Tuesday December 8
 
11:50
 
New Netbook

Back in May 2007 I bought one of the first so-called “Netbooks”, the Kohjinsha SA1. It had an 800×600 swivel inaccurate touchscreen and ran like a dog – and I don’t mean a greyhound, I mean one of those small fat wobbly dogs that pensioners have.

It cost 104,800 yen. It was probably one of the most disappointing PC purchases I ever bought. The keyboard was worse than that of a ZX Spectrum. IE ran so slow that it was almost going backwards.

A month after I bought it, Kohjinsha brought out a new model. Same price. Higher res screen. Decent keyboard. New processor. All the problems fixed. Grrrr.

Fastforward to 2009 and it’s fair to say that I’m still cautious of Netbooks. One bitten, twice shy they say.

But Netbooks really have come on by leaps and bounds. Last week I bought one of the new Acer Aspire One AOD250 netbooks. Looks wise, it’s just like this – but with it has the new N280 processor and a 1280×720 screen. With the larger screen, it doesn’t feel constrained like a 1024×600 netbook. Battery life is around 7 hours – in the week that I’ve had it, using it for about an hour on the sofa each night, I’ve not yet had to recharge it once.

Good keyboard, large screen, useable battery life, and very decent speed running Chrome, it is perfectly usable – unlike the Kohjinsha trash I bought before. And it only cost 35,760 yen – almost 70,000 less than the crap I bought before.

The only problem? It has two screen defects – one single RGB gone at the top left, and one full RGB set, a full pixel, at the bottom left.

Usually dead pixels would bother the hell out of me – but with the pitch on the 1280×720 screen being so small, I can’t notice the single RGB defect and can only notice the full dead pixel if I look for it. I started the process of sending it back to exchange it, but in the end I couldn’t be bothered. If it was a bright always-on pixel then I’d care more. If I’d bought a 110,000 yen MacBook then I’d care. But on a cheap-as-chips netbook that has a life of 1-2 year max? It’s not worth my time getting a new one, running the risk that it has bright pixel defects, setting up Windows 7 again, etc etc.  Yeah, I’d prefer it was perfect, but I guess they have low tolerances on these cheapo computers. And the price on Amazon has gone up now by around 10%, so I kinda got it at a discount.

Bottom line: Netbooks can actually handle internet use now, which is splendid – and they are almost at throwaway prices.

For what it’s worth, I’ve read that Acer’s screen policy is 8-16 dead/bright “spots” across the whole screen or one in centerbefore they’ll consider a return. Whether spot means “RGB” value or “pixel”, I’m not quite sure.

One of the nice things about this new Netbook is that it came with Windows 7 Starter. Why is that nice? I have an MSDN subscription and I was able to enter my Ultimate serial number into the “Upgrade Anytime” control panel and Windows immediately upgraded the installation to Ultimate, without needing to download anything. I then downloaded the English language pack and could switch the UI to English – dumping the Japanese. OK, so it isn’t as easy as having a Mac and it requires Ultimate, but it’s better than having to install Windows again from scratch.

Thursday December 3
 
17:04
 
Windows 7 monitor problem

I had the weirdest display problem with Windows 7. If I switched off and on my LCD monitor with Windows then all the windows would be resized down to 1024×768 and moved to the top left corner of the screen. Turns out that when I switched off the LCD, Win7 was defaulting to a standard VGA monitor.

I typically never powerdown or sleep my PC so that I can VNC into it from my iPhone – instead I just switch off the monitor, so this was a big problem for me. And I’m not the only one it’s a problem for:

My issue is that every time i turn my monitor off, Windows 7 rearrange and resize my desktop windows. This probably happens because win7 change the resolution of the desktop when the monitor gets ‘un-plugged’ (in reality just turned off).

I tried everything fix this – even disabling TMM (Transient Multi-monitor Manager) didn’t fix it. In the end I found a workaround using VNC and my iPhone!

