Annoying Ubuntu Problem Solved

As is usually turning out to be the case with these things, I have found a solution to a problem that I had been facing on Ubuntu (Karmic Koala) in the excellent Ubuntu forums. The problem was this: the quick search bar on Synaptic was greyed out and unusable. Thanks to forum members, it's now resolved. Head on over to the link below to see the solution.

In brief, it's the case of a missing package, though why it stopped working one fine day is beyond me. Oh well, software will never be perfect I guess. Nor will human beings!

The headphone problem with Android 1.5 phones

Weird problem to have with a phone, and is yet another eye-opener for me. Plugging a headphone into your phone doesn't somehow automatically make it aware of the headphone; you need software to make it aware, and that software for Android 1.5 phones is now here. Okay, let me now describe the problem a bit more in detail.

I'd got a HTC Hero phone (yes, shamelessly lured by the Android promise) about a couple of months ago. I had been a happy user with lots of applications installed, uninstalled, regularly used, etc. Happy, that is, until my headphones stopped working about a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure when exactly it stopped working, nor am I sure whether it was after installing the last.fm application from Android Market, but stop it did. Until yesterday, I was confident that it was something to do with hardware. (Had my brain worked, though, I shouldn't have been so confident.) In fact, I remained confident even after a friend casually mentioned that it might be something do with some setting on my phone (this was justified as there isn't any such setting of course).

However, after calling T-Mobile customer care yesterday and agreeing to send my phone off to repair at a nearby T-Mobile store, I woke up early this morning, unable to sleep further (since I'd hit the sack last night at an unusual hour for me - 8 pm! (Or was it 9? Can't quite remember!)). Anyway, as I was surfing, I stumbled on to this thread and realised, again, that I - or rather, my phone - was not afflicted with a unique problem (tangentially, here's a thought: can phones be afflicted with problems, even if they happen to be called Android?). Two things are immediately clear:

1. This is a widespread-enough problem that a fix should to be included in the Android 2.0 update
2. There's a fix available today!

What should also be clear to developers is the extent to which software controls nearly every aspect of the phones that we use, even down to recognising if a headphone has been plugged into those tiny devices that we've come to love.

HP leads the list of most troublesome laptops

I knew this way back in 2004 when I bought my first laptop, a used Compaq 2500. By then, HP had acquired and assimilated Compaq and its products, enough to tarnish the once-reputable Compaq brand (with its Armada brand of tough road-warrior laptops. My knowledge was further reinforced when I foolishly decided to give HP the benefit of doubt and purchase my second laptop a couple of years later, this time an AMD-powered one.

Different processor, same result: trouble with the hardware components. While my first laptop's display conked out twice, yes TWICE in two years, my newer laptop's Wi-fi card decided to vanish one fine day from Windows' device list. A visit to an HP service centre (that is a tale for another day!) revealed that there was some hardware/software problem which was sorted out, thankfully, without my having to pay them anything. Anyway, the link below will give you a statistical reason why you should never, ever, go in for an HP laptop if you can help it.

My current laptop? A Dell Inspiron 1525.