Technology

Free Space On Treo

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Since my 650 is on order I need to make sure that I have free space in order to upgrade to it. The 650 basically uses more space for the same amount of data. So I need to make sure I have at least 33% free space than I already have, or else I will run out of memory. I am currently syncing my Avantgo Channels onto my memory card. I am also seeing what else I can offload to the memory card. The problem with that is that the dam memory card access is slow.

So basically I bought a $600 device with virtually no memory. I can buy a 32 meg memory card for like $30 or less but I spend $600 and only get 32 megs of memory (only 24 megs of usable space).

I gotta say I thought the Treo 650 would be my perfect phone. now I am thinking I will use it until HP gets their act together and comes out with a smaller GSM Pocket PC phone. Some company always has to take the perfect device and mess it up somehow. Thanks Palmone!

Vindigo Vs. Zagats

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I have had both Zagats and Vindigo over the years. I have bought yearly subscriptions to both systems. When Zagats was actually featured on Vindigo all was well with the universe. Now I pay for Zagats (since it is no longer on Vindigo) but I miss some features. the other day I wanted to check movie listings. Rich and I were out and wanted to see what was playing near him. it took me 15 minutes to find a site that I could browse to on my Treo. if I had Vindigo I would have downloaded all my listings already. The question is whether or not Vindigo’s restaurant review is anywhere as good or as comprehensive as Zagats? Or is the movie section of the free Vindigo good enough for me to keep paying for Zagats and just use the free Vindigo?

Once I get my Treo 650 I will download the Vindigo trial and give it a whirl.

A Server of My Own?

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Jayson has been playing with Linux in VMware. He was going to make a good virtual machine and run a website off of it at him apartment. He has been having problems with it and called me up to take me up on my free computer offer. I have 2 old Dell’s P3 700’s. I got one from an old company I helped out that went out of business and the other is my dad’s old machine. Neither are good for a desktop but as a linux server they would be perfect. All we need to do is put it together (i had to cannibalize both when I was working on my Tivo, long story) and bring it over to his place.

Once built I can host my website and hopefully mail on it. I could get by with Miguel’s server, but I like to have admin access to box’s I host stuff on. I feel more in control. So if this box works, I will put my mail and website on it. this blog will remain at Typepad, but my photo site and other stuff would go on that server. I am still pissed with RCN that I cannot host the website in my apartment without paying $20 extra a month.

Lets see if this project actually gets done, or if it is just another pipe dream.

Unlocked Treo 650 Price Increase?

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What the f–k is up with this? Palmone made a “mistake” about pricing? Sure for weeks they allowed rumors go around that the price of the unlocked version would be $599. They announced it and left the price on the site for over a day, but they made a mistake and the price really was $699. How f–king stupid do they think we are? Thankfully I put my order in on Wednesday. News.com reports that they will not raise the price if you already had an order in before price increase. If they screwed me I would never have bought another PDA from them again. I am still skeptical until I actually get my Treo and see the credit card bill.

This whole ordeal is very frustrating. The bigger problem is why the hell is no other company making a device close to this form factor that actually competes with the Treo? They have had over a year to do it, but the best people can come up with is this? I have used Gus’ it is huge compared with the Treo. So I am pissed at Palmone for being dicks, and I am pissed at everyone else for not making some real competition.

I am using a bit of expletives in this post, but I was a bit pissed that I almost got charged an extra $100 for something because some large company decided to be a bunch of ass’.

Treo 650 Is Ordered, No Its On Backorder

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The day finally came and I ordered my Treo 650 this morning.  Now it is on back-order for 1-2 weeks.  Or in Palmone speak whenever the hell they dam well feel like shipping me something.  Why take orders for something that won’t ship for weeks?  Why don’t they start taking orders for a product when they have them in stock and ready to ship?  The small things I wonder out loud about.

Now I have to prepare my old Treo for sale.  I also need to begin getting all the applications I plan on installing ready.  Many of my current apps won’t work on the new Treo, yet.  I mentioned that last week.  Now I need to do some verification on what will be installed.  I love that I need to verify what get installed on my phone.  Sometimes I think the old days were good.  Pick up phone, have dial tone.  Simple!!!

The Queue Of OS Demo’s

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I have a list of OS & utilities that I want to demo. I have downloaded or want to download a bunch of stuff. I never will have enough time to try everything out.

I downloaded and installed the Novell Linux Desktop. It didn’t work in VMware so I had to put it on a physical box. It is basically SuSE 9.1 with some new logo’s. I will go back to SuSE 9.1 sometime soon.

Jayson got and suggested Knoppix for troubleshooting disabled desktops and servers. it is a self contained bootable Linux CD that allows you to boot from and run the OS from a CD. Also lets you mount hard drives to get data off even if the OS is not working right. I downloaded the ISO, but I can’t seem to remember where I put it on my hard drive. I am searching for it now. Once I find it I will burn a copy and try it out. Sounds great.

