Technology

Rebuilt My Laptop

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I rebuilt my work issued IBM Thinkpad T40 on Christmas eve. Gus finally returned his old laptop. Since he wiped his hard drive I took the opportunity to upgrade mine. I needed more drive space, and I really needed to wipe my laptop. I had tons of issues with it freezing up on me. It was driving me crazy.

Now that it is rebuilt (well almost) I am still having some issues. I am frustrated with windows, even though I use it almost every day. I haven’t even put on the more obscure software that I have on the Thinkpad so I could see if the system worked fine without them. The answer I got was it works better than before, but not by much.

At least I have double the drive space now. That will keep me in business with VMWare images. With all my Virtual Machines I have stored on my laptop now I still don’t have room for any MP3’s, but this is a work machine anyway:)

Pocket PC Vs. Treo 650

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Gus is trying to convince me that I should be looking at the new Pocket PC on sale from Cingular. It is branded the Siemens SX66, but it is basically the same PPC phone that HTC is making for several vendors. Gizmodo had a comparison of Audiovox’s variant of the phone for use on Sprint’s network. I am not impressed. The Treo 650 is smaller and from this review still better than the PPC. I am going to wait. Gus on the other hand may actually go buy that beast and use it. To me it looks too close in size to the HP Pocket PC that AJ got from T-Mobile a few months ago.

Patiently waiting for the Treo 650 for T-Mobile…

UPDATE: Gus got the SX66. He wants me to goto the Cingular store and check it out. I am going to go, but I think I will still wait for the 650.

Wireless, Wireless, World

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I was busy Tuesday. At work I had issues with our Wifi setup. Gus has complained about it for years, but I never find anything wrong with it. On monday I did notice that it was just not working at all. I took my old 802.11b wifi point from home into work to troubleshoot. The point I had at home is the same type we use at the office. Back in the day it was top of the line. Now, not so much. Turns out both points at work are bad. The Wifi cards are fried. We are running off of my old point for now. I want it back so I can ebay it, but I will keep it at work until we can purchase new ones.

At home I had wifi issues of my own. I wanted a new 802.11g point at my house for a while. Ever since I got my VPN firewall I have been without high speed wireless. So since work got my old B point (that I should have sold long ago) I finally went to Best Buy and got a new Linksys 802.11G point. I set that up in no time. My problems started when I tried to configure the Wireless Bridge (802.11b if you were wondering) I had lying around. After hours of messing with it, I finally got it to work correctly. Right now it is plugged into my VOIP phone so I could put the phone in my bedroom without pulling any cables. it is neat. My eventual goal is to plug the bridge into my Tivo so I don’t have a cable running from my router to my TV wall unit.

I like the bridge so much I may get another one and keep the phone where it is. I have all the components to go totally wireless. I have a 802.11g card for my desktop. The only down side of wireless is if I want to transfer large files, which I do sometimes. For now everything works!!!

Scott Math

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Ask Jayson, I have a weird way of justifying buying stuff. It is a combination of impulse buying, ebay selling, and sometimes disposable income to throw around. Of course having a girlfriend that sucked down the disposable income didn’t really slow me down much. That is something to think about later.

I buy stuff, use it for a while and the sell it. By selling stuff, I can justify buying newer versions of said stuff, or different stuff. Take my computer I just got. I didn’t go out and blow a ton of money on a computer (well I did, but read on). I had half the purchase price set aside in what I like to call my Tech/Vacation slush fund. it is for impulse buys and such. I put gift money, cash earned from selling gear, etc into that account. When I want a big ticket item I go there to spend it. So I paid for half of the computer with that money. Then I decided to sell a bunch of other stuff on ebay to pay for the rest of the computer. When all is said and done, I would not have spent any money out of pocket for the computer. Jayson laugh’s at my theory. My friend rich scratches his head with confusion, but it works. All I know is that I get new gear with little or no expense out of pocket. Soon I will sell my powerbook and pick up a new one. Only having spent a few hundred dollars on the difference between the used computer sale price and the new machine.

That my friends is how you can keep up on the new technology. Of course I only do this for some items. Much of my crap is not recycled allot. I have the same 4 year old tv I have had. my stereo is not getting any newer, etc. But how good a stereo do you need in an apartment?

If you are reading this post going, "hey that makes sence, how can I do that also"? You are crazy. If you are reading this post going "man Scott is crazy". You would be correct. I am not normal. I never said I was. All I can say is eBay is addictive…

Saw The Razr Today

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Wednesday Jayson and I went to the Cingular store to check out the new Motorola Razr. It was really cool. Super slim, and all metal. The screen was almost as big as my Treo’s. The downside, it was $500 with a contract. I have been pondering moving to Cingular, but that price was way too much for me right now. Without a contract it was $600. If the price came down to $300 maybe I would check it out. I wasn’t going to buy a plane old phone that is more than what I paid for my PDA/Phone. that is just crazy.

Gus was upset that I didn’t wait to goto the store with him. He seemed jealous that I went with Jayson. I told him if he was a good boy I would goto the store with him too!!!

Ebay is Adictive

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I finally got around to putting up on ebay a bunch of items that I need to get rid of. I put up a cell phone from Verizon that I have not used in over a year, a linksys router that I cannot use, even though I still want to keep it, and my old HP iPaq 1945. I don’t use that anymore, even though I want to. I am just too lazy to use it, so I carry my Treo. I will miss the 1945’s nice color screen.

Hopefully I will get decent amounts for all that stuff. The proceeds of these auctions will go to pay for my new desktop computer I just bought. I like to ebay stuff so I can buy or pay for other electronic stuff I buy. it is the circle of life so to speak.

