Incoming links: Ethernet
Bought: November 2023 during Black Friday sale for £1,323.00 to be Ciro Santilli's main personal laptop.
Six years after, and we are 2x on every key spec (except processor Hz ;-) at about 1/2 the price and 1/2 the weight (though smaller 14" screen for greater portability), so not bad! Customized to max out each hardware spec:
Specs:
- Processor: AMD Ryzen™ 7 PRO 7840U Processor (3.30 GHz up to 5.10 GHz)
- Operating System: No Operating Systemselected upgrade
- Operating System Language: No Operating System Languageselected upgrade
- Microsoft Productivity Software: None
- Memory: 64 GB LPDDR5X-6400MHz (Soldered)selected upgrade. Specs at: www.lenovo.com/gb/en/p/accessories-and-software/memory-and-storage/memory-and-storage-hard-drives/4xb1d04758 quotes "64 Gbps", i.e. 8 GB/s.
dd count=1M if=/dev/zero of=tmpgives only 255 MB/s however. - Solid State Drive: 2 TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 Performance TLC Opalselected upgrade
- Display: 14" WUXGA (1920 x 1200), IPS, Anti-Glare, Touch, 45%NTSC, 300 nits, 60Hz
- Graphic Card: Integrated GraphicsThe Ubuntu 23.10 "About system GUI describes its graphics as: Radeon 780M Graphics × 16, which e.g. www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-780m.c4020 documents as running the RDNA 3 microarchitecture.
- Camera: 1080P FHD RGB/IR Hybrid with Microphone
- Color: Thunder Black
- Factory Color Calibration: No Factory Color Calibration
- Wireless: Qualcomm Wi-Fi 6E NFA725A 2x2 AX & Bluetooth® 5.1 or above
- Integrated Mobile Broadband: No Wireless WAN
- Ethernet: Wired Ethernet
- Near Field Communication: No NFC
- Fingerprint Reader: Fingerprint Reader
- Keyboard: Black - English (EU)selected upgrade
- Battery: 4 Cell Li-Polymer 52.5Whselected upgrade
- Power Cord: 65W USB-C Slim 90% PCC 3pin AC Adapter - UKselected upgrade
- Electronic Privacy Filter: No ePrivacy Filter
- Adobe Elements: None
- Adobe Acrobat: None
- Adobe Creative Cloud: None
- Security Software: None
- Cloud Security Software: No Cloud Security Software
- Warranty: 3 Year Courier or Carry-in
Identifiers:
- Ethernet MAC address: fc:5c:ee:24:fb:b4
- Wi-Fi MAC address: 04:7b:cb:cc:1b:10
Upon arrival:
- Weight: 1490 g
- Charger weight: 323 g
- Firmware according to
sudo dmidecode -t bios:Vendor: LENOVO Version: R2FET33W (1.13 ) Release Date: 09/08/2023
Buy research:
- www.phoronix.com/review/thinkpad-p14s-gen4 says Ubuntu running fine
- Intel vs amd: the Intel ones could come with a discrete rtx A500 GPU. GPU likely makes laptop heavier and less power efficient. And both have basically the same benchmark which is crazy:So the only downside is not being able to run CUDA.
- thought about Yoga or other Ultrabook options, but 2x price at same specs, so nah...
Log:
2024-01-17: firmware update:Actually fixed performance mode: askubuntu.com/questions/604720/setting-to-high-performance/1343879#1343879
Vendor: LENOVO
Version: R2FET36W (1.16 )
Release Date: 10/24/2023Bought: 2017 for approximately 2400 pounds to be Ciro Santilli's main personal laptop.
Specs:
- screen: 15.6 inches, 16:9
- weight: 2691g (self weight in 2023)
- charger weight: 700g (self weight in 2023)
Identifiers:
- Ethernet MAC address: 54:e1:ad:b5:5b:08
- Wi-Fi MAC address: 44:03:2c:a2:27:81
Board LED does not turn on (turned on on first plug, Ethernet always turns on):
- www.orangepi.org/orangepibbsen/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=470
- www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtUn-dnJFdU says only one specific supply worked..
- www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/3jamn1/any_orange_pi_owners_here_help_with_power_imput/ Comment www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/3jamn1/any_orange_pi_owners_here_help_with_power_imput/cy79a7w says it only worked with the official supply...
