John's Tech Blog

Auto connect to Samba on Mac Lion

2012-01-19T15:05:00.000-08:00

Every time I boot my Mac it disconnects my samba share. How to get it to auto connect, even connect in the first place. Well boys and girls, here it is.

First you have to connect to the server in the first place. In Finder select Go->Connect to server. Put in your credentials or select guest for anonymous login. This will create a new shared locaion in Finder.

Select the share to open

Now to make it do that when you automatically login. Open System Preferences, Select Users and Groups then select your user from the list of users. Then select the Login Items tab. Click the + button below the list of Login Items and then browse to the Samba share you wish to open automatically. It will then appear in your list of Login Items and problem solved.

Add the share to your Login Items

The Joys Of Ignorance

2010-06-14T22:46:00.000-07:00

A little bit of knowledge is a reason to instill panic on the unsuspecting masses.

When we elect people to Parliament and they become ministers it would not be unreasonable to expect them to have half a brain. The problem is that they keep opening their mouths and removing any remaining doubt we had.

This proclamation from one of Queensland's finest demonstrate how dangerous a little bit of knowledge can be.

I am not sure who these health experts are but I have not seen one peer reviewed study stating that 3D TV is any worse that any other piece of technology. I know of one anecdotal story from someone who was involved in testing a 3D game and they found a certain level of disorientation in some subjects but as far as I am aware no further investigation was done.

Second, who are these manufacturers that issue such dire warnings?

In reality no one has identified 3D TVs as being any worse than any other bit of tech. It is true that some people are adversely affected by 3D video but no more or less than other technologies such as CRT TVs, plasma or LCD displays, computers, fluros, even my mum was sometimes affected by driving in the car at times.

Oh yes, roll out the old pregnant women and children. How on earth does being pregnant make 3D TVs more dangerous? The truth is that the warning that the manufacturers issue is the standard disclaimer that manufacturers issue for all flat panels, and is not unique to 3D displays. They do this so that people will not sue, not because they believe it is a serious issue.

The paranoia over 3D is no different from that which accompanies any new technology that the ignorant do not understand.

The warnings in the last paragraph are ridiculous.

"They should also avoid watching 3D TV under fluorescent lighting or direct sunlight and it's also suggested the screens should not be placed anywhere near stairs or balconies because viewers can become disorientated and that could lead to an accident."

To suggest that someone walking down a stair will be disorientated as they glance towards a 3D TV shows how ill informed the minister is.

Maybe the minister in question should go back to what he is good at...

Apple iPad - Tablet, slate or what?

2010-06-06T22:20:00.001-07:00

Since its launch many commentators have referred to the iPad as a different class of device, and have also referred to it as a tablet. The problem with these commentators is that by doing so they show their ignorance of the sate of computing tech today.

First of all this is not a new class of device. The slate computer has been around for a number of years and a Google search on slate computer will reveal to the least tech savvy amongst us that this type of device is not new. A slate is basically a computing device with no attached keyboard, a touch and/or active screen and minimal buttons for quick functions. The slate form factor has been popular for specialised operations but has not had a large penetration in the main stream. It has remained a fairly niche product, mainly due to user ignorance. Manufacturers have not been keen on publicising slates up until now and no one has put a lot of effort into developing or promoting the form. The iPad is really a low end slate device, without a serious CPU, RAM or OS. Hardly new, if you are talking about a crippled computer being a new type of device, but seriously, I think not.

Tablet? Well the Tablet computer has been around for about ten years and comes in two basic forms. Convertible or slate. A convertible Tablet is similar to a laptop but the keyboard twists and folds up onto the back of the computer to allow it to be used in a slate mode. This makes the device larger and heavier. Many people use a slate form factor and attach a portable keyboard and mouse whe required. The Tablet has a pen, active matrix display and may or may not have touch. It is a mistake to call the iPad a Tablet computer. It is a slate without the tablet functions. To be a tablet you need to be able to use a stylus which has been specifically omitted from the iPad.

I am eagerly awaiting the plethora of Windows slate computers now in the pipe line to see what they are like. It would be nice to see some real slate Tablet computers emerge from the scrum.

At least one good thing will come from the popularity of the iPad. It demonstrates to manufacturers that there is a market for real slate computers (as opposed to the toy that the iPad is) and that some real development work will be put into developing a serious contender.

The truth is the iPad is a very high quality device but the average consumer does not care. They want a device that is cheap and convenient. If the main stream PC maker comes to market with a real computer for the rest of us then then they will carve a huge market for themselves. This reminds me of an exchange between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs from the movie The Pirates Of Silicon Valley.

Jobs "Our products are better than yours."

Gates "It doesn't matter."

The iPad, another view

2010-04-07T20:53:00.000-07:00

Interestingly all of the people that said that the iPhone was a looser and would die a quick and unnatural death are now saying what a wonderful device the iPad is.

However there is one dissenting (and in my view reasonable) voice amongst the fan club. The Register report on an interesting article from the NYT's David Pogue.

His wife's observations are exactly what I have been saying. After all the hype has settled this will be seen for what it is. A nice expensive toy. I am hanging out for the HP slate which will be (according to reports) lighter, more powerful and a real computer with real interfaces.

