G1 Android

I've done an unsual amount of traveling (for me) this past month. I spent two weeks in Taiwan and after returning to the states for a week I traveled to Seattle. These trips allowed me to test my travel gears including the Android G1 phone and the iPhone.

I have had the G1 for awhile but no phone service for it. Since it is unlocked I decided to get a SIM card for it in Taiwan and use it while I was there. Getting and installing the card was super simple and I did it at a 7-11 store. It was a matter of putting the card in and turning it on.

As a phone device I found it to be excellent. Sound was clear and it was easy to use. The screen was sharp and overall responsive. One annoyance was that it accidentally dial too easily unless you lock the touch screen. The other annoyance was that the contact list was not easy to navigate and search. I am not sure why Google struggles with contacts on both its site and the phone.

The camera on the G1 is super especially compared to the iPhone. With 3MP and autofocus, it is a real camera. Its excellent intergration with Google means that it can hold its own as a PIM. Add to it the wifi and browser capabilities and you have a nice portable computer that fits into your pocket. For traveling, the G1 is very well suited.

The screen can be a bit larger as it's current size limits its use as a portable dock reader. The UI of its apps are not as uniform, and Android is not as polished as the iPhone. Its marketplace needs to be improved so more apps get built. Battery life is short and needs improvement for it to be a true road warrior.

The experience of using the G1 vs IPhone is like using a PC vs Mac. The advantage of a open platfom is variety but initially a less polished user experience.

First experience with the MBP (late 2008)

This weekend I had a chance to sit down and do a little more with the new MBP. This is the late-2008 model with the unibody design. I got the 2.5GHz version, 4GB memory and 320GB 7200RPM HDD to replace my current 3GHz Pentium 4 desktop.

There were two things about the new MBP that I was worried about. First, the keyboard didn't feel as good as the previous MBP keyboard. However, since I don't plan on using the built-in keyboard most of the time (I use an external IBM Model-M keyboard) this isn't as big of a deal. When I do need to move around with the notebook, I can live with the keyboard.

The other concern was the glossy screen. I already had a glossy screen Vaio so I used that to see how would it bother me if I used a glossy screen all the time. After a few days, I didn't find myself too bothered by the reflectiveness of the Vaio, so I decided to go with the new MBP. Now, I'll just have to say that this screen is even more reflective then I expected. In the morning with the sun shining through the window behind me, I can use the screen to shave! Yet, I noticed that it didn't bother me (and my eyes are very sensitve) because choosing a different background will help reduce the problem. Also, I don't find myself working with the sun directly behind me most of the time and the positive of the screen outweighed the reflectiveness. The glossy screen looks very very good. The colors are sharp and vibrant. The whites are more white and black is more black. It's very obvious next to my matte LCD. Ultimately, both matte and glossy have their own pros-and-cons, but the glossy screen has become a non-issue for me.

I had complained about the blurriness with OSX 's handling of anti-alias fonts. On my work MBP, I installed TinkerTool to disable it for most font sizes and installed some Windows fonts to replace the default OSX fonts. I was going to do this also with my MBP, but the problem wasn't there! The fonts looked good on the new MBP. I initially thought maybe Apple did something, but once I move to a dual monitor setup I saw the fuzziness on the external matte LCD. So it seems that the same light diffusing property of a matte screen also is the contributor for making the font look fuzzier to me.

In the end, configuring everything was pretty easy. Most of the time was spent transferring data from the old machine to the new.

Getting a Macbook Pro

I ordered a Macbook Pro (15-inch, Late 2008, MB471xx/A) this week after much deliberation. As much as it might surprise some people, this is not the first Apple computer that I've bought. I had previously bought one of the clam shelled candy colored one for my wife when she was in school, but I promptly sold it after she graduated. Apple machines and software was simply not interesting to me and the premium for their stuff was never something I was willing to pay. Even now, I wouldn't consider getting a Mac as a desktop system.

What made me initially consider getting a MBP wasn't because of the Apple name or its software. The software that I primarily use are all equal or better on Window or Linux. What got me interested was that it can run many open source Unix software on a laptop. Basically, the BSD component of OSX was what made a MBP even worth considering.

Still, it was a hefty price to pay a notebook for something that I mostly do on my Linux or Windows desktop and I would still have to keep my Windows machine around for the things that weren't available on OSX. The subsequent release of Bootcamp (update for SP3), Parallels and VMWare fusion suddenly made the possibility of reducing the physical machines I have by one by running Windows on the MBP natively or through a virtual machine. Add to the fact that my current machine is over 3 years old, it was starting to make more economic sense.

At work, I was given a MBP so I've been able to use it for a few months and see how I liked it. OSX is nice but has its annoyances like Windows does and as a desktop OS, I feel no urge to replace Windows with it. What I love is a good UNIX laptop that can also be a desktop replacement when needed.

