Archive for the 'hardware' Category

AC adaptors: standardize, please

Published on April 25, 2009 in hardware. 2 Comments Tags: , .

I was just cleaning up around my computer and I got annoyed again because of the utter lack of common sense hardware vendors seem to have in their choice of AC adapters (I’m not the only one, Douglas Adams wrote about it before).  I made a list of all the devices in a radius of 3m around me:

Brand Product Plug Volt Ampere Watt
Apple Airport Extreme (proprietary) 12 V 1.8 A 22 W
Apple Mac Mini (proprietary) 18.5 V 4.6 A 85 W
Apple iPhone charger USB + mini USB 5 V 1.0 A 5.0 W
Asus EeePC 1000H Coax 12 V 3.0 A 36 W
Canon Selphy ES1 Photo printer Coax 24 V 2.3 A 55 W
Dell Latitude laptop (old) (proprietary) 20 V 2.0 A 40 W
Iomega External USB disk Power DIN 12 V 1.5 A 18 W
Jabra Bluetooth Jawbone headphones (proprietary) 5 V 550 mA 2.8 W
Jabra Bluetooth headphones mini USB 5 V 180 mA 0.9 W
Logitech Bluetooth headphones Coax 6.5 V 250 mA 1.6 W
Netgear Cable router Coax 15 V 1.2 A 18 W
Netgear External network disk Coax 12 V 5.0 A 60 W
Nintendo Gameboy (proprietary) 5.2 V 320 mA 1.7 W
Nokia GSM Charger N-series Nokia plug small 5 V 890 mA 4.5 W
Nokia GSM Charger pre-N-series Nokia plug big 3.7 V 355 mA 1.3 W
QPS Digital photo frame Coax 12 V 3.0 A 36 W
Trekstor External USB disk Coax 12 V 2.0 A 24 W
Tulip Laptop Coax 19 V 3.4 A 65 W

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Touched by the iPod

Published on September 26, 2008 in Apple and hardware. 9 Comments Tags: , , , .

Apple iPod TouchAs most geeks in my circle of friends, I am known to buy hardware slightly more often than the average Joe. I have 3 Wifi routers at home (just gave away my 4th one), I have more than 2TB of hard disk storage, split out over half a dozen of PCs and devices, and I have more USB cables than teeth. But hardware that makes me *really* happy, that is uncommon. Don’t get me started on failing hard disks and non-functioning printers. So let me tell you about this new piece of hardware that I bought: the iPod Touch.

No iPhone, thanks

This is not my first iPod, I think I’m at n° 5. And before you start telling me “the iPod Touch is an iPhone, that can’t be used for calling. Why not buy an iPhone?”. Well, I don’t need a new phone yet, I’m probably gonna buy an iPhone in a year or so, when the GSM providers have reasonable data transfer prices, and there’s the price too: the 8GB iPod is slightly over 200 euro. The iPhone is 525 euro.

Applications

But this baby is really neat. It does music, sure, and video, like the previous one. But it’s got Wifi, a big, smart touch-screen, games, applications, and … From day one I’m using Google Mail (via IMAP), the Weather application, Google Maps. Then I started looking through the free applications on the App Store. So what am I using now:

  • Games: Dactyl, Cube Runner, BlueSkiesLite, Sudoku, TapTap
  • Stuff: iDoodle2Lite, WhiteNoise, Remote
  • Network: AirSharing, Speedtest, IM+, Palringo
  • Social networking: Facebook, AroundShare, GooSync, ShoZu, reQall
  • Info: BuienRadar

I’ve just started using reQall, a kind of task list + shopping list, which allows you to add via the iPod/iPhone, via the web and via a IM (Gtalk) account. This looks promising.

The games are not bad. Dactyl is strangely addictive, the movement sensors work really well with BlueSkiesLite, … I expect to see some killer iPod/iPhone games in the future.

The only thing I miss now is a good sync with my Google Calendar. iTunes can sync my iPod contacts with Google Mail, but not my calendar. GooSync is supposed to be able to do that, but I can’t get it to work. Of course Apple wants me to use (paid) MobileMe, but I want to see if I can find a free way first.

