Speeding things up using slower hardware

Today I have recorded a small video of a computer with very low performance and how it can get to boot A LOT faster than your new and shining computer/Mac.

How is that possible? First, you need to get rid of your hard drive and use some pretty fast Compact Flash card to locate the OS. This is not very easy, since not all the CF cards can stand up for the job. You will need a damm fast one and as trusty as you can pay.
In my case, money limits storage to 4Gb, but if I were richier I could go up to 16gb for a moderate amount.

Second, I am using a very cheap computer, runing on an AMD Geode LX800 at 500Mhz wich provides very little processing power, but, if you are careful with what you demand at the same time, it can do the job surprisingly well. Of course it is not the king of multitasking, but you will have no trouble watching xvid o divx movies (do not think of high definition) or surfing the web, or using openoffice.

Despite the cpu is not very powerful, it is also not hungry of electricity, allowing an absolute zero noise when operating. Of course, it also does not heat up, running between 35º and 40º with warm temperature (24º) in the room.

It also has 4 USB ports and many other interfaces to keep conected.

So, that is about the talking, let's see the video:

24hrs with a MacBook Penryn

Wednesday evening brought a nice surprise, I would be able to configure, use and test an Apple Mac for my first time. Sure I have seen them everywhere, read a lot about them, even used them a little to find out I had not a clue how to the simplest things, but until two days ago I have never had the chance to open a new Mac myself and put things up and running.

The experience has been interesting, with a quite a few surprises, despite I thought I already knew everything I could know about Macs, but you know, blogs and tech sites all around the internet suck, because everybody says how good or how evil are Macs, but they do not really telll how does it feel to have a Mac in front of you for the first time coming from Windows and the challenges you will find.

First of all, this mac is not mine, it is from a friend of a friend who thankfully thought of me to help her installing everything. She is a professional photographer and art student.
She told me Leopard needs to be reinstalled, because it comes from appleland using 14gb of space, and she has heard it can be less if you reinstall it and choose a couple different options during the process.
Ok, let's do it I reply, since I have no idea about my way in a Mac I cannot say if it is right.

Ok, we put the Leopard disc 1 on the tray and ask the mac to wipe the hard drive and reinstall Leopard in all its glory.



The interface of the process si quite simple, everything done from a graphic interface, you do not seen an old blue screen like when you install windows on a pc.

The process itself is very straight forward, there is not any important decission to make really and thus, is easy, a lot easier than installing windows xp or vista.



What is best is you do not need to fool around looking for drivers or waiting for the "integrated drivers from the manufacturer" to install after installing the operating system, that means once you have leopard installed, you have a beautiful machine with everything working, but you have spent two hours, and best of all, you did not even need to be near the computer.
With these new mac, it comes iWork (trial) and iLife bundled with the system, so you can almost do anything from the begining. Of course it cannot play xvid or divx out of the box, but installing vlc -for example- is not difficult, at least if you know how to install aplications in a Mac.

Because if you come from Windows and its .exe world, how in hell do you get an application installed? Good question.
First thing to do is find the application in the web and have it downloaded. It is saved in the folder "downloads", and there it is an executable. Coming from the other side, firs thing I think of is double click.
Done, well, not yet. It opens a box whith a big icon an arrow and a big "A".
mmmm, what is this???
let me think.... double click again?
Done; Vlc just opens in front of me. I tell myself: "Is it really installed?" It has been easy, but it has not given me any proof, maybe macs do not need proof of installations, they just work....
I drag and drop a video to the player and plays flawless, ok, it is working!!! I close the program (well, only the red button on the upper left corner of the window).
I install some more applications and after a while I choose to restart the computer. My sixth sense is telling me I am wrong at some point.
When I reboot, I find an unpleasant surprise, I cannot find VLC player anywhere, not in the dock, nor the Applications folder, where the hell has it gone?

I use for the first time the search engine, Spotlight, with no luck, it only finds the installer I first downloaded.
Once more, I put into work my windows experience, if it is not working after a first installation, let's do it again and catch the problem.
I repeat the process and this time, after installing and opening the program I close it using command+Q, (equivalent to Alt+F4).
Obviously, the program disappears completely again.
This time I still have the installer opened with the big box with the vlc icon, the arrow and the big "A".
Let's try a different approach: "what if I had never used a computer before and I do not know what is double click?" "what if I read the box whitout the computer that surrounds it?"
I still have the "applications" folder opened in the background so I finally get the epiphany I was waiting for: I just need to drag and drop the big VLC icon (which does not even look like an icon or something you could drag&drop) to the applications folder itself -yes, the crazy way- and voilà, I have my first application installed in a Mac.