In the end, I decided to go ahead and get the MBP. It gives me a new gadget to learn and play with. This process reminded me of the early days of Linux where the distros made it really easy to install Linux on an existing Windows machine and that helped ease adoption (well, a little opposite since its Window on Mac instead of Linux on Windows). It's just too bad that there isn't a more widely supported Linux notebook.

Thinkpad x300

The Lenovo Thinkpad x300 arrived this week for my wife which will replace her current desktop computer. It's a pretty impressive machine that carries on the Thinkpad reputation. I thought about taking some pictures and writing a review of the machine but there is already some detailed reviews out there. I found that I'm in agreement with a lot that was said here and he has a lot of pictures of the machine.

I knew that it was going to be very light, but I was still surprised when I held it in my hand. This machine is LIGHT, but at the same time felt very solid. The keyboard is the classical Thinkpad keyboard so it felt good to type on, but I do feel that the trackpad is a bit tiny even for me. After running it for a whole day burning back-up CDs, watching videos and basically continuous operation it remained very cool. No worries about burning the family jewels when you have it on your lap with this one.

The software offering for the x300 is a mixed bag. Thinkpads are definitely business oriented machine and I can appreciate heir approach to functionality. The applications' interface is not pretty but they work.

Along with the x300, I got the Lenovo enhanced USB port replicator to connect the ethernet, peripherals, speakers and monitor to. This worked initially, but the ethernet connection is flaky. After installing my own apps, the display driver seems to have gotten corrupted and whenever I tried to switch from expanded view to mirror view I would get the blue-screen-of-death. Removing, reinstalling, removing, updating new drivers all failed to solve the problem and it just was stuck on expand mode.

I ended up selecting the system restore function when the machine was booting and told it to put the machine back to it's original state when I got it. This was easy to do. Just hit F11 as it boot, select the option and let it do its thing. It deleted everything, reinstalled and went through the Windows setup. When it finally finished, it booted back into windows and I reinstalled the driver and things worked as expected.

Overall this is an awesome little machine that doesn't come with a lot of crapware preinstalled. The USB replicator's drivers are a little flaky, but the restore function worked like a charm.

iPhone

This past week, I got myself an iPhone since my wife had to switch to AT&T and it was cheaper to move the same carrier then paying two separate bills. I didn't have a strong desire to get an iPhone, but if I was to get a new phone I wanted one that was new for me to play with. My initial impressions of the iPhone is pretty good although depending on your perspective then it is either an expensive mp3 player or expensive mobile phone. It's whether the combined functionalities justifies the price.

Having access to the internet anytime with a fully functioning web browser is no doubt... awesome. This was my #2 reason for liking the iPhone. This worked pretty well right out of the box and I had no problem connecting through the phone or getting it set up to access my home WIFI. The only thing missing is the ability to play songs from internet radio stations especially given that this is a combined music/video/phone device.

As a proud Dad, I naturally have the urge to show off pictures of my son, but I resisted the "carry 100 pictures in my wallet" stereotype. Well, with the iPhone I can be the modern day equivalent of it and literally carry thousands of pictures to show from the phone (don't worry, I'm not carrying that many). The image quality looks good on the iPhone screen, but since I was managing my photos in Picassa, I had to create an album for the iPhone then export that album to a directory that I tell iTunes to sync. I have to do this each time I want to add a new picture. It's a workable solution but not a great one.

Using VLC, I was able to convert my divx/xvid video to mp4 which I can copied to the iPhone and watch while I travel. The video quality and sound was excellent. I wish I could this as easily on the DS.

As an PDA device, the iPhone comes a little short and is more an phone then a Blackberry competitor at this point. Managing contacts could be easier in my opinion and the default list of apps is what you expect on a phone (calendar, clock, notepad).

As a phone, the quality is good, but the lack of a speed dial function sets it back to the stone age in that area.

As a music player, having to buy an adapter before being able to use regular headphones is plain silly.

The iPhone looks beautiful coming out of the box, but the shining silver band around the display is scratched easily even if the glass is more difficult to get scratched. It doesn't matter though because when the border gets scratched the whole aesthetics of the device is compromized I'm talking about it being scratched by lint, folks! I had the device in my pocket (nothing else there, no coins, keys, pieces of paper, etc) for 10 minutes and it still got some scratches. I had to buy an iPhone condom to protect it from further scratches and to hide it.

Overall, it's a good multi-function device but it's not a PDA with a phone. It's a phone with more advanced PDA functionality then typical phones. Or it's a mobile media device with a phone and PDA functionality. If the iTouch had a camera, I'd probably have gone with it since my wife would already have the internet covered on her phone. The iPhone is a very good first generation device and has a lot of potential to be more in the future. I hope that future won't be dominated by just Apple but that other companies will learn from the success of the iPhone as to what people are looking for and more.