1. With VNC running on my PC, I switched off the monitor. Real VNC free version works in Win7 if you run it in User mode and not as a Service.
2. From my iPhone, use Mocha VNC to connect to the PC. (VNC also allows connections via a standard web browser - if you don’t have an iPhone you could try that.)
3. In ATI Catalyst, under Monitor Properties – Attributes, untick “Use Extended Display Identification Data (EDID)” and set the resolution to 1920 x 1200 (the resolution of my LCD) and refresh rate to 60Hz. (If you don’t have an ATI card, look for the relevant option to force display resolution in your graphics card driver software.)
4. Go to Control Panel – Display – Adjust Resolution – Advanced settings. Under “Monitor”, uncheck “Hide modes that this monitor cannot display”, then under “Adapter” click “List All Modes” and select one of the 1920 x 1200 options.
5. After applying this, I get kicked out of VNC. Very quickly I need to VNC in again to click OK on the “Do you want to keep these display settings?” box.

Voila! Now when I switch off my LCD, Windows 7 still detects the monitor is gone and switches to the default monitor – but because that resolution matches my LCD display, the windows dont resize.

Funny that I used an iPhone to fix Windows though – haha…

If you want to disable TMM under Windows 7, here’s how. This didn’t work for me, but I know there’s a lot of people out there who want to disable TMM for KVM switches.

1. Open Windows 7 registry editor by clicking Start, type regedit.
2. Right click on regedit, click on Run as Administartor.
3. Navigate to the location: Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\TMM
4. Click UseIViewHelper in the right pane.
5. Set the value data to “0” {zero} to disable TMM feature in Windows 7.
6. If you want to re-enable TMM feature, set the value data to “1”.
7. Click OK and reboot you computer for the changes to take effect.

Tuesday November 17
 
10:21
 
Free iPhone 3G 3GS ringtones

No, this ain’t a scam where I get you to text me an SMS for a free ringtone and then charge you 10 quid a month for eternity because you can’t unsubscribe. But if you want to do that, please send an SMS to:

816 8008135*

That’s a joke – honest!

I finally found out a way to create a ringtone – and alarm tone, because they are the same things – for my iPhone for free. And direct from iTunes, with no extra software to download. It’s so simple I can’t believe anyone click those links to pay for ringtones in iTunes or buys those crappy ringtone apps.

I’ve written a page on wot u need 2 do 2 cre8 ur rt (that’s txt spk that is): Create iPhone ringtones for free

I’ve got my iPhone walking me up to Keane - Somewhere Only We Know, and my ringtone set to my favourite ringtone from when I lived in Korea: Fantastic Plastic Machine – Hello and Goodbye. It feels so good to have my iPhone waking me up and ringing to music I know – a small thing, but also a big thing.

Shameful that Apple doesn’t make it easier to make ringtones for free.

* large knockers

Tuesday October 20
 
18:16
 
Barnes and Noble new eBook reader

I’d be buying one of these B&N eBooks if it wasn’t for the fact that I bet it wont be available overseas. Sigh. Maybe I’ll be able to get one of these Android readers instead – that’s also 3G though, so also unlikely.

Still, it’s this hybrid e-ink and LCD panel which could really shake things up, I think. It’s coming in a device next month – could it be in the Apple tablet? Unlikely, but you never know – maybe this is the screen that makes Apples killer iTablet - the combination of a large iPod touch and eBook reader would be a killer. 

Wednesday October 14
 
10:11
 
Amazon comes clean

Don’t say my blog isn’t effective. After writing yesterday about Amazon’s lack of clarity on Kindle pricing and contacting Engadget, Amazon today has updated its country specific information.

Japan now says:

Low Book Prices: New York Times® Best Sellers and New Releases are $11.99, unless marked otherwise. You’ll also find many books for less – over 100,000 titles are priced under $5.99

UK says:

Low Book Prices: New York Times® Best Sellers and New Releases are $11.99 to $13.99 (prices include VAT), unless marked otherwise. You’ll also find many books for less – over 70,000 titles are priced under $5.99

Korea: Kindle is unavailable.

So in Japan we pay $11.99 for a wireless download and US customers travelling overseas pay $11.98 for a wireless download. Fair?

Yes and No. US customers can download for $9.99 using their PC and transferring by USB, but international customers can’t. And what about the UK where the price is up to $13.99?

Oh, and while I’m at it – international customers can buy a Kindle and download books, but we can’t use the Kindle for iPhone App? And if that is made available, what price will the books be – there’s no additional overhead, so no justification for higher prices.

No wonder people download from P2P when publishers and device manufacturers can’t sort themselves out.