Smarter Geek

Wall Mossberg has just posted a review of a PC’s on his blog called Dell Goes on Ultrabook Diet With Slimmed-Down Laptop. But not surprisingly he also mentions the MacBook Air no less that 8 times in comparison. Granted he did not give a a totally bad review with comments such as:

“I found it to be solid and well built, speedy and with a good, backlit keyboard, a bright screen, and good looks.”

But just as in his review of other Ultra books such as the Samsung Series 9 he is quick to point out the weak points but then only glosses over any of the strengths when compared to the MacBook Air such as USB3, better specs, or bigger screen.

Then queue that the standard “battery life is not as good as a MacBook Air using his standard test” statement (not verbatim) that he uses for all Ultrabook reviews. With his non-scientific test which “use full brightness, disable power-saving software, leave on the Wi-Fi, and play a loop of music”. Really!!! Let me just list the ways this is a completely wrong way to use it…

1. He complains about the out of the box Bing bar being installed but he customises the out of the box power setting and then does his test… If you are going to complain about out of the box software then you should not customise out of the box settings as well.

2. He turns the power features off and then plays a loop of music. Who in the world deliberately does this? Who would ever say “I want to listen to music in the most power wastefully way possible”… No one… I would also like to know if his music loop is playing using that most in-efficient software called iTunes using far more CPU than other programs and probably far less optimised for audio playback in Windows then on OSX.

3. Running a power test with power saving turned off means that the CPU would un-necessarily be running at full clock speed without any reason. This is like running a MPG test on a car after you have removed all the full saving features from the engine then refusing to use 5th gear as the other car you tested before did not also have a 5th gear… Essentially you are using the computer in a un-efficient and very un-typical configuration for anyone who uses their laptop on battery often.

4. At the top of his article he has a two word saying “Ethics Statement” when you click on this link Walt in his own words says “I am a subjective opinion columnist”.

He can’t have it both ways… If he is going to test the battery life of any computer then they should be judged on the out of the box setting of the device OR stop complaining about the out of the box software install in the OS. Why? If a person is knowledgeable enough change the power plan of a computer they are probably also smart enough to un-install pre-loaded software.

5. Price. He also points out that this computer is about $300 less than a MacBook Air but the the Dell comes with Office which is NOT included with Air so makes no compensation for the fact the Dell has more value in hardware AND software.

Until he puts an end to these “Subjective” reviews and becomes a little more scientific the PC industry just has to stop give this guy any attention…

I have previously blogged about the things I liked and hated about the iPhone so I thought it would be only fair if I started a same post about my new Windows Phone 7 HTC Mozart phone.

I have now had this phone for 4 day’s so this review is still very preliminarily so I fully expect that this list will change over time. My comments will cover both the hardware and software on the device as Microsoft have been all about the “experience” of the device and therefore I need to cover all aspects of the phone.

In addition to the Good and Bad i have also put in a Wish List at the bottom that has all the little features that I thought would be nice for the phone to have.

Good

• Camera with Flash is good for those low light situations. (see image below)

• Camera 8mbit / 720p video. I have not used an iPhone 4 camera so i can’t make the obvious comparisons however having a high resolution camera on hand all the time is nice. (see image below)

• Camera that I can use without having to unlock the phone and then launch the application is nice to quickly capture those special unplanned moments.
• Camera that automatically uploads every photo I take to SkyDrive so I will never lose a photo is awesome.
• Dedicated camera button is very nice so I don’t have to find the camera app even when then phone is unlocked.
• Hardware is solid the back is mostly aluminium… clearly an iPhone styled device.
• Screen is very nice with 800×480 is much higher res than the iPhone 3g… but not as good as iPhone 4. Still having a screen with such high resolution is very nice. I find that even going bad to the iPad with it lower DPI makes a lot of the text and image look somewhat fuzzy.
• Find,Lock,Beep,Wipe my phone but just going to http://windowsphone.live.com and login and then select the option want to use (see below). This is very similar to Apple Mobile Me except without the $99 price tag.

