Technically Speaking

Keep it coming

Now that CES is in full swing, we are seeing an avalanche of new gadgets and a whole whack of updates and tweaks to current items. Big news seems to be the free (from Microsoft?) release of Windows 7 beta - use at your own risk - I won't yet. The resurgence of Palm - maybe. Newer, thinner, greener and cheaper TV's. Recession news from Lenovo, Dell and TDK about mega layoffs and plant closures along with the failure of Circuit City have seemed to have had no effect on the hordes of people surging through the exhibits. The Swiss Army knive people, Victorinox, have created a true 'geeks' knife with the Presentation Pro. Along with the usual sharp edged weapons there is a removable 32GB USB drive with fingerprint authentication, laser pointer, and Bluetooth remote control for your presentations. Mind you, it will cost you $330 when it ships in May - ouch! Toss in everything from leaf blowers and sewing machines and you have the perfect CES - everything including the kitchen sink - man, I wish I was there.

More of the same?

It's Macworld and CES again. Macworld without Mr. Jobs does indeed feel weird and almost unreal. He has looked ill for many years and its a relief (in a way) that it's not the dreaded 'c' word that is used. I was discussing with my son some of the announcements - his response was as muted as mine. Nothing really new and nothing to give that 'wow!' response. iPhoto and iLife had some small tweaks that Picassa from Google already had. iTunes was perhaps the biggest thing - no more DRM copy protection and lower prices. The new Macbook was nice, but again, nothing really overwhelming or really impressive. A nice 17" screen and a powerful processor with lots of memory and storage. The lack of a removable battery does concern me, but there again, how many people have multiple batteries or change the one they have? It's nice to see a much longer battery time and a commitment to 'greener' processes - whatever that is. There is one problem that I have with the new laptop - the price - $2799! That's just silly. It always seems to me that Apple has great products and amazing designs with some clever ideas about usage of technology, but.....those prices.

Believe the hype?

For a long time now we have been exhorted to think green especially with our car choices. Leading this charge have been Toyota with their Prius and Honda with the Insight and the various hybrid concoctions out  there from various companies. What we haven't seem to have had is the other side of the equation. More efficient and cleaner vehicles that won't break the bank. You see, my beef with alternative energy cars has been the huge premium that you are expected to pay just to own then. Be honest, how many people buy these cars because they're cleaner? They are purchased mainly to save money on gas - be honest - you know it's true. On a recent edition of the UK motoring show 'Top Gear', they had a challenge to drive nearly 700 miles across Europe on one tank of gas. The cars chosen? A Subaru Forrester , a Jaguar twin turbo V6 diesel and a diminutive WV Polo BlueMotion with a 3 cylinder engine. Believe it or not, they all made it and the Jaguar even had enough gas for another 100 miles or so. Actually, the Jag was driven like a maniac across France and even then still made it. The VW was my real interest though. Here we have a car with better mileage than the Prius and a heck of a lot cheaper to buy. The Prius is rated at about 66mpg while the VW is rated at 74 (actually got over 80 mpg) and the VW is over $8000 cheaper. Now why, in all that's holy, don't we have cars like this in Canada? There is a real lack of diesel engined family vehicles and we seem to be blinded by the hybrid/electric marketplace. This lack of real investment in more economical cars at reasonable prices is part of what has brought our domestic auto industry to it's knees. Mind you, the Asian car manufacturers haven't shown any sign of bringing more of their fuel efficient cars here either, so there is plenty of blame to go around.

What did you say?

Have you noticed one thing missing from most notebook PC's? It's a decent sound system with acceptable volume. Even though my Acer laptop is a real nice unit with Dolby 2.1 sound, it still is rather wimpy when compared to my 5.1 system (Logitech)on my desktop. Yes, I know, a bit like comparing apples to oranges, but I still find the sound from my laptop to be disappointing. However, not all is lost, Logitech to the rescue with their AudioHub available for around $100. This add-on provides a much beefier sound system that will make all the difference to your notebooks output. I won't go into all the techie details as you can read that for yourself - I'll just go over using the AudioHub itself. First impressions are of a quite large and heavy speaker bar that, due to needing it's own power, is not really that portable. It's aimed more at a 'base station' type of setup. Having said that, it's a doddle to setup (even on Vista), completely plug-and-play and ready to blast your eardrums in seconds - very nice. Other than a softly lit combined volume and power button, there are no other controls to be messing with - so no bass or treble settings - hmmmm (a negative to me). One nice thing is that it provides for 3 powered USB ports and comes with an additional USB extension cable if needed. It even comes with an extension bar to hold a webcam - of limited use, as most notebooks have built-in webcams, but a nice touch though. The sound? Well, what a difference a decent set of speakers makes. Apart from the volume - even 10% is nice and loud - the bass output from the sub-woofer makes for a whole new experience. Do I recommend this device? Definitely. If you need to get better and richer sound from todays multimedia notebooks, you already know you need decent output to create a full rounded experience. There are many speaker systems available to add better sound to notebooks, but this one is designed and made for that purpose alone and overall it looks good, sounds good and does what it does with no fuss - I like it!

