RickyCadden.com

I’m Traveling Again

// August 31st, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Uncategorized

I’m traveling again, this time to Stuttgart, Germany, for Nokia World 2009. Normally, Nokia World takes place in December, so the earlier event dates will definitely make the weather a bit more bearable. I’m traveling quite gadget-heavy, as well, which is nothing unusual. For starters, I’m bringing 2 laptops. I realize that might be a mistake, but theoretically it will offer a great experience. Last year, I attempted to cover Nokia World with only the Fujitsu P1610, and it was a horrid experience. Managing massive high-resolution photos, including editing and uploading, simply wasn’t feasible with the weak processor, unfortunately.

This trip, I’ll have both my Dell XPS M1330 and my Asus 1000HE along for the ride. The XPS M1330 will likely stay in my bag most of the time, and will be extremely beneficial to edit videos and photos at the event, rather than having to wait until I get home. Conversely, the Asus 1000HE, while a powerful machine for its size, will be much better suited to taking notes during interviews and putting together quick blog posts on the go. Its extended battery – further extended by cranking down the display brightness and other factors – will also make it ideal to cover an event from.

I’m also bringing a borrowed Nokia N810 Internet Tablet, for two reasons – first, the Nokia N900 was recently announced, and it’ll be great to be able to get some side-by-side comparison photos of the long-lost brothers. Second, the N810 will make it even easier to liveblog a keynote speech or do other text-oriented tasks, in a handheld form factor.

As for phones, I’m bringing along the N86 8MP, E63 NAM, 5800 Euro, and an LG KT610. The LG will be given to Rita el Khoury, my editor who lives in Paris, France. Its tri-band GSM is of limited use to me in the U.S., so I figure she’ll be able to put it to good use. The N86 8MP will be my workhorse – performing the function of connectivity, as well as digital camera and video camera. It’s no easy task, but the last few weeks with this phone suggest that it’s definitely up to the task. The E63 NAM is only here as a charging device – it uses the same 1500mAh battery as the N810, and the 5800 Euro is only around in case the N86 8MP bites the dust (knock on wood).

You can follow the fun on twitter at @rcadden, or on Symbian-Guru.com.

Laptop Keyboard Backlights Should Be Standard

// June 16th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // toys

When I worked at Nokia, I was given a Lenovo Thinkpad as my work laptop. I don’t recall the exact model or anything, it was merely a work machine. However, one thing that really stuck out to me as a brilliant feature was a little tiny light nestled into the bezel around the display. With a hotkey combination, you could turn this tiny light on to illuminate your keyboard. This was extremely helpful when typing at night, or in other dark situations.

As a result, I purchased a backlit keyboard for my office, to plug into my Dell XPS M1330. There’s not much to it – I don’t do those fancy-pants keyboards – it’s just an external keyboard that has a bright blue backlight. Instantly evenings became more productive (which was good, because Mrs. Guru was working nights at the time) and my eyes felt less strained.

However, now I have a netbook, and I like to work from wherever I want to work. Unfortunately, I do not take this backlit keyboard with me, especially since my Asus EeePC 1000HE has a keyboard built in. The only laptops that I know of that have a backlit keyboard built in are the MacBook Pros and a few Windows gaming laptops. For whatever reason, it simply isn’t a common feature, but it should be.

There are a few mods, though none for my Asus EeePC 1000HE, unfortunately, since it has a rather unique keyboard. I wonder how much extra it would cost netbook and laptop manufacturers to include this feature in future models? Even cooler would be the ability to change the color of the backlight, through a special application on the computer, though I would gladly accept a single color, as well.

Initial Thoughts On The Asus EeePC 1000HE

// May 21st, 2009 // 8 Comments » // toys

I spent the better part of Wednesday night tinkering with, setting up, and exploring the Asus EeePC 1000HE, and wanted to record some of my first reactions. Most of this is coming from the perspective of the Dell Mini 9, as that was the previous netbook that I had.

First off, the 1000HE has some annoying design flaws that I simply must point out. First, I’m not really wild about the massive tube on the hinge. I realize it’s mostly there to make the battery look like it fits, but it’s simply not aesthetically pleasing. Plus, the silver endcaps are ribbed, a design that usually means I could unscrew the caps to find some feature or something. You can’t.

Also, the speakers face down, with the grills located on the bottom of the computer. Granted, the part where the grills is located is angled up, so that when sitting on a flat surface, like a table, it might project the sound. However, when sitting in your lap, or in bed, it’s likely these will be muffled instead. Boo.

The last design flaw is actually probably the most annoying. One of the selling points of the Asus EeePC 1000HE, in my opinion, is its non-glossy matte display. I much prefer this, specifically on a netbook that’s likely to be used outdoors or at a coffee shop. Unfortunately, the rather thick bezel surrounding the display is made of high-gloss black plastic – perfectly shined to brightly reflect any and all lights. It’s nearly bad enough to completely offset the matte display, which is a shame. I’m looking into options to remedy this.