• User Interface is smooth and responsive to use.
• Home screen is really nice as I have pinned all my commonly used apps ,people and podcasts to the start screen making it really easy to access the stuff I use most of the time.
• Wireless Sync is OMG fantastic. I used to have to sync my iPhone/iPad to my computer each morning before going to work… Now I just wake up and my phone is all synced for my days listening.
• Internet Explorer is very good. Just like safari on the iPhone…
• Xbox live is cool as now I am earning points for my Xbox live accounts on my phone (like playing Flight Control)… very cool…
• Lock screen information is really nice as it actually give me useful information such as time, day, date and upcoming appointments.
• Compatible with Apple ear buds with remote clicker. Only the play pause button works however it is still nice to be able to use the apple ear buds with i prefer.
• Remote App install is a nice feature that lets you purchase an application on your computer and have it appear on your phone with connecting the two devices.
• Voice commands works as well on this as it did on the iPhone. Will be useful when in a car and you don’t want to touch the phone to make a phone call.
• Micro USB connector is really nice to have as I can use any micro USB cable to charge the phone. These are also really cheap and you can pick them on on eBay for about $6 as opposed to $35 for Apple phone data leads.
• Key Applications that any good smartphone should have are mostly there… Below is a list of key apps that I have installed.
  • Foursquare
  • Shazam
  • Facebook
  • Adobe Reader
  • Ebay
  • Flickr Manager
  • Feed Reader (Google reader app)
  • Twitter (Official app))
  • YouTube
  • Windows Messenger
  • Flight Control

Bad

• No microSD card support means the phone is limited to 8gb storage. This is a phone specific restriction as other phone do have microSD cards for future storage upgrades.
• No case’s means that i am very paranoid that I will drop or scratch the phone.
• Battery life is poor. I am getting only 12 hours out of my phone with fairly light usage. I suspect this is due to keeping one of the push service turned on in the background so I have turned these off to see if it makes a difference.
• I have had the OS crash on me two times now when running the Facebook applications.
• HTC Apps are broken. After trying to run an application update on the HTC applications they have now stopped working. Apparently this is due to a certificate issues and updates are coming. See http://twitter.com/#!/Windows7AU/status/28073132075
• App store still has only a few applications. This number is growing and it does have a key number of applications however it is still no where near the Apple of Android app store. Notable missing application:
  • Angry Birds
• Capacitive buttons are a totally pain in the ass… I have accidently touch the buttons at least a dozen time when typing on the phone. Positing the space bar just above the star button really sucks and accidently pressing the search button when play a game in landscape is also rally annoying. Update: I really wish the 3 buttons could be locked out when playing a full screen game/app. This would make this a LOT better… even if it just asked… are you sure when you press the button in the middle of the game.
• You can pin a podcast to the home screen (which is nice). But when you are listening to the podcast and then you click on the pinned tile the track stops and then starts again. Annoying!

Wish List

• 2x play speed when playing podcasts would be really nice. They have this in Windows Media player and in the iPhone so having it in the Zune software would be a great time saver as I would (literally) be able to listen to all my podcasts quicker.
• Scrub bar for playing podcasts and music would be nice to be able to jump to certain parts of audio track really quickly. You can do something similar by pressing and holding the back/forward button but this is not as good.
• Schedule for email sync so that i don’t get email notification at 1am in the morning…
• New: Percentage indicator for the battery remaining…
• New: Folders for the application launcher so that I can group my similar application. This could be automatically based on the categorisation of the application in the app store.
• New: Internet Tethering… This was something that was mentioned as possible on the Windows Weekly podcast but was then later revealed as not correct for the release. I suspect this will be coming in a v1.1 update…
• New: Flash and Silverlight in browser support. I am not saying I love Flash and Silverlight however having the option would be nice…

This is just a start for now… I will definitely be adding more as time goes by…

Microsoft have just announced the launched the public beta of their next versions of Windows Home Server codename “Vail”. Home Server is a product aimed at people with 2 or more computers in their home who wish to securely store data centrally on the network and have a single console that can easily be used to manage the health of their PC’s.

In this version new version of Home Server Microsoft have focused on four main areas:

• Extending media streaming outside the home or office
• Improvements in multi-PC backup and restore
• Simplified setup and user experience
• Significantly expanded development and customization tools for partners

The feature the end users will notice most is that will be able to easily stream all their photos, music and video’s from their media library via the remote access web page. This is done by the server transcoding pretty much any type of media file on the server and streaming it using silverlight plug-in. This of course means that this remote access will work just as easily on Windows and OSX.

Vail is based on Windows Server 2008 R2 therefore one of the biggest changes is that it will only run on 64bit hardware. Therefore for people that are already running Windows Home server there is now way to perform an in place upgrade from their current home server to this new product. However as this is mainly sold as an OEM only option or it is used by people who are very IT savvy this is not really a major issues.

