Somewhere out there!

The recent  Windows Mobile 5 firmware upgrade to the hx4700 had a real impact on performance. Here are a few hacks to fix this until and if HP release a patch themselves.

Technorati Tags: hx4700, hack

A useful list of Common Questions about the Sun X2100 Server.

I’m looking for a three colo server at the moment and was considering either a x2100 or a x4100. The ILOM feature and four drive bays will probably swing me towards the x4100.

Technorati Tags: sun, hardware, x2100

Fast OS Switching a good reason to consider the Mac Mini as your next workstation.

I’ve put together a quick comparison tablet for the tablets I’m considering at the moment.

I’ve decided by next portable laptop will be a tablet. While in the UK over December/January I thought a bit about how I work and what methods I could find to improve my approach to work management. Particularly the constant pieces of paper floating around my deskspace which I like to then carry around in my backpack, and when I’m brainstorm how I like to draw diagrams and hand write notes quickly. Stuff which doesn’t work very well with a normal computer. Further reading and many blogs about tablets which all pointed at OneNote pretty much decided me on the matter. Then last week I had a chance to play around with a HP tc4200 then a Fujitsu T4010. Handwriting works, and its pretty amazing.

Most of last year I was dead keen on getting a Powerbook. Buying a Mini Mac clued me of that. Then being able to run NX desktops clued me having requiring Linux to running on my laptop. For the last three months I was using a IBM R52 just running WinX. With my NX desktop on the other side of the world I contained myself within WinXP. Annoying at times, but most of the time I was only using Firefox, Thunderbird and Openoffice. Not problems. The main thing that happened during this period was I discovered that WinXP is not so bad to run after. There is some really good WinXP software out there. Thus using WinXP Tablet edition is now not an automatic cross of the list transaction.
Question now of course is: which tablet do I get?

Whiles reading an article about the new Macbook last night I discovered this cool product: Aspoke custom notebook skins. Here is a cool example. These things are bound to make excellent gifts.

Run across a pile of interesting tools and cool gadgets of the last couple days:

URLy Warning is a Windows version of curl, cron and diff. Undoubtablely useful for you stock trader friends.

LibraryThing is like flickr/de.licio.us, but for your books. I wish I’d discovered this before I’d purchase Delicious Library. Definitely more useful when travelling. Although the video barcode scanning is damn useful.

The Noguchi Filing System, a useful management hack for organising paperwork. Particularily useful as it provides an inbuilt method for dealing with when to archive.

I’ve been thinking about trying out a PSP for quite a well. Now I’ve got a Treo 650 (which is a very good phone and reasonable good PDA, review to come sometime in the future), my iPAQ hx4700 is now really finding time only for reading dot-lit ebooks. If I could find some way to read dot-lit and ereader ebooks on the PSP. Then ombined with the Neo 4-in-1 Pad the PSP would quite useful. AA battery option, CF or SD slot. Combined with the large clean screen it would become the better travel companion, with a much improved form factor over the hx4700.

Some what odd but cool, a gamer pillow raises heads, lowers posture expectations. Not that I game much these days, but the several other places this might be useful, like as one commenter states on a plane.

Finally from: TED Blog: Inspired Holiday Gifts, Part 2:

For someone who loves entertainment … and being first on the block: Sony LocationFree TV. Watch your Tivo’d programs, local TV, or your DVD collection from anywhere in the world. The base station in your home streams the video over a broadband connection; the LocationFree TV screen — or your PlayStation Portable handheld! — receives it at the other end. All we can say is: Wow. TEDster Dan Dubno’s review (in his holiday gift guide), will get them started. $1099 w/7-inch TV at SonyStyle

Note to self, look out for the hx4700 version of the WM 5.0 upgrade at HP.

Reviews look good. Especially the comments about the persistent storage feature and battery life, 10-30% more battery life.

Sounds like buying a new PDA for only 40USD.

I’m pretty much only using the hx4700 as an ebook reader at the moment, haven’t had time to explore its other features. Once I get a chance I’ll see if I can integrating Tracks and the hx4700 calander, probably via vCal.

A simple Opteron vs. Xeon
benchmark using slamd comparing a dual core Sun v20z and an IBM x345.

Result: Opteron server is 1.6x faster then Xeon server. Turning additional cores on and Opteron server is 2.62x faster then Xeon server.

My new v20z is sitting at the warehouse today. I’ll probably have to find my ear plugs while I’m building it up, but I’m looking forward to seeing how well the Opteron is going to perform.

This article “No More Apple Mysteries, Part Two” at Anandtech is a second focus on the PowerPC. Of greater interest to me was the numbers between the Intel and AMD processors.

At the moment I’ve been reviewing the purchase of a new 1U machine and trying to decide between a Sun Fire v20z or a Intel SR1400 Server Chasis. Basically the using an Opteron 248 2.2 GHz or a Xeon Irwindale 3.2 GHz 2 MB L2 800 MHz FSB.