u l t r a m o o k i e

I wanted to rearrange my workspace at home to be more ergonomic.  This meant moving my laptop onto the small stand that was for my LCD.  Then, I could get a nice keyboard so that I am not hunched over typing.
I went shopping for a new keyboard and the shiniest one was the one I [...]

I wanted to rearrange my workspace at home to be more ergonomic.  This meant moving my laptop onto the small stand that was for my LCD.  Then, I could get a nice keyboard so that I am not hunched over typing.

I went shopping for a new keyboard and the shiniest one was the one I bought.  It was the Apple Wireless Keyboard.  Yea, I bought an Apple keyboard for my PC notebook.  Since it is HID compliant, I paired it up with my notebook without issue and most of the keys mapped over OK (like ALT and (Windows)).  But, after typing on it for a while, the shortcomings of the shiny keyboard started showing up:

• Flat keys make it hard to touch type.  It is really difficult to find the “home” position for typing on the keyboard.
• The keys have a really short throw (about 3mm from what I read).  It is weird at first, but not a killer.
• The Fn key is where the Control key should be.  Ugh.
• There is no dedicated Delete key.  The Delete key on the keyboard is actually Backspace.  To get normal Delete action (aka. Forward Delete), you have to Fn+Delete.  Huh?
• There is no Home.  There is no End.  There is no Page Up.  There is no Page Down.  For that matter, there’s no numeric keypad either.
• At least Steve allowed Apple users to replace the batteries in the wireless keyboard, and with standard AAs too.  Too bad, it’s an odd number of AAs (three).

If you look at the keyboard itself, it is the same size and layout as the MacBook Pro’s keyboard.  Yup, it is a notebook keyboard without the notebook.  While that is not a bad thing, the things that Apple cut out (look at the above list) for the sake of design are unreasonable.  When practicality and usability are sacrificed for the sake of design, that is bad engineering.  Yes, it’s shiny.  Yes, it’s sexy.  No, it’s not something someone would use as their primary input device.  That would be idiotic.  If you’re going to make a keyboard, why not make it a full keyboard?  Why cut the keyboard down to less than normal keys?  (Other than for the sake of trying to get people to describe it as “minimalistic”)

Instead, for half the price, I got the Logitech LX310 keyboard and mouse combo.  Yea, for half the price, I got a decent keyboard and mouse.  The keyboard is a standard-fare layout (the Delete key is weird because it is twice as high, but at least there is one).  The keyboard includes some media keys, some programmable keys and other weird keys that I probably won’t take advantage of.  What the keyboard does have are the Delete, Insert, Print Screen, Home, End, Page Up and Page Down keys.  Oh, there’s also a keypad.  And it even takes an even number (two) AAA batteries.  The mouse is good too, it has a nice feel and heft to it.  There are extra buttons that I’ll probably use sparingly — the page forward/back buttons are nice.  Sure, the keyboard is not sexy like the Apple Wireless Keyboard, but it is something that can be used as a primary input device.

Update (9/8/08): Picked up a Rocketfish Wireless Multimedia Bluetooth Keyboard and Laser Mouse from Best Buy.  I found it last night as I was surfing around, it is a cool set because it is Bluetooth and it is considerably cheaper than Logitech and Microsoft’s offerings.  The keyboard is “ugly” as my wife blurted when I opened the package — quite an opposite of what the Fry’s guy said when I returned the Apple Wireless Keyboard (”This is beautiful” as he said).  The keyboard is silver, black and (sit down for this) red.  Same thing with the mouse.  By going Bluetooth, I can reuse my Kensington micro-USB Bluetooth adaptor (which can stay in the USB port if I ever take the notebook away from home).  The keyboard has a good feel to it and the mouse is actually pretty nice also — though, I would have happily traded the cheezy “play, ff, rew, and stop” buttons on the mouse for a “back” and “forward” button.  However, the set is pretty nice.

Apple does make some cool stuff, but I think they may have taken design a little too far with their wireless keyboard.

Apple fanboys please refrain from commenting.

Here’s the super secret iPhone 2.0 strategy.  I got it from Steve* himself.
Promise all sorts of new features before iPhone 2.0 software is available.  Fanboys go wild.
Rush iPhone 2.0 software out the door, when it is really not ready — it’s buggy as hell, crashes, and is slow.  People have to reboot their iPhones every [...]

Here’s the super secret iPhone 2.0 strategy.  I got it from Steve* himself.

