The Sony VAIO VGN-NR430E/L Notebook is my last minute pick for another back to school or college notebook. It was also CNET’s pick for entry-level Back to School laptops.

There are a lot of Sony products I really like, but I must admit that the VAIO notebooks just don’t seem to appeal to me. Like a most Sony products they look very good, it is just that they had a reputation for being loaded with bloatware. According to CNET this model has the minimum of bloatware.

Now to the important stuff. The specs are; an Intel Pentium Dual Core T2390 processor running at 1.86 GHz, 2GB of RAM, Integrated graphics with 358 MB RAM and a 160GB hard drive. It runs Windows Vista Home Premium and apparently the 2GB of RAM seems to be enough as long as you don’t try to play games on it. The Sony VAIO NR430 has a 15.4 inch screen (measured diagonally of course). The VAIO NR430 has four USB 2.0 ports, a mini Firewire port, and Memory Stick and SD Card readers. Networking options include built-in Ethernet,  802.11g, 802.11b, 802.11a, 802.11 pre-N Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

The VAIO NR420 weighs 6.3 lbs and comes in “Night blue” (not to be confused with “midnight blue”).

Some of the notebooks available on “Back to School/College” sales almost make me wish I was going back to college. Well, maybe not…

The first notebook I looked at was the Dell Inspiron 1525. The configuration I was looking at comes in 8 colors, with Jet Black being included in the price. Since I would probably go for the basic black, it is nice to see a choice of 4 patterns - great way to distinguish your notebook from everyone else’s.

As for specs, it has an Intel Core 2 Duo processor T5750, 2Ghz (with the choice of processors up to an Intel Core Duo T8300 running at 2.4GHz) with 3 GB of memory. It runs Windows Vista Premium with SP1 – which is preferable to Vista Home Basic. The 3GB of memory is just about the minimum for Vista, as you don’t want the notebook slowing to a standstill when you are wanting the word processor and fast.
The standard 250GB hard drive is a good size, about the minimum I would personally go for in a notebook. The CD and DVD writer is almost standard nowadays. This Notebook comes with a 802.11g wireless card, which is also pretty much standard.

For those of us who may like the eye candy look of Windows Vista, but who are unwilling to upgrade to Windows Vista, there is an alternative. Stardock Window Blinds. Window Blinds is one of the most popular applications to “skin” or “mod” the Windows Desktop. Window Blinds at it’s simplest provides more Desktop themes for Windows XP and Windows Vista, but goes beyond that.

I’m running the trial version on my main Desktop PC and Windows XP could easily be mistaken for Windows Vista. The Start Button has been replaced by the Windows Logo, and the look of every application has been changed. Window Blinds was around when Windows XP was released, and you could use it to make Windows 98 look like Windows XP. It doesn’t stop there. In “Muchhala’s World” blog, there as a blog entry “Desktop Modding Explained” which covers the different types of Desktop Modding that can be done, with an example in “My Desktop - May 2007“.

Stardock has a number of other programs, including ObjectDock, which adds Mac OS X Dock Bar functionality to Windows.

Stardock’s programs are also mentioned in the book “Career Building Through Skinning and Modding” by Jeri Freedman.

Yesterday I finally bit the bullet and updated Windows XP to Service Pack 3 on one of my machines. I’m still trying to find out what extra features it may have added apart from security patches and bugfixes. Microsoft just seems to lead you in circles on their website. I did make sure the machine I updated had a Pentium processor, as I had heard that Windows XP SP3 caused problems on machines with AMD processors. Of course Microsoft may have fixed that by now, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

Firefox 3 is a different story. After only using the portable edition for several weeks, I finally installed Firefox 3 onto all but one machine, which is actually the machine I’m writing this particular blog entry on. I’m having to jump through a few well-documented hoops to have Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 running on the same machine (but obviously not at the same time). The main reason is because a large number of my favorite Firefox 2 add-ons have not yet been upgraded for Firefox 3. Eventually I guess I may have to do without Tab Mix Plus.

Today I saw a print ad for the Livescribe 1GB Pulse smart pen. It is not available on Pricegrabber.com yet, but is similar to the LeapFrog FLY Fusion Pentop Computer.

The FLY Fusion Digital Pen is targeted at children ages 8 to 16, to help with homework as well as play games and double as an MP3 player. A number of adults find it useful too, both in business settings as well as for general writing. I must admit that when I first saw it advertised I thought it was pretty cool.

Basically, the FLY Fusion Digital Pen makes use of a tiny camera to record handwriting on special paper (called “FLY Paper“). This is then stored in the pen’s memory, and when the pen is connected to a computer the digitized handwriting can be converted into various formats. Additional software can be purchased to add functionality to the FLY Fusion.

The Livescribe Pulse “smart pen” adds sound recording, so it can record sounds while you are writing. This seems ideal for college and also business meetings. It also uses special notepaper and ink refills.

This technology is still developing, but is already a viable (and cheaper) alternative to tablet PCs.

Yes, I know that two boots are worth more than just one, but this is a technology, and a single boot is standard for computers.

As I mentioned previously, the latest version of Apple Inc.’s Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard includes “Boot Camp” software which allows dual booting between the Mac OS and Windows.