Feelings on the Macbook and OSX

I'm getting more used to using OSX/Macbook although a few things still nags at me. I'm still more used to having the application's menu within the frame of the application instead of at the top of the OS (especially noticeable when I'm using a dual monitor setup), and I wish Apple would allow the screen to tilt back more, and why are they so unwilling to provide a docking station?!?

The keyboard is nice and comfortable, but a two button mouse is still preferable. Overall the system runs well, but I don't feel it's a speed demon. For those running Windows on OSX, 4 gig is recommended. Running with 2 gig is ok, but it's like running Windows on 1 gig while also slowing down OSX.

I like Quicksilver and Geektools and I love the UNIX underlying. The support for external display kick the butts of my windows notebooks (especially ones by HP). The dimensions of the 15" Macbook and the weight balance is excellent. The 17" model is too big to travel around with and the Airbook just isn't that compelling to me. Personally, I feel the 15" is the sweet spot in Apple's notebook line.

I don't get the Apple Nation...

Truth be told, I never paid too much attention to the Apple Nation. Sure, I kept up-to-date on many of the products they release, but not because they were from Apple. It was more that I wanted to see what's the latest mp3 player and the iPod is one of the top choices, etc. This is just to say that I never paid much attention to Macworld other then read a news article here and there after the fact.

Since I got the Macbook Pro, I've been finding out a little more about Apple stuff mainly because I've been looking for software and utilities and since you can't go to any Apple-related site without hearing about Macworld, I actually paid some attention to Steve Jobs' announcements. This year there doesn't seem to be much revolutionary new products coming from Apple as compared to last year when they announced the iPhone. At the same time, though, the Apple fanbois made everything sound like Apple has just invented fire.

Macbook Air? It's a pretty neat product and while it might be something new in the Mac universe, sub-notebooks are hardly a new thing here in the rest of the world. Almost as soon as it was announced, Gizmodo did a comparison of Apple's sub-notebook with 5 other sub-notebooks. At most in the sub-notebook category, it has some evolutionary refinements, but the Apple Nation was cheering as if they've never seen a light portable notebook before...

Customizing my work environment.

I'm continuing to get more familiar with working with a Macbook Pro and am starting to customize it to suit my working style. The first thing was to get some parity with what I was used to in Windows. At work, I have two machines (Macbook Pro notebook and a Linux workstation) and two monitors (24" LCD and 17" LCD). I previously had a Windows notebook instead of the Macbook and had configured my system to be a three monitor system. The Windows notebook was on the far left and connected into a docking station. I used the notebook's LCD for Thunderbird, IM buddies, etc.

To the right of the notebook, I had the large monitor which is the extension of the Windows desktop and what I'm staring at most of the day (when I'm at my desk that is). Next to large monitor is the 17" monitor that is connected to my Linux work station.

There is only a single keyboard and mouse, and both are connected to the Linux workstation. By running a VNC Server on the Windows machine and a program call x2vnc on the Linux machine, I can move the mouse/keyboard cursor across all three monitors as if they were one and even copy-and-paste between UNIX-Windows apps. The only limitation is that Linux apps can't be moved off the the 17" screen and Windows apps can't be on the 17" screen, but effectively my one keyboard and mouse controls both computers.

Being so used to VNC, I tried to do the same thing with OSX. Imagine the above system except with the Macbook instead of the Windows notebook. At first I tried using Apple's Remote Desktop which is suppose to be basically a VNC Server. The problem is that x2vnc or any other vnc client I tried could connect to OSX. I then downloaded a VNC Server for OSX, but that didn't recognize the dual monitor display of the notebook+external monitor.

Fortunately, the solution was the open-source Synergy tool which does much of the same thing as x2vnc and has both a server and client for Linux and OSX. Basically, on the Linux workstation, I run the Synergy "server". On the Macbook, I run the Synergy "client" and now I can do what exactly the same thing as before with one mouse and keyboard.

Installing Synergy was a snap. On Linux, use whatever your app management tool might be (i.e. "yum install synergy") and on OSX use Macports (i.e. sudo port install synergy). The Synergy site has instruction on what the configuration file should be and then it's just a matter of running the programs on each machine.

With my physical environment ready, I started to tackle trying to get a good ToDo app for OSX. For me, a todo utility must be easy to access. I'm too lazy to have to move my hands from the keyboard to the mouse. ^^; I also want the data to be presented simply and non-obtrusively. It's surprisingly hard to find this combo. Even on Windows, I didn't have a great solution: I used Google Desktop's todo widget which required that I use the mouse to select the widget before I can type into it, but the look was simple and basic.

I tried a few Mac Todo lists and was going to go with DoIt since it had Quicksilver integration that allowed me to write items to the list with keyboard strokes... almost. The problem was that DoIt also requires you select a category from a drop down list before it adds the todo item, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to select the category without using the mouse.