Promise all sorts of new features before iPhone 2.0 software is available.  Fanboys go wild.

Rush iPhone 2.0 software out the door, when it is really not ready — it’s buggy as hell, crashes, and is slow.  People have to reboot their iPhones every day to keep it running — hey, just like Windows.  Fanboys rejoice as they have new software.  Fanboys go out and defend this shitty software because…well, they are Apple fanboys and Steve Jobs is their diety…and they must defend their diety.

Every few weeks bump the revision number of the software, but really don’t fix anything.  In the release notes, be as vague as possible — say something like, “Bug Fixes”.  Fanboys install, get the placebo effect, and go wild.  Fanboys cheer and are happy that Apple “fixed” something — when secretly, all Apple did was bump the VERSION_NUMBER constant in one of the header files and recompile the whole thing.

Meanwhile, try as hard as possible to fix the iPhone 2.0 software and get what would have been the real release out the door — you know, like any respectable software developer would:  Release a tested and fixed software sans any major bugs.

Thanks Apple for your backasswards way of releasing the iPhone 2.0 software.  I really wish I had stuck with 1.1.4 and waited things out.  Apple you’re becoming more and more like Microsoft.  With the iPhone 2.0 software, I kept thinking to myself:  “Crap, I should have waited for Service Pack 1 before I upgraded.“  Ironic, huh?

*Steve “Mookie” Kong, that is.

Things just fell into place today and I got $170 back into my pocket!  The family was eating dinner at the local Chinese restaurant (China Delight II).  The restaurant had today’s San Jose Mercury, so I just had to have a peek.  And that’s when I spotted the ad above!  What?  Fry’s was having a [...]

Things just fell into place today and I got $170 back into my pocket!  The family was eating dinner at the local Chinese restaurant (China Delight II).  The restaurant had today’s San Jose Mercury, so I just had to have a peek.  And that’s when I spotted the ad above!  What?  Fry’s was having a sale and they were selling my HP dv2910us notebook from Fourth of July for $170 off! One Day Only!

So, I drove over to Circuit City and talked to Customer Service.  The woman behind the counter looked in disbelief at the ad.  She called Fry’s to valid that the price was correct and that the notebook was in stock.  The price was right and they had them in stock.  Win!

She called her manager over, a tall lanky young guy, and told him about the refund she was going to give.

“Did you call?”

“Yes.”

“They had it in stock?”

“Yup.”

“Ouch.”

While the woman did the refund, the manager ran through what seems to be SOP for Circuit City:

“I don’t know if you know, but you can still get a free wireless gee networking and a free printer with this purchase.”

Ugh.  I smiled and told him “no”.  Circuit City is quite relentless with their “free*” (*after mail-in rebate) stuff.

Anyways, win for me as I got the $170 back from Circuit City!

Almost a year ago, Apple released the iPhone.  Everyone clamored to get one and then everyone hopped on iTunes to activate it.  Surely enough, the activation servers were overwhelmed.  For hours and hours, happy new iPhone owners quickly turned to angry customers.  You’d figure that Apple would have learned their lesson about capacity planning when [...]

Almost a year ago, Apple released the iPhone.  Everyone clamored to get one and then everyone hopped on iTunes to activate it.  Surely enough, the activation servers were overwhelmed.  For hours and hours, happy new iPhone owners quickly turned to angry customers.  You’d figure that Apple would have learned their lesson about capacity planning when it comes to large launches.  Nope.  Apple screwed the pooch again with the iPhone 3G launch.

Why do we make mistakes?  So that we can learn from them and not make the same mistakes twice.  If you do make the same mistake twice, you’re kind of stupid.  Therefore, Apple is stupid?

Anyways, I upgraded Eileen and my “Original” iPhones to the iPhone 2.0 software and downloaded a bunch of apps from the App Store.  Very cool software, there are some stability issues, but still this is close to what the iPhone should have been when it originally launched.  Minus the 3G and GPS, I’m happy enough with my original iPhone and don’t see any real reason to “upgrade” (or in AT&T’s words “extend my contract”).

By the way, if you were one of the people that installed the unofficial 2.0 firmware yesterday on your original iPhone, you’d probably want to install the official one.  It is rumored that the one distributed yesterday (which carries a different filename and filesize from the official one) was a debug version for the iPhone 3G — that’s why you’re probably experiencing slowness or sluggishness on your iPhone.  You can either download the firmware directly or just use the “Check for Updates” button.