While the x64 is understandable it is disappointing as this means it will prevent anyone from re-using their existing Home Server hardware or most Intel Atom CPU based systems.

The system requirements for “Vail” are:

1.4 GHz x64 processor – Therefore the newer 64bit Intel Atom CPU’s are supported however Microsoft are recommending that you use a Dual core CPU as this will help with transcoding of media streams.

1 GB RAM – This is double the 512mb requirement of the original home server however which this is a significant bump of the previous version it is still very reasonable for system today. This bump in requirements will (hopefully) give owner the head room to run additional add-on on the server to augment its functionality. This was a problem with HP’s original home server (and other OEM’s) which only had 512mb which wherefore it was almost impossible to run any add-on’s without greatly slowing down the OS. As the OS is also 64bit this means that it will take advantage of +4gb ram configuration which are also quite common place today.

At least one 160 GB hard drive. – Again this is a very reasonable requirement and is the bare minimum specs for HDD on even the lowest end netbooks. A nice new feature of “Vail” is that you will be able to move the data stores off your system drive and thus improving system performance and preventing your from filling up your system drive.

Home Server v2 “Vail” supported client Operating System:

This time Microsoft are releasing native support for both 32bit and 64bit client operating systems out of the box, unlike home server v1 which did not originally support for 64bit clients until Power Pack 1 that was released much later.

The Windows 7 Operating System

• Windows 7 Home Basic (x86 and x64)
• Windows 7 Home Premium (x86 and x64)
• Windows 7 Professional (x86 and x64)
• Windows 7 Ultimate (x86 and x64)
• Windows 7 Enterprise (x86 and x64)
• Windows 7 Starter (x86)

The Windows Vista Operating System

• Windows Vista Home Basic with Service Pack 2 (SP2) (x86 x64)
• Windows Vista Home Premium with SP2 (x86 and x64)
• Windows Vista Business with SP2 (x86 and x64)
• Windows Vista Ultimate with SP2 (x86 and x64)
• Windows Vista Enterprise with SP2 (x86 and x64)
• Windows Vista Starter with SP2 (x86)

The Windows XP Operating System

• Windows XP Home with Service Pack 3 (SP3)
• Windows XP Professional with SP3
• Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 with SP3

Microsoft have also said that this time they will not be releasing “Power Packs” but instead they will be releasing “Roll-up packs” which is the same terminology used for Microsoft Exchange updates. They are also hoping that they will be releasing up to 4 rollup’s each year meaning newer features will be integrated with the server much more quickly.

Just like the previous version of home server you should not manage the server from the actual console and instead you should manage the server from the dashboard application.

To logon to the server via the dashboard simple enter the server password you entered during the install on the server. If you want to see the entire install process of the server and connector then check out my other post “ “. The dashboard like the previous version is a seamless remote desktop application that you run locally on your workstation which you can use to manage you home server.

The users tab is to manager the various users who have access to the server. This is especially useful if you have multiple people wanting to access the files on the computer.

Computer and Backup tab is used to manage all the computer in your home network.

Server Folders and Hard Drive is used to manage the shared folders on your server. Notice the “Exclude the hard drive from Server Storage” which is the option I talked about before which is used to move any data off you system drive to improve system performance.

Add-ins is used to manage the third-party extensions to the servers functionality.

A nice feature with setting up remote access to your server is that it now support various third-party domain providers for you buy a easy to remember domain to use for remote access to your server.

to After you have turned on the Remote Access feature you will be able to remotely access your home server from Internet using the URL you just configured. This page has been turned into a portal for the users where they can  access all the files in the shared folder and remotely connect to you computer.

You can also stream any media files in your media library from the page by using the silverlight client. Here you can see a video that has started to screen with the on-screen controls. The controls will disappear when you move your mouse off the playing video much like Windows Media Player controls behave.

Seeing this is still beta software it is really impressive how well this software works. It has the feel of a finished products which can probably be attributed to the fact that it is built on the RTM version of Windows Server 2008 R2. Certainly this is a welcome upgrade to the original home server which is now starting to look a little dated due to its Windows Server 2003 heritage and having an improved extensibility will mean that any shortfall in the product can easily be made up with third party add-on’s. As per the previous version this is going to be an awesome addition to any home network and is certainly going to make anyone life who has to look after multiple computers a LOT easier…

You can also see my other post on how to install Home Server at How to install Windows Home Server “Vail

One of the new hardware products that was shown off by Microsoft at CES 2010 was the Microsoft Arc Keyboard that was designed to be used around the home and living room. Microsoft also made the Microsoft Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 6000 which is more aimed at mobile laptop user who wants a move ergonomic and/or compact keyboard while they are out an about. Well this keyboard is now out in Australia and as I am most certainly an mobile work I decided to buy this keyboard for myself to use.

