Al’s WebLog

I’ve been pondering a PVR thingy for a while but could never justify the cost or really needing one. Tesco have allegedly had a barginous 70quid Digihome one but its never in stock (been watching for 9 weeks, apparently its 60quid now too, but again, no stock) that is the same as the 95quid one at Argos. So, yes, today I found a proper reason for needing one - Le Tour is only on ITV4 so I can’t use my VCR! Still, 95quid… but oh no! Its on sale for 80. So, toy, a Digihome PVR80 which thus far has been impressive. It works, it doesn’t look bad and yeah, it works. I don’t suppose I could ask for more. Apparently I can connect a serial cable to it and hack the software to it will record two channels at the same time, but for now I will be leaving it as it. Recorder set for ITV4 7-8pm for the next 3 weeks. Marvellous

On Thursday night, the 32″ widescreen goodness that my GF used to attract me gave up and saw red. Lots of red, in square boxes, then all over the screen and then… blackness as it switched itself off. 14″ of 4:3 isn’t the same. Over the weekend the GF and I have had several, shall we say, discussions about replacing the 32 inches of cathode ray goodness, mostly along the lines of “oooh, shiny 32″ TFT!”, “No, the 14″ is fine.” (sense of humour my GF). But, oddly, this evening when I crossed my fingers and turned on the big tele, it worked! Rah

I finally dropped more RAM into my MacBook last night.

The original 512MB simply is not enough to run MacOSX in my view. Example, if I was using Safari and had 5 or 6 tabs open, closing a random tab that was not the foregrounded one would cause the spinning “beach ball of doom” to appear, often for long enough to make a cup of tea. Another example, I have the Applications folder in my Dock to act like a quick launch - on my old G3 iBook this worked fine, but on my CoreDuo MacBook I would have to click and hold down the button for 10-20 seconds before the folder popped up and opened.

But now, with the maximum of 2GB of RAM in my MacBook, all is well. I can open Safari AND iTunes without a visit from the beach ball. I can open tabs and flick between them with no lag. Google Reader works! Its great. I note that with just RSS Menu and Safari running my MacOSX sits there using 800MB of RAM… nice The new Micron RAM also seems to run warmer then the old standard Apple stuff, but not worryingly so.

Right, new bigger/faster hard disk next.

Bah. When I bought my MacBook at the start of July, 2GB of RAM for it was 180quid at Crucial.com. I didn’t buy it as I thought I would see how I went. Mid/end of July RAM was 140, I didn’t buy ‘cos I wanted to wait until after I was paid. I got paid, I looked at the price, now 160quid, I didn’t buy ‘cos it was only 140quid 2 weeks ago. I wait a week, 170, another week or 2, now 180, last week 200, now 214! Arse. I refuse to pay 216 quid. Apparently RAM prices will be high until the end of October. So, I’m on 512MB till November at least.

On a happier note, however, John Lewis have now sent me my free wireless mouse (a mighty mouse no less). So, Apple wireless keyboard and mouse up on Ebay next week.

A friend asked me today if my ADSL has been more unreliable, disconnects etc, after I moved to 8MBit. I thought about it and thought not, but in retrospect I think he is right, ADSL MAX sucks for uptime, mine is down again. Bastards. I need to make my router reboot itself when the line drops….

In other news I have become addicted to the two finger scrolling thing on my MacBook…

Its been a month since I bought my MacBook so I thought I’d air my views (its unlike me to have an opinion, eh!).

• Its thin. I had a G3/800Mhz iBook before (and have a G4/1.33GHz iBook for work) and it feels noticeably thinner but that makes me worry about snapping it.
• Its wide and shiney. The width of the screen is okay, TBH I don’t see much reason for this swing to wider aspect ratio monitors generally, but the glossy coating, whilst indeed making colours more vibrant does mean using a MacBook outside is nearly impossible. I don’t do that much, so…
• It gets warm. Especially by the power conector. However, its not a great deal warmer than either iBook ever got and I don’t feel overly worried.
• Its insensitive. The touchpad particularly at times seems not to work. I end up licking my finger a touch and pressing harder to make the mouse move. The wider button is also not great and rather vague, especially at the ends.
• Its sluggish. I do find that quite often it takes a second or two to figure out I clicked on a tab in Safari or on a different Terminal window. This makes the beach ball pop up for a moment whilst it pauses then doe things very quickly. Odd. This has gotten better over night though, with UB of Flash installed.
• It takes ages to charge. I don’t know why but it takes a bloomin’ age to charge the battery. The iBook would race up to 95% in an hour or so, then trickle the last 5% in another hour. The MacBook doesn’t race, it just takes about 5 hours to charge from 20% empty to full.
• Its an Intel.Yes, you knew that I know, but it means CodeTek’s Virtual Desktop Pro (for which I have paid!) doesn’t work.
• Its clicky. The keyboard is really nice. Its clicky yet it doesn’t feel to hard. Its just lovely

Stuff like the magnetic power cord and screen latch, well, they work but I don’t see much real in-use difference. I never had trouble with the old systems, new stuff works, so did old. I have not made any use of the remote control or iSight (anyone use iChat?).