Running with the same (or similar concept of Knoppix, I found UBCD4Win. It looks like a mini windows environment with a ton of utilities on a self booting CD. I am going to try that out when I get some time also.

Last on my list (for now) is building a Smoothwall firewall. It is a free (at least for the express version) Linux based firewall. I have been interested in this ever since I saw a demo of it on TechTV. I have no real need for it at home. Interesting maybe for work? I don’t know. But it is interesting enough idea that I want to try it out.

This list is enough to keep me busy for a year or so, but I want to at least browse this stuff sometime soon. So many cool items out there, and not enough free time to look at them.

Apple Ranked Top Brand!

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Apple has been voted the most influential brand according to Cnet News.com. Take that Microsoft! Where are you in the top 5? See even only having less than 5% of the personal computers in world hasn’t stopped Apple from having the most influential brand in the world. Go iPod!

Now the question is what will Apple do besides the iPod and music players?

Mac Mini, The Review Part 2 First Impressions

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If you want real benchmarks read CNET or Macworld. This is my opinion of the Mini based off of my 2+ years playing with OS 10 and Apple hardware. First the memory I put in the Mini (pumping it up to 1gig) really helped. The 1.4ghz G4 did not seem light years faster than the 1ghz G4 in my Powerbook 12″, but it was faster.

I had no problems loading up Microsoft Office, iLife 05, Konfabulator, ecto (using it right now), Netnewswire, and a bunch of other mainstay programs that I have.

One major issue I did discover was that it was VERY slow copying files to the drive. I have a 100mbit switch and router and copying 30 gigs of MP3’s took like 6 hours. That is drastically longer than it should take. I have copied a ton more in that period of time. I am not sure if it is the Mini’s NIC card, or the hard drive. looking over the spec’s I believe that the hard drive is what is causing this slow speed. What I don’t understand is that I have a Thinkpad with an 80gig 4700 or so RPM drive that is close to the spec’s of the Mini, but the Thinkpad can handle the same copy almost twice as fast. I don’t think anything is wrong, but I am extremely unhappy with that performance stat. In real world use I won’t be copying on or off the drive that large amount of data very often. it just sucks that it is so slow. in normal use so far today it has performed well.

The Mini plugged into my 20″ Cinema display without a problem. iLife 05 didn’t come installed. I assume that the final version was not ready when the final image for the Mini was burned into the hardware. That install took a few minutes, but was painless. I have not had a chance to try out the new iPhoto. The rest of the suite (minus iTunes 4.7.1 that I already had) is not stuff that I plan on using.

I am winding down my day of configuring software. I just finished syncing my Treo 600 with Entourage. I think that the only major thing I need to do is get my favorites out of firefox off of my Powerbook.

More reviews and impressions as I use the computer. So far so good!

Mac Mini, The Review Part 1 Upgrading Memory

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I got my Mac Mini yesterday. For a small computer it came in a massive box. Upon opening that box I found yet another large brown box.

Upon opening the smaller brown box I finally found the box for the Mini.

The box as Steve Jobs showed is very small.

First impressions was that the mini seemed heavy (for its size) and well built. Turning it on and configuring it was like any other mac. I got right into installing programs. Then I realized I needed to put the ram I purchased in it. I was not going to stick with the 256 megs RAM that came with it so I ordered a 1gig chip. The RAM upgrade was not as easy as originally led to believe, but it was doable by an end user. of course Jayson and I are both experienced computer (information systems) people and we both were a little skiddish about opening up the Mini. I never had to go buy special tools to open a computer. Read on for more details.

So Apple says the memory upgrade on the Mini is user upgradable, then does not recommend that you do it. I for one was not going to pay double for the Apple memory upgrade, so I decided to do the install myself. Macworld had a fantastic article on how to do it. They gave tons of photos, and explained what you should use to open the Mac Mini. Since I my vision is less than stellar Jayson and I ventured from my warm apartment to Home Depot by his place. There we bought the two puddy knives that the article recommended. The one criticism of the article is on what putty knives to get. The writer said get the thinest you can get. Not sure about you, but I had no idea what I was doing buying putty knives. I can do electrical or computer work, but home improvement stuff is not my thing. After feeling up a few knives we selected two that we thought were good. I include a picture of the label and the Home Depot part number in case you are like me and like exact details on tools you are going to use to open up your $500 computer. We used PN 037064091750 from home depot. Picture below:

The reason I am so specific is because if you goto a place like Home Depot you will see a wall this many options. Who knew you could have that many putty knives.

The upgrade went exactly as the review said. You have to be careful but Jayson was able to get the Mini open and ram in it with any major problems. Funny enough the only problem he did have was getting the case back on. In order to get the clips to all lock into place he had to do it in a certain way or else the back part of the case wasn’t as snug as it should be. After a few minutes of tinkering and all was fine again. Now I had maxed out my memory on the Mini. Below are a few pictures we took when we opened it up. they are not very good. Neither of us had our real camera’s. All I had was my Treo Camera Phone. It sucks in low light conditions and his place was not well lit.

The Mini found the memory right away and I was off and running from there.