The iPad - Whatever Happend To Innovation?

2010-02-01T21:41:00.000-08:00

With the "most important announcement of Steve Job's life" done and dusted, but without the dust having settled what is the verdict? Am I buying this or is it just candy wrapped in marketing?

I have to say that despite the anticipation and hype before the event I did not have high expectations. As more detail was leaked I became less excited until the night before my expectations had plunged to an all time low. In retrospect I have to say that all of my expectations were met. This was a fizzer and the hype appears now to be no more than marketing.

My initial response was one of underwhelmed and nothing at their presentation and all the glowing reports from those who used it have not changed my opinion. All of the fancy things that Steve demonstrated elicited no more than a ho-hum from me. Interestingly it reminded me a lot of the iPhone launch which I can still recall. My reaction to that launch was quite the opposite even though they are very similar devices.

I will start by saying what the iPad is not. The iPad is not a tablet. The tablet computer has a number of functions which are clearly missing form the iPad. First and foremost it has no digitiser and its associated functions. The digitiser is an active matrix built into the screen which allows the use of a multi function stylus or pen. It enables what is called pen computing, It doubles as a mouse in its simplest terms but it also has handwriting recognition, may be pressure sensitive, and write and erase. Pen computing is an extremely powerful tool and for anybody that has ever used pen computing to not include a pen in this format device is unthinkable. Not one of the news bloggers that are tablet specialists think that the iPad is a serious contender in this space. Touch has been around for a long time on these devices but until now they have all had the active digitiser. To remove that feature is like removing an athlete's leg. Some of the functions that require a pen are drawing, fine control graphics manipulation, and handwriting. These are possible with touch but you do not get the fine control with touch as you do with the pen. That is why conventional pens are held and not attached.

Neither is the iPad an e-book reader. As nice is the display is it is not e-ink. The e-ink displays are designed to minimise eye strain for prolonged concentration that is necessary for reading. It does not replace the e-book reader so that idea that somehow e-book readers will flock to this device is mistaken.

The iPad is not a web device. The lack of full web function ensures that you will not display many web pages. To criticise flash is to miss the point entirely and the pronunciation's of Steve Jobs in the last few days regarding his perceived issues with flash is disingenuous to say the least. In the last 24 hours I have visited several web sites that required flash to display, one of which is a daily visit and would be rendered useless without flash. Why would I buy such a device where I would be forced to return to my regular computer of choice just to visit this or that random site.

The iPad is not a portable music player. Lets be perfectly blunt about this, any potential iPad customer will already own at least one of iPhone or iPod, perhaps multiple such devices. Tho buy yet another device to replicate that function that you cannot put in your pocket makes no sense at all.

The iPad is not a movie/media player. Its lack of codecs, lack of connectivity and form factor (4x3) make this a vary poor media player. One can accept these restrictions on a small pocket device but not on a device that is supposed to be a replacement for a mid level computing device.

It is not a personal computer. I know that this is the most radical and potentially controversial statement but bear with me here. It is a closed computing platform. That means that all code that runs on this device has to be digitally signed by Apple. So none of the restrictions above can be bypassed without hacking the device. You cannot run a third party browser. (All browsers that run on the iPhone are simply Safari with different UIs). You cannot install additional audio and video codecs, for instance xVid or FLAC. You cannot do voip over 3G or Skype unless Apple grants their permission. You cannot run linux or parallels or Boot Camp to run your Win apps. You cannot even run your Mac apps without Apple allowing them to be ported, and even then some will have difficulty because of the interface. The addition of docking and pairing solutions makes up some of the gap but there is still a huge gulf between the iPad and a personal computer.

"So", I hear you ask, "What is the iPad".

The iPad is realy a portable iTunes player/games machine and not much more. I will concede that with the additional APIs and applications you can perform some of your more sophisticated tasks but without an open environment and pen functions any serious computing has to be done with a tethered keyboard and mouse(?).

Of all of the positive reviews of this device none have talked about its usability in a wider environment other than reading books, playing movies and playing games They all rave about its wonderful interface which I will concede looks extremely nice. One of the great things about the iPhone is the interface which is a great piece of design. But what is good for a hand held device does not necessarily scale up to a mid range device.

The iPad is light innovative and a wonderfully designed and architected but it fails to produce in its intended market. The things which made the iPhone a best seller will not save the iPad. It is a different format and different market. If Apple think that the success of the iPhone can be replicated by scaling up its features into a mid level device I believe they are mistaken. I am going to stick to my Tablet until Apple produce a serious contender.

Ten Things I Hate About MS Windows

2010-01-03T19:11:00.000-08:00

1. $500 - give me a break

Most other operating systems for the desktop range from free to about $50, but not MS. They have to squeeze the last ounce of blood from the dying user. True some versions are cheaper - but still over $100. In a day and age where you can buy full systems for way less than the price of the OS there is some rather distorted summs going on here. The price of hardware has dropped substantially over the years but not the OS. This brings me neatly onto No. 2.

2. How many versions for you Sir?

Starter, Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate. Whilst most other operating systems have a single version (desktop, not server) MS have in their wisdom deemed that the user must pay extra for what most other operating systems provide in their base OS.