I finally came across a mixed low-tech/high-tech solution. Quicksilver has an action called "Append to text file". Using a simple text file (i.e. todo.txt), I created a trigger and keyboard shortcut that when hit, let's me type a todo item that gets appended directly into the text file. To see my changes, I used a very neat little app called Geektool that display a transparent window containing the text output of anything log file, script output or image.



One limitation of this setup was that I used Geektool's file type to handle the display of the todo file. This only works when the file is appended to at the end like typical log files. This means that if you edit the file with another application, the change doesn't show up. The solution is to not use "file" but use a Geektool "command" with a refresh timer. By using the command, "curl " every 30 seconds, it'll regularly update the window with whatever is in the text file. Not as good as detecting a change automatically, but works well.

OSX Networking

Setting up wireless connection was surprisingly easy and I was able to get it up in minutes, so points there for Apple. I connected the machine through the built-in ethernet at work and the performance was dog slow! I saw packet loss of about 70 percent so definite negative points. Initially I thought that there might have problem with the ethernet hardware but then I read online that Macbook Pros have problem if they are on a LAN that has 802.1q/vLAN. The problem is discussed here.

I hook the notebook on another network and it performed fine so it seems like I got bit by this same bug. I'm surprised that Apple still haven't fixed it, but I suspect this mainly effect corporate users which might still not be a big customer base for Apple to pay attention to.

Dev environment on OSX

I feel like I'm behind at work recently so I didn't want to start the new year at the office spending time configuring the new notebook. The baby was nice to me tonight and went to bed early so it allowed me to have the chance to get my development environment on the new Macbook Pro with OSX Tiger configured. Thanks to M in Ohio who saved me hours of time by pointing me to the right solution.

The nice thing about the OSX is that it is build on top of UNIX which is a developer's OS. You'll find that most open source tools are available and if not then getting it compiled from source is usually possible. I used compile everything from source including the kernel, but now that I am a lazy old man, I tend to prefer using some sort of package management solution that has the dependencies resolved. For Linux, I like the yum package management tool that sits on top of RPM. It beats the hell out of downloading the source and figuring out all the dependencies.

M pointed me to MacPorts as a similar repository/package management solution for OSX open source packages. It's really easy to use. Simply download the install package from the site, run it and you're ready to go. I did ran into one bug where it didn't create a .profile file for me so the path to "port" couldn't be found. I'm not sure why, but a quick look on the site and I knew which directories to add to my $PATH variable.

export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH

Don't forget to "source ~/.profile" to pick up the change.

With MacPorts installed, it was only a matter of grabbing the programs I needed for a web development environment: Apache2, MySQL, PostgreSQL, PHP5.

Installing Apache2:

• sudo port install apache2
  
  
• cp /opt/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf.sample /opt/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf
  
  
• sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apachectl start
  
  
• point your browser to http://localhost to see that everything is running.
  

If you want to automatically start apache at boot-up then do then:

sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.apache2.plist



Installing MySQL and PostgreSQL:

• sudo port install mysql5 mysql5-server; sudo -u mysql mysql_install_db5 (to start the daemon: cd /opt/local ; /opt/local/lib/mysql5/bin/mysqld_safe &)
  
• To automatically have mysql start: sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.mysql5.plist
  
• sudo port install postgresql84 postgresql84-server
  To create a database instance, after install do
  sudo mkdir -p /opt/local/var/db/postgresql84/defaultdb
  sudo chown postgres:postgres /opt/local/var/db/postgresql84/defaultdb
  sudo su postgres -c '/opt/local/lib/postgresql84/bin/initdb -D /opt/local/var/db/postgresql84/defaultdb'
  (to start: /opt/local/lib/postgresql84/bin/postgres -D /opt/local/var/db/postgresql84/defaultdb)
  
  

Installing PHP5 with support for MySQL, PostgreSQL:

• sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apachectl stop
  
• sudo port install php5 +apache2 +postgresql +pear
  
• sudo port install php5-mysql php5-sqlite
  
• sudo cp /opt/local/etc/php5/php.ini-development /opt/local/etc/php5/php.ini
  
• sudo vi /opt/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf
  
  • add "Include conf/extras-conf/*.conf" to /opt/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf
  
  
• sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apachectl start
  

Installing Eclipse IDE:

• Download the IDE from Eclipse.
  
• unarchive it to whichever location you want to run it from (I put it in /Applications/eclipse).
  

With that, the an Unix development environment capable of doing web development with PHP, MySQL and/or PostgreSQL as well as Java/C/C++ development is all ready!

For a little more detail about the set up process, I stumbled on this nice post.

Using OSX... a few days later.

I've now had a few more days to use the MacBook and OSX 10.4. The first day was mostly getting familiar with the environment and it wasn't until the second day that I started to migrate data from my Windows XP notebook.

The migration turned out to be simpler then I expected. Part of the reason is that I tend to use open source applications which are often developed for multi-platforms so the data transfers easily.