Now just HDMI does not work. Possibly a monitor vs television problem:
Admin IP address: 192.168.1.1/
Giving that a try because the Talktalk router is shit, Wifi is way too weak. Produced a great improvement over two doors, way more than the previously bought tp-link repeater!
Very very good. Those nice pre-Dot-com bubble vibes.
Might be freely watchable? Wikipedia links to:
But they do start with an FBI warning about copyright. So... erm.
Part 1 - Networking The Nerds talks about the TCP/IP and early machines implementing it:
- 21:00: shows inside The Pentagon. The way the dude who works there opens a his locked office door with an electric switch is just amazing. Cringely also mentions that there's an actual official speed limit in the corridors as he rides a carrier bike slowly through them.
- 21:45: the universities weren't enthusiastic, because people from other locations would be able to use your precious computer time. But finally ARPA forced the universities' hands, and they joined.
- 24:24 mentions that some of the guys who created ARPANET were actually previously counting cards at Casinos in Las Vegas, just like in the 21 (2008) film
- one of the centerpieces of development was at UCLA. The other was the BBN company. 33:55 shows the first router, then called them Interface Message Processor
- the first message was from UCLA to Stanford University. He was trying to write "Login", and it crashed at the 'g'. Epic. They later debugged it.
- towards the end talks about ALOHAnet, the first wireless computer communication done
Part 2 - Serving the Suits
- Robert Metcalfe. He's nice. Xerox PARC. Ethernet.
- Explains what is a "Workstation", notably showing one by Sun Microsystems. This is now an obscure "passé" thing in 2020 that young people like Ciro Santilli have only heard of in legend (or in outdated university computer labs!). Funny to think that so many people have had this idea before, including e.g. the Chromebook
- 10:46 mentions that all of Cisco, Silicon Graphics and Sun Microsystems and where founded at Margaret Jacks Hall, Building 460, at Stanford University.
- he then talks a lot about Sun. Sun became dominant in Wall Street.
- 19:05: Novell, from Utah. How they almost went bust, but were saved at the last moment by Ray Noorda, who refocused them to their NetWare product which was under recent development. It allowed file and printer sharing in IBM PCs. 22:55 shows how they had a live radio host for people waiting on customer support calls!
- 33:56 mentions how The Grateful Dead had in impact on the Internet, as people wanted computers to be able to access The WELL online forum. They still own the domain as of 2022: www.well.com/. It is interesting how Larry Page also liked The Grateful Dead as mentioned at The Google Story, his dad would take him to shows. Larry is a bit younger of course than the people in this documentary.
- 37 show McAfee
- 43:56: fantastic portrait of Cisco
Part 3 - Wiring the World:
- Berners-Lee at CERN and the invention of the URL.
- 1992: US Government allow commerce on the Internet
- Web browser history, Mosaic and Marc Andresseeen.
- 20:45: America Online
- 23:29: search engines and Excite. Google was a bit too small to be on his radar!
- 25:50: porn
- 27: The Motley Fool and advertising
- 30: Planet U grocery shopping
- 31:50: Amazon
- 33:00: immigrant workers, Indians playing cricket, outsourcing, Wipro Systems
- 41:25: Java
- 46:30: Microsoft joins the Internet. The Internet Tidal Wave Internet memo. Pearl Harbour day talk.
- 56:40: Excite Tour. If they had survived, they would have been Google with their quirky offices.
A switch is a box with a bunch of Ethernet wires coming into it:Except that it doesn't have to be Ethernet, e.g. it would also be a Wi-Fi.
+--------------------+
| +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ |
| |1| |2| |3| |4| |
| +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ |
+--------------------+What the switch does is:After the destination is found, a confirmation is somehow sent back to the switch, which then learns which wire to send each MAC address to.
- an Ethernet request came in from wire 1
- decide which wire to send it out on, e.g. wire 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. You likely don't want to send it back through 1 where it came from.
A switch is a bit like a router but it is a bit dumber/operates at a lower level: it basically operates only on MAC addresses, not on IP addresses.
The Internet service provider boxes most people have at home combines a switch for the local network and a router for the ISP communication.