3. Legacy

When shall we shake off the shackles? In this day and age of virtualisation we are shackled to legacy compatibility. Run a virtual server, there are plenty to choose from, both free and paid. We are being tied to legacy when we could have a much faster and more stream lined OS if we cast off the shackles of the past and went to a clean 64 bit OS.

4. The Registry

Who's wonderful idea was this? As soon as MS created this multi headed monster anyone with half a brain could see what was coming. Corruption, phantom entries, viruses that place protective shields around themselves hiding inside the registry. Admittedly it has improved since earlier versions but it is still a serious issue.

5. Dynamic Linked Libraries.

I am not sure exactly what it is about DLLs that causes so many issues but they seem to be a nightmare. An installation will randomly "upgrade" DLLs at will and trash several other programs as they do so. Why don't we have standard core libraries which are protected and then additional libraries provided by each program vendor as required. This seems to work for other operating systems.

6. Open kernel

Protect the kernel for goodness sakes. To tack on UAC as an after thought in order to annoy the heck out of any one trying to perform a simple operation is shutting the gate after the horse has bolted. Users rejected Protected Computing years ago and this is simply imposing all the inconvenience without any of the protection. If you really want to improve the OS stability protect the kernel and core libraries so that they cannot be changed without a signed package and only by supplying the admin password. The rest of it can be as open as you want. But that means re-designing the OS to behave like a real multi-user milti-tasking OS.

7. The GUI as the OS.

We have this wonderful GUI interface and instead of treating it as an application it has become the OS. The result is that you have this over burden of an overblown program sitting in between the user and the hardware slowing everything down. The GUI should be simply just another program and each user program should run as a separate entry but instead the whole thing has been designed so that the running programs sit on top of the GUI interface. Bring back performance.

8. Paying for bug fixes.

Windows 7 is a bug fix for Vista, whatever MS would have us believe. I fail to see why we have to pay for Microsoft's incompetence. I read recently that Windows ME was a minor upgrade to Windows 98. This was the opposite to Vista/Win 7. ME users were manage to pay for new bugs in 98.

9. Performance Bloat

This is related to, but different from #7. Each OS requires more memory and more processing simply to run the OS. To run the exact same programs I used to run with 512M on XP I need 2G on Win 7. How does that work? If I want to run more powerful tools such as high res 3D gaming or graphics editing then sure, I can accept that. But just to run the OS without any other gains, and then to have the programs run slower into the bargain does not make any sense to me.

10. No economic upgrade path.

It is still a minimum of $100 for an upgrade to the most basic version of Windows. Most other programs are genereous to loyal users but not MS. If they really wanted to stop piracy then price their OS upgrades resonably. Anything more that $50 for a fully blown OS is a rip off IMHO.

The Win 7 Scam - Are we being taken for a ride?

2009-11-29T21:16:00.000-08:00

In your average software life cycle you see minor upgrades and bug fixes and major revision releases. Customarily the minor releases are free and are chacterised by point releases. For instance 8.0 is the initial release, 6.0.1 is a minor update to fix a release bug and it will then go to 8.1, 8.2, 8.3 etc as further updates are released. All of these are free until the next major release when we go to 9.0 and existing users pay an upgrade to receive the new software. Now the upgrade price is usually a substantial discount to pay for the loyalty of customers. Differing software companies offer different pricing schemes. All of this is quite normal and offers loyal users bug fixes, minor upgrades and discounts on major releases.

When Microsoft released Vista there was a lot of hype created around this wonderful new product but the market was underwhelmed. Not since the Windows ME disaster has there been a more lukewarm response to a Microsoft OS. One would have thought that they would have learnt from Win ME. Be that as it may, The initial release of Vista had so many issues one has nightmares just thinking about it. But it is true that the updates did make it marginally more usable. It is interesting to not however that the actual revision number of Windows Vista is 6.0. Now here is the thing. Windows 7 is release 6.1. The reason that MS give for this only being an incremental number is that a change in major release will cause a lot of software to not run. I am not entirely convinced. I believe that in fact Windows 7 is simply a service pack on Vista with a minor GUI upgrade. Why do I say this? Let me explain.

If they changed the version from 6.x to 7.x then they could simply provide a check box in the program's properties to make it think it is Vista. After all, that is exactly what they did to XP programs that did not run under Vista, and there were precious few of those.

All Vista drivers work in Win 7, which means that the kernel driver sub-system was substantially unchanged. This has not been the case for any other OS upgrade. Vista required all new drivers because the driver subsystem was changed. Same drivers = same OS.

Win 7 was only what Vista should have been in the first place. To its dying day Vista was a retrograde step for 99% of people. There are I/O issues. There are memory issues. There are performance issues. None of which have been satisfactorily addressed despite all of the updates, until now that is.

I maintain that Win 7 is primarily a patch fix for Vista and should be free to all Vista users. MS however put in all the fixes for Vista and in order to sell it as a new OS release they gave it the synthetic "7" moniker, added some interface changes and marketed it as a brand new OS.