For example, you can copy Thunderbird mail, settings and extensions directly from the Windows location (C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\) to it's OSX equivalent (~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/. The same can be said for Firefox.

Users of GAIM/Pidgin will most likely use Adium on OSX and since they share the same foundation, their IM archive share the same structure so just copy the "logs" directory over.

I then copied over "My Documents" to "~/Documents" where by default it is recognized by Parallel's XP instance.

All-in-all, getting everything over to the Mac has been pretty easy. I've found most of the apps I needed to have an OSX versions although I've still not found a good note taking program like Evernote (I'll give Yojimbo a try). I'm also still trying to understand how to configure the system to give me some of what I'm used to in Windows (such as displaying image thumbnails for graphic files).

Some annoyances with OSX include the sensitivity of the track pad. I tend to use my right hand fingers to move the pointer around, but my left hand stays near the keyboard. The track pad often senses my left hand and gets confused.

The keyboard on the Macbook Pro is pretty good, but I'm more used to where the CTRL (in the case of Macs, the Apple key) so there is some finger gymnastic action. The lack of a second mouse button is also annoying to a Windows/Linux user spoiled by the convenience of it. I've always wondered if Apple is just too proud to admit someone else could come up with good interface ideas and that's why they've stuck with the one button mouse.

The biggest annoyance is the screen and font! OSX's font rendering especially its anti-alias/font smoothing is plain fuzzy to my eyes and the Macbook screen makes it worst when you're not looking at it from a specific angle. This is a controversial topic as can be seen here and here, so I won't talk about it much here. A lot of it is personal preference, of course, but I've always had a hard time with the softness around some of the anti-alias text. I wish they just soften curves instead of everything. I don't understand why a solid dash line isn't just a solid black, for example.

I figured what I can do is just turn off anti-aliasing (Apple calls it font smoothing) or select a different system font. Then I found out that Apple seems to be to headed down the road of less user customization by restricting what fonts the system uses, etc. I read it was to make sure that users don't confuse the brand by customizing the UI to not look like OSX... I'm not sure if that is true, but I was surprised by the lack of customization available to the user.

My eventual solution was to download a small app called TinkerTool which exposes many of the hidden settings available but not exposed by Apple in the preferences tool. I was able to tell OSX to not use font smoothing for text greater then 12pt, to change the default fonts (not all parts of OSX respects this setting nor do all OSX apps, but so far it's been ok), and to use the Tahoma font instead of the default OSX font:

TinkerTool > Font Smoothing: "Turn off font smoothing for font sizes 16 pt and smaller"
TinkerTool > Fonts:
System: Tahoma, 13pt
Application: Tahoma, 12pt
Messages: Tahoma, 13pt
Labels: Tahoma, 10pt
Help Tags: Tahoma, 11pt

So now that I got my data over, my most essential apps installed, and the UI is not giving a headache to look at , it's on to the fun part of customizing the environment to suit my working habits!

Feeling the power of the Dark Side of the Force

At this point, I'm not sure who is actually the dark empire: Microsoft or Apple. Neither seems to be in the role of the "Rebel Forces" and neither seems to be as vast of an empire to warrant being called the Empire. I'd give the Rebels designation to the Linux camp.

Anyway, I've never been an Apple fan boy and I didn't like how proprietary their hardware used to be. Despite how their UI was touted from the get-go, I've always thought all the ones pre-OSX were pretty crappy in how they "dumbed down" the interface for the users. It wasn't until OSX was released that I even had a vague interest in a Mac and that interest was the result of Apple switching to a FreeBSD kernel as the underlying OS. To have a full UNIX system with all the tools AND a nice UI is nothing to sneeze at. Still, it wasn't enough to get me to want a Mac.

When Apple announced that they were going to switch to an Intel processor, that's when I started to take greater notice. Sure enough, not long afterwards, the ability to run Windows on Mac hardware became reality. Having the ability to run Windows on top of OSX with a UNIX base is the best of all three worlds and made the Mac an compelling development environment. To have this all on a notebook... well, that's enough to turn the heads of even the toughest critics of Apple.

So, was this enough to get me to give up my familiar tool set that I've accumulated over the years on Linux and Windows and to learn a new environment? Not really. The cost of switching is still too high for me from both hardware and software perspectives. However, if work gives me the opportunity to work with this platform then I have no objects.

Yep, you guessed it. I got a Macbook Pro from work which I'm now working to get my data transfered over from my Windows notebook. I'm learning the "Mac" way which is different experience from either Windows or Linux. We'll see how it goes.

Apple fanboys rejoice, Apple supporters groans.

In response to the cryings of many Apple early adopters of the iPhone after Apple lowered the price by $200, Apple decided to issue a $100 credit to those folks. The folks who were complaining that it was too soon to drop the price should continue to complain although I suspect they won't. I guess that means it's ok to drop the price by $100 after 2 months but not by $200.

