Archive for August, 2011

My First Android Phone

Friday, August 26th, 2011

I’m after getting my first android phone, its the vodafone smart or its a huawei 858 in real money. So why did I buy it,  well it’s €60 so it’s cheap as chips. So I wouldn’t be an issue if I decided to drop it on a sink or worse. So far it works it dose a job, I’m even using it to write this post. So is android able to run on this phone, well it can stall the odd time so it isn’t the greatest. but it works and the applications work. The GPS works, I’ve had issues with the blue-tooth. (more…)

The college Laptop/back to school Laptop

Monday, August 22nd, 2011

Well it’s almost back to college and you need a computer. So what to buy well it’s always a tough choice,  but you don’t need to go into the thousands for a PC these days.  the lower end laptop will do the job for most things, and the way to go here is low end.

  • Keyboards: if your buying a laptop be sure to try it out and type on it, and type a paragraph on it, cause if it’s a bad keyboard your stuck with it for 3-4 years.
  • Memory, go for as much memory as you can, Memory is not hard disk space, we’re looking here at on-board memory, it will be quoted like 4096MB which is enough if your running windows 7.
  • Hard drive space: Don’t worry about hard drive space 160GB will be enough for most people, if your into music and video, you can always get an external USB drive. USB if you can come across USB 3.0 on a system, then that’s a plus.
  • Screen size, rember the bigger the screen the more its going to cost to replace it if some one sits on it, of if it falls off the bed/desk or what ever!, a 17inch screen is going around €200 for a replacment, and its not an easy job.

The next thing is software:

  • Office software, well Microsoft office is the standard, but you can use open office or libre office, once you have made sure that you save everything as Microsoft file format and it will work fine.
  • Photo-shop is a standard but GIMP gives you all the functionality that most people need, it’s also open source.
  • The Zotero plug-in for Mozilla FireFox, is great for citations.
  • LYX is great for producing papers and Theseus, and is much better at handling documentation than word.
  • If your a publisher look at scribus, its  open source desktop publishing system, you could always pay for quark.

Happy shopping, and don’t spend too much!

HP getting out of the Tablet game

Saturday, August 20th, 2011

Looks like HP dipped their to in the water and didn’t like what they saw, going up against Apple and Android (Google) is not a good starting point even if you did buy Palm. It’s a pitty it would have been good for the industry. It’s a bit like OS2 an old operating system on the PC. It tried and failed, it seems the smart phone business is all to similar to the PC business 30 years ago. We’re going to have two main players, One dominant and one not so dominant, and the one will the open architecture will win, Android has the open architecture, so my money is on this at the moment, but I think the patent wars that are stating could put a stop to Androids development.

Standard 3D Glasses

Tuesday, August 9th, 2011

3D glasses are now to be standardised, well the main players have got together to create a standard for 3D glasses, The “Full HD Glasses Initiative” which should lay down a standard for consumer active shutter glasses to communicate over Blue-tooth or IR. So we should be able to in a few months walk in to a shop and buy what glasses that will work with our new TV’s, Looks like it will be 2012 before they are out.

“August 8, 2011- Panasonic Corporation, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Sony Corporation and X6D Limited (XPAND 3D) today announced their intent to collaborate on the development of a new technology standard for consumer 3D active glasses, under the name, “Full HD 3D Glasses Initiative.””

 

Make everything wifi

Friday, August 5th, 2011

So you got a printer connected to a laptop, but you need the laptop to be free, well the people in IOGEAR thought of you. This device for about $100 makes printers web cams and anything usb, “wireless”, it will still have to be attached to the device, But its a hell of a lot cheaper then going out and buying a wireless printer. More info fron IOGEAR here