There were I believe several motivations for doing this. First they wanted to make money on it. The sales of Vista were way below expectation and MS lost a lot of market share as a result of the issues. The only way to recoup the loss in revenue was to make everybody pay all over again. Second to release Win 7 as a service pack for Vista would be admitting that Vista was in fact broken, at beta level on release and this would have been a loss of face. Third they wanted a clean break from the damaged Vista branding. Vista has acquired a stigma that MS wanted to break from and the only way to do this was to pretend that Win 7 was a new OS, rather than the patch upgrade that I contend it is. So for MS to regain their place as market leader in operating systems they believed it was necessary to present Win 7 as a mew OS and to try to cut the link to Vista.

I believe that MS should have released Win 7 as a service pack. This has been the principle in the past and I believe it would have worked here. Sure they would have not had as many sales but their sales of Vista would have taken off once people realised that the bugs were gone. Reviewers were universally negative on Vista, but the same reviewers were universally positive on Win 7. All MS needed to do was to engage in some subtle marketing and Vista's image would have turned around on the back of a substantial service pack. Remember XP in the pre-service pack days? It too was bug ridden and unstable, not as bad as Vista I will grant, but not the wunderkind that it became after the service packs. The XP service packs also added substantially to the features. As much as Win 7 did over Vista.

To release Win 7 as an upgrade comes down to one thing, greed. MS needs to keep the $ signs in their eyes rotating at great speed and to do this their revenue stream has to be maintained, and what better way than to package an OS upgrade and an entirely new OS and to charge accordingly.

How much would you pay for an iPhone dictionary?

2009-04-13T19:58:00.000-07:00

After about six months of use I am at last sorting out the good, bad and ugly applications. Some apps are just brilliant and in daily use such as Oz Weather and Google Maps. Others are nice to use and yet others have been deleted never to return.

One app though seems to me to be extraordinary value for money and that is Dictionary.com.

Dictionary.com is an online dictionary that is up to the standard of a quality home dictionary without the nuisance of taking out several large volumes from the shelf. They have now added a fantastic application to the iPhone and all for the princely sum of nothing. Yes, that is correct, this app is free.

I have been comparing it with the dictionary I would prefer, the AU$40 Oxford dictionary and although the Oxford is somewhat better there is no way I can justify $40 when the Dictionary.com is free. In many cases the entries in Dictionary.com and the Oxford are all but identical.

Not only do you get the dictionary but you also get the pronunciation, the Thesaurus and a word of the day. The WOD does require online access but the dictionary and Thesaurus are both offline. The text entry also does a spell check and suggests similar words just in case, like me, your spelling is less than perfect. It also keeps a history of recent words. If you have a word in one of the three screens, Dictionary, Thesaurus WOD, selecting another screen will perform a look up in that screen.

As far as I am concerned this is going to be my standard "pocket" dictionary unless I can get the Oxford for a substantial discount.

See Whats On iPhone for another view.

iPhone - DYI Charger

2009-01-07T17:01:00.001-08:00

It has been a source of much frustration to me (and obviously many others) that many of the iPod accessories will not work with the iPhone. Not sure for all of the reasons for this but one of the more irritating is that a large proportion of iPod chargers will not charge the iPhone. The worst thing is that there is no indication whether that particular accessory will charge the iPhone (unless marked of course) until you purchase said accessory and plug it in. I recently bought several iPod car adaptors on sale for $20 each only to find that one charged the iPhone and the other did not.

In researching this I came across some interesting information on iPhone charging adaptors and more specifically using USB for supplying power to connected devices.

USB has four pins designated +, -, D+ and D-. + is 5 Volts regulated, - is 0V or ground, D+ and D- are the data pins, send and return if you will. The actual current that can be drawn from a USB port varies on wheter the port is on a powered device, a hub or a dedicated charger, and also what revision USB the port is. What this means for the iPod and iPhone is that the iPhone requires more current and therefore the charger for the iPhone is slightly different due to the higher current required.

This article and its links provide some good information on how to adapt your regular USB adaptor to make the iPhone know that it can use it for charging. In short all you need is to add two resistors to one of the D lines between the + and - lines to tell it to turn on charging. In other words apply about 2.5V to one of the data lines. Some of the circuits use four resistors and others 2 but the outcome seems similar.

Of course there are other resons why your avereage USB car adapter will not charge your iPhone but you really need some skills in electronics to sort it out if it does not work first up.

I will be trying this out when I get home to see if I can get my wife's phone charging in her car.

Landmark - 40 Years on

2008-12-09T17:31:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of a device we all consider a central part of our computing experience, the mouse.

This BBC article is an excellent tribute to this small creature.

It is amazing how such a seemingly casual idea was the herald of a revolution in the way we use computers.

Update
This article also shows some light on this guy who was so forward thinking.

The video link near the beginning is over an hour but is very interesting in what it indicates.

You have to think that at this time computers were rooms full of equipment and that input was typically cards, paper tape and if you were very lucky a teleprinter, and the output was paper tape, paper and on occasion a screen. The idea of the average user interacting via a console was rare and the interactive interface which is second nature to us these days was thought of as a nonsense at the time.

My Precious - The iPhone after a couple of months use...

