Sunday, August 12, 2012

Android PC vs Hackberry A10



After the Raspberry Pi, the APC and Hackberry A10 are the latest entrants in the hugely popular line of ultra small motherboards designed to run any thing from the Android OS to trimmed down Linux distributions. But keep in mind that these are development boards, not mobos that you can buy and build a standard desktop computer from.
No wonder they are popular with tinkerers, developers and wannabe DIYers. No doubt that they will eventually go mainstream, but for now, these boards are a hacker’s delight. This article presents a casual comparison of the Android Personal Computer (APC) and the Hackberry A10.



FeaturesAndroid PC (APC)
APC
Hackberry A10
A10
CompanyA product of VIA Technologies Inc., a manufacturer of integrated circuits based in Taipei, TaiwanA product of Miniand, a technology company based in Canberra, Australia.
ProcessorVIA 800MHz ProcessorAllwinner A10 ARM Cortex A8 clocking at 1.2GHz
This is obviously a more powerful system than the APC.
Graphics (GPU)Hardware 2D/3D Graphic.
Resolution up to 720p
Not as powerful a graphics processing power as the A10
Mali 400 (4 max GPU cores). Hardware 3D acceleration and video decoding.Resolution 1080p
Memory512 MB DDR3 512 MB to 1 GB DDR3
There are two different models, one with 512 MB of RAM and another with 1 GB.
ConnectivityHDMI
VGA
USB 2.0 (x4)
microSD Slot
HDMI
VGA
USB 2.0 (x2)
microSD Slot
4-pin serial port
Storage2 GB NAND Flash. 4 GB NAND Flash. SDHC card slot supporting up to 32 GB
Networking10/100 Ethernet10/100 Ethernet, Realtek 802.11n WiFi
Supported OScustom Android systemAndroid 4.0 ICS, Linux
Comments/
Resources
The price tag for the APC is USD $49, but because of overwhelming demand, the company has stopped taking pre-orders - for now.

Home page. Download the kernel and boot loader from
here.
The price tag for the 512 MB model of the A10 is USD $60, but is currently out of stock. The 1 GB model is due at the end of this month and the published price tag is USD $65.

Home page

Ashampoo.HDD.Control.2.10.Final


The hard drive is one of the most important components of your computer. Even if a hard drive works flawlessly, it should still be regularly checked and maintained. This way an imminent hard drive failure can be detected early and might be prevented. If suddenly major problems occur or if your hard drive even completely fails, data loss might be the result.

Make sure you are prepared for such a situation. Ashampoo HDD Control 2 can notify you early so that your valuable data won't become the victim of a hardware crash. Now Ashampoo HDD Control 2 offers even more functions to check the status of your hard drive(s). Use for example the S.M.A.R.T self-test or adjust the noise level and power management of your hard drive(s) (if supported). Furthermore you can restore accidentally deleted files and folders with Ashampoo HDD Control 2. Get to know the all-rounder for monitoring, maintenance and defragmentation, and check the health status and performance of your hard drive(s) today.

Software Highlights
Constant monitoring of your hard drive(s) (also for multi-user systems)
Extended user interface with extensive hints and information on health, performance and temperature of the hard drive(s)
Significantly extended support for external USB hard drives and solid state drives (SSDs)
Support of S.M.A.R.T self-test (if supported by the hard drive)
Adjustment of the noise level and power management of your hard drive(s) (if supported by the hard drive)
Data recovery recovering deleted files and folders
Fully automatic, proactive defragmentation of the hard drive(s)
Online retrieval of achieved benchmark results of your hard drive model(s)

Install Linux Kernel 3.5.1/3.4.8 On Ubuntu 12.04/Linux Mint 13



Two updates for Linux 3.4 kernel series and Linux 3.5 kernel series have been released recently bringing more support for hardware drivers and various corrections and improvements. You can find full changelog for Kernel 3.5.1 here, and here you can find full changelog for Linux kernel 3.4.8.

In this tutorial, we will see how to install these two kernel versions under Ubuntu 12.04/11.10 or older and Linux Mint 13 or older.

Kernel 3.5.1 Installation

Users of the Linux 3.5 kernel series can upgrade to the 3.5.1 version with these commands for both 32-bit-i386/64-bit-amd64 systems:

cd /tmp 

wget -O linux-kernel-3.5.1 http://dl.dropbox.com/u/47950494/upubuntu.com/linux-kernel-3.5.1

chmod +x linux-kernel-3.5.1

sudo sh linux-kernel-3.5.1

After installing the kernel, reboot your system, then check if it is well installed with this command:

uname -r

outputs returned:

3.5.1-030501-generic

To uninstall kernel 3.5.1 and revert to the previous kernel, run this command:

sudo apt-get purge linux-image-3.5.1-030501

Kernel 3.4.8 Installation

Users of the Linux 3.4 kernel series can upgrade to the 3.4.8 version with the following commands:

cd /tmp

wget -O linux-kernel-3.4.8 http://dl.dropbox.com/u/47950494/upubuntu.com/linux-kernel-3.4.8

chmod +x linux-kernel-3.4.8

sudo sh linux-kernel-3.4.8

Then reboot your system to finish the installation of the kernel. To uninstall kernel 3.4.8, run this command:

sudo apt-get purge linux-image-3.4.8-030408