Switched from OpenSuSe to Ubuntu 9.10

Well, I was really satisfied with OpenSuSe, I just had one problem in OpenSuSe. It couldn't handle dual displays well. Not sure why, but I wasn't able to use my External LCD. So I tried the live CD from Ubuntu 9.10 and it worked just fine. So I backed up my files, and did a clean install of Ubuntu 9.10 on my Inspiron 1318. And honestly I am more than satisfied with it. VPN setup was a snap, it even automatically identified and installed my WiFi card, which I had to do manually in OpenSuSe with Ndiswrapper it worked but in Ubuntu it was automatic. Which is great. Anyhow, I am glad I switched to Ubuntu.

Sound lost after an update on my Inspiron 1318

I did the usual update using Yast. guess what, my sound was gone. It sounded like the speaker was gone, really low sound, barely hearable. I've had speakers burn on me, and boy this sounded like that. I went to the forums, nothing about an Inspiron 1318 losing sound after an upgarde, but one article mentioned a similar issue, on a dell Studio as well. I didn't follow all the isntructions, just went to the end to verify if the last step would get things fixed, and it did. And the solution was pretty simple, using Yast go to sound, on the bottom right click on other and volume. Make sure PCM is up I had it at 100%, and under other channels front needs to be up. and that's it. What puzzles me is what's the use of the volume control on the taskbar? just decoration or what? Anyhow a simple prolem and luckly a simple solution.

Digital Photography workflow with my NAS

Well, finally after installing the NAS I took some pictures, as it is my hobby.  I wanted to do things the way I did before, copy the card contents to the external HD, which was previously attached to my computer, now it's HD2 of the NAS.  So, I had to adjust my workflow.  I created Folders on the computers HD directly, where I downloaded, checked, and edited the pictures, ofcourse in RAW format, once I was satisifed with them, I uploaded them to the NAS.  This way processing is much faster, I tried doing it over the network, but it's a painfull thing to do specially over a WiFi Connection (laptop).  Listening to music over the network works just fine, even watching movies.  So far I never had a problem or a stream cutting, although many reviews say this Solutions is not suiteable for streaming, in my case it works fine.  Also there are only two uses using this NAS so I on larger installtions I am sure it would behave differently.  So far it woks like a charm, my data is backed up on a weekly bases, and it's all in a centralized location.    I want to make more tests for connection speeds over the network, but I have yet to come up with a good way of doing it.  I was thinking of using iperf, while I have all the computers download some files from the NAS, over WiFi, and wire.  And once I have that data, I will post them here, if someone is interested..