2008-12-03T13:36:00.000-08:00

OK - here is the deal. First it was Nokia - great interface, ultra reliable and sort of easy syncing with a few glitches. Then it was onto the Smart Phone - HP Pocket PC with keyboard, GPS, BT and wifi plus expandable memory. OK, but extremely buggy. Constant crashing, running out of memory, slow, loosing calls for no obvious reason for several hours, sometimes up to a day at a time.

To summarise
Nokia
Pros;
Reliable
Consistent interface
Syncing - mostly good

Cons;
Antiquated
OS not capable of more sophisticated apps
If the sync messed up was a nightmare to sort out.

Smart Phone
Pros;
Extremely powerful
Great range of apps
potential of almost anything

Cons;
Slow
Very very buggy - really always felt like a beta version
Unable to upgrade the OS - no FW releases - stuck with the many bugs
Constantly missing calls for no good reason.

I decided to move towards a basic phone with a UMPC for the more sophisticated mobile computer experience. Untill the iPhone arrived.

I was not immediately taken with the iPhone, for a start it was only GSM, it was rather limited in memory and here in Australia it was quite difficult to get and really not worth the effort. Then they announced the 3G and a tentative date for Australia. I started to get interested. I wondered if this would be a nice intermediate compromise? The two devices in one.

My two sons bought iPhones when they were released so I got to see them up close and for all the limitations I did like it. It would be nice to have a phone that would work - as opposed to my pocket PC.

There is the story - one of frustration and constant phone envy - What is it like to have a phone that works? So after having it for a couple of months here is my first assessment.

My first impression was how smoothly everything worked out of the box. No sophisticated computer knowledge required to set it up, no esoteric syncing software to set up, just the old favourite iTunes that I have been using for years and it just appears magically in the left hand pane with a big Sync button down the bottom. It does require a little setup and as with every program the options take some explaining - whey does IT language have to be so obscure. Why can't the options be self explanatory - or at least have a little help popup to explain them. But for all that it is much easier than either Nokia synchronisation software or Active Sync.

The first thing was to sync my music. Select the sync only selected music and check all the wanted play-lists and it was done. Simplicity itself. However the inability to access the device's files directly and only able to sync one way and to only one computer is severely limiting. I have looked for mechanisms to overcome this limitation but so far to no avail.

Application download and backup is straightforward. Although there are a plethora (supposedly just passed 10,000) of applications most of them are rubbish and you do not have the quality of applications that are available for the PPC. You get far less quantity but much higher quality applications for the PPC. Also the limitation to multitask on the iPhone is a severe limitation. I will be happy when all of my favourite apps for the PPC are available on the iPhone.

The phone works. What more can I say. The inability to easily sync with my Outlook is a nuisance but I am depending less on Outlook - but for those still tied it can be rather problematic. I use Google for most things now - except for work mail. The mail app is nothing short of brilliant. I have two Gmail and one Yahoo account and it is very easy and has just the features one would want in a mobile mail app. Gmail contacts seem to work fine. No complaints really. There is an excelent web interface to the Gmail callendar but it does not integrate with the native iPhone callendar. It would have been nice to have integration with all of the web apps, it seems like half a job to me.

The interface is very nice to use. Smooth and easy to navigate and all the application interfaces have a nice consistency. Much more than any other device I have used, and much better than the PPC. Selecting an application is easy and navigating it is simplicity itself - although the developer does need to make the labels so that they make sense. One of the benefits of Apple tying it down like a homicidal maniac is that you are forced into this tightly defined interface. Not a bad thing on a device such as this.

As mentioned above the iPhione is quite reliable - maybe not as reliable as a basic phone but no where near as flaky as my PPC. The occasiona app crash (excepth for this reboot probelm I have - more below) it has been extremely stable.

The media player is as good as one would expect from Apple. Anything on the Nokia or the PPC looks plain ameturish compared to the iPhone media player. It is smooth, powerful, easy to use, and of resonable quality. The new Genius feature is a very nice addition. As above ther are some gripes but the media player is not a tacky add on as with other devices. One thing I will say is the lack of high def BT stero support is notable. I bought a pair of BT stero headphones for my PPC and so far they have lain idle. It is a nicely integrated powerful media player in its own rite.

May trees have been felled in defence of the browser and apart from some well documented gripes it works as advertised and is very smooth and easy to use. Most sites are properly rendered and easy to navigate. IE for PPC, eat your heart out.

The maps software is nothing short of brilliant. You get the map, sattelite view, directions, assisted GPS, markers and now with the 2.2 update you get street view. All of which is easy to use, fast and convinient. There is now only one thing lacking, that is turn by turn navigation. Why it is missing I have no idea. It is a serious limitation and its absence on what is otherwise such a comprehensive device is a complete mystery.

I do have an issue with my iPhone whereby on several occasions when the phone has been docked it went into a mode where by it would reboot every minute or so. It would continuously reboot until I removed it from the dock. The first time I thought it had developed a software fault and did a full restore. After it started happening the second time I realised I could stop it by removing it from the docking station. I come back the next day and it is fine. Still no idea why it does this.