The keyboard is in fact actually two devices with one being a compact keyboard with the all the standard keys as well as dedicated function, volume and arrows buttons. The other part is a separate keypad that can be used independently of the keyboard. This means that it can also operate as a standalone keypad for a laptop if you just want the added convenience of a dedicated number input device. A nice surprise is that the number pad comes with its own material pocket which protects it from damage if you are storing this in your bag along with all your other junk… errr… equipment.

Externally the packaging looks like the standard Microsoft red packaging they have used for many years.

When you open the packaging I am reminded greatly of the form fit packaging that came with my Apple iPhone 3GS. Microsoft have really gone all out to make this a very easy experience to remove the product from the packaging which I like greatly when compared to something like the previous Microsoft hardware devices like the Microsoft Remote Keyboard for Windows XP Media Center Edition.

Pull the keyboard out and you get a glimpse of the keypad…

After you remove the cardboard insert you see the keypad, instructions and the keypad pouch.

The material that the pouch is made of is not very soft and pretty however this is a good thing as it need to protect the keypad from damage not make it look pretty.

This is by far the thinnest keyboard I have ever used.

In fact I have found it to be so compact and small that you can easily place it on top of your laptop keyboard to get the advantage of the bigger keys and more ergonomic shape. This also means I can use the keyboard and not have to push back the laptop from the edge of the desk making the laptop screen to far away to see effectively. Nice!

Notice the PrtScn, Home and End keys are implemented using the Fn “function” button not surprisingly it does not also work as the laptop keyboard function button. The placement of the “function” button is a bit strange as you cannot easily press it and the other alternative button without place you whole hand over the area to obscure the view of the keyboard you are trying to use. This is probably something that can be picker up with muscle memory after a period of time but I would have thought it would been much better to have pushed the Fn button over to the left hand side where most Fn buttons are located on laptops.

The keypads and keyboard have a dedicated physical hardware on off button as well as a pen push Bluetooth connect button.

Adding the device to your computer is straight forward. Just bind the device using the Add Bluetooth option from control panel and let windows create a pairing pin.

Initially I was confused as to how to enter the pin number for the device but then I realised you just type the number in on the keyboard and then press enter.

You follow the same binding process for the number pad and then you will see the photo images of your devices in Device and Printer platform (along with any other hardware you have installed).

Overall the hardware build quality seems to be excellent. The feel of the soft press low profile keys is very nice to use for someone who is used to laptop keyboards and the compact design means that it will easily fit it into my bag when I am on the road. The price at them moment at Officeworks in Australia is $148 au however which is a little more expensive than other keyboards but this is a very thin light weight wireless keyboard/keypad package that is unique to the market right now.

I am also think this is going to be a very good companion device when the HP Slate (and other devices like it) is released in the coming months as this will be able to be used with out taking up any of the precious USB slots on the device as it can use the built in Bluetooth receiver. I also wounder if this will work with the iPad…. hmm…

If you are a person who types a lot on your laptop and you want something that makes pounding out all those reports just a little bit easier then this is once toy….err… gadget… errr… productivity tool that you must get.

9 out of 10.

For more detail and product specification see http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/ProductDetails.aspx?pid=016

At long last my Intel X-25 M 160gb Solid State Disk (SSD) drive arrived in the mail and I joyfully ripped open the packaging like a kid on Christmas morning to see what had arrived (like I didn’t already know). To my absolute delight it was a brand new box with what I hoped contained the saviour of my now aging (slow) Dell Dimension 9150 with a 2.8ghz Dual Core CPU which was in desperate need of an upgrade.

As you can see below the drive is 2.5” so it will fit into most laptops but it also comes with a 3.5” caddy for installing into desktop computer. While I did not take the smaller size into account when I bought the drive i realise this is a real bonus as I can easily use it in a laptop in the future if I ever decide to get something more portable to replace my current desktop at home.

I also decided to the get the 160gb model because it now has a faster write speed than the 80gb version with the release of the its latest firmware from Intel.

It also comes with a very important “my SSD Rocks!” sticker to show as a badge of honour (or to tell someone that your computer it worth stealing for the parts).