Gimme, gimme, gimmie

Some time ago I posted information on the Aptera electric/hybrid vehicle with the 300MPG promise. I am sure that many of you rolled your eyes and though that they had heard these claims thown around before. Well, I have good news for you tree-huggers out there. The Aptera seems to be on track for release within the next year. This video from Popular Mechanics gives a really good idea of what this vehicle is all about. Forget your Smart Cars - this is the one to be seen in. It looks like the future has finally arrived. Aptera has two models that are almost production-ready at $30,000 and below: the all-electric, 120-mile-range Typ-1 e that you see here; and, by 2009, the range-extended series gasoline Typ-1 h, which Aptera says will hit 300 mpg. A more conventional third model, called 'Project X' or perhaps Typ-2, is now in the design phase, with plans for a four-wheeled chassis and seating up for to five passengers. Bring it on!

Gas attack!

Setting up my nice new laptop and having a lot of fun and, unfortunately, frustration. Whatever I do, I cannot get Outlook 2007 to run - it was OK on my other Acer running Vista. I've tried EVERYTHING, but no go - so, out with Outlook and in with Gmail - ahhh! That's better. Other than that, it's a real nice machine although it is a little big and heavy. The HD-DVD is a real nice feature and when I get my HDMI cable we will see what the TV makes of it. There are a few gripes though: one USB port is so close to the optical drive that anything plugged in will stop the drive tray opening - dumb! The other issue is one that is common to all laptops - bloatware! This is where manufacturers fill the harddrive with gigabytes of useless utilities and games that no one will ever use and why oh why do they partition the damn drives - it's aggravating. I've been reading reviews on the world wide web of lies (thanks, James May) and I am finding the same conclusions except for one - people think it's ugly - looks alright to me, in fact I like it. There is one other feature that was better that I expected - the webcam - very sharp and even fairly good in low light. I am very pleased with this machine and would recommend it - if you can get one.Nice one Acer!

This ones hot!

Some people wouldn't recognize a good deal if it hit them in the head. Here is a good example. I am getting rid of my rather slow Acer laptop and looking to upgrade to something faster and with better features. Good old Redflagdeals.com came up with the perfect PC. Originally this particular unit was selling for over $1000, but was being reduced to  $799 as a clearance item. On Friday I managed to snag one of these and found that the staff were amazed at the features for the price and had no idea that it was such a decent unit. For this money you get a good quality video card with 512MB RAM, 2 GB of system RAM and a 250MB harddrive. However, the real hidden gem is the inclusion of a HD-DVD drive! Now that makes this a real winner. I will warn you though - don't look to get one - they are all gone (I think I got the last one). I know it sounds dumb to buy it before I sold my current laptop (sold now), but I didn't want to miss this one. Thank goodness for Futureshop's return policies. This just shows you that 'keeping your eyes open' can really pay off.

The lost weekend

Let me start by saying - I HATE COMPUTERS - there, that's better, much better. You would think that installing a motherboard, RAM and a CPU would be child's play, but nooooo. According to the Asus website, the motherboard was supposed to support the fast chip (updated in January), however it appears that the retailer must have had the board in stock for a long time - so no boot-up power. We tried two power supplies, but no go. So, back to return the board (15% restocking fee, damn) and get another one with native support. Yay! We now have power and all the fans spin up as expected. That's more like it, but, now what. No video, bugger! So, off we run to get a new video card - thank goodness for Futureshop's return policies - so did it work? Of course not, that would be too easy. We checked the monitor and the cable; all OK there. So, as we speak, the PC is in the shop for them to work out which of their bits aren't working (we think it's the RAM). Man, that was a whole weekend down the tubes and it's just a blooming computer! Good job it wasn't anything important.

New lamps for old

Well, it's official, we are upgrading old Betsy. Went out yesterday and have nice new bits ready for unveiling. What did we get? Here goes; 2GB of Corsair DDR2 RAM sticks, a 500GB SATAII drive (to replace our 120GB boot drive), an Intel E6750 2.66 GHz CPU and a nice motherboard as a home for them, an Asus P5B board. Very nice stuff indeed. All that remains is to install all this silicon goodness. I was reflecting on how things have changed since I started working at Conpute all those years ago. At that time the IBM AT was the hot ticket item ($2000) with 1Meg (not GB) of RAM running at 12Mhz and including a 'huge' 40Meg harddrive with the nice addition of a 3.5" floppy drive and a 12" or (if rich) a 14" monitor in VGA colour! Remember, this was in the bad old days of Windows 286 and DOS (ask your grandfather).

Expanding your vision

How I missed this I'll never know. Samsung has released a new monitor to the world - ho hum, you may say - but wait, it has something really neat - a USB interface. No, I don't mean a USB hub, but an honest and true USB video connection (UbiSync Technology (USB Graphic Interface)). So, if you have a laptop or a desktop PC and need an additional external screen, just plug this into your USB port - no extra video connection needed. How does this work? Now this is the neat thing; when you initially connect the monitor, it installs a virtual video card. Obviously, if your 'host' PC doesn't have a decent processor (preferably dual-core) then the performance on the second monitor may suffer. This is a really cool idea and one I may make use off. The next step? A wireless monitor - awesome!