Pros;
Great interface
Very easy to use
Consistent look and feel wherever you are
Many additional programs in every conceivable category to choose from - many free
Good email support
Most popular sites now have iPhone dedicated pages
First class media player

Cons;
No multitasking
Limited RAM
No memory expansion
No direct access to the file system (can using wireless if jailbroken)
Apple tie down the applications with a draconian approval process and limitations (Unless jailbroken)
No Stero BT support
Many of the apps are toys with no real porting of many serious computer programs as yet
Often tied to onerous phone plans
No turn by turn

Conclusuion
Using the iPhone is a pleasurable experience with very little down side. The limitations, some of which are really annoying, are far outweighed by the many advantages.

It would be nice to see a new model with more CPU grunt, more RAM, multitasking, better integration in some areas, better BT stack and turn by turn.

For all the limitations, given the choice, I would buy the iPhone again. Reliable device, smooth navigation, great feature set make this a great device. Add to this the great media player and navigatin it is a true winner.

Hp Giveaway at Jake Lunding's Digital Lifestyle

2008-12-03T03:16:00.000-08:00

It has been a while since I posted but this is a great contest. This month HP toghether with 50 sites are giveawaying US$6,000 of computer equipment.

One of the sites is Jake Lunding's Digital Lifestyle. Head on over to Jake Ludington’s HP Magic Giveaway to enter and check out the other sites involved.

Replacement Weather Station

2008-01-08T14:15:00.000-08:00

At last my replacement weather station has arrives and is in the process of being installed.

It is a Lacrosse 3600 wireless and seems to be working fine except that it is purportedly susceptible to stray RF which there is plenty in the computer room where the base station is located. It has to be reasonably close to the server so that I can connect it to the server's RS-232C port to collect the data. I need to provide a longish cable so that I can move it elsewhere.

The data is here and the graphs are here. They do not look particularly pretty yet and I will be working on the layout. I am also going to upload the data to the Weather Underground, but the data is not loading. I am waiting until the quality issues are addressed and the scripting is finished.

I also need to make a Stevenson Shield to house the temperature and humidity sensor. A rudimentary shield is provided but it is not immune to radiation and it tends to read several degrees high in direct sunlight. In short a Stevenson Shield prevents direct sunlight from distorting the readings by providing a shelter for the sensors. It is no more than a ventilated box but needs to be designed so as to allow the sensors to read the characteristics of the surrounding air without bias from the radiant heat from the sun or the influence of surrounding structures. I have been looking at shield designs and most people tend to use layered rings from largish white or painted flower pot bases. From what I can see these may be more or less successful bur are never as good as the louvered wooden boxes as seen in the official weather stations. I have searched unsuccessfully for blueprints for one of these so it looks like once again I will be designing and building one from scratch. I will try to remember to take progress photos for reference and to assist anyone else who wants to make their own.

I will post some pictures for the voyeurs amongst us later.

Bill and Steve and that other guy...

2007-06-19T20:09:00.000-07:00

Is it just me or does that old guy seem to like the sound of his own voice? I don't know about you but I watch this stuff for the interviewee not the interviewer. Maybe he watches too much late night TV.

http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2007/05/gates_and_jobs_.html

Firefox + PPC = Success!

2007-06-19T19:11:00.000-07:00

If like me you are an avid user of Mozilla apps and own a PPC then the following URLs may be useful

This is the free POP mail client but the sync software is not free -

http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2007/05/sync_windows_mo.html

And this looks to be a nice little utility as well

http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2007/06/finchsynch_conn.html

thanks to JK for the info.

XP User's Guide Series

2007-05-06T14:47:00.000-07:00

Just came across this series on Windows Vista. Not read it yet but it looks to answer the common questions that most XP users have when using Vista. Check out the series here.

Toshiba P100 review

2007-05-01T18:42:00.000-07:00

Introduction

My two year old A 20 17" wide-screen laptop was stolen late last year and the insurance company replaced it with a brand new P100 - PSPAGA-014001. This is the recently released Vista model with the maxed out specs.

In Brief
Core 2 duo 2.16G
2G RAM
NVidia 7900 GTX/512
200G HDD
BT/WIFI
Media Centre remote control
You can look up the rest if you are interested.

First impression - Nice!

When I unpacked it there was not the usual plastic wrapping but instead there was a quality cloth pouch and a cloth insert between the screen and keyboard. This will come in useful for when I transport it to add additional protection. It has been stored in my laptop case.

The appearance is neo-traditional, with a metallic blue top. It does not feel particularly solid when handling it and the lid bows somewhat to the touch. It gives the impression of being rather fragile, although I doubt it really is, but maybe this is the compromise between robust and light. Lifting the lid reveals a full keyboard including numeric keypad which is if not unique in a laptop highly unusual. It means that the user does not have to battle with the triple mode keys in failing light (eyesight) to enable unique keypad function. To accommodate the keypad in the available space the cursor movement keys have been reduced in size. This takes some getting used to but most keyboards do and this is not really a big problem.

I have to say up front that I hate every iteration of "pointing device" I have ever used on a laptop and the "mouse pad" is no exception. I remember the first time I saw one at a demo when they were first released and the salesman was telling me how wonderful it was (don't they always) but ... there were these problems with false triggering, moisture, tricky pointer movement, and in the next 15 or so years all I can is "they have not fixed these problems yet?". Now I have that rant out of the way I can get back to the review.