Those who cried that Apple was punishing their most loyal users who waited in line to buy the iPhone at launch and would be pacified by this credit obviously are not really loyal Apple users. By demanding to be compensated, they are effectively trying to weaken the company by taking away revenue. Hard to break it to you folks, but companies need revenue and profit to survive. The argument that these folks are true supporters of Apple just doesn't fly.

iPhone for $399

Apple announced a $200 price cut on the iPhone just two months after its release and it has set off a firestorm of indignant comments by Apple fan boys (uh, I mean early adopters) of how they got screwed by Apple and they should sue the company for lowering the price. All this for a product that as far as I can tell anyone can get if they go to the Apple store since it's far from selling out.

I don't think I need to say much on how silly their arguments are although I can also sympathize to a certain extent especially for those who might have have bought it only a couple of weeks ago because they needed a new phone. However, the one argument that just seems so ridiculous is the one that says, "I'm ok with the price cuts if it happens 6 months after launch rather then two." How does 6 months, or 5 months, 3 months or 2 months matter? What changed during those extra 4 months?

I wonder if any of the complainers will be home buyers 'cause they're going to suffer from a serious case of buyer's remorse.

Lowepro Compudaypack

Finding the elusive "perfect" bag is like a never-ending quest. When it comes to computer bags, I've settled on the Waterfield Cargo bags for its convenience and durability. The bags are sturdy and the notebook is easily accessible from the top without having to open up any flaps which makes it really convenient when going through airport security scans, but I wouldn't call this the "perfect" computer bag. The bag can get a little heavy and with it being a messenger style bag it slings over one shoulders so it can put a lot of weight on that one shoulder. When the notebook is inside there aren't a whole lot of additional room (maybe the large size is better, but I only have the small and medium) for things other then some books, magazines, or papers, but the outside pocket is pretty roomy for smaller accessories. I wish it had the option where I can carry it on both shoulders like a backpack.

For my camera gear, I bought the Canon bag because I wanted one bag that can be used to organize my gears. For that purpose, it works very well, but my recent trip showed me that it isn't very practical for plane travel. The bag can be very heavy and bulky and having a baby, backpack and camera bag at the airport just makes traveling difficult. For traveling, I also don't need to bring everything which means with one bag I'd have to leave some gears out loose when I take the bag.

1455 (click to see larger image) Canon camera bag.

2136 (click to see larger image) Inside of Canon bag with my gear.

So I decided what I need is a combination computer and camera backpack that I can use to carry just the camera gears I need along with a notebook and still have room for magazines to read on the plane, accessories and baby's emergency supplies. There is a surprisingly few number of camera bags for "everyday" use and combinations of notebook+camera bags are even less. One of the first that I was able to find was the Lowepro Compudaypack. This bag seemed to fit the bill as it is designed to be lightweight and has compartments for both a notebook and camera gear. My initial fear was that it didn't have much room for anything else. A friend of mine went through the same exercise of looking for a combo bag and he chose the Crumpler Sinking Barge.

The Crumpler looked like just what I was looking for and seemed very spacious even after loaded with the computer and camera gears, but at $180-$190 it isn't cheap. I was at a local store when I saw it had the Compudaypack and I eagerly checked it out. The bag turned out to be roomier then I expected and it did feel very light. At $80, it is less the half the cost of the Crumpler and you can find it on-line for $50. It became a no brainer to get try the Lowepro first.

The Compudaypack looks pretty much like a normal backpack and is basically a notebook backpack with a compartment underneath to hold the camera gears.

2142 (click to see larger image)

The various padding allows it to keep its form, but I didn't feel it to be bulky when I put it on my back. The camera compartment is large enough to hold a camera (in my case a Canon EOS 30D with battery grip, eyepiece extender, and a 28-105mm zoom lens attached), a couple of lenses and a flash. It comes with pads so you can rearrange the layout of the compartment to fit your needs.

2139 (click to see larger image) Compartment after I changed the configuration around.

2115 (click to see larger image) Holding my gears.

2118 (click to see larger image) Zipper.

Even with everything inside the compartment, I didn't feel anything poke against my back when I carried the backpack and the bag still felt pretty light. The gears fit in snuggly and the padding is not bad although I would swing it around or just drop it on a hard surface.

The laptop compartment doesn't have a strap to hold the notebook although a 17" notebook would probably fit pretty tightly anyway. I tried a 15" IBM Thinkpad and it was a good fit although the Thinkpad has that hand grip on the back that make it a little bigger. The compartment also has a pocket for magazines. Overall the compartment is not that big so the lack of a strap to hold down the computer might be ok since there's not much room for the notebook to slide around anyway. The compartment is padded on all sides to help keep the notebook safe.

2127

The third compartment is for general stuff and contains a number of pockets to help organize small accessories. The flap has a larger pocket for cables and wires.

