Ubuntu lucid lynx 10.4 on Vaio CS17G

Its nearly a week since the release of ubuntu lucid lynx or ubuntu 10.4. I upgraded when it was still beta and now i have fully updated lynx. On my vaio cs17g, i was hoping it will fix few specific glitches with this laptop. see my previous blog for this.
So does anything change? Not really
Although there are a lot of improvements over ubuntu 9.10 like,

• Faster boot time: some guys claim to have a boot time of less than 10 secs, i get around 15 secs till Login screen.
• Improved appearances: in the sense, better default themes, i like dust sand, ambience
• Introduction of "me menu" which i feel is a very nice idea.

In terms of addressing my specific problems pertaining to this laptop, no much change.

• suspend does not work: it suspends well but no keyboard on wake up
• Inbuilt microphone does not work
• Media keys do not work

I managed to get the brightness key working after tweaking and getting them to work with nvclock.

Apart from these glitches i feel it is a great improvement over the previous release.

Ubuntu 9.10 on Sony Vaio VGN-CS17G

Hi, a little more than a month left now for the release of Ubuntu Lucid lynx i,e 10.04. I have been using ubuntu for the last 5 years,earlier on my previous sony vaio PGN-K115Z and now on my new vaio CS17G for the past 6 months. I have tried hard to get the most of my lappy in ubuntu. It is the time to list what has worked and what did'nt, since i want to move to ubuntu lucid beta ASAP.

What did'nt work:
1. Inbuilt microphone
2. Suspend works but no keyboard on waking up.
3. Media keys do not work.

What works:
1. Fn keys for volume control works including mute, up and down out of the box.
2. Fn brightness keys worked after tweaking, to get them work with nvclock
3. Inbuilt webcam works with cheese but not with camorama.
4. wifi works out of the box
5. Hibernate works out of the box.
6. Headphones work

Most of the other things worked.
For me, the one which caused much trouble was suspend. It is anoying to hibernate, as it takes more time to wake up than booting time. So you can actually shut down and boot everytime faster than hibernate

I have heard that the new kernel in lucid has rectified the problem of suspend. That is good news and that it is very fast in booting i,e under 10 secs boot.

I will report back when i install lucid beta on this machine.

Useful websites for Orthopaedic surgeons and Residents

Hi i have compiled a list of very useful websites for Orthopaedic residents and surgeons. The list has links to many sites with free medical information, some basic,some with recent advances. This has taken a lot of time and some heavy googling to compile, i hope you find this useful.

• 1. AO Foundation
• 2. Arthroscopy: The Journal of Arthroscopic and Related Surgery
• 3. Cardiovascular Medicine
• 4. Clinics in Sports Medicine

Save our Tigers

Hi there is a sharp drop in the tiger population in India. Only 1411 left now, with 86 deaths in 2009.
Our national animal, majestic and the biggest of the cats is in the brink of extinction.
There is a campaign going on called 'save our tigers'.
Pl voice your support for the same by visiting http://www.saveourtigers.com/.
Click on join the roar and pledge your support.
This is one of the many photographs of the most favorite animal of the world, by me.

Reduce Loud Rattling sony vaio CS fan noise

Update: 3 months since my post on reducing the fan noise. The noise seems to reappear. I took apart my vaio CS again to peep inside and try to figure out what exactly is the problem. I found that there is a lot of wobble when the fan rotates which makes the blades to brush the edges. So i came up with this.
Take a smooth surfaced plastic washer and stick it to the base of the center rod in the fans, like this in the photo. Look at the arrows to see how the washer is stuck to the base of the fan. After this put everything back as before. Now the fan noise is very minimal as the wobbling reduces to a great extent and the fan runs smoothly. For full article look below.

                                                                 

Hi it has been nearly 10 months since i started using vaio CS17G, it is an excellent laptop running vista without problems thus far. But since yesterday i started getting a strange loud fan noise all of a sudden.
I could follow the temp readings and the noise came on as soon as the temp was nearing 50C.
After googling for a while i learnt that this is a common problem with the sony laptops and was attributed to the faulty fans manufactured in china which were used by sony for their laptops.
I could go for repairs from sony under warranty, but for many people the problem returned after the repairs.
Since i had also partitioned the hard disk and installed ubuntu, i was not sure of warranty.
So i decided i will fix this on my own.
So these are the steps to reach the fan and fix the problem.

1. Disconnect power cable after shutdown and remove battery.