Update: I shipped out the iPaq and my old router today. I am still waiting for the cell phone to sell…

The “Official” Cut Over To My New Computer

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I have been spending less time on my move to a new desktop (see past posts), but I am almost done. I think I am past the point of no return. Or shall I say I am now officially working off of that computer. What fine line did I cross to let me say that? Not sure. I am doing almost nothing on that computer yet. I think what did it was moving off 90% of what was on my firewire drive (plugged into my powerbook) over to the new computers drive. The final straw was importing my MP3 collection into iTunes for windows on the new computer. All 28gigs are now working on the desktop. Fear not, I can still listen to all that music on my Powerbook. I just shared out the itunes on my desktop. Now I can listen wirelessly anywhere in my apartment.

Like I said I am still using the Powerbook as my primary machine, but everything is now a network share off of the new desktop. I am also using the desktop as the DVR I originally planned.

I am also reformatting my iPod as we speak. I am setting it up so it will sync with my PC. I have never used the iPod with a PC so lets hope it is as easy as with my Mac? With it formated for a PC (FAT32), I can use it as an external hard drive and shuttle data back and forth between work and home. I can also use it to plug into a Mac or a PC. The limitation I had with it in Mac formatted mode is that I needed to plug it into only Mac’s. It was a pain to do that.

Once the iPod cut over is completed I will need to continue to install all the needed applications on my desktop. Now that most of the data copying is over, I can focus on configuring the machine more. New computers are time intensive to setup:(

Well the format of the iPod to FAT32 went ok. I am now installing my music again using my PC copy of the files. it looks like it is taking longer than on my Mac. Not sure what is up with that.

Updatathon Set

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I am still moving files around on my new desktop. I decided to move everything off of my old 160 gig drive so I could format it fresh. It is taking forever to move stuff. I assume it is due to the age of my first IDE drive. Also I am moving hundreds of gigs, and ten’s of thousands of files. Oh well. It is almost done. If I listen to windows, it is only 15 more minutes. Once I format my first 160 gig drive I can move all the data off of my Firewire drive and format that. Currently the firewire drive is formated for the Mac. It won’t work when I plug it into a PC. If I format it with FAT32 I can use it with both my Mac and my PC’s. The only down side of that is will have to partition it logically as 2 disks. Dam FAT32 and its partition size limits.

Once all that fun stuff is done, I need to install all my applications I want on my new machine. that will be a fun and time consuming updateathon.

I know I have been droning on about a piece of metal. I have no life right now, so a new gatget or some crazy thing at work is all I got to write about. Sorry poor reader… You could be reading the news. This site is way more uplifting that the news!!!

HP, Vs Dell, Vs Gateway, Vs Etc…

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So for a while I have been thinking about if / when I should buy a new computer. My desktop has been causing major issues for me over the past few months. I have really not used it that much since I got my iMac last November, but recently I have had uses for it. It just keeps wigging out on me. I have debated going with a Powermac, another Powerbook or some combination of machines. Cost concerns prevailed and I ended up going out and getting a new PC. I still have my powerbook (writting on it right now) but my new desktop at home is an HP Compaq Presario. It has the glamorous name of the SR1230NX. This new box replaces my aging custom built AMD Atholon XP 1500+ machine that will be 3 years old next month. The new Presario is another AMD Atholon, running at 3200+. Not the fastest thing out there, but much faster than what I had.

I was shopping around on the internet, and just decided to goto best buy and get something in my price range. I got everything I needed, DVD-+R, 160 gig drive, media reader, etc. I also purchased a ATI All In Wonder Radeon 9600. A major reason for the new computer was to do DVR functions, so I needed a video capture card.

A new computer is a new thing for me. I haven’t bought (built) a computer in 3 years. Before that I was upgrading every 1-2 years. What is different about this purchase is that I went out to the store and bought a Compaq (HP) from Best Buy. I usually build them. Now a days it is just easier and sometimes cheaper to buy a model from the store. I only had 1 specific requirement for this machine. I wanted a video capture card as I mentioned. So I just bought a ATI All In Wonder card and put it in the new box. I also took my 160gig IDE drive from my old desktop and put it in this new machine. Now I have 2 160 gig drives, plus an external firewire drive on my powerbook. Man that is allot of drive space. I don’t know why I am actually using so much of it. The only thing I am really missing is more ram for the new desktop. it came with 512megs. I will upgrade it to at least 1.5gig or maybe max it out at 2 gig next week. That way I can use VMWare without a performance problem.

So far the setup of the new box has been going OK. I had a bit of trouble getting the extra drive in the box. These new machines are so small and they make it so hard to maneuver in them. I wiped the Windows XP Home edition that came with the machine and put my copy of Windows XP Pro on it. Right now all I have is a fully updated windows xp box with nero & VWMware on it. I am coping my data from the old 160 gig drive to the one that came with the box. Then I will format the old drive to start fresh. Oh I almost forgot. I also have the ATI media center installed. It has a TV program, viewers, etc. So far the software is great. It is allot better and more stable than the last version I used way back in 1999 with my original ATI All in wonder card. FYI, I still used that old 16 meg video card in my last computer. It lasted forever, but I couldn’t use the TV function because it was so buggy. I have high hopes for this new card.

Now I am off to do an updateathon of software installs on this new machine…

I Need A New Mac!

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I have been eluding to my desire to get a new Mac. The lack of hard drive space is killing me. I see people in the train station (did so today again) with the 15″ powerbooks and I go “i want one”. I day dream about the power of a Power Mac when it takes a minute for my Powerbook to load a PDF.

My problem is I know I want a new Mac, but I haven’t decided what I want to get. Until then I am stuck with what I have. Now it is in great condition, but I am hitting the limits of its performance.

My current options are a single processor G5 tower, the newer 12″ Powerbook, or the 15″ Powerbook. When I make up my mind I will go and get one. You know what that means? eBay in my future for my current model.