Guide to customize and improve upon default settings
 

If you're a newbie, you may want to take a look at this guide for improved performance of your N8x0 unit running OS2008. I have gleaned the following tips from spending/wasting hours on this forum and others on the intarweb.

This is a first edition so please take it as a first stepping stone.

From a freshly flashed image:
1. Change wifi power-savings from Max to Intermediate: this change will allow greater wifi performance.
2. Make sure wifi Transmit Power is set to 10mw, NOT 100mw: for better power saving.
3. Disable metadata-crawler
sudo gainroot
/etc/init.d/metalayer-crawler0 stop
mv /etc/rc2.d/S99metalayer-crawler0 /etc/rc2.d/K99metalayer-crawler0
4. Copy Windows fonts to /home/user/.fonts directory and reboot.
5. Change the browser memory cache to 4Meg or Auto.
6. Change the “browser memory disk enable” to “true”
7. Change the “browser memory disk capacity” to “131072”

Applications to Install:
1. Python2.5-runtime
2. Vagalume
3. Mplayer
4. Mytube
5. Easyroot
6. Advanced Backlight
7. USB Host Control
8. Wifi Tools
9. Disk Usage
10. Battery-status
11. Internal-temp
12. FBReader
13. Canola Media Player
14. Maemo Recorder
15. Virtual Game Boy Emulator
16. Maemo Periodic Table
17. Video Recorder

Accessories to Have:
1. iGo Stoway Ultra-Slim Bluetooth Keyboard (Amazon $44.84)
2. Transcend 8GB SDHC Card (Amazon $32.79)
3. Tekkeon Tekcharge Mobile Charger (Amazon $20.53)
4. Sony 2500 mAh AA Rechargeable NiMh Batteries, 4-pack (Amazon $12.19)
5. Rayovac Universal Battery Charger for Rechargeable AA, AAA, C, D and 9-Volt Batteries (Amazon, $19.27)

Re: Guide to customize and improve upon default settings
 

These two are suspect at best. They may help some people, but the likelyhood is that they'll end up just hurting most others. Either way, these are not things I would recommend to newbies.

Definitely not something I would recommend to newbies. "Why doesn't Media player work anymore?"

A recommended accessory list might not be bad, but I would be a lot more general about it. If specifics are insisted on, however, I'd definitely recommend the Sanyo eneloops over any other NiMH battery brand (much, much better at maintaining their charge, and they come pre-charged).

Not really a bad start all in all, but there's a lot missing and some of the stuff included isn't stuff I would recommend to anybody.

I would really like to see some sort of "Setup Guide" for new users who want to get the most out of their tablets. Sort of a series of how-tos on fine tuning everything—from the initial flash to tweaking MicroB's about:config.

Re: Guide to customize and improve upon default settings
 

While I applaud your effort to make something to guide the novices in their first ITT steps, it often helps if you give fuller instructions and not just a bullet list. Also if you explain what the items mean/where they are/why you are doing that, it could help.

Re: Guide to customize and improve upon default settings
 

First, thanks to generalantilles and schmots! As I stated in the original post, this was meant to be a stepping stone for fuller explanation/guide for novices.

I take issues with what generalantilles has stated regarding the wifi settings and disabling the metalayer-crawler. I AM a newbie when it comes to the NIT devices; I've barely had the unit myself for only about a month. I have to admit that I am quite comfortable with Linux, having used RedHat since 1997, not Debian, though.

Reading through the forum, I see lots of people complaining about their batteries draining after flashing to the latest OS2008--it turned out that the buggy metalayer-crawler process was hogging up cpu/ram and draining the battery.

If you disable the daemon from starting up, you won't have the problem of dead battery. However, the downside is that, as generalantilles pointed out, your built-in media player won't be able to automagically find your media (music, movies and whatnot) residing on your sd cards. You CAN still open your media files manually from within the media player. This is why I'd recommend that you disable the metalayer-crawler daemon. You not only save your battery, but also get more memory space and less wasted cpu cycles. On some forum discussions, some people have reported the metalayer-crawler seizing up 60 MB of RAM and 100% CPU.