I think I need to increase the RAM (its on stock 512MB), I’m pretty sure this will help the little freezes between apps (I guess I’m swapping?). I will also at some point put in a larger hard disk and probably make sure its a faster one.

So, would I buy another? Well, if my iBook had not died and I know now what I do about the MacBook I wouldn’t be rushing to buy one (esp if they are bringing out Memron ones next month, bastards) but overall I’m happy enough. Its a laptop (notebook, sorry) which runs Mac OS X at the end of the day and thats what I really want.

Well, I bought Tiger for my iBook (finally). The DVD was on my desk this morning. Sadly mu iBook doesn’t have a DVD drive, so… run with iPods! http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-122236.html

So, I narrowed my choice down and decided I rather liked the Sony Ericsson W800i, despite it being rather orange. Trouble is, I tried one and the UI is, errr, horrible. Now I realize I should spend longer trying to get used to it and that after 5years with Nokia’s I am going to be used to a different UI, but… I’m old, I don’t like change. So, my second choice is a Nokia N70, which is similar in function to the W800i and with an adapter you can use your own headphones. It has a silly small MMC card thing which seems to max out at 512MB, but I can live with that. So, time to call Orange, tell them to match Three’s tarriff and free phone.

Well, my mobile phone contract is up for renewal so I can get a new phone for no additional cost (I know its not free, I know I pay over the period of the contract, yadda yadda ;)). So, what to get? Well, whilst I was away last I came to be wanting a much better camera from my phone. I know, I have always been a bit of a “just make it a phone, stop making it this that and the other” kinda guy, but I nearly always have my phone on me and often don’t have my digicam. So, I want a nice camera on the phone. Other than that, small, light, works with my Mac… I pondered an ‘iTunes phone’, the Motorola E790 (ROKR E1) but its camera sucks. So, I can get a Sony K750i, or a W800i, which both have nice camera’s and both sync with iSync (though, what sync’s???). Motorola seem to lack a good camera phone. Nokia, well I like the N80 but it isn’t out, so its the N70 or the 6280i. I think they all do what I want, they all work as phones, they all vibrate and the all have a speaker phone function. So, which? I’m leaning to the W800i just cos its got a bigger mem card then the K750i, its features look the same otherwise. Mind you the K750i looks nicer… Any opinions? Anyone got one of the above and care to recommend/slate/other it?

Well, whilst in Singapore I have noticed a couple of places doing Dim Sum. As Phelyan has on numerous times extolled the virtues of Dim Sum when he has been in HK I thought I had to try it. He is spot on, its great. Lots of tasty little things to pick at and eat. Plus, its cheap - 3ppl for 10quid eat at the Intercontinental! Sweeet.

Electronics shopping in SG is weird. They have so much stuff and things you just wouldn’t expect to see in market shops (Sim Lim Square, Chinatown, Orchard Road, etc). In Sim Lim I wandered past a place with a Sun E450 and an E3500 sat outside, I asked how much. The E450 was 400SGD (140GBP) and the E3500 was 600SGD (200GBP!). The chap confessed to not knowing what they were but rather pricing on their size, I reckon I could have haggled him down but I suspect Sri Lankan Airlines wouldn’t quite approve of my ‘oversize luggage’

The Apple store on Orchard street is nice, and they give a great demo of Aperture. Opposite there is a crumpler store too - I was wandering about with an iBook in a Crumpler Roll-O-Notes and this apparently make me really cool. Err, thanks!

Back at work this morning I thought I would fill in my timesheets, ahead of time or else I’ll forget. So, for tomorrow I leave the apartment at 5.30am and expect to get to Bath at about 10pm (sadly its not a direct flight!) - that is 24 hours and 30 minutes, so I tried to put 24.5 under traveling on my timesheets, at which point the system told me that I could not have more than 24 hours in a day. Bastard logic of American software! I have written to complain