2121 (click to see larger image)

2124 (click to see larger image)

The base of the compartment is padded since it is the top of the camera compartment. The front of the backpack has a small compartment for a mp3 player. The shoulder straps are padded and each has a Lowepro Sliplock attachment loop to hook a water bottle, lens case, etc. to.

2133 (Click to see larger image) Notice the loop on the shoulder strap to hook accessories to.

So far I like the Compudaypack. The durability seems good although I need to use it awhile to test it. I guess I should try to take another vacation to really get to use the bag!

The dimensions are: 11.4W x 53D x 5.5H (camera compartment), 12.2W x 1.8D x 15.9H (notebook compartment), 12.6W x 5.5D x 11.4H (top daypack department).

Another video card bites the dust...

When I went to my Linux box this weekend, I noticed that the screen would flicker a few times and then go blank. It would come back for a few seconds and then the same thing would happen again. After checking all the connection to make sure they didn't come lose, I plugged another computer to the monitor to make sure it wasn't the monitor that was flaking. In the end, I determined that it was the video card, so I had to buy a replacement. I got a GeForce 6200 LE since it was wasn't too expensive and I don't need a fancy card for Linux. This is the second video card that has died on me this past year and it really shows that while technology advances the stability and quality of new devices often suffers.

Anyway, replacing it was simple. I popped out the old card and put in the new one. Restarted Linux which fell back to the generic NVidia (nv) driver so the screen was a little off so I had to tell it to use the vendor-supplied one which was already installed since the previous card was also an nvidia card. Fedora didn't list the card correctly (saying I had a 5200 nv30 card), but the Nvidia driver software did list the correct card as being installed. There goes 30 minutes and $80 of my time this weekend.

Babies are camera makers' best friend.

When one has a baby, there is an inevitable desire by parents (or grandparents telling the parents) to take pictures and lots of it. I wonder how many new camera sells are directly related to a new baby coming into the world with an eager dad ready to satisfy that urge to take pictures and that inner desire to buy gadget? I think camera makers should be like the diaper and baby food makers who sends you tons of samples before the baby arrives to get you hooked on their product. Send the expectant father a new camera body and a brochure of all your lenses and watch the money flow from daddy's credit card.

Not being immune to the this bug either, I started looking for a new camera after missing some good shots with the digital point-and-shoots that I have. I started photography in high school as a sports and yearbook photographer with traditional 35mm b/w film SLRs, but as time when by (along with the lack of a darkroom) I stopped photography as a hobby.

I bought a Sony Cybershot DSC-S85 a few years back so that I can take pictures on trips. It's a great camera with a good balance of features, but more importantly, it was convenient. I just need to take it out, point and shoot and the images are good. Compare to current point-and-shoot digitals, however, it is a bit bulky and I was envious as people started to whip out little itsy-bitsy cameras out of their shirt pockets with bigger LCDs, more mega-pixels and faster shooting speed. I started looking for a replacement for the S85 starting with newer Sony models. Sony has gotten its hook on me with its brand on my camcorder, TV, PDA, camera and notebook (had 2 over the years), but over the past few years I've been getting more disappointed with the quality of their stuff.

After some research, I decided that it's time to break out of the Sony grip despite the investments I put in Sony chargers, memory sticks, etc., and eventually decided on the Canon Powershot SD800IS. It's a small and compact camera that feels solid and shoots at 7.1 mega-pixels. It's a nice camera, but honestly I don't see the difference in image quality between it and my 4 mega-pixels S85. In low light, the S85 seemed to come out a bit better for my pictures. It could be that I'm not used to the Powershot yet, but regardless I realize that both camera is limited in how quickly they can power up and shoot fast shots. I could go back to my film SLR but I didn't want to deal with the processing time and getting prints then scanning it, etc.

It was time to get a digital SLR and I narrowed down my choices to the Digital Rebel Xti (EOS 400D) and EOS 30D Digital. The Xti is cheaper, newer and is 10 mega pixels, but the 30D can shoot at 5 fps continuous. After reading various reviews and speaking with some friends who own the Xti and hearing that they would upgrade to the 30D as soon as they could, I decided to just go ahead and get the 30D with 2 basic lenses (50mm prime and 28-105 Zoom). It's been a long time since I used an SLR and I'm excited.



So there, Canon sold two camera because of one baby.

NVidia 7600 AGP

My new FXF NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256MB DDR3 (PV-T73A-UDF3) card came last night to replace the burned-out MSI Ti4800 (Ti4600-TD8X) card. Because my motherboard is still AGP, I had to get an AGP card instead of the newer PCI-E and there are fewer and fewer AGP options out there especially if you're looking for dual-DVI connections. There seems to be more ATI cards that sports dual-dvi, but they tend to cost a lot more and I've always liked Nvidia cards.