This week I read about an interesting use of dual booting. It involved installing Debian Linux on the External flash drive (a High Capacity mini or micro SD card) of a Nokia N800 or Nokia N810 Internet tablet. The the default Operating System, Maemo Linux OS2008, would be booted from the internal flash drive, and Debian Linux from the External Flash drive. Then at boot up, the user can select between OS2008 and Debian Linux – not bad for an Internet Tablet. I can already hear people saying “Why would anyone want to do that?”. There is a good reason, as a lot more software is available for Debian Linux than for Maemo Linux OS2008. I must admit that the instructions are not for the faint-hearted.

Dual Booting with Windows XP can be “interesting” enough, especially if you don’t know what you are doing.

At the end of my previous blog posting I’d barely answered the question why the iPhone?.

Initially I was looking for a phone which had decent web browsing and email capabilities, and was considering a Windows Mobile professional phone with a QWERTY keyboard. The AT&T Tilt was on my shortlist. Then I ran a “jailbreak” on my iPod Touch. This allowed me to download and run third-party applications on the iPod Touch, most of which were free. Instead of just using the iPod Touch for an hour or so a week to watch video podcasts, suddenly there was a whole lot more functionality. This got me thinking how much more useful the iPhone would be with “official” third party applications. These are third party applications written for the iPhone and vetted by Apple. I’d also taken note that some of the software I used on my Palm would soon be available on the iPhone.

Then there are the 3G iPhone’s missing features: battery is not removable, no video record feature, no MMS messages and no copy and paste (I’m probably missing a few). I took stock of these and decided that they were outweighed by the unique touch interface and the possibility of the iPhone becoming the next mobile application platform.

A few days before the 3G iPhone was released I realized that I really wanted one. At first I thought it was a severe case of “iwantitis“, so I waited for it to pass. Since I’m not one to stand in line for hours for something, it was easy to let the release date come and go.

After a week I still wanted a 3G iPhone. To cut a short story shorter, about a week ago I finally got the iPhone from AT&T, after a 14 day wait. Getting one from an Apple Store would have required waiting in line – after two attempts at this I went the “Order from AT&T” route. Basically you pay for the iPhone with a credit card (only at certain AT&T stores) and they order it, which takes somewhere between 7 and 21 days. The card is only charged the day the iPhone is actually shipped to the store. You are then contacted and have 7 days to pick up the iPhone. When you pick it up, it is activated and you sign up for the two year contract.

One thing to be aware of is that you cannot return an iPhone, even within the first 14 days, without paying a 10% “restocking fee”. The restocking fee is waived if the box is unopened, but the box has to be opened in the store to activate the phone. It seems that Apple stores may do something similar. The reason I mention this is because the iPhone is not a regular cellphone or smartphone at all. The virtual keyboard takes some getting used to. That said the user interface as a whole is really natural and easy.

So what prompted me to join several million others and buy this micro-Mac-computer-cellphone? The excellent browser, email and internet on the go and the availability of third party applications were the main reasons.

In my recent blog about free Basic and C compilers I used some technology jargon and didn’t even realize it, as I have been working with compilers and interpreters so long I’ve forgotten when I learned the differences. It was the reference to “Free BASIC Compilers and Interpreters”. So I thought I’d give some definitions here.

A search for Interpreters on Pricegrabber.com found Interpreters and Translators of languages, alas not computer languages but spoken languages. It did find plenty of Programming Language compilers though, like this Intel C++ Compiler.

Wikipedia has definitions for both Interpreters and compilers, but they could be a bit confusing for those who don’t have some familiarity with programming. The Free Online Dictionary of Computing has a simple definition for an Interpreter:
“A program which executes other programs“, which is expanded in the rest of the article, otherwise it doesn’t can be misinterpreted.

A broader definition of an interpreter would be a programming tool that interprets and executes one line of a computer program at a time.

The definition of a compiler from the Free Online Dictionary of Computing is:
“A program that converts another program from some source language (or programming language) to machine language (object code). Some compilers output assembly language which is then converted to machine language by a separate assembler.”

Large portions of the Windows operating system (both XP and Vista) are written in C and C++ which is compiled.

A newer, bigger version of the Asus Eee PC has arrived. The Asus Eee PC 1000H Notebook has a 10 inch screen, and is now the biggest of the Asus Eee PC notebook series. There are a number of enhancements in the Asus Eee PC 1000H, including an updated look and feel from earlier Eee PC models.

Along with the larger screen, the 1000H has a more spacious keyboard. The 800MHz Celeron processor from previous versions has been replaced by a 1.6-GHz Intel Atom processor.  The 1000H is the first Eee PC to feature a hard drive rather than a solid state drive. It has a 80GB 5400-rpm hard drive for the Windows XP version. There is also a Linux version, the 1000, which has a 40GB Solid State Drive. Both Linux and Windows versions have 1GB of RAM.

Also improved are the Wi-Fi networking, sound system and webcam (1.3 Megapixel).

The notebook weighs 3.2 pounds, which puts it in the Ultraportable class, at a price quite unknown for an Ultraportable notebook not so long ago. It is however, one of the largest of the new crop of similarly sized mini-notebooks, and has a number of competitors in this up and coming market. The price of the Asus EeePC 1000H was dropped by $100 a week after it was released.