The dual mode mouse pad is "interesting". The mouse pad doubles as a quick launch facility. In quick launch mode a blue light behind it illuminates the touch "buttons". After using it several times the novelty quickly wore off and I will probably never use it again. By the time you have tapped the dual mode button, made sure that it is in launch mode, started the application and put the pad back in mouse mode the user could have located the item on the desktop and launched the application from there. One could of course keep it in launch mode but it is still rather fiddly to use.

One additional feature that immediately strikes the user is the finger swipe pad. This can be used as power on security, user login, application launch or HDD encrypt-protection. This is fine until the driver crashes. After several days of not rebooting the driver typically crashes. But while it works it is very handy - but a word of warning - do not forget your passwords.

Otherwise the unit is much like any other Toshiba and quite familiar.

This model seems to have every conceivable port. It is missing the legacy parallel and serial ports, but to be brutally honest if you are spending about $4k on a laptop then the last thing on your list will be centronics or RS-232C ports and they make room for more usefull ports such as additional USB ports. (A computer can never have too many USB ports.) However there are four USB V2 ports, PC Card, Express card, DVI and RGB video, Fire Wire, headphone/digital audio out, microphone, line in and memory card reader. On many laptops you have to pay extra for a port expander or docking station to get this selection of ports but not on this model. Much kudos to Toshiba for the flexible port options.

The optical drive in this model reads and writes up to dual layer DVD in whatever format your heart desires.

Also in the package is a USB IR receiver and what appears to be a self adhesive IR extension on a rather long wire that plugs into the back of the IR receiver. This comes with a Windows Media Centre remote control. There is no in box documentation for this and no on disk documentation as far as I can see. Neither is there any mention on the Toshiba web site of this device except for the PDF flyer available from the Toshiba web site. Having said that you do not have to have a doctorate in computing science to figure it out. After all who reads manuals anyway? It would have been nice though.

Overall it is quite large but for the power and facility not unexpected. It is after all a desktop replacement and is certainly not designed with the average shirt pocket in mind.

Turning it on

Turning on the machine is an experience in and of itself. The machine is pre-loaded with Vista Home Premium and this is set to auto-configure when first started with very little user intervention. Of course the location, time, and language must be set along with startup userid and password but it is - as with XP - fairly seamless. With one exception. There is a distinct possibility your children may leave home, get married, have children and maybe even grandchildren of their own in the time it takes to configure the OS. It does seem to go on for an inordinate amount of time, with more reboots than seems absolutely necessary. I lost count of the number of reboots.

Once it is configured though it is a dream to use...except for the configuration. As with all Toshiba units it comes with a Toshiba enhanced custom suite of programs to configure the laptop. Amongst which are the finger print reader, wireless connections and power settings. As with most computer programs they are easy once you know how to use them and the on disk PDF manual does describe their operation, but these programs are by no means intuitive. When I wanted to configure the wireless key it took quite a while and several failed attempts to find the relevant window. PnP was well named Plug and Pray, in this case for guidance to find the right path to enlightenment - ie. the correct configuration window. Similarly the fingerprint configuration is a mixture of differing screens for differing aspects of the configuration. Again to configure the video you have to open not one, not two, but three different cascading windows with many tabs and options to actually set the video options. One of the nice things about Vista is that it automatically recognises when you plug in a PnP monitor. However customising the configuration is not for the faint hearted. Why does it have to be so obscure?

Using the P100

I have not yet had a chance to stress test it but I have noticed a few minor problems. Mostly the performance is reasonable, but I suspect Aero is taking its toll. Either that or the video driver is playing up.

Playing the online game There was fine except for a fair amount amount of lag, especially when loading a new environment. Turning off Aero for There and switching the default render to DX8 did improve the performance but not as much as one would expect for this level of computer. I have read that there is an issue with file I/O and speed. Since There uses a lot of file I/O especially when moving around in the world the lag may be associated with that but it is hard to tell. There was one small annoyance with the use of voice in There. Initially whenever I spoke the system seemed to auto adjust the voice input and adjust the level so that I was barely audible. I could not seem to discover how to turn this affect off. Even getting to the sound settings was an adventure. I did not expect it to be identical to XP but I did not expect an additional level of obscurity. Eventually - for some unknown reason the sound stopped autoadjusting but now behaves in very strange ways that are impossible to explain without lots of screen shots - so I will not even attempt that, except to say - how hard do they have to make it? Also when playing videos using Windows Media Player there was some jerkiness when playing on the digital or native LCD, but not on the analogue display. Although I have not tried these programs with Aero off it may be associated with that. This is surprising considering the power of the CPU and video.

I am yet to give the Windows Media Centre a good tryout. I have a 37" widescreen LCD TV but the digital input is faulty and I am waiting for it to be repaired. I am looking forward to setting it up.

When plugging in the external monitors they immediately auto detected and asked me how to configure them. Once both external monitors were plugged in I had the choice of any two of the three video displays and could configure spanned or cloned, with a choice of primary and secondary. I could also select the display to be on either the left or the right. Funnily enough once the display position (left/right) was selected it took a trip to Google to find how to change this setting. Also once the computer was restarted after a reboot or sleep the external display was to the right of the internal display. Maybe I am missing something here but I think the smarter OSs get the less intelligent they become?