In any case, I discover a new use every day. It’s … exciting, actually.

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Netgear ReadyNAS: NAS done right

Published on April 30, 2008 in hardware. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

One of the most popular pages on this blog is about a storage device that has a lot of enemies and few defenders, the SC101. It’s Windows-only, uses a proprietary filesystem and when (not if) it starts crashing, just say bye-bye to your data. The product didn’t do much good for Netgear’s reputation. So when Netgear offered me the opportunity to test a real NAS solution, I agreed. So they sent me the ReadyNAS NV+.

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WD My Book is not really ‘Pro’ storage

Published on January 7, 2008 in hardware. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

WD My Book Pro 1TB After having Lacie, Maxtor, Iomega and most recently Netgear StorageCentral external storage fail on me, I am now the proud owner of a broken Western Digital My Book Pro II 1TB. I bought it less than a year ago and used it as a mirrored 500GB drive for my music, movies and images. It first failed 3 months ago (broken mirror) but after a full night of rebuilding it worked again. But now one of the drives has fallen victim to the infamous ‘click-of-death‘ and the drive would not show up anymore via USB nor Firewire. I disconnected the broken (SATA) disk, and then I could see the other one show up again as a lone 500GB drive. I quickly started copying to a 2 x 300GB FreeNAS system I had set up on an old Dell system (you don’t want to know how many old hard disks I have lying around). During the rescue operation the solo disk gave up twice, but by restarting the My Book device, it came back. So now I have an extra copy of all my data, most importantly my 80GB of photographs (quickly growing thanks to my Canon350D) and 120GB of iTunes music (mostly ripped CDs, not purchased, but still).

First thing is to see how Pixmania handles the warranty. They are supposed to send me a replacement for the broken drive, but I haven’t heard back from their customer support yet.

And then I have to make a decision about an alternative for reliable storage. Do I go for something semi-pro like the Buffalo Terastation Live (2TB, Raid5 for +- $1000) or do I build my own storage server with an old PC, a hardware RAID card and something like FreeNAS or Ubuntu. Decisions, decisions …

TomTom One: beauty with short breath

Published on October 27, 2007 in hardware. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

TomTom voice: Norma The TomTom One (the ‘old’ model) is my first ever GPS. Overall, an excellent design. I never had to open the manual because it is a very intuitive device. The route calculation is quite fast and accurate, and with the Spanish “Norma” voice installed, it is even a pleasure to be told where to go (”despues de ocho cientos metros, gire a la derecha“).

The only problem with the device is that within 6 months of buying it, the battery started running out very quickly. Actually, it is not always short of breath, but mostly. Sometimes when I turn off the ignition (which stops power to the GPS) it will die within seconds. Other times, it might keep on running for an hour. Feels like a bad contact inside but the standard engineering trick for this (”hit device hard with right hand”) doesn’t help.

According to TomTom support (but I don’t think that’s why my battery gave up):

Speaking of the battery, TomTom told me by phone today that I should navigate using the battery and not the in-car charger. The customer rep said that overcharging was an issue if I left it connected continually.
via reviews.cnet.com

TomTom One booting
When I check the boot screen (reset and keep pressing the power button while turning on, via) then my battery gives 4140 mV, which is a good enough score. So I don’t think buying a new battery would help (they sell for less than 20€ at e.g. www.mdsbatterie.com.fr). I guess I’ll just wait a bit and go for the TomTom One XL. Size matters.

Logitech online store: haunted

Published on October 18, 2007 in hardware and internet. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Shaky Logitech I have wanted to buy a keyboard with Bulgarian layout for a while, and as you can imagine, you don’t find these in the local FNAC or Vandenborre. So when I saw that the Logitech site allowed purchasing online, of such exotic items like a Bulgarian keyboard, I quickly ordered one. However, the experience has been unsatisfactory:

  • First try: I order the keyboard, do the checkout procedure, pay with credit-card and get an immediate reaction: purchase OK, shipment will follow soon. Wow, that’s slick. Several days later, UPS passes by my front door while I’m not there, they say, the package is signed off by a certain “Korenberg” and I get an email: delivery OK. Slight alarm bell: I know no “Korenberg” living at my appartment. When I get home this is confirmed: no one in the building knows anyone by that name. Keyboard is in the twilight zone. I file complaint with Logitech, they propose refund, I accept, I’m still waiting for confirmation. But, I still need a BG keyboard.
  • Second try: I order another keyboard and try to pay with my credit card. Twice I give my credit card details, press “Process” and get redirected to the same check-out page, without any notion of whether or not my order is accepted. I check the “order history”, see that my recent purchase is not there and decide to give up on credit cards.
  • I select “bank payment” and finish checkout. They tell me what bank account I should pay on (one of Bibit), and with which message. I do the payment, see that the number message is not a structured number (”gestructureerde mededeling”) and put it in the normal message box. Since then, nothing. Has Bibit recognized the money as the payment for Logitech? No idea. Has Logitech started fulfillment? I guess not.
  • I visit the Logitech web site again, checking out the Squeezebox, and decide to test the checkout system again. I put a Squeezebox in my shopping cart. When I go to the customer care, I fly from shop.logitech.com (where I am logged in) to logitech-nl-emea.custhelp.com (which looks the same, but where another login is necessary, because both accounts aren’t linked, apparently). There I get into an eternal redirection loop, with an infinite number of “&cl=BE,nl” adding themselves to the URL.
  • I try to break out of that loop by going back to the shopping cart page. For some reason my shopping cart now contains 2 Squeezeboxes instead of one. That’s it , I’ve had it.

Bottom line: this online shop of theirs is as trustworthy as Lindsay Lohan saying she’s gonna stop drinking. I buy online a lot from shops like Amazon and Pixmania, so I think I’m qualified to say that their shopping application stinks. I’m gonna wait until next week for reply on the second purchase, if there’s none, I’m cancelling that order, and I’m never shopping with Logitech again.

Two dice make a calendar

Published on September 28, 2007 in hardware. 16 Comments

Kalender kat

Little riddle: if you have two dice (so each has 6 sides), with 1 digit on each side and you want to be able to form all numbers between 1 and 31 (for the days of the month), what digits would be on each dice? E.g. if dice #1 has 0-1-2-3-4-5 and the second 4-5-6-7-8-9, it won’t work, because you cannot form the number ‘22′.

Try to guess and I’ll give the answer next week. There’s a little trick involved! I first tried to figure it out without looking at the dice, and I enjoyed the mind gymnastics.

LG KU-800: have low expectations

Published on July 6, 2007 in hardware. 1 Comment

LG KU800 phone Because the posts on disappointing hardware are very popular on my blog (e.g. Netgear storage and Lexmark printer), I’d like to write about a device that also should be avoided: the LG KU800 GSM. The KU800 is the Vodafone version of the KG800, which is sold in Belgium by Proximus (239€).

It was chosen by someone close to me for its neat black design, somewhat iPod-cool, let’s say. The design turned out to be the only thing it’s got going for it. The battery performance is lousy and almost every conversation of more than 5 minutes is broken of. She complained and got a replacement phone: exactly the same performance. A colleague of her also has that phone: the battery won’t even hold a full day.

The GSM forums talk about the same behaviour:

  • gsmarena.com: “it freezes up all the time, especially when im texting”, “the screen goes blank.. the camera freezes… i cant hear people on the other end… and oh the battery sucks”, “the display blocks when I slide it open , the touch pad started to fail sometimes and it has a very low speaker, i can hardly hear what the people i speak to are saying.”
  • yourmobilephonereviews.co.uk: “The battery life is appalling”, “Most of the time the buttons don’t work “, “the phone volume itself is quiet even on the full setting, battery life is rubbish”, “I am now on my 4th one they all have the same problem. It just decides when it wants to turn on or off. The screen freezes, & the vibrate mode gets stuck”

Why can’t there be a phone with great design and the performance and reliability of a Ericsson/Nokia phone? Why is there no designer on the level of Jonathan Ive working at Nokia? Maybe that is a good question for Bob Cringely.