I have to tell the truth: I felt stupid, it was so easy, BUT, I am sure it has happened to most of the people who came from windows. They just forget to mention it when they talk about switching to apple (or they feel so fooled that cannot say something was tricky being this absolutely easy).



Once I had these step under control -there were some applications that did install themselves by double clicking in the installers- and get use to the "mounting images" feature that keeps new disk units popping on the desktop I move forward to the next level.

Because Leopard is very nice, but after twelve years in the windows world, being this slow doing EVERYTHING is too painful, I needed some Microsoft Windows -never thought of that, did you?-
So, let's bootcamp it. I do not find it on the applications folder (what is the point of that folder if it has not all the applications?), so I use Spotlight to find it.
I still have not a clue of where it is, I simply look for it with spotlight and opened it.
Opened, and followed the instructions, it asks me for a windows xp disc. After some problems with special versions of windows, I finally find the windows SP2 disc that bootcamp likes.



Reboot and install windows xp -the mac owner wanted xp, not vista-. I felt a lot more comfortable, since friendly fire(windows) is a lot easier to avoid that enemy(mac) fire(fury).
Once xp is installed, I put the leopard disc on the drive to end the xp installation: sound rather wrong, but it is what bootcamp said.
Ok, and this is what you get:





So in the end I have managed to install a bunch of applications in Leopard and also managed to install windows.
When using windows, the first thing I noticed weird is the keyboard: where the f*** are the Del, av pag, prnt scr keys?????
Well aparently they aren't anywhere on this mac, so I check the bootcamp for dummies documentation. Fn+Backspace equals Delete, and the others are even more complicated, and does not help there is only one Fn key on one side of the keyboard, using those keys is always way too hard.

Talking about user experience on windows has another drawback: RIGHT BUTTON. Apparently, it is not needed since it is supposed to be done puting two fingers on the single touchpad button. Definetely I am too stupid, because there is no way I can get that to work.
After playing a lot with the computer, I mean doing nothing productive, only try everything and see how everything works, I decide I am ready for the next step of my quest:



Enabling an extended desktop. I am forced to use the d-sub15 adapter for the macbook since it is the only adaptor my friend has bought.
Configuring the bigger desktop is easy, but has some annoyances:
First, if the screens turn off for saving power, when you come back to the computer, the external display does not turn on automatically.
Second, It is very weird the way you can move windows around the desktop, te top bar stays ALWAYS on the main screen and therefore, you can only see one app at the time.
Third, when using multidesktop with windows, sometimes the macbook screen (not the external), flickers as if it was an old CRT screen with low frecuency rate, this is particularly scary and annoying. If you unplug the external monitor, everything comes back to normal.

Also I want to mention some details about this Mac:
The screen sucks!! Specially, the viewing angle, if you are not in front of the screen it looks washed and the bright is only OK.
And last, but not least, the cooling. It gets quite warm on the back, which is annoying if you are holding the computer on your legs, but at least the keyboard is not hot. The big problem is if you are making the mac sweat with CPU intensive activities, then you suffer a level of noise which does not match the minimalism and zen looks of its white design.

It is true that my everyday machine is a more expensive Sony Vaio AR, which is now two years old, and was noticeably more expensive and bulkier, they play in completely different leagues, but, the macbook does not look any attractive to me now.

Maybe the MacBook Pro, we'll see.

PRO:
-Slim and compact design.
-Good battery life.
-Easy to begin using.

CONS:
-keyboard with fewer keys than pc's.
-screen sucks.
-graphical performance sucks.
-single button for the touchpad.
-noisy
-doesn't feel faster than a two years old pc.
-no HD led, no power led.
-no card reader.
-leopard is not better, it is just different.

Fuji F50fd

Today I am writing about the best compact digital camera in the market: the fuji f50fd; Although I am not a fan of fuji's compact models, the flagship model has gained a reputation with amazingly high image quality at high sensitivities with the F30 and F31fd.

