Remus

What can I say, it is just as wide as I thought it would be but the height is a bit disappointing, but that is really my fault, never bothered to actually check that. Anyway it is super OK, the main point, which is to have a bigger resolution than my laptop display (1400×1050), is fullfiled (having 1680×1050), the ergonomics are great so are the colors, and absolutely no flaw (no dead or bad pixels).

The whole idea is that my laptop is kind-of old, it was about time to change it to a new model but then I left the company so the whole point of having a laptop made no sense anymore as I don’t have to work every day both at the office and at home. In the end I decided that I will have a regular, home made PC and use my old laptop for couch reading, writing and traveling.

The first thing needed was a display, after so many years on LCD there was no way I would switch back to CRT, but there is a problem, the screen resolution for a 19′ LCD is 1280×1024 or that is less than the one I’ve been using on my laptop for so many years. For site reading or document writing that resolution would be plenty but development on this resolution it is most definitely not a pleasuring experience. The higher resolution LCD displays start at 20′ and has a hefty price. Luckily there here are 3 models available here, those have a 1680×1050 resolution and are less expensive.

Initially I found the FP202W model from Benq with a reasonably good review and then the model 200W6CS from Philips which I heard share the same screen and technologies as my 2005FPW Dell reviewed here and here. The only trouble was that I couldn’t find the Dell available on the Romanian e-commerce sites, till I found Madd Electronics. Being less expensive than the Benq and Philips and having a very positive review I opted for the Dell.

Even if a bit disappointing (the height) I’m not sure I would have pay the difference for a full blown, standard (1600×1200) low end 20′ display.

I was unable at the beginning to convince my official Dell Nvidia Geforce2 Go drivers to display the not so standard resolution, the issue is that Dell doesn’t have for a long time made an update to them, and the official Nvidia drivers refuse to install on the Dell laptop. But uninstalling the Dell drivers and letting the official Microsoft drivers for the card did the trick. Under Suse 10 it was easy, just choose LCD 1680×1050 and you are settled.

After two days of using it, I can say that I definitely like it, hopefully will have a successful long term relation.

Unless you where living under a rock, you have heard about Ruby on Rails, its basically a full web stack for writing real-word applications with joy and less code, how they put it, and most definitely the application that made Ruby a star.The basic idea was to use OO, and the cool new technologies work for you, in a transparent manner, hiding the complexity in convention over configuration, a very simple idea that makes a lot of sense.

Since that idea works quite well, powerful technology combined with simplicity its always a winner receipt, the Python guys did their version of Python on Rails, Turbo Gears. Even if it makes sense, despite the 45 Java based Web related frameworks, today I noticed that we have our own version, first release milestone, of Java on Rails, called Sails. It comes well equipped, with a Blog, a Community and Eclipse plugins.

I like the idea a lot, so its there on the list of things to investigate, right near Shale, and Seam. I think we are developing our own version of Kmania (from KDE) but it starts with S (Struts, Shale, Seam, Sails), hm.