My GQ NX-L513 (aka ECS LS51II, aka $399 notebook) is a cool machine. It is still rather speedy and it still runs great. It just turned One in April and I wanted to upgrade for a few reasons:

I wanted something smaller that is willing to travel.  The NS-L513 is a 15.4″ monster that [...]

My GQ NX-L513 (aka ECS LS51II, aka $399 notebook) is a cool machine. It is still rather speedy and it still runs great. It just turned One in April and I wanted to upgrade for a few reasons:

• I wanted something smaller that is willing to travel.  The NS-L513 is a 15.4″ monster that is really built to live at home.
• I wanted to have that extra “core”.
• More to the first point, I wanted a processor that was more battery efficient and that did not run at “holy crap, I’m 100%” all the time.  The Celeron M 420 is fast and it was fast all the time — no fancy SpeedStep.
• I wanted 802.11n (draft) speeds, since my D-Link DIR-655 is one of the routers that gets great 802.11n speeds.
• I wanted something with a DVD burner inside — the NX-L513 only had a DVD-ROM / CD-RW drive.
• Did I mention, I wanted something smaller?

The first machine I found was a HP dv2845se, which is a “special edition” notebook that comes with a (what I think) neat lid design and palm rest design.  It was on sale for $750 at Best Buy and that was a great deal for what was being sold:

• AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-62 [2.0Ghz]
• 4GB RAM
• 250GB HDD
• DVD-RW
• 14.1″ WXGA screen
• Nvidia GeForce Go 7150M
• 802.11b/g wifi

It was priced much less than some comparable machines (say from Dell) and HP is not a bad name to go with.  I had done my research at night and the morning after Best Buy pulled it from their website and said that it was no longer sold in stores.  Boo!

So, I looked around for another notebook with comparable specs and price.  What I found at Fry’s and Circuit City was the HP dv2910us.  It was a near match for the dv2845se, except that it was $50 more and had an Intel Core 2 Duo chip inside.  Yay!  I’ve always liked having Intel chips in my PCs, I don’t know why, but I do.  What do you all think about the whole Intel vs AMD thing?  Are they on about the same playfield now?  (Perfomance, power efficiency, etc.)  The dv2910us looks like this spec-wise:

• Intel Core 2 Duo T5550 (1.83Ghz)
• 3GB RAM
• 250GB HDD
• DVD-RW
• 14.1″ WXGA screen
• Intel X3100 Video (GM965)
• Intel 4965abg wifi (802.11 a/b/g/n)

And that was perfect.  I picked it up at Circuit City and have been tweaking it ever since.  It has less RAM than the dv2845se, but that’s OK, I think I’ll survive.  The dv2910us also has the high-gloss imprint on the lid and palm rests also.  It’s a different, more subtle one.  I’ll write more about the new notebook as I use it more.  The old GQ notebook will get a fresh install of Windows Vista Home Premium and then it will go to work with me to see if I can’t find it a nice new home.

I want to mention that I will never shop at Circuit City again.  I only bought the notebook at Circuit City because it was closer to my house (4 miles versus 12 miles compared with Fry’s, one way).  Fry’s and Circuit City both had the same price on the machine, so the cost of gas really made the decision for me.  During the purchase, I was asked no less than four times if I wanted the stupid “protection plan” (from three different people).  I was asked three times if I wanted “free” anti-virus software and a “free” printer (after mail-in rebate).

One guy, who I figured was a floor lead (because his shirt was black and not red) asked me the last time for the “free” printer and software to which I was steaming mad, this is how it went:

Him:  Are you sure you don’t want the free printer and software?

Me:  Sure, as long as it shows up as $0 on my receipt.

Him:  No, it’s a mail-in rebate.

Me:  Then it’s not free since I have to pay tax and postage.  Shut up.  Go away.

I was not steaming mad just because he was the third person to ask me about the “free” stuff, but he walked in late on the sale and started this conversation:

Him:  Do you want to get one of these external USB harddrives?

Me (politely):  No, thanks.

Him:  Are you sure?

Me (slightly less politely): Yes, I’m sure.

Him:  Ok, I just came out of a training recently and they told us there are two types of people.  Those that can recover their data and those that are destined to lose their data…(trailing off his voice to insinuate something).

Me:  Can you please leave now?  You’re unpleasant.  (Last part was in my head.)