This is definitely a no frills package that came in a small box with the card, manual, CD, s-video cable, power splitter cable and a DVI-VGA converter. The installation was easy, but don't expect to get help from the manual which just said insert the card into the AGP slot. It didn't even take up half a page. Later on, I found that on the CD there were some PDF documents that offered a little more details but only because it included some diagrams.

After putting in the card, I turned on the machine and saw... nothing. The GPU fan was running but I realize that the power cable from the PSU (the card recommends 350W) wasn't connected properly to the back of the card so it wasn't getting enough juice to turn on. Once I reconnected the cable, everything worked fine. I downloaded the latest drivers from Nvidia and a reboot later I configured everything as I wanted and the monitors looked very nice with both going to DVI.

Overall, the card is nice. The AGP version was more expensive then the PCI-E version but it was still cheaper then upgrading the whole machine. The card is actually smaller then my previous card and I didn't notice it being any louder. The latest version of CPU magazine did an article on AGP card and this one got the best review and performance, but is about $30 more then the average price but given that this will hopefully be my last video card for this machine and I want it to last I figure the investment was good.

Dead video card

Last night I suddenly smelled burning plastic. After looking through the house, it turned out that the fan on one of the video cards (MSI Ti4800) stopped working and the heat of the card melted the fan and surrounding plastic. Not being a heavy PC video gamer these days, I don't buy the super fast video card that could melt a glacier, but I guess most cards these days will generate a decent amount of heat as to require at least a heat sink or fan. What was interesting is that the video card still worked although probably not for much longer, but I still took it out of the computer and put it in the garage because it smelled really bad.

Since no video card essentially means no computer, I figured that I should find one fast, but as I'm not a gamer I haven't been following the latest in video card technology. Although I've heard a lot of good things recently about ATI cards, I've been a long time user of Nvidia so I started there. The Ti4800 is no longer made so I'd have to upgrade to a newer GPU and this time I decided I really want one that has dual DVI connectors instead of a 1 DVI and 1 Analog, and since the motherboard is still an AGP mother board, I needed to find an AGP version of the card.

A few generations of GPU has passed me by since I bought the 4800 with the latest-and-greatest being the 8xxx series, but those cards are in the $400+ category and way beyond what I want to spend for an old system. At first I thought that the older 6xxx series such as the XFX GeForce 6600XT would fit my needs exactly as it has dual DVI, AGP and is relatively cheap.

However, the shocker came as I read the various comments that the XT requires a 500W power supply!?! I thought, "is this the norm these days?" Looking around some more, I settled on the XFX Geforce 7600GT which got very good reviews and being that it's no longer the top-of-the-line from Nvidia the price isn't at a premium. However, because I had to get the AGP version, it was about $50 more then the PCI-E version. While the 6600XT seemed to require a powerful PSU and the XFX version seemed to be a fairly large card, the 7600GT is less power hungry and is suppose to be more a regular sized card. I'm now waiting for it to arrive and I'll provide more details of my experience with it.

Hopefully this will be the last upgrade for the computer until the whole system is upgraded.

Seagate External USB/Firewire HDD

This weekend I got myself the 750 GB Seagate Dual Interface (USB2.0/Firewire) External HDD [ST3750640CB-RK]. I looked around at the various external enclosures and internal HDD combination, but since Best Buy was selling the drive with an instant $100 rebate and I had a discount coupon the price came out better.



The drive's spec is pretty good:

• 7200 RPM


• 16MB Cache


• 2 lb. 9.5 oz.


• USB 2.0 port


• Firewire (IEEE1394a) port

The drive is pretty compact and feels solid in my hands. It comes with a stand so you can have it sit upright or flat if you wanted to stack them. The problem is that there are no rubber feet if you do lay it out flat so it'll slide around on a smooth surface.

The drive is formatted as FAT32 and comes with a one-push button that will start a back-up program if you use it with Windows. I didn't try it with Windows but instead connected to my Linux server.

Setting it up was very simple and involved plugging it into the electrical outlet and connecting the USB cable from the drive to the computer. My Linux box didn't automount the drive, but I was able to check that linux can see it using "fdisk -l". This will return the device name that can be use to manually mount the drive:

mount -t vfat [device name]

Once I knew it was working, I decided that since I will primarily use it with Linux that I'll format it to use ext3 instead of FAT32 so it can understand UNIX file permissions. Unmount the drive and format using:

/sbin/mke2fs -j [device name]

This will erase everything on the drive and make use ext3 (ext2 + journaling). The process was very quick although it uses up a bit more space then FAT32. Once I was done formatting, the drive showed 688 Gb total and 198 Mb used. I think the default FAT32 had 699 Gb total.

Once it looks like everything is working, I added an entry into my /etc/fstab so that the drive will get mounted.

I'm debating whether I should use the fstab or whether to use automount, but this is a minor thing. Otherwise, the drive seems to operate seemlessly with Linux. I now need to get my other machines to back up files to the new drive.