Month: November 2009

The new PS3 slim has been launched in Malaysia and I can say that the launch package is a big let-down. According to the Sony website, the launch package is priced at RM1399 and includes a free game, a second controller and a special t-shirt. While I can appreciate the free game, I cannot appreciate the second controller as most of the good PS3 titles are single-player titles anyway and I most certainly have no use for a free t-shirt. At RM1399, that is a whole US$100 more than what people are paying for in the states. In fact, it is the same price as in the UK but they have a better package deal.

Personally, I feel that this is a massive let-down by Sony Malaysia. The direct US$ pricing should only be RM1099. Charging an extra RM300 is a rip-off considering the fact that the states has sales taxes levied while we are free of taxes in Malaysia. In fact, the UK price includes a 17% VAT and is still cheaper than our Malaysian price. Boo! Rip-off! I just don’t understand why the price of consumer electronics products are so expensive in Malaysia, when compared to their prices overseas. The games are so expensive and the consoles are more expensive too. Now, I am seriously considering importing a unit in. The only risk would be on the warranty.

Alternatively, I should consider getting the older 80GB EU model, which has PS2 backwards-compatibility for the same price. That way, I would be able to play PS2 games on it as well. Just something to consider. Another alternative would be to investigate the bundles at one of the smaller game stores in KL that still bring in import units from Hong Kong. When I previously asked, they were bundling the 120Gb slim with two games. I already see the 250Gb version in their stores.

Karmic Koala was officially released a couple of days ago and I did not miss my opportunity to upgrade all my Kubuntu machines to it. However, my upgrade path was frought with peril and I felt that I should probably chronicle some of the lessons learned, for future reference.

My troubles started when I was unable to request a free CD from ShipIt because I had already exceeded my quota. So, I proceeded to download the alternate ISO image. Unfortunately, I had trouble with the burned media. I ended up burning 3 CDs from the image only to have 3 dodgy disks. One disk was good enough to at least go through the first stages of the installation with only a few files missing. This was when I discovered that the Debian installer could be tricked into using a ISO image loaded on a USB stick. All I had to do was to mount the ISO image under /cdrom for the first stage of the installation and then mount it under /target/cdrom for the latter stage of the installation. In fact, this was much faster than installing it using a CD.

Lesson 1: Do not use old CD-R media. I have since bought myself a 1.8″ DVD-RW media that I will use for all future kubuntu ISO image burns.

Next, I had problems with my home user files. I use the default ecryptfs to encrypt my entire home partition. For some reason, someone decided that the encryption keys should be stored in /var instead of /home, which it currently does. Since I had reformatted my entire root directory, which held everything other than the home directories, the encryption keys were totally lost (and so were my files). So, I had to spend my entire Saturday restoring my home directory from my backup. Thankfully, I backed up my entire home directory just before re-installing my laptop.

Lesson 2: Always back up my files before doing anything invasive like upgrading the operating system.

As for the new Kubuntu, I have been very happy with the upgraded user interface and utilities. Great job!