Sony Sliders: I could be referring to the new Sony PSP Go or the Sony MYLO, but I’m not.

This is not the first time I’ve had a problem with a slider button on a Sony product. My very first Sony PlayStation Portable was occasionally a source of aggravation, but only with certain games (most notably Grand Theft Auto : Liberty City Stories). In the heat of battle, I would accidentally flip the sliding On-Off switch and oh no, where did my game go? Sometimes I got it back, other times it was just tough luck - should I have being playing GTA in the first place?
This problem wasn’t just limited to the first PSP. I had the same problem playing a Pinball game on the Sony PSP 3000, the most recent PlayStation Portable (the last one which still handles UMDs). In both cases I just had to adjust my grip slightly and the problem went away. Don’t get me wrong, the Sony PSP is still my favorite handheld gaming console.

The last time I was blogging, I happened to be using my Sony VAIO VGN-S460P Laptop, and when I clicked the  “Save” button, I got an error message that there was no internet connection. It took a frantic few seconds to realize that I had accidentally flipped the Wireless switch to the off position, not that hard to do since the slider switch is just where my right wrist rests. Poor design? Maybe, but I still like the laptop.

I looked at two computers today, and tried to figure out which was the best laptop.

The first one has 4GB RAM and a 320GB Hard drive, as well as 14 inch screen. The second has 2GB RAM and a 160GB hard drive, and a 13 inch screen. Both have Dual Core Pentium Processors, DVD writers, IEEE802.11 Draft N wireless and a built-in webcam.

The first sells for around $650, the second for at least $1100. The first is a Toshiba Satellite L515-S4925 Notebook. The second one is an Apple MacBook Pro.

I guess it depends on whether you can afford the MacBook Pro, and whether you don’t mind that it does not have a user-replaceable battery. Other than that, it is likely to provide a solid computing experience. It also has a oversized multitouch trackpad.

The Toshiba Satellite costs $500 less than the Apple MacBook Pro, and has better hardware specs. It has double the memory and double the hard disk capacity. Since the Toshiba runs Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit, 4GB of memory is the recommended minimum of memory (1 GB is required). It also has a user-replaceable battery.

Which one would you choose?

It is so sad to see an Operating System die, particularly one which has been around for so long, and which I’ve grown with and even written programs for.  I’m not referring to Windows XP, but to the Palm OS for handheld computers and smartphones. Some would say that it has been dead or dying for some time. When a Operating System dies, it seems that the software development tools start dying first. A week or so back I logged onto a website of a Palm OS development tool I’ve used to be dismayed at the news that the website and the forums were closing down soon.

The Palm Operating System’s replacement is the Palm webOS as featured in the Palm Pre. At present there is only one smartphone being sold by Palm which still runs the Palm OS – the Palm Centro. With Palm (the company) it is hard to tell how long the Centro will be around. On the Palm website, the Centro is referred to as “Access Powered“, but that merely means “Running Palm Operating System licensed from Access, previously known as PalmSource”.

If the Palm Centro was to be killed off tomorrow, and the Palm OS was officially dead,  people would continue to use Palm OS devices, from old Sony Clies to Tapwave Zodiacs.

Even though the iPhone is getting more useful with each firmware release, I’m still using a Tungsten C which runs Palm OS, while moving to a Treo 680, which also runs Palm OS. Of course, if the Palm Pre or another webOS based smartphone comes to Verizon, I would take a good hard look at it.

Tripped up by levels of “compatibility”!. I had mentioned that I was having problems after installing Eeebuntu NBR (Net Book Remix) on my Asus EeePC 701 Netbook (see “Neglected Netbook gets new OS“). Important Dialog Boxes were cut off at the bottom of the screen, making it impossible to configure Eeebuntu properly. I though it would simply be a matter of looking at an Ubuntu distribution on another PC to see what the buttons are, and work from there. It wasn’t.

Then I came across some interesting information. The Ubuntu wiki had a page
“HardwareSupport/Machines/Netbooks” which gave three Tiers of compatibility for Netbooks which had been tested with Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04. Tier 1 was “…netbooks that work reasonably well, with few or any issues, and no major issues“. Unfortunately, the Asus EeePC 701 Netbook fell into Tier 2:
“…netbooks that work somewhat, but have problems that may interfere with typical activities at the moment, or many smaller issues.”
For the EeePC701 there was this note “This netbook basically works, but most of the problems with it center around the fact that it has a very small screen with a default resolution of 800×400 and many apps simply won’t scale down to that size.” Two of the issues were “Evolution setup assistant takes more space than available on Eee 701SD” and “Display preferences takes more space than available on a Eee 701SD“.
By space they mean screen space.

This wasn’t even mentioned on the main Eeebuntu NBR website, and if I’d known about it, I certainly would have thought twice before installing Eeebuntu on my Asus Netbook.

On Saturday morning the lights went out with an ominous clang.

My main Desktop PC was on, but since it is on a UPS, it was simply a matter of shutting it down gracefully. I have a fairly basic UPS, similar to the APC (American Power Conversion) Back-UPS ES 8-Outlet, but it suits my purposes.

After the usual checks of fuses and account payments, we assumed it was a general area-wide power failure. Later I confirmed this by phoning the local Power Authority a while later. A recorded message said the power should be back on by mid-afternoon.

That left me with a problem. I needed to mail a parcel before the Post Office closed at 1pm, and the mailing address was in an email message online. Fortunately I could access my email account with my iPhone via AT&T’s 3G network, which was up. It made me appreciate cellular data access more than ever.

It was only mid-afternoon before the power came on again, but the hours without power were quite a drag, as I still had several computer-based tasks which needed to be done.

