It’s official, Dell UK has started selling the Mini 10 for 299 pounds for the 1.33GHz version or 329 pounds for the 1.6GHz version.
You can buy it here. It won’t ship for another 3 weeks however.
More details on the Dell Mini 10 have been released:
http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/archive/2009/02/18/dell-s-mini-10-packs-a-punch.aspx
Some things that jump out:
Summary: Not a lot of netbook for a lot of money. I’m going to have to reconsider which netbook to buy now.
I have come across this website:
http://www.studyjapan.go.jp/en/toj/toj0306e.html
It’s like JET. You apply with the embassy in your home country, but this is to study in Japan for a Masters or Doctorate. Get this: they give you a free return ticket, moving allowance (25000 yen), and a monthly allowance (170,000 yen). Plus, you get your education! I’m quite interested in this, especially with the current economy in the UK.
Hmm… what to do….
Well, I’m coming down with something and it’s looking very like influenza. Aches, pains, cough, sore throat, general sick feeling, I have it all. Time to stay in bed.
This problem has been bugging the life out of me ever since it appeared about a month ago.
Some background: I have a VPS with EUKHost.com that I have all my sites on. I have about 5 email accounts spread over my various domains on this VPS. I prefer to use IMAP, and have MS Outlook open for most of the day with it doing an automatic send/receive every 10 minutes or so. This worked great for 10 or 11 months.
As I said, a month ago this “BYE Temporary problem, please try again later” message kept appearing. What made it even more annoying is that Outlook displays it in a foreground message window that disturbs any application you may be using at the time the error occurs. Oh, and it also keeps the mail accounts “offline” until you do a manual send-receive. E-X-T-R-E-M-E-L-Y annoying when this happens every few minutes. I ended up closing Outlook for most of the day because it just bugged me so much.
EUKHost couldn’t fix it. Various google searches I tried before didn’t help. Today, I finally have some free time to sit down and finally figure this one out.
First, I had to confirm that it was a server problem and not a problem with my Outlook. Because this is an intermittent problem, this was difficult to do and partly the reason why it took me 4 weeks to do something about it. After some research, I found out how to debug courier authentication errors. I wasn’t 100% sure this was where my problem lay, but as I had nothing else to go on, I decided to give it a try.
How to debug courier authentication errors:
authdaemonrc (I found mine at /etc/authlib/authdaemonrc)DEBUG_LOGIN=1authdaemond:# authdaemond stop
# authdaemond start*.debug /var/log/debug# touch /var/log/debug
# killall -1 syslogd# tail -f /var/log/debugOK, so now we’re debugging authentication errors. I opened Outlook and just continued doing whatever I normally do until the error message appeared. It wasn’t more than 5 minutes before it appeared. In the log file I saw this:
...
Feb 14 15:57:34 vps authdaemond: authpipe: TEMPFAIL - no more modules will be tried
...
Feb 14 15:57:34 vps imapd: LOGIN FAILED, user=paul+fuc.it, ip=[::ffff:222.144.254.98]
Feb 14 15:57:34 vps imapd: authentication error: Input/output error
This confirmed that it was indeed an authentication problem. The input/output error confused me for a while – was it a hardware problem? After researching more, I found this useful bit of text within the authdaemonrc.dist file (yes, the configuration file I was editing before didn’t have any comments…)
##NAME: daemons:0
#
# The number of daemon processes that are started. authdaemon is typically
# installed where authentication modules are relatively expensive: such
# as authldap, or authmysql, so it's better to have a number of them running.
# PLEASE NOTE: Some platforms may experience a problem if there's more than
# one daemon. Specifically, SystemV derived platforms that use TLI with
# socket emulation. I'm suspicious of TLI's ability to handle multiple
# processes accepting connections on the same filesystem domain socket.
#
# You may need to increase daemons if as your system load increases. Symptoms
# include sporadic authentication failures. If you start getting
# authentication failures, increase daemons. However, the default of 5
# SHOULD be sufficient. Bumping up daemon count is only a short-term
# solution. The permanent solution is to add more resources: RAM, faster
# disks, faster CPUs...
I underlined the important bits. Sporadic authentication failures? Check. Default of 5? Uhm…. mine’s set at 2. So, I upped it to 5, restarted authdaemond and waited for Outlook. It’s been going for a few hours now and no errors. I hope this resolves it finally. I also hope that this helps someone else and prevents someone from getting as fed up with it as I did. Leave a comment if it helped you!
In the first of my “How to fix” posts where I detail how I fix various issues I run into, this is a simple one:
[root@vps etc]# locate courier
locate: can not open `/var/lib/mlocate/mlocate.db': No such file or directory
OK, so the mlocate.db file doesn’t exist, marvellous. How do we either find it or create it?
Answer: simply run updatedb
[root@vps etc]# updatedb
Now we can do our search:
[root@vps etc]# locate courier
/etc/profile.d/courier-imap.csh
/etc/profile.d/courier-imap.sh
/etc/rc.d/init.d/courier-authlib
/etc/rc.d/init.d/courier-imap
/etc/rc.d/rc0.d/K30courier-imap
/etc/rc.d/rc0.d/K85courier-authlib
/etc/rc.d/rc1.d/K30courier-imap
...