The screen is quite glossy but this does not seem to cause any problems in my environment. The screen is quite bright and purely subjectively (with poor eyesight and slight RG colour blindness) appears better than my 22" wide screen displays. For a laptop the display is excellent and superior to anything else I have experienced.

Other than a few rather minor annoyances I have no problems and fond it a delight to use.

What I like

These are what I consider to be the better aspects of the P100.

- Processor Core 2 duo 2.16G - should be enough processing power there

- Video options. You can select any two of the three video options. I have two 22" WS 1680x1050 monitors. This fits neatly into the resolution of the native display. I can use any two of the 22" WS monitors and native display at once in either spanned or cloned configuration. When you plug in the display it pops up a dialogue asking how to configure the additional display.

- Lots and lots if I/O options. I find it difficult to imagine wanting any additional I/O options. Well maybe a couple but that would be pure greed.

- High quality video display. excellent - I have heard the the HP is a little brighter, but it seems to be just a matter of degrees here and if I want gaming or hi quality video then I will hook it up to my TV... which brings me neatly to...

- DVI interface. You you use this beast as a fully paid up member of the Windows Media Centre community. Granted - the only thing lacking is the TV tuner but with USB tuners for around $100 it is no biggy IMHO. I am looking forward to getting it hooked up to my 37" LCD TV.

- Top end video card. With the 7900GTX and 512M DDR 3 ram this is one fast video card and capable of driving 2 hi res displays independently. Impressive to say the least.

- S/P Dif audio. The high quality digital audio to drive the surround sound home theater.

- Hi quality inbuit speakers. Well...ok not the surround sound theatre but good enough for general use. Fairly impressive for their size.

- Fingerprint reader. I hate typing and anything that gets my fingers away from the hated keyboard has my vote.

- BT and wireless. Fairly standard these days.

Neutral points

- Weight - to be expected. Not that I really mind it.

- S-Video - why? Even if I had no other option I probably would not use it. The quality is so bad.......

- Dual mouse pad. Cannot really see the point. I think it was one of those "It seemed like a good idea at the time" things.

- CD/DVDplay and control buttons - I cannot remember the last time I used this type of thing. I usually forget they are there after the first few time I use them. Most of the time I just operate the application the way I normally do. Besides there is the remote for that sort of thing, right?

Dislikes

- Vista - which is not too bad - seems rather buggy add has a significant performance hit. I am looking forward to getting some of the bugs out. Reminds me of the unpatched XP - pre SP. But to be fair Vista per se is not my gripe but some of the negatives that come with running Vista. The additional load - esp with Aero, the small bugs still present, and the "paranoid" default security setting. Roll on SP1 - or maybe even SP2. I am strongly recommending people to not install Vista unless there is a specific reason to.

- The obscure and layered configuration options. They seem to be trying a little too hard to make it easy and instead have made it even more complex.

- Size and weight. Not much to be done here though. It really comes with the territory, this is why I bought the tablet as well.

- Battery life. Not a lot of advantage actually having a battery if you cannot watch a video all the way through and you even have to decrease the screen brightness to get it to last any time at all on battery. I am certainly looking forward to seeing one of the newer technologies with better capacity to weight/size ratios.

Conclusion

This is one powerful beast that would have no trouble handling any game environment - maybe not to maximum detail, and especially with Aero enabled - but for a portable with more than acceptable ease. Although I have not tried it for high end high res gaming as yet I am not so sure that it would have the performance needed whilst running Vista. For the non-gamer this has more than enough power to handle all but the most demanding of tasks. The numerous I/O features including audio, video and remote make it ideal (although rather expensive) as a media centre.

The weight, size and battery life are what one would expect from such a machine and you would expect to run it from the power most of the time. It is more of a portable desktop replacement than your genuine notebook.

This unit can be used as a portable desktop replacement and can be a gamers machine, media centre or just a general purpose high end workstation. But offset against this is the cost, size, weight and battery capacity.

Toshiba have definitely built this as a no compromise system but I am not convinced that Vista is yet ready for this hardware. Would have liked to compare the same hardware under XP.

Training Vista Handwriting

2007-05-01T17:03:00.000-07:00

This is a great tip for Tablet PC owners from the guys at GBM. This is it here. I am yet to take his advice - and believe me my handwriting is worse than my typing so I am hoping that it can improve my recognition somewhat.

Hey guys I am here....

2007-05-01T16:51:00.000-07:00

Well this is yet another attempt at getting a tech blog going. Here goes - yet another rank amateur adding his noise to the great unwashed WWW.

So to introduce myself .... I am from an electronics background and still dabble, but I have been working more or less in IT for about 20 years. I work as a Unix sys admin at the moment but have worked in various capacities over the years.

My personal computer collection consists of a P 64 dual core 3.2G with an nVidia 6600GTX, 2G ram, and 3 320G SATA HDDs. A Toshiba M400 tablet. A P100 with the 6900GTX/512, 1.5G and 180G HDD. An HP 6965 Pocket PC.

I also have other bits and pieces which I will be sharing with you no doubt in the coming entries.

Hope you enjoy my vain ramblings.

Till next time ...