Aside from that, it’s a nice machine. The 1000HE is closer in size to my Dell XPS M1330 than the Dell Mini 9 was, and I’m not sure how I feel about that quite yet. It’s still more portable than the M1330, but obviously not nearly as portable as the Mini 9 was.

In terms of battery life, thus far I’m floored. At ~4p yesterday I unplugged the 1000HE, with a full charge. I then spent the rest of the night with full brightness and WiFi running, downloading and installing applications, rebooting, etc. At 930p, Battery Bar was still showing 2.5hrs of power left.

Today, at around 11a, again with a full battery, I unplugged the EeePC 1000HE, leaving WiFi and Bluetoth on, full brightness, and Seesmic Desktop running, as well as a Bluetooth headset charging off a USB port. As of 315p, I’m showing just under 1 hour of remaining battery life. While that’s not the full 7-9 hours advertised, it’s much longer than any laptop I’ve ever used. I would imagine if I turned the brightness down slightly, and disabled WiFi or Bluetooth (depending on how I was connecting to the net) I could get alot further.

Thus far, I’m most definitely a happy camper.

Dell Mini 9 For Sale

// May 21st, 2009 // 2 Comments » // toys

Now that I have the Asus EeePC 1000HE, I obviously don’t need the Dell Mini 9. It’s rather sad, really – I completely enjoyed the Dell Mini 9. However, the 1000HE is a bit faster, and offers a much improved battery life and keyboard experience.

As such, I’ve put the Dell Mini 9 on Craigslist, so that I hopefully don’t have to resort to Ebay again. Asking price is $300, and that includes shipping, in case you don’t live locally. Here’s the specs:

Dell Mini 9
8.9″ display
Intel N270 Atom processor @ 1.6GHz
2GB of RAM
16GB SSD (solid state drive)
WiFi
Built-in Bluetooth

I’ve got the original box, as well as the power cord and a zippered neoprene case to throw in. It is currently running Windows 7 RC1, fully activated, with all the drivers and whatnot installed. The Dell Mini is usually regarded as the best OSX hackintosh netbook, if you’re a Mac person (James Burland, I’m looking at you!) I previously installed OSX on here, and it ran fine (though I personally didn’t care for it).

It currently has a camo skin from DecalGirl.com on there, though it’s vinyl, and comes right off with zero residue. I can remove this before shipping, if you’d like. There’s a white Dell cover underneath. Also, there is a SMALL scratch on the bezel around the screen, though it’s hardly noticeable. Here’s the craigslist listing, or you can contact me directly at Ricky(at)RickyCadden(dot)com.

Windows 7 Release Candidate Experience Thus Far

// May 4th, 2009 // No Comments » // technology

I’m no stranger to Windows 7 – I’ve been running one of the early betas on a few computers for a while now, but have resisted shifting the whole house over until the Release Candidate was available. I got ahold of the release candidate this weekend, and spent pretty much all of Saturday installing it on the Dell Mini 9, my old Gateway MX6956, and more stressful, our MediaCenter computer. Each presented a different challenge, which Windows 7 seemed to handle quite nicely, after a bit of tinkering. Here’s the skinny:

Dell Mini 9 – After the install, I needed to install a few drivers, all of which are conveniently available in this thread. I did a few of the tweaks found here, and ended up with a fully working install on my 16GB SSD with 7.92GB free. Not bad for a full Windows install, really. I’ve confirmed that WiFi, audio, Bluetooth, and the card reader are all working great. Speed is on par with the previous Windows 7 install, and that’s awesome.

Gateway MX6956 – This is my former production laptop, reduced to a DVD player, basically. It was already running Windows 7 Beta, so upping to Release Candidate was no big deal. I was pleased to see that the Windows 7 installer recognized an older version of Windows, and threw everything from the C:/ drive into a ‘Windows.old’ directory, so that I could access my background images and the like, even after the fresh install. I had to install the Synaptics driver to turn off touchpad clicking, but other than that, this machine did not require any special drivers, and everything (WiFi, sound, memory card slot) just works – awesome.

Emachines T6003 – this is my Media Server, and don’t laugh, it was free. This machine was previously running Windows XP Pro, and has an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ processor, ~3GB of RAM, and uses an ATi Radeon Xpress 200 video card, which I believe is integrated into the motherboard. I first installed Windows 7 RC1 64-bit on this machine, and had everything working, except that pesky video card. Finding a good solution proved troublesome, so I tried just putting the 32-bit version of Windows 7 on there. I’m pleased to report that this worked much better, with less headache. Brilliant.

Tomorrow I’ll report on which applications I’m using on the various machines, as I’m sure many of you are wondering about software compatibility.