsement. To be clear, my experience with Apple laptop hardware was horrid. My white polycarbonate/fiberglass macbook ,within its first 2 years, suffered from a swollen battery, a/c adapter failure, cracks around the keyboard and display, a dead fan, a dead key, and several keys on the keyboard's home row whose letters wore off. Despite being a laptop, this machine never left my home and was always treated well. Note that none of these problems were unique to my machine; there are ample forum threads on the net about them. However, I do seem to have been particularly unfortunate in suffering from all of them.

To be fair, I must say that their customer service treated me well and attended to most of these issues. But, after the third year, when Applecare had expired and the machine began to refuse to charge, I took great joy in dropping it from a balcony, before running it over with my car, and slamming a sledgehammer upon it. My only lament is that I did not have thermite for the remains. In accordance with Apple's enviromentally-friendly policies, I properly disposed of the corpse.

I hear that the aluminum unibody designs are more robust. For those who invest them, I hope that's the case. I will steer clear.

A low-end Lenovo G570 that I bought 8 months ago just died last week. Consumer Electronics 101: it never bodes well when your computer releases its magic smoke. Very soon after the acrid smoke began to exit the vent, the machine shut down and has not shown any sign of life since. I suppose I should not have expected anything more when the manufacturer itself has little confidence in their product's quality: the machine shipped with a 6 month warranty (3 months for some parts, such as hinges).

I hope that the Thinkpad line hasn't suffered similarly. I owned a Thinkpad 486 that was still going strong 20 years after it was born. I only got rid of it because I had been accumulating too much disused hardware.

Since my Lenovo's passing, I will buy a new machine soon. Hopefully, after experiencing bad luck with my last two purchases, this next one will turn out well. Currently, I am dividing my time between a couple of laptops: a 7 yr old HP Compaq nx6325 (Windows XP/OpenBSD) and a 15 yr old Pentium II Compaq Armada 7800 (Debian). The open source unix systems run very well on both machines (I eschew elaborate desktop environments in favor of very lightweight tabbed window managers).

In an emergency, the Armada doubles as a heavy, devastingly lethal, blunt weapon (it weighs approx 9 lbs/4 kgs). [1980s Arnold Schwarzenegger]I will crush your puny ultrabook between my catastrophic, pumped up hinges![/1980s Arnold Schwarzenegger].

Since both of my current machines are related to Compaq, that's where I cast my vote.

Regards,
Alister

Last edited by alister; 05-20-2013 at 02:22 PM..
 

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WMBATTERY(1x)															     WMBATTERY(1x)

NAME
wmbattery - dockable battery monitor SYNOPSIS
wmbattery [options] DESCRIPTION
wmbattery is a battery monitor. It is used to visually display the system's battery status. wmbattery can get battery information using HAL, APM, ACPI, or the SPIC controller in some Sony laptops. You need to build your kernel with support for at least one of these for the program to work. wmbattery is dockable using WindowMaker and AfterStep window managers; under other window managers wmbattery appears as a nicely-sized 64x64 application. wmbattery displays the status of your laptop's battery in a small icon. This includes if it is plugged in, if the battery is charging, how many minutes of battery life remain, battery life remaining (with both a percentage and a graph), and battery status (high - green, low - yellow, or critical - red). ELEMENTS OF THE DISPLAY
The wmbattery display consists of these elements: dial The large dial at the top of the display shows battery life remaining. time display The time display, right under and in the middle of the dial, shows how many hours and minutes of battery life is estimated to remain at the current rate of use. If ACPI is used and battery is charging, the time display will instead show a countdown (starting with a minus sign) of how many hours and minutes it is estimated to take until the battery is fully charged. power cord The small icon of a power cord plug, in the bottom left, tells if the laptop is plugged into wall power. If so, it will be lit. charging indicator The lightning bolt icon, to the right of the plug, tells if the battery is being charged. If so it will be lit and will connect the plug to the battery. battery icon The battery icon, to the right of the lighting bolt, shows the percentage of battery time. If the battery is removed the icon will be dimmed. If the computer is low on power the battery will turn yellow; if the computer is critically low on power and about to die because of it, it will turn red. OPTIONS
-h Display list of command-line options. -w secs Pause this many seconds between updates. -d display Use the designated X display. -g +x+y Specify geometry. This specifies position, not size. -b battnum Display the given battery. Only of use with the HAL or ACPI interfaces on systems with more than one battery. The default is to dis- play the first battery found. -l percent Set the percentage at which the battery is considered to be running low. By default, this percentage is determined automaticall, and you shouldn't need to set it. If you set this, you should probably also set the -c switch. -c percent Set the percentage at which the battery is considered to be critically low. By default, this percentage is determined automati- cally, and you shouldn't need to set it. If you set this, you should probably also set the -l switch. -e wmbattery contains code for estimating the time remaining before discharge, and until full charge, and this code is used if no other source of this informaton is available. This switch makes wmbattery use its time estimation code even if some other estimate is available. -s granularity Ignore fluctuations less than the specified granularity percent when estimating time. (Implies -e) -a file.au Play the specified au file (by sending it to /dev/audio) when the battery is low. AUTHOR
Joey Hess <joey@kitenet.net> WMBATTERY(1x)
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