These models did not get the crowd's attention, probably because they were not very fashionable and didn't play the megapixels race, with only 6Mp when the competition were going above 8Mp.
Fuji failed us coming to the MP race with the F50fd but, to be fair, it is still ahead of competition when it comes to good high iso response. Even if we compare it with more expensive and well known models as Canon G7 or G9 and Nikon P5100 the Fuji is the winner if we are looking for iso over 400.

Here is the proof:


It retains highest quality up to iso400, and is really good at iso800, decreasing at 1600 and being terrible at 1600 and 3200.
If we do not compare it with results from other compact cameras these may even look very noisy, but once we compare it with the G9 or P5100 the Fuji really shines.

The downside is, they did not make pictures from the F50fd any better than F31fd, despite having 12Mp instead of 6. If there is plenty of light and you want to print the picture on an insanely big size for a compact camera, you may get slightly more detail with the F50fd, but for printing posters, you should go for a digital reflex for starters (even with less MP).
On the other hand, the screen is very good, colors are accurate to the output, and, while lacking an optical viewfinder the screen sports an extra-bright mode, that when in use makes the screen perfectly visible with direct sunlight.

Another feature unique from the fuji its modes to simulate different kinds of films. There is one for color called "chromo" and another for black and white pictures.
Here is the comparison between chromo and standard color:



In my opinion, there are only two big issues with the Fuji F50fd.
Firs of all, battery does not last very long, maybe too tight for a photo-intensive day. It is worse than its predecesors, F30 and F31fd.

The second drawback is the user interface. If you choose one mode you may not even see option that are not selectable in that specific mode, so you can be driven crazy looking for something in the menus, that simply is not there in that mode.
It also makes you navigate through too many items to adjust F or S in Manual mode, this body needs more dedicated buttons and a reorganization of the user interface. Despite this, in about an hour, you can master it all.

This camera is, until further notice, my preferred compact camera and the one I would recommend most. Great image quality, good price -specially if you look for it-, many features, really compact and feels well built and durable.

There is a better review in dpreview if you want it.

External Hard Drive Monster: Iomega Ultramax

Today I am making a mini-review after a few months using an external hard drive, peculiar to say the less.



Actually, it is not A hard drive, since it has two drives inside, that is the reason the case is so massive. The case is made completely of brushed aluminium, a perfect design match to a Mac Pro or a new iMac. Indeed, it came formated with HFS+ (mac filesystem).



What makes this drive special, is its performance. The Drive comes configured as a Raid0, providing speeds up to 70Mb/s of sustained read. To achieve this awesome performance, the drives provide two Firewire800 connectors; Despite very rare on pc's, we can easily find this interface on mac pro, iMac and even MacBook Pro as an standard component. For further compatibility it also comes with usb2.0 and firewire400 connectors, which are mainstream.



Another interesting feature about its connectivity is that it has 3 usb ports and another 3 firewire ports, so you even add connectors when attaching to your computer, nice detail!!

Performance is astonishing, providing constant 70Mb/s through firewire800, 40Mb/s with firewire400 and 30Mb/s with USB2.0; Even with Fw800, this drive is interface limited!!
Compared to the newest and biggest 750gb and 1Tb single sata drives, this speed might not seem to high, but for laptop users or iMac users, getting this performance with an external device is awesome!!







Comparing speeds between interfaces makes clear usb is only meant for times when we have to use it with computers without firewire, since it is the slowest and most resources demanding of the three.

Because I use a Sony Vaio, not a pro Mac, I haven't got any firewire800 embedded on the notebook. The solution was difficult, since firewire800 cards are difficult to find and purchase despite I could go for an express card or a PCMCIA device. I found the solution through ebay, spending 50% less than buying to a specialized shop. First I got an Apiotek card, but it didn't work, with 10 or more computers that I tried; The funny thing is it worked fine with 2 different Fujitsu-Siemens computers, no idea why.
The ebay seller changed the card for another one, without any kind of name on it, and with funny caution advices on the base:







All in all, the drive runs smoothly, well, smoothly but noisy; The fan changes speed and sometimes it becomes REALLY annoying. I assume it is because of the metal case, since it is not soft attached. Being this professional oriented, it is a big deffect, specially for those of us with almost silent computers.

Reviewing Biggest USB Flash Memory: 32GB

I couldn't help it, I needed one; Actually I don't. But I just wanted to have it, 32Gb, these days for a usb stick is simply crazy. In six months it will be normal seing them at stores, and in less than a year, they will be cheap.



