Posts

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“it’s too flawed to be anything other than a novelty”

The Guardian has reviewed the Sony VAIO UX1XN and found that though a wonderment of design, it is somewhat fiddly to use.

But delightful though this notebook is to look at and hold, it’s too flawed to be anything other than a novelty.

UX1XN

The review also mentions issues with the keyboard and the tablet input, which I both agree with.

… there’s the first disappointment – the keyboard. You wouldn’t want to do much more than tap out an email on it, as the size of the keys make it no good for touch-typing. Double-thumb input is feasible, but the tiny keys make it hard to be accurate.

and

The touchscreen is a nightmare. Fiddly to calibrate, it failed to retain its settings and eventually refused even to acknowledge that it was in fact a touchscreen. So I resorted to the pointing device.

I still think it is useful and not as flawed as the review makes out, and the more I use it, the more uses I find for it.

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Installing Ubuntu 7.10 as a Guest OS on Parallels

After having a few problems and reading a variety of guides on installing Ubuntu as a guest OS on my Parallels installation on my iMac I finally managed to get there after a suggestion from KevanV on Jaiku.

Go to the Ubuntu website and when you download the ISO ensure you that you check the box which says Check here if you need the alternate desktop CD. This CD does not include the Live CD, instead it uses a text-based installer.

Then when you install Ubuntu ensure you use the text based installer.

Also when asked which screen resolution you wish to use ensure that you check 1024 x 768 only.

Once installed the graphical user interface works just fine.

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802.11n

I was playing around with my new 802.11n Airport Extreme base station seeing how I could maximise the performance of the wireless network.

I switched to a pure 5Ghz 802.11n network and then using Chicken of the VNC on my work MacBook Pro made a connection to my iMac and set EyeTV going. I was quite impressed with the screen refresh, however it wasn’t good enough (even at 300Mbs) to watch remotely.

I also undertook some file transfers and was very impressed with the speed.

I had to switch back to b/g compatible mode which reduced the 802.11n speed down to 130Mbs, but as I have a fair few legacy devices I need the b/g compatability. I will at some point add an Airport Express or my older 802.11g Airport Extreme to one of the LAN ports of the newer base station to enable me to have a dual wireless network, one a pure 802.11n network and a b/g network.

The only problems I had were when I switched back to b/g compatible mode, I forgot to reset the security back to WPA/WPA2 mode which meant that my HP TC1100 Tablet failed to connect back onto the network. I had to reset the wireless security and then reboot the TC1100 before it would connect correctly to the wireless network. Other devices worked fine, butI suspect that was because theTC1100 hardware doesn’t support
WPA2.

I also had to delete and add back my wireless Canon MP600R wireless printer.

I am impressed with the new 802.11n Airport Extreme and I haven’t even started to utilise the full functionality of the device.

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Ubuntu Display Server Error

So I managed to download Ubuntu 7.10 (in an hour) and decided to install it on my Mac via Parallels.

It seemed so simple, create a new VM and say I want Linux and Ubuntu Linux at that, point Parallels to the ISO and wahay!

Well not quite.

It seemed to start okay and then I got the following error.

Click to enlarge

Click the picture to enlarge.

No (real) idea what is going on here.

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Six Months to Download Ubuntu!

So after some excellent recommendations from Jaikunauts I decided to download Ubuntu.

Went to the website, chose a mirror and went to make a cup of tea.

Came back later to find this…

Well six months to download Ubuntu is not really what I had in mind. Pressed the back  button chose a different mirror and…

An hour now that’s more like it.

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Amazon debuts digital book reader

Big news yesterday was the launch of Amazon’s digital book reader.

BBC reports that:

Online retailer Amazon has unveiled an own-brand wireless electronic book reader called Kindle.

The paperback-sized device is on sale immediately in the US for $399 (£195). It can store up to 200 books in its onboard memory.

Kindle does not need a PC to be loaded with books, blogs or papers – instead content arrives via wireless.

Amazon said 90,000 books, including bestsellers priced at $9.99, were available for Kindle at launch.

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Online Video Conversion Tools

I have mentioned video media conversion tools before, but most of them have been applications. These are fine for example if you have the right computer (you need a Mac for VisualHub) or you have administrative rights to install the software on your Windows computer (which for a lot of work comuters is generally not the case).

So if you can’t install a conversion tool on your computer, how do you convert video files, well I have been looking at online video conversion tools for a while now.

The one I have used and found the results work well on mobile devices is Media-Convert.

Media Convert

It’s quite simple, you upload a media file from your computer, and an online conversion converts into the file format of your choice. It can handle a large number of file types including text and audio as well as video, and has a range of possible output file types.

It can be used to create PDF files which is handy.

The user interface could be better, it is covered in Google ads, but it is free and they need to make money somehow.

I was impressed with the quality, I took a large Quicktime movie and converted it into an MP4 file that could be used on my Nokia N73, and the conversion was done very well.

I was recently told about another online media conversion tool, Zamzar, however the site is populated with pop-ups and you also need to enter an e-mail address which smacks to me that my e-mail might be harvested and passed onto third parties.

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Stable Wireless

Well after upgrading to the new Airport Extreme (802.11n) base station, it does seem to have had an impact on my network stability.

Today my wireless network has remained stable and I have maintained connectivity.

It would appear that the fault lay with my Airport Express, though it didn’t help that my ISP had problems at the same time.

All working now.

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Annoying Printer

Though I really do like my new Canon MP600r multi-function printer, there is one aspect which does annoy me slightly.

If you need to reconfigure the wireless connection you need to connect it to the Mac by USB cable. This can be difficult if the printer is not near the computer, which it might well be as that’s certainly why I bough a wireless printer. If I wanted a wired USB printer I would have bought the much cheaper MP600.

Canon MP600r

Ah well, at least I have reconfigured the printer to join my new Airport Extreme wireless network, and now I can print and scan over the wireless network.