REVIEW : Lenovo Z710

Review : Lenovo Z710

Design

The Lenovo Z710 is made of plastic but a quality one. Around keyboard, it gives you the sensation that it's made of metal,which looks quite office.

The top of the laptop is also made of plastic with a cool pattern.

One thing that I don't like about it is that the CD-ROM is placed on the right and whenever I try to lift the laptop, I need to be careful not to pull up the CD-ROM's head. 

The LCD is damn big , 17.3 inches but the quality is pretty good.

The speakers are made by JBL and the sound is perfect and loud. You don't need additional speakers when you keep a presentation in classroom, the sound can be hear clearly.

Overall, the design is nice and I don't have anything to object. I enjoy it.

Performance


CPU: Intel Core i7-4700MQ 2.4GHZ. 

It's a quad core CPU launched in 2013. It's still powerful enough to do my everyday businesses. It can support up to 32GB of RAM and it has also a graphic processor Intel Graphics HD 4600.

GPU: Nvidia Geforce 745M

I'm not quite satisfied with this GPU because I had several problems while I was running Windows 7, Windows 8.1 or Ubuntu 16.04. I suppose that the drivers aren't optimized good enough to handle some games like League of Legends. I am using Windows 10 since its release and it looks like the problems disappeared. Probably DirectX 12 and new drivers solved it.

Another reason why I don't like this GPU is that I can't run with, at least, 30fps, games like The Crew or Need for Speed , but I was able to play decently Grand Theft Auto V with around 46 FPS.

RAM: 8GB DDR3 1600MHZ

The amount is sufficient for multitasking. It never occurred to run out of memory. 

If it's not enough for you, there can be added up to a total of 16GB RAM , limited by the motherboard. There are 2 slots available.

Storage: ~930GB HDD 5200RPM

It's a bit slow but I could live with it. If you want to improve laptop's performances, a SSD can be a great choices these days. The price per GB has lowered and it's worth every penny.

Battery: 4-cell  Li-ion Battery

I am PROFOUNDLY disappointed about it. It can last about 1 hour while watching a movie so it is bad for a laptop. I expected to last at least 2 hours but my expectation were to high. Moreover, charging it can take about 2-3 hours but who knows why.

Ports:

•  2 x USB 3.0 and 2 x USB 2.0. 
• SD CARD READER
• ETHERNET
• AUX PORT
• HDMI
• VGA

To sum up, it is a good laptop and, after 2 years of everyday use , I never encounter a major problem. So you can rely on it.

Arduino's tool Web Editor is now better:

 Library manager has been added

What's Web Editor offered by Arduino? 

It's a powerful tool that allows you to write , edit and upload code to an  Arduino board just using your browser.  All you have to do is to download and install their free plugin available on the official website.

Until recently, it required to get an invitation in order to use it, but now it's completely accessible to everyone who has an Arduino Account.

 The photo displays the simplicity of the Web Editor but still well made

What does Library manager bring to you?

Since Arduino is open-source , there are hundreds of libraries written by its users (around 700 libraries).  To use the library needed , you were required to download and install it by yourself. Now, it's much easier to make use of them, you simply select the library, without any installation, and you are ready to code. This is possible because every library is found to Arduino's servers.

Moreover, every sketch has a unique URL , meaning that sharing was never easier.

The picture shows how easy it is to search and add the required library to your code.

To sum up, Arduino seems to take full advantage of cloud services .This appeal to programmers because you can turn the trivial browser into a powerful programming tool.

Steps to install Drupal on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

Hei readers. My name is Sorin and today I am going to show you how to install Drupal on Ubuntu. Currently , I am using ubuntu 14.04 LTS ,64-bit version.

Why should you install Drupal ? 

Well, that's  an easy question seeing that  Drupal is a great content management software. The only thing you need is  creativity because Drupal already provides all the rest, it has great standard features , such as  easy content authoring , reliable performance and excellent security. Its tools help you build the versatile , structured content that dynamic web experiences need.
Do you think that it has few tools? Again, no problem , you can extend it with any one, or many , of thousands of add-ons.
But, do you know what is the best part ? IT IS TOTALLY FREE.


Don't you believe me? Go and check  https://www.drupal.org/about   and you'll see I'm right.



REQUIREMENTS:

First of all , you need to meet certain minimum requirements. It is recommended to have ,at least , 15 MB free to run this software .