This fast, 150x speed stick. After testing it, it threw out 30Mb/s reading and, 8Mb/s writing speed. I have to do more writing tests, because 8mb/s despite good, feels strange compared to those amazingly fast sustained 30 reading.
*Updated: Today I made a simple but reliable writing test: I copied 30Gb of HD movies (files over 4Gb each) and it took just over an hour. This means, it has an average writing speed of 8Mb/s. If we think about the hour it takes to fill the sticks, it is dead slow, but, compared to other average usb sticks, it is a lot quicker.



And if having 32gb in a usb stick, means I don't need to take an external hard drive with my laptop all the time, I still think is great! Since this stick is really big, I formated it with NTFS rather than FAT32 for better use of drive's capacity as well as being able to write files bigger than 4Gb.
I also did the test the other way around: Copying the same files from the usb stick to a very fast drive (2xSATA drives on RAID 0 through firewire) to check the reading speed. This test was a bit disapointing, with only 24,14Mb/s average speed and under the higher 30Mb/s measured earlier. Compared to writing speed, it is actually 3 times faster reading than writing.*
With this 30Mb/s reading speed I want to put Linux inside and see how the PC feels, but since my notebook refuses to boot from a usb stick, I'll have to wait for another oportunity.
This stick is enhaced for Vista ReadyBoost but seriously, it only means it is not dead slow since all the relatively new but cheap sticks I tried could do the job.



About the usb stick, it is rather uncommon, its cover is made of soft rubber instead of common plastic. This gives a nicer feeling, and according to manufacturer it is water and shock resistant, but since this thing is a little expensive, we are not going to check those.
Size is almost average, it is thicker, but I rather think it is about the rubber cover, more than bigger because of its capacity.
As you can see on the pictures is almost the same size as a normal 4gb stick.




Usually usb sticks come in a blister as small as the stick, with some space to put the features and that's all. But here, we are talking about other stuff bundled: Indeed it comes with a usb extender cable -handy for computers under the desk- and a lanyard -really cheap and lame one-; I rather have no lanyard since it is poor quality.

Patriot Memory also qualified this usb flash memory with lifetime warranty, so probably those 32gb are safe in there.

To sum up, this Patriot Xporter XT Boost 32gb usb flash memory is huge at 32Gb, it is not the fastest usb stick ever seen by mankind but close and it is not too expensive considering it is very rare.
It is a safe purchase if you need, or better said want, a 32Gb usb stick.
More info about it here.

Apple iPod Video 5.5G

This is the 80gb iPod 5.5G;
I bought it on black because everybody had white ipods; Big mistake!!! Black gets full of fingerprints in no time!



Anyway it is very discreet and strangers see it a bit bulky; I think this is good, making it less attractive to possible thieves.

None of that is what I like most of this ipod, therefore I love I can throw in massive amounts of music whithout fearing "disk full" at any time. I do not need to choose what music do I put each time, I just put the music in case I want to listen to it.



Screen is also good and a big improvement over my older ipod photo; It plays videos with good quality, but the screen is too small to enjoy them. The video output is indeed a very nice add-on. You can plug your ipod to almost any tv-screen out there.

New mates for the shuffle

I have decided I will use my brand new grey ipod shuffle when I want to take music with me, but I do not want to carry the big and heavy 80gb ipod video;

Not only because it is big but not as rugged as this little shuffle;

So I bought a pair of rugged clip-earphones to go with the ipod. They are not in the most elegant colour: bright green.



These pair of clip earphones are suposed to be sweat and water proof and even, washable;

Before I bought them, I did not notice they were bundled with a carrying case;


I even manage to put the earphones themselves with the ipod inside.


I am starting to love the ipod shuffle, these days gadgets get more and more complex, and this is so against all that....

I am curious how will I know it is running out of battery, will the blinking LED tell me???

I should mention which pair of earphones are these: They are Sennheiser OMX70 Sport. They cannot be considered cheap, but if they are as rugged as they promise, probably will not look expensive;

My only concern about the earphones is that they cable is extremely thin, I do not know how rugged will it be...

They are easy to wear and fit comfortable to my ears, and I guess any other pair of ears, specially since there are adapters for diferents size of ears.

In the other hand, they are very light, 7grams, including the cable. The ipod shuffle 2G weights another 12 grams.