OS and Firmware testing for XO 1.5 B2

[Tiago Marques]

Hi all,
Here's some data I collected:

Firmware Q3A13-Q3A15:
-------------------------------------------------
    OS30:
        hdparm -t /dev/mmcblk0: ~700KiB/s (buffered), this is too slow
for these cards, should be at least 2MiB/s

    OS32:
        Gnash and youtube don't work, just an error screen. This is
for an older codec and newer h.264
        Two battery icons/devices. One works and gets updated, the
other mimics the real battery at boot and stays that way.
        Screen corruption in both gnome and sugar, when minimizing
window or using the frame, for instance.
        No speaker hum is a plus, contrary to XO-1. When the mic led
is turned on there is a hum with no sound but some piece of software
usually turns both off. Kudos, some power is being saved here see:
http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/9505
        Pretty fast boot times
        Slow app load times (perhaps the performance issue found with
hdparm, see below)
        hdparm -tT /dev/mmcblk:
                  cached: 11, 13, 0.75, 0.622, 42, 83, 8.9, 138
                  buffered: 1.10, 4.6, 3.86, 3, 4, 2.6, 0.86, 1.28
        Video(flash player 10):
                  h.264: ok, no skips in sound, ~3-10 fps(rough estimate)
                  older(mpeg-2?): very good performance
        Speakers don't turn off, sometimes, when phones plugged in, at
OFW playing the boot song.

     OS34:
         Still two batteries
         Video seems to play at the same framerate as OS32 but h.264
is stalling a lot, skipping music even. Not network related, video was
buffered more than enough. This was reproduced consistently.
         Connects to all my APs fine, which was something
problematic(still is) in the XO-1. Connecting to WPA-EAP wasn't a
problem with Gnome's nm-applet.

     OS40+Q3A16:
         KB and touchpad hanged after firmware upgrade, USB worked
fine. Removed the battery.
         hdparm -tT /dev/mmcblk:
                  cached: ~245MB/s, very consistent
                  buffered: 10.8-16.5, the 16+ MB/s figure is much
more common than the ~10MB/s one (this is excellent! Are you caching
data in RAM somehow?)
         Apps boot reasonably fast now
         No screen flash anymore
         Jumpy mouse issue seems better but not gone.
         Still displays two batteries (mimics on sugar but doesn't
update, shows 0% in gnome)
         Mouse cursor not animated on Gnome.
         Firefox in Gnome has a too big default "zoom". Fonte size in
Gnome Apps is good.
         Browse seems to need an extra level of zoom.
         Youtube video (adobe flash)
                 h.264: ok, no skips in sound, occasional 1s video
stall, ~6-12fps measured with "show video info" option
                 older: ok, very good performance, no sound skips,
occasional 1s skips on video(not unlike my desktop machine)
         Gnash and youtube is a no go. No error now, just a black screen

Overall:
   Wireless signal seems better over XO-1
   Apps are ***much*** more usable with the extra CPU and RAM. Hasn't
"locked" once due to lack of RAM and swap space, as was common with
the XO-1.
   It's a shame browse doesn't let you launch more than one instance
now and there are no tabs.
   Switch from gnome to sugar works great.
   Hardware seems to suffer greatly from electrical noise coming from
the motherboard, shuts off when opening an app, minimizing apps,
maximizing etc. Perhaps C-states related?
   CPU doesn't throttle but hits 90ºC when running show-temperature.
Haven't had time to check if it's proper contact or not.

Flash videos:
    480x264, h.264?, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lpvai3DQ0Co - The
video tested up to OS40 was like this, I confirmed it was h.264 when
gnashed gave an error. This one seems like it but since the other one
was pulled down due to copywritght issues, I couldn't confirm.
Framerate seems similar, anyone knows how to check this?
    320x240, not h.264, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeeie9l9taM


Best regards,
Tiago