IMHO, Nokia should just remove/disable the metalayer-crawler daemon. There's really no need for it on the NIT. It's like the Microsoft Vista's bloated background services, all of which are bug-ridden. The more you stop these background services from starting up and running, the better off you are. Same thing with the current Fedora/RHEL releases--they're headed to bloatwareville, as well. I'm switching over to Ubuntu.

Regarding the Sony AA batteries, the ones I have bought are manufactured by Sanyo. They may not be the Eneloops, but they're also less expensive and perform just as well.

Anyway, to each his own. I'm just saying that everyone should have the options and often noobs don't know that they have the options.

Ciao,

J

Re: Guide to customize and improve upon default settings
 

No, they do not perform just as well. The biggest downfall for NiMH batteries is their incredibly rapid power loss (unused batteries will be nearly dead within 30 days from a 100% charge). The enelops (Rayovac also has a similar battery technology, but I don't recall the name off-hand) do not suffer from this sort of extreme power loss (review with tests), making them much more convenient to use.

Re: Guide to customize and improve upon default settings
 

How? I don't seem to have these options.

Re: Guide to customize and improve upon default settings
 

You can do this one of the following two ways:

1. Within the microb browser, type "about:config" in address bar (without the quotes, of course); Under the Name field, type "browser.cache.disk.enable" and under the Value field, type "true", now click on Set Preference button. Now you can figure out how to change the browser.cache.disk.capacity value, right?

2. Modify the prefs.js file (/home/user/.mozilla/microb directory):

Look for the following lines and change the values accordingly

user_pref("browser.cache.disk.enable", true);
user_pref("browser.cache.disk.capacity", 131072);

*When you are editing the prefs.js file, make sure microb/browser is closed; make sure you are NOT root, edit it as user.

Re: Guide to customize and improve upon default settings
 

Take issue all you want, but he's still right. The 10mW transmission power has been confirmed by Nokia to only be for regulatory purposes in countries that don't allow the higher 100mW transmissions for non-licensed electronics. It doesn't affect power consumption. [1] Also, changing Max to Intermediate *does* negatively affect power consumption *and* it isn't an issue for many (most?) people. It would be nice if you maybe prefixed that suggestion with "If you're having problems with your wireless connection dropping you might try..."

Also, having had problems with metalayer-crawler in the past I'm the first one to say it has issues and is far from perfect, but if you decide to just disable it, how do you get the built-in media player to play two or more songs in a row? I haven't found a way yet, but maybe I'm missing something obvious. Maybe add "If you no longer use the built-in media player (in favor of Canola, UKMP, etc) and you have battery life issues, consider disabling metalayer crawler on a trial basis, then if all is still good for you here are the steps to disable it semi-permanently (until a reflash)..."

Other than that the list looks good, and it's nice to see someone stepping up to provide it. Thanks!

-John

[1] https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=256

Re: Guide to customize and improve upon default settings
 

There is *no* disk cache code as far as I can tell. I tried this as well in my browser tuning and after rebooting I tried querying the cache about:cache?device=disk fails while about:cache?device=memory still works fine.

Re: Guide to customize and improve upon default settings
 

Eh, that's a bit misleading. Everything comes with a price, in the case of the Eneloops it's reduced maximum capacity. If you're recharging on a frequent basis, the bigger capacity batteries might be a better fit. (It really depends on the individual user)

As for holding a charge, count on regular NiMH's loosing about 1% per day, which means you should have something left after a month.

Finally, all batteries are NOT created equal. Very frequently the cheaper brands will advertise a higher capacity than what is actually delivered, there are review sites on the web that test them. Personally, I use and recommend Maha, both their batteries and chargers are excellent, but there are plenty of other quality brands out there as well.

Thanks for the guide and the followup information everyone!

Drew