I’m sorry stupid sales guy, I’m not your regular customer.  I’m sorry that you don’t see there are lots of other types of people out there like maybe the kind that has 4TB of storage at home in different locations, and a lot of that is dedicated to backups.  Sigh.  I’m sorry if you’re a dense dumb-ass.

Oh, and when the guy selling me the notebook first pulled out the notebook, he offered me an “optimization” service.  I was curious to what they would optimize.  He told me that for a fee, they would remove all unnecessary programs.  Really?  He’s going to charge me money to uninstall stuff?

I’ll never shop at Circuit City again.  At least at Fry’s, if you know what you want, you can just walk up and buy it.  Boo to Circuit City for such terrible service.

And lastly, to those of you were going to ask (since it seems like a question I have gotten a lot \):  No, I didn’t buy a Mac.  I have a PowerBook G4, it still works great.  It was very pricey and still has a way to go before it gets replaced (if at all).  The MacBooks are nice, but pricey also.  And I didn’t want a new Mac.

My lovely wife completely surprised me last night when she gave me…well, a surprising second part of my graduation and birthday gift!
Yes, she got me the watch of my dreams!  Thirteen years ago, when I was a mere 20 years old, I saw a Omega Seamaster Professional on Pierce Brosnan’s wrist in GoldenEye — and [...]

My lovely wife completely surprised me last night when she gave me…well, a surprising second part of my graduation and birthday gift!

Yes, she got me the watch of my dreams!  Thirteen years ago, when I was a mere 20 years old, I saw a Omega Seamaster Professional on Pierce Brosnan’s wrist in GoldenEye — and that was the watch that I wanted.  Now that I’m turning 33 (tomorrow), my wife has gotten me the watch!  It is a beauty and I LOVE it.  It will get a lot of wrist time compared to my other watches — even the Breitling that I received from my father-in-law when my wife and I got engaged.

This is the new model (#2220.80) that Daniel Craig wore in Casino Royale.  The “Seamaster” is now printed in red, the hour markers are raised (very cool), and it has the Omega co-axial escapement.

Thank you honey for the best birthday (and graduation) gift ever!

For my grad, dad and birthday gift, my wife got me a spanking new Playstation 3.
Thank you wifey for such a cool gift!  You are a kick-ass wife and the PS3 is a kick-ass gift!
I wanted a PS3 mainly so that I can watch Bluray movies — we already pay for Netflix, so it would [...]

For my grad, dad and birthday gift, my wife got me a spanking new Playstation 3.

Thank you wifey for such a cool gift!  You are a kick-ass wife and the PS3 is a kick-ass gift!

I wanted a PS3 mainly so that I can watch Bluray movies — we already pay for Netflix, so it would be better to take advantage of the Bluray selection, rather than pay a whole lot more for HD satellite feeds.  I must say, the PS3 is quite impressive — although, I guess I could be a bit biased as an ex-Sony employee.

Observations about the PS3:

• Now that Bluray has won the high definition format war — finally — the PS3 has an upper-hand when compared with the Xbox 360.  Whether it really plays out, I don’t know.  But, that was the whole reason why I wanted a PS3:  Bluray.
• Brilliant move pricing the lowest priced Bluray player the same price as the PS3.  It just makes people think that they are getting a “free” game console with the Bluray player.
• Demos on the Playstation Network (PSN) are great!  Usually, I don’t play through a whole game unless I can really get into it — and there are not many games that I can get into.  So, playing a demo from start to finish is usually enough to make me satisfied.
• PSN network speed is horrendous.  It takes forever to download something from the PSN.  I tried downloading the PS3 update from PSN and it ran ~160kBps, which is terrible (my DSL line is a 3Mbps line so I get around 300kBps max).  Sony needs to invest into more bandwidth (or stop throttling).
• Even though Sony is out to sell Bluray discs, there is still a market for downloadable video and audio content.  So where is it Sony?  Sony has a whole library of movies, TV shows and music that it can sell online.  They should get on the ball and start doing it — Microsoft does it with the Xbox 360 and Apple does it with the AppleTV already.
• The PS3 hardware itself is beautiful.  When Alice lent me her Xbox 360, I was surprised by the size of the total package — most importantly that the power brick was the same size as the Xbox 360 console!  The PS3 is all enclosed, the only thing that sticks out are the HDMI and power cables, no fugly external power brick here.
• The PS3 is quiet.  Alice’s Xbox 360 was loud — not just the fans, but the drive also.  And not just “kind of loud”, more on the “this is distracting my gameplay loud?.
• I’m kind of disappointed at the lack of 1080p games.  Most games seem to run at 720p, which is fine, but I figured the PS3 was powerful enough to squeeze out 1080p gaming easily.
• The DVD upscaler (software) does not do as good of a job as a dedicated DVD upscaler.  When compared to the old Pioneer DV-400V upscaling DVD player that we had, the PS3’s upscaled DVD output is a little disappointing.
• The SixAxis controller is lighter than I thought.  Also, I don’t like having to pay for Sony’s stubborness when it comes to rumble.  Sony should have swapped out the SixAxis controllers the minute they settled the lawsuit against them.  One of these days, I’ll get a Dual Shock, but not right now.  I’m fine with the SixAxis.
• The lack of PS2 backwards compatibility is a disappointment, but not that big of one.  It is not like I have played any of my old PS2 games recently and that I would pop one back into play anytime soon.  I still have my slim PS2 in the garage and can pull it out to use when I want.  It would be nice to have the backwards compatibility, but not a requirement.  What is hugely disappointing is the actual reason why Sony stripped out the backwards compatibility from the 40GB PS3.  Sony reasons that “by omitting the option of playing PS2 games, Sony hopes that new customers will instead spend their money on more PS3 games.”
• The one game that my wife got me was Burnout Paradise — because I’m a huge Burnout fan, I have all of the games on either the PS2 or PSP.  Burnout, Burnout 2: Point of Impact, Burnout 3: Takedown and Burnout Revenge on the PS2.  Burnout Legends and Burnout Dominator on the PSP.  Now, Burnout Paradise on the PS3.  Fantastic game.  The only thing that has be a bit frustrated right now is that I still don’t know my way around Paradise City and that makes doing races a bit difficult — as sometimes I find that I have turned on the wrong street and am going the wrong way.  If only Criterion would have made the minimap like a GPS device — mark out a general route (that skips shortcuts) for the player, if the player gets off route, then “reroute” based on where they are heading.  This would help lessen the frustration of being lost in the city — there are subtle hints that Criterion threw in like the blinker on the car will give you a hint where to go.
• The one movie that my wife got me was Casino Royale.  The movie is a gorgeous showoff film for Bluray.  The scene where Bond and the bombmaker are fighting it out on the crane really shows off the resolution of Bluray movies (as the water sparkles brilliantly in the background while the helicopter-mounted camera revolves around the two from a long distance).
• Remote Play functionality — where the PSP can take control of the PS3 and display media (and some games) — works really well.  I was surprised at how easy it was to setup and get going.
• Although the PS3 has no PS2 support, it, ironically has psOne support.  The support works and there are some “enhancement” technologies to try to make the old games look new again — like texture smoothing.  The psOne games I have tried on the system (Gran Turismo 2 and Metal Gear Solid) both work well and look…well, like the are ten years old.
• Netflix continues to amaze.  I sent back movies the day that I got the PS3.  That night, I logged into my Netflix account and flipped on the Bluray option and moved some Bluray discs to the top of my queue.  The next day, Netflix received my DVDs and sent Bluray discs to me.  I got the Bluray discs the following day.  That is normal operating style for Netflix and it continues to amaze me.  Now, if only Netflix to adapt their “Watch Now” feature to stream HD content and stream it to a PS3, that would completely knock me out of my chair.
• The PS3 is made as a media center.  What I love is how the harddrive is easily user-replaceable (which I will do with an old, larger notebook drive.  What I also love is that the PS3 can play all sorts of media — including MP3, WMA, AAC, DVIX, XVID and H.264 AVC.  And all of this can either reside locally, on a USB thumbdrive, on a DVD-RW disc, or can be streamed over the network (from a DLNA server or, as Alice tells me and I have to test out, an Apache server).  The PS3 is surprisingly open for a product that has come out from Sony.
• The PS3 can also take Linux, but I don’t know if I’ll go down that route.  I have enough Linux boxes at home (yes, one can actually have “enough” Linux boxes).  I don’t really want to turn my PS3 into a semi-Linux box also.

I guess that’s a long-winded enough posting for now about the PS3.  I’m sure I’ll have more later.  Do you own a PS3?  What do you think about it?  And what’s your PSN name?  I want to add you to my friends list!