2010-11-03 von ekkehard.

After several years of using various Type II and III Das Keyboard, I’m finally closing that chapter. I had hoped to get reliable keyboards that would last a lifetime. However, it turned out that all my Type III keyboards suffer from some unknown problem, either a firmware bug that causes specific keys to be ignored occasionally, or a defective controller chip (since I didn’t notice that problem earlier), or simply defective keys (I think I did notice a different tactile feetback on defective keys). I think that’s inexcusable b/c the company advertises a lifetime of 3 million key presses or more per microswitch key (can’t remember the exact figure). Normal keyboards only last for a couple of months for me, and some of these Das Keyboard lasted a couple of years,  but 3 million key presses?? I don’t think that I really type all that much. I’ll resume  to using cheap keyboards for now, even if I have to replace them every couple of moons.

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2008-11-18 von ekkehard.

Today, I was playing with the thought again to purchase an AIX workstation one day when I can afford them, and I was surprised to see that IBM is going to give its Intellistation POWER Series workstations the boot in January ‘09. A black day for AIX on the desktop. I really wonder what’s the problem there, warehouse costs? IBM has a history of burying its best stuff (like OS/2 for instance). Some years ago, I enjoyed hacking away on an RS/6000 workstation running AIX 4.2, and it was a pure joy. Not only the kernel, but also the admin tools, like smit and smitty. Their blade-centric solution uses Windows as a client for workstation application. This truly sounds like IBM wants AIX only for servers anymore. I’m not amused. Although, eXceed on Windows with an XDCMP server running on AIX might also be a viable solution … whatever. But it can’t beat a native POWER box sitting on your desk, that’s for sure.

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2008-11-18 von ekkehard.

Tonight, I restored a backup I made on Blu-ray disks. Restoring a folder of merely 60,000 files took over 6 hours. While Blu-ray is the best option for optical storage of 25 GB per disk and beyond, reading speeds are more akin to old QIC streamers … (along with the odd seeking noise)

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