I know, a day early… However, when I arrived at school this morning, there was already 2 bags of chocolates on my desk. See, in Japan, the girls give chocolates to the guys on Valentine’s Day, and the guys are meant to give white chocolates back on “White Day” (March 14th).
Later in the day, 2 of my nice(r) students gave me some homemade chocolates. They’re the Elmo box and the little bag below.
Remember, Elmo loves you!
I’m new to wordpress, as you can probably tell by the default template and lack of plugins etc etc. However, 1 day after installing it, it prompts me to download and install a new update. I comply.
After updating wordpress, I went to bed satisfied knowing my wordpress was up to date and all my worries had been solved… or so I thought. What I didn’t expect was for it to revert my customised footer (with page counter) back to the stoneage. Without telling me. Unfortunately, I only realised this after I woke up, thereby losing a good 8 or 9 hours of stats.
ありがとうワードプレスさん。 (Thank you Mr. WordPress).
Not.
After 5 years of teaching English in Japanese High Schools, there are still some things that get under my skin. Pure incompetence is one of them.
Usually lessons are 50 minutes long, but today it’s only 40 minutes for some unknown reason. This puts a bit more pressure on me to get my content finished which is usually to the minute for a 50 minute lesson.
Today I was trying to get the teacher who I was teaching with to tell the students at various points of the lesson what I was showing on the TV. I was showing clips from the TV show “American Chopper” to show creativity and just because it’s interesting and fun. I introduced each clip and every single time the JTE (the Japanese teacher) made up a load of bollocks which did not even slightly resemble what I was saying. For example:
Me: Students, please take your seats and we will hand out your previous lesson’s worksheets.
Teacher (in Japanese): Sit down. <Proceeds to stand at the front of the class doing nothing, like a twat.>
After a few seconds of waiting…
Me: Teacher, please hand back the worksheets
Teacher (in Japanese): Ok, everyone sit down. <still does nothing about the worksheets>
Me: Teacher, please hand back the worksheets.
Teacher: Ok please start the lesson.
Me: I can’t until you’ve handed back the worksheets…
Later, 30minutes into the 40 minute lesson… I was explaining what is now happening on the screen. Bear in mind that this spider theme was introduced at the very start of the lesson and we already saw 4 other clips based on the spider theme:
Me: ”Now they are making a wheel.”
Teacher (in Japanese): “This is a new theme. New theme.”
Me: ”No, it’s the same theme. Spiders.”
Teacher (in Japanese): “Ok, it’s a new theme, new theme.”
Me: <gives up>
Now I have to go and teach another class with the same guy. Back later.
The Dell Mini 10 is due to be released in the UK on February 27th, 2009!
I’ve been following the slow trickle of information released about the Dell Mini 10 for about a month now, and got a little fed up of clicking my bookmarked link to Google with the keywords “dell mini 10 release date”. So, I clicked on over to dell.co.uk and pulled up a seat in their live chat. To be honest with you, I didn’t expect them to give me the time of day, never mind the answers to the questions I was about to ask.
After a few seconds, a Dell agent named Avinash came in and 2 lines of pasted text appeared. Not a good start I thought. Please excuse the lack of proper formatting as this is not a copy/paste from the original log. The original log is displayed at the bottom of this post.
Paul Synnott: Initial Question/Comment: Hello, I am waiting eagerly for the release of the Dell Mini 10. Is there any hint of a release date? A general ball-park ….
System: Avinash_K_Kumar has joined this session!
System: Connected with Avinash_K_Kumar
Paul Synnott: A general ball park date would be appreciated so I can plan my finances thank you
Avinash_K_Kumar: Thank you for contacting Dell sales chat. This is Avinash, your Sales Advisor. Please give me a moment while I review your query.
Avinash_K_Kumar: In order to Help you better can you provide me with your email address and Telephone number in case we get Disconnected so I can either come back to you by phone or email
However, things very quickly got exciting when after asking me to wait 2-3 minutes for the details to my question, he says:
Avinash_K_Kumar: So Paul the mini 10 is being launched on 27th of this month!!!
You read it right, the Dell Mini 10 is being released on February 27th, 2009!! Wow. A clear, concise answer to my question. I was speechless, but not for long! I quickly got a few more questions in before Avinash came to his senses:
Paul Synnott: I have a question about the power cable that will come with it… as you know, compactness is the key for the Mini, will the power block be the tiny one like the Mini 9, or a huge block like the other laptops?
Avinash_K_Kumar: its going to be the smaller one like the mini 9
Awesome. No huge power block to carry around. Winner. Onto the next question:
Paul Synnott: one last question, I’ve seen the “leaked” slide about the specs, I’m a little disappointed it shows 2 HDDs and no SSDs for the storage options. Are SSDs definately not being included as an option?
Avinash_K_Kumar: We are working on that.. we sure feel that SSDs are a must for any compact machine.. but pricing also comes into picture if we include SSDs.. so will have the info in the last week of this month..
Understandable. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that Dell can do some magic. Ok, now for my actual last question:
Paul Synnott: (oh, forgot to ask, any prices for it yet?
)
Avinash_K_Kumar: Prices have not been decided yet but its going to be around the price of the Mini 12.. slightly cheaper though..
So, around 300-350 pounds I’m guessing. Reasonable.
I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait. It looks like a great machine and I’ll be first in the queue to buy it. Full chat log below, made public with Avinash’s permission.
Dell Mini 10 release date chat log