Now that you have enough space to run it , you need some extra programs such as :

• APACHE 

        It is the world's most used web server software.Apache supports a variety of features , ranging from server-side programming language support to authentication schemes.

        You can install it using the next command        

           sudo apt-get install apache2

To check if it is installed correctly, you can open a browser and go to localhost .It should look like this :

•    MySQL 5.5.3

     MySQL  is the most popular Open Source SQL database management system.  This software is very fast , reliable , scalable and easy to use so I strongly recommend it to you.

     

     Use  sudo apt-get install mysql-server to install it.When the installation is finished, you're asked to write a password for the "root" user.

• PHP 5.5.9 :   

PHP is a computer programming language  designed for producing dynamic web pages. You have to install 3 libraries to be able to finish the installation  of Drupal.

      Type sudo apt-get install php5 php5-gd php5-mysql in terminal to install PHP

*it is  require to restart apache to use PHP. The command is :
    sudo service apache2 restart



DOWNLOADING DRUPAL:

Well , you can go to the next step. You have to download and extract the software. To do this , I recommend to use Drush because it offers the most convenient way of downloading Drupal (for more advantages of using Drush check : https://drupalize.me/videos/what-drush?p=1156) .If you don't have Drush installed , you don't have to worry. Use sudo apt-get install drush and now you're able to download Drupal. You have to use a single command  drush dl drupal .When the download is finished , you should get a message like this :




CREATING DATABASE :

Let's move to the next operation. You have to create a database using MySQL commands. It might sound quite hard but you don't have to worry , I will show you how to create it. 

    1.Create a new database 
   Type this command in terminal : *
   mysqladmin -u username -p create databasename;
  Now , MySQL prompts for the 'username ' database password , and creates the initial database files.

  2. Log in and set the access database rights 

           mysql -u username -p
  
   MySQL prompts for the 'username' database password .
  
    3.Now, at the Mysql prompt , enter the following command :

    GRANT SELECT , INSERT , UPDATE , DELETE ,CREATE , DROP , INDEX , ALTER ,CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES ON databasename.* TO 'username'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';

   In this case :

• databasename is the name of your database
• 'username' is the username of your MySQL user account
• 'localhost' is the host where  Drupal is installed**
• 'password' is the password required for that  username   

*when you type a command for mysql , don't forget the " ; " 
**in this case, you don't have to change the host

    4.If successful , MySQL will reply with  Query OK , 0 rows affected 

INSTALLING THE SCRIPT


Finally , you reached the last step. You have to run the install script . In order to do that, you have to replace everything is in the /var/www/html folder with the Drupal files.  Open a browser and type in the URL bar localhost .

At the beginning there are two options , Standard and minimal . It is highly recommended to select the standard installation.

In the second step , you have to choose what language do you prefer. If you don't want English , you can go to the translation server  and download a translation. Next , you have to put it into the directory /profiles/standard/translations/ .


In the third step , the script is checking if you meet the requirements. It is possible to encounter some problems:

•  Missing files system  

     You have to grant everyone permission to write to the sites/default directory with this command :
        chmod a+w /var/www/html/sites/default 
        Don't forget to set the permissions back with :
               chmod go-w /var/www/html/sites/default 

• Missing settings file

You have to make a copy of the default.settings.php file with the command :
   cp sites/default/default.settings.php sites/default/settings.php

Next , grant write privileges to the file to everyone with the command :
  chmod a+w sites/default/settings.php
    
Don't forget to set the permissions back with :
   chmod go-w sites/default 



When all the requirements are fulfilled , you are asked to set up database. 



Now, the script is installing the profile . Next, you're asked to configure you site  with email address , username , password, etc.



CHANGE FILE SYSTEM STORAGE SETTINGS

Now , this step is optional . The files directory previously create is the default one.It is used to store all uploaded files , as well as some temporary files created by Drupal.  If your site runs multiple Drupal installations from a single codebase or your site runs on a number of web servers behind a load balancer or reverse proxy , it is highly recommended to modify the file system path .

Move back to the /var/www/html/sites . You have to create a new directory and to grant write permissions . In order to do that , you have to use mkdir uploads , then  
chmod a+w uploads  .  

Afterwards, open you browser and navigate to your site . (type localhost in url bar) . Click on Administration > Configuartion > Media > File system  , and enter the desired bath. ( In mine case , sites/default/uploads )




Congratulations !!! You have just installed Drupal on your computer . Hope you enjoy my tutorial and don't hesitate to comment if you have any problem with the installation.