Idiotprogrammer Blog

Category: Gadgets

  • Juicing Up

    Tomorrow I’ll be traveling to Austin in preparation for Sunday’s Wiener Dog Race.

    image

    In preparation for my trip, I am charging my iPad and my Zune and my miniature mp3 player (long story). Also, I need to charge my camera battery and my cell phone. Now that I think about it, I am in the process of charging my laptop. Also, I’m drinking a caffeinated drink. Yes, it will keep me up a little, but there are some days you are meant to stay up most of the night.

    Our gadgets make us more powerful and more vulnerable.

  • Ipad: More Reviews

    image Andy Borowitz reports: iPad Wins Nobel Peace Prize.

    Also, on his twitter feed, he muses, “Someone needs to develop an iPad app that will make people stop talking about their iPads.”

    Beepo the Dolphin reviews the iPad. His verdict? “After repeatedly throwing it up in the air with my tail, the device eventually landed on the nearby concrete and wound up with a cracked face.”

    See also: video of Pee Wee Herman reviewing the iPad, Hitler’s technical complaints and fake Steve Jobs’ Open Letter to the People of the World.

  • Random Ipad Links & Musings

    image A commenter remarks:

    Apple has negotiated a product-placement deal with the fabric of reality itself. All this week, your friends are required to tweet about iPads, and comedians are required to work the iPad into bad jokes. Obama is going to tape his weekly video address while holding an iPad.

    Here are some things that popped into my head after two days of ipad use.

    (more…)

  • My ipad purchase

    I finally did it: I purchased an ipad.  I purchased the 32 gig device without 3g (although the monthly price was tempting indeed).

    My main purpose was professional: to see how it would change reading and to test ebook designs on it.  See Craig Mod’s article about book design on the ipad.

    I am not a big fan of the multimedia magazine (especially since Conde Nast or Wired or Verve seem to be the only ones with the technical resources to do it). Nor am I a fan of branded ebook readers or the iTunes store. I remain relatively happy with Windows Vista and Vista 7 and my  cheapo cellphone. I don’t mind buying a handful of applications, but I don’t relish the idea of buying a large number of single function applications. Nor do I relish the idea of having to sync things between Windows and the ipad.

    On the other hand,  I also look forward to new writing tools like Budding (which like Google Docs or Live Writer are indispensible  to me now). As much as I enjoy the freedom permitted by the e-ink devices, I miss the interactivity and full color of the  world wide web.

    I don’t intend to turn into an Apple Fanboy, but frankly, I see no other device that competes in the same category. I’m sure I will find other things to despise about the iPad, but for now I feel the joy of having spent several hundred dollars on something no one has ever seen.

  • Just ordered: Thinkpad T400 laptop!

    Ok, for the last 6 months I’ve been hunting around for a new laptop.  I need a sturdy powerful laptop which had some bells and whistles which would be  useful especially for giving presentations. I ended up spending between $1250-1300. Some observations:

    1. I thought I was saving money by ordering my RAM and hard drive from a third party. Indeed, I did save about $40. In retrospect, that seemed like needless crimping. For $40 more, I could have had the peace of mind knowing that I had only one vendor for servicing my parts. Now I have two vendors to worry about.
    2. I upgraded to a bright NIT display. That cost about $150 more, but I really thought having a laptop whose screen would be clear and sharp in midday sun would be a good feature to have (and good to show off). The display technology apparently uses just about the same amount of energy as regular displays.
    3. One big factor was whether to buy a laptop with a builtin eSATA port. Esata is a standard which is faster than USB 2, but it only comes on high end laptops. After some checking around, I decided instead to buy a separate eSATA adaptor for my ExpressCard. I don’t plan to use this often, but that seems to be something I would use. (Interestingly, the Thinkpad didn’t seem to have firewire either).
    4. I saw lots of excellent laptops selling for $700 or less. The compromise you made was lack of customizability, inferior processors and 5400 rpm hard drives. Upgrading to 320 gig 7200 rpm cost you another $100 or so.
    5. I never ceased to be amazed at how many laptops still have 32 bit Vista on it. After placing my order, I just realized that Lenovo did not list which version of Vista they would install on it (I will need to call to make sure).  Update: Home Premium is 32 bit; what a pain to change!
    6. For $100 more, I paid for the 2 extra years on the extended warranty. Peace of mind.
    7. I had to choose between a 14 inch model and a 15 inch, and my choice ultimately come down to battery life. The smaller you get, the easier it is to carry and the longer battery life.
    8. Lenovo has one of the best reputations for being friendly to the environment and climate change. This means a lot to me.
    9. Two things I rarely found good information about were the ports on the laptop and the quality of the webcam (and Linux support). These sorts of things don’t make the manufacturer any extra money, and yet they are vital to being satisfied with your laptop.
    10. I did something unusual this time. I asked for advice on what laptop to buy on a forum. On Notebookreview.com I found a good forum entitled, “What laptop should I buy?”. You had to fill in a form giving your price range and preferences. Then, within minutes, you get suggestions by people knowledgeable about what you can get in today’s market.
    11. Lenovo is known for high quality Thinkpads, but in some ways, their website is incompetent. They don’t have 24 hour customer support or even weekend support. Shipping dates are  substantially longer than Dell and HP. They use only Intel processors, and the ecommerce tool is not as friendly. Their laptop prices haven’t declined that much over the last 6 months. On the other hand, they have been putting out 15% off coupon deals (in addition to the normal discount). But Thinkpads is their premiere laptop, and so I know the quality of the parts and the build itself is high. 
    12. I had to shop for a replacement router for my mom. Apparently, according to reviews, no one is happy with the performance of 802.11n wifi routers (even though range and performance of the standard itself is supposed to be better). Many savvy people are sticking with the Linksys 54xxx g router, which is surprising. I didn’t see one router under $100 which people are happy with.
    13. I was trying to deal with the dual boot issue, and someone referred me to wubi, which installs ubuntu as a kind of virtual machine on windows. From the faq:

    Is this running Ubuntu within a virtual environment or something similar?

    No. This is a real installation, the only difference is that Ubuntu is installed within a file as opposed to being installed within its own partition. Thus we spare you the trouble of creating a free partition for Ubuntu. And we spare you the trouble to have of having to burn a CD-Rom.

    I actually played around with the idea of buying a cheap 4 gigabyte laptop, but the quality of the builds were not as good; also you usually compromised on memory and ports.