Replace the Refrigerator Door with a HP (Hewlett-Packard) TouchSmart IQ504 All-in-One PC. The HP IQ504 (and higher end IQ506) models replace last year’s TouchSmart Iq775. This time around HP has included a number of improvements which make it easier to imagine using it in the kitchen, serving as a replacement for a family’s organizational calendar and notes on the Refrigerator Door.

With a 22 inch touch-sensitive screen, the TouchSmart IQ504 has touch based tools like a Note Taker and Family calendar. Although the touch interface is not as sophisticated as the Apple iPhone, it allows for touch-based entry without having to resort to a keyboard and mouse. Even so, because it is an All-in-One PC, the keyboard is always close at hand.

The specs of the HP TouchSmart IQ504 are what you would expect for a Vista Desktop PC:
2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 4GB RAM, a 256MB Nvidia integrated graphics chip and 500GB hard drive. The system has full 802.11n wireless networking, and both the keyboard and mouse connect to the system using Bluetooth.

After neglecting my Asus EeePC 701 Netbook for a number of months, I’ve now loaded a new Operating System onto it. The Netbook had fallen into misuse even before I started “playing” with UMPCs (Ultra Mobile PCs). The UMPCs with all their miniature delights almost put the Asus EeePC right out of my thoughts.

Then, a several days ago I charged it up , booted up and looked at the same old pre-installed linux Operating System, which for some reason is giving error messages when I try to get updates. Fortunately, I had just seen (and downloaded) Eeebuntu, after reading “Let Eeebuntu Free your Eee PC” on the GHacks blog.

I followed the steps mentioned in the blog. This took longer than expected - which is almost always the case when working with computers – the third step (”Plug in a >= 1 Gig Usb flash drive to your computer.“) taking the longest. For some reason the smallest USB flash drive I could find was a 4GB SanDisk micro. It had files on it, so I had a “quick” glance through them, backed some up, then deleted them from them removable drive; formatting it would definitely have been faster. An hour or so later I had Eeebuntu installed on my Asus EeePC 701 Netbook.

Now the downside. I should have spent a little more time trying it out, because for some reason the screen resolution is cutting off the bottom of dialog boxes. What that means is that I cannot see the buttons at the bottom of the dialog boxes to apply settings (I need to look at an Ubuntu distribution on another PC to see what the buttons are). Once I know the layout of those all important buttons, I can change the screen resolution and join the Asus EeePC to my home wireless network…

The HP (Hewlett-Packard) Pavilion dv2-1030us looks like a Notebook, although a very slim one. With 4GB RAM and a 320GB hard drive, it sounds like a notebook. Instead of an Intel Dual Core or even AMD Turion X2 mobile processor, the HP Pavilion dv2 has an AMD Athlon Neo running at 1.6 GHz. The Neo is AMD’s answer to Intel’s Atom processor – specifically meant for Netbooks. This means that inside this Notebook is a Netbook processor, and this Notebook delivers performance which is more like a Netbook than a Notebook. All is not lost though, as the AMD Neo processor has enough power to run Windows Vista smoothly.

This machine appears to be aimed somewhere between Netbooks and Ultraportable notebooks. It is pricier than Netbooks, but it does have a 12 inch screen. Like Netbooks it does not have a built-in optical drive, but it does include and external DVD writer.

Other Notebook-sized Netbooks similar to the HP Pavilion dv2 are the Samsung NC20 and the Dell Inspiron Mini 12 Notebook.

From the company who practically invented the Netbook, comes their latest Netbook, the Asus Eee PC 1000HE.

The Asus 1000HE features the new 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 processor, which was designed for low-power products such as Netbooks. One of the main differences from previous Asus Netbooks is the keyboard, which has widely spaced, flat-topped keys. These make for an improved typing experience.

It also has 1GB RAM and a 160GB hard drive, which seems to be the current standard for Netbooks. Other specs include a 128MB Mobile Intel GMA 950 graphics card, 3 USB ports, SD card reader and Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for networking. It runs Windows XP.

The 1000HE weighs a bit on the heavier side for Netbooks, at 3.2 lbs, but for that you get very good battery life: Asus promises up to “9.5 hours” of battery life, but CNET.com tests showed 6 hours and 21 minutes, which according to the CNET.com Asus Eee PC 1000HE Review is still “an extremely impressive number“.

Naturally this is only my opinion based on a limited subset of UMPCs which I have tried.

When I started I hadn’t received the Sony VGN-UX380N yet, but it had always fascinated me. Upon seeing it for the first time I thought Wow!, it is smaller than I’d expected. The 4.5 inch screen is bright, but I definitely need to try increasing the font size and lowering the screen resolution to make it more readable. I don’t remember than problem so much on the OQO Model 01 I tested, nor on the Fujitsu U810 LifeBook. The Asus R2H UMPC doesn’t really count since it has a 7 inch screen, compared with the OQO Model 01’s 5 inch screen and the U810’s 5.6 inch touchscreen. Okay, the others all have bigger screens!

The layout of the keys on the Sony VAIO VGN-UX380N’s keyboard is closest to a standard keyboard layout. Unfortunately the keys don’t have enough tactile feedback. The U810’s keyboard does some unexpected sharing of keys, but is closest to typing on a regular notebook. The OQO is quite amazing because of it’s size and how well it functions as a regular PC. It also has a really neat way to check the battery charge without turning it on. Pressing an unobtrusive button on the underside of the OQO lights up row of small lights, giving you a quick visual indication of the battery’s charge.

Choosing the best one is hard. The dual clamshell notebook/tablet PC configurations of the Fujitsu LifeBook U810, along with it’s general ease of use narrowly gives it the edge. So the Fujitsu LifeBook U810 narrowly beats out the Sony VAIO VGN-UX380N.