As I was un-boxing the drive I kept think to myself that “gee I hope this drive was worth it” and “I hope it will make a difference with my computer”. My initial worry was that the drive was not going to be able to run at 3gb/sec to take advantage of the full throughput of the drive. But I was relieved to see that the drive and motherboard were 3gb/sec capable and so it negotiated its link speed at full speed. nice… so I continued my tests…

Benchmarks

OS Load Time (12m:09sec)

So I found my USB stick of Windows 7 64bit, plugged it in an turned it on…

12min 9sec (see timer below) after I pressed the power button I was at a default desktop…. Nice…  This was good and I was starting to feel a little confident that the drive was going to make the system faster. Note that this also included all the time it took me to click the buttons using the OS install Wizard. I would estimate that this would have added at least an extra minute to this overall time.

Windows Experience Index (7.8)

The Windows Experience Index is a bench mark that was introduced with Windows Vista that allows people to assess the performance of the individual pieces of hardware in a computer. This benchmark helps people determine what part of their computer is slowest and can help guide people to what upgrade they perform next to get some more speed out of their system. In Windows 7 the rating numbers go from a minimum of 1 to a maximum value of 7.9 (which is up from 5.9 in Windows Vista).

As you can see the drive rated very well with a 7.8 although I was hoping for a 7.9 because I have to wounder what drive on the market could possibly be better that this drive (maybe 2x Intel X-25 M in a stripe).

OS Boot Time (20.1sec)

The other really important stat about the drive is how quick it takes to boot up and shutdown. Now Google claims that it can get 8 seconds boot from with it uses a SSD drive so I was really keen to see how fast it compares with Windows 7. Now the total overall boot time from power on to desktop was 32.8 seconds however this included the 12 seconds BIOS post tests. Now bear in mind that my system is almost 5 years old and BIOS start up time for computer now are a lot quicker.

If you take a look at the lap time (top right) the whole OS boot only took 20.1 seconds.

OS Shutdown Time (3sec)

Now this I have not measured exactly yet however this is now a near instantaneous from fully loaded desktop to powered off takes no longer that 3 seconds.

Windows Media Center (much better)

Now my desktop computer also acts as a server for Windows Media Center on my two Xbox 360 which was always bit sluggish to navigate through the menus which I put this down to the lag from the IR remote to the Xbox 360 via the Ethernet to the Computer back via the Ethernet to the Xbox and onto the screen. However even though my media files are stored on a 1tb 1.5gb/sec SATA WD Green plater based drive the over all navigation and load time has much improved.

Better with Windows 7

Its also one of the first SSD drives to offer native support for the Trim SATA command with Windows 7 which all but eliminates any performances degradation over time with SSD drives.

Windows 7 also recognises SSD based drives and disabled the defragmentation option as this offers no benefit due the drives low random seek speed and can even cause premature wear out of drives if performed to often.

Overall (5 Stars)

Needless to say I am very, very, very impressed with the performance of the drive and this upgrade has now turned me into an absolute speed demon. It definitely seems that drive I/O is now the most constraining factor with computer as ever relatively slow CPU’s on a modern Operating System such as Windows 7 seem to be more than capable.

I also find that doing multiple tasks at one is much smoother and seems to have almost no performance impact at all. This is obviously due to the less than 1ms random seek time of the drive and the native command queuing that allows the drive to handle a massive amount of simultaneously commands.

Another advantage of the drive is that is has no moving parts which should mean that the reliability of the drive is (hopefully) going to be more reliable with a predicted 1.2 million hours Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) which is nearly double that of 750,000 hours MTBF that most other spinning platter based drives have.

This is a drive that I will probably using in my next 3 computers so I really see it as a long term investment even though it cost a little (ok a lot) extra. If you are looking for an upgrade to your system that will really give it a killer punch in performance then this is it even thought its a bit pricey still it is totally worth the cost.

But for I can truly say I no longer wait for my computer to load program anymore… 

Rating 5 out of 5 stars.

For a more in-depth review of the drive including some of it’s issues (which have been fixed via the latest firmware) see the following PC Perspective Articles:

• Intel X25-M 80GB Solid State Hard Drive Review
• Long-term performance analysis of Intel Mainstream SSDs
• Intel Responds to Fragmentation with New X25-M Firmware
• Intel X25-M G2 TRIM firmware is out, really, we mean it this time, honest!

Intel’s specification sheet on the drive can be found Here

Link tot he latest firmware that  the drive Here and instructions can be found Here

Link to an eBay store stocking the drive can be found Here

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