Archive for the ‘Gadgets’ Category

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Recent Purchases

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

I don’t know if I have mentioned this on here yet but starting September 12th I will be leaving the US for 3 months again. This time we will be gone from September 12, 2010 to January 1, 2011. For the first month or so we will be backpacking through Southeast Asia (Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, maybe Malaysia), then two weeks in China split between Beijing and Shanghai. I can’t wait to go to the world expo! I am pretty excited about this trip and have recently started making preparations. I think three weeks ago we bought our tickets so now that dates are set in stone. But this stone only costs $100 dollars to modify so that’s cool. And I have started buying stuff!

Electronics!

Since I will be moving around a lot I have decided that my X61 tablet is just too big. Soon (next week) I will be selling it and I have already ordered my replacement laptop. It should be arriving this Friday. I had a really hard time deciding which one to buy. In the end I decided on the Asus Eee PC 1005HA. Yes I know it is last years model but I decided on it anyways.

At first I was looking at this year’s Eee PC netbooks and trying to decide between the 1001P and the 1005PE. The only things I cared about that separated the two were the 1005PE had 3 hours extra battery life,  bluetooth, and wireless N. The battery life on the 1001P is rated at 11 hours and, you guessed it, the 1005PE comes in rated at 14. I was struggling for a few days wondering how important these extra goodies were for my purposes. I then decided that none of these could justify my paying the extra 80 bucks for the 1005PE. But then when I was about to buy the 1001p I saw that Tigerdirect was having a sale on the 1005HA from last year! At the time I ordered it the sale price was $269.99. But as I write this the sale price has been increased to $279.99. Looking at the specs I noticed that other than the 10.5 hours of battery life and the N280 processor it was the same as the 1005PE, with a price tag that was 20 dollars less than the cheapest 1001p I could find! so I jumped on the deal!

Now keep in mind I do not care about things like hard drive size, 64 bit processing, or the performance differences. The N450 processor in the 1001P and 1005PE has 64 bit capabilities and the N280 does not. So anyways from my point of view the 1005HA was 100 dollars cheaper than the 1005PE AND I got all the extra little goodies I wanted like wireless N and Bluetooth, plus extra HD space which I don’t care about, while only getting dinged for 30 minutes of battery life from the 1001p which I was about to buy. I think 279.99 is an extremely good deal for the 1005HA and 269.99 was even better!

But anyways that’s enough about my netbook purchase.

I also decided that carrying around a full sized 1 terabyte hard drive and the extra power brick that it would require was quite stupid so I bought a western digital 1 terabyte 2.5″ width external drive that is usb powered. This cost me 139.99 I was thinking about getting one from Fry’s for 119.99 but then I would have had to drive all the way to Renton and pay 9% tax (I have no idea what the WA cities tax rates are) or something so I just ordered the drive from Tigerdirect as well.

Clothing

I am a cheap ass, especially when it comes to clothing, so I will not be buying the 250 dollar rain jacket and the 90 dollar lightweight breathable pants.

Anyways, since it is kind of early I have only ordered two things so far. A backpack and a lightweight rain jacket. Since we will be going during the rainy season and I am still pissed about the pouring rain that soaked right through my backpack when I was in Taipei I went down a sort of unorthodox route for my backpack. I ordered a medium Seattle Sports H2O Gear Waterproof Backpack. It looks more like it should be used for water rafting but it is cheap and waterproof so I am gonna try it. I’ll post back here if for some reason it is impossible to use. who knows how long this link will work but here is the link to the backpack where I ordered it. I also ordered the White Sierra Trabagon Rain Jacket from the same place. The reason why I ordered the jacket so early is because I think the lightweight jacket will be nice to wear around Seattle since it is summer but every once in a while it rains.

Edit (7/27/2010): I received the rain jacket and it is perfect. The backpack however is not perfect haha. Being a noob I thought this would work, but I did not know that these types of backpacks have no zipper. On top of the no zipper it was HUGE in my min 25inchs tall with a 14 inch diameter did not seem that big but it is quite huge. So the backpack is getting returned and I have ordered the Deuter Futura Zero 40 Pack this was last years version so it is a closeout. It’s only 40 liters compared to the 63 liter monstrosity that I am about to return. I also ordered some vibram fivefinger flows (backordered), 20 feet of rope (just in case), and some other stuff. But these new purchases will be part of another entry when I get them all. Oh and also it seems that after July 4th the summer weather in Seattle is just like Los Angeles haha so the rainjacket is useless, but still nice to have it already.

Future

Soon I will have to order, pants, a towel, some sandals. Hopefully while I am in Hong Kong the Asus Eee PC EP121 will come out and I can buy it before everyone in the US!

Anyways I have a midterm in 3.5 hours that I am not prepared for. Managerial Accounting is no fun!

Posted in Gadgets, Tech, Travel | 2 Comments »

Apple’s Antennagate Press Conference

Friday, July 16th, 2010

So I woke up at 10AM this morning (isn’t life great for a full time student?) to read through the live blog of the Apple press conference over at Endgadget, you can look at it here. And I thought it was quite hilarious.

First Steve Jobs started out saying that it wasn’t a problem he compared the signal loss issue to a blackberry bold 9700, the samsung Omnia 2, and the Droid Eris. According to Mr. Jobs all three of these phones showed sizeable signal drops by holding the phone in a similar manner to that which causes the iPhone 4 problem. Unfortunately I do not have any of those phones to test with but I do have a Nexus One.

So as I was reading this I whipped out my phone and started trying to grab it in all manner of awkward ways. He said it would take a while because other phones report this stuff very slowly,so I was sitting there holding my phone in different ways for quite a while. After about 5 minutes of trying I found that if I held my Nexus One with both hands completely covering the bottom portion of the phone I got it to go from 4 bars to 3 bars. Unfortunately I could not figure a way to do it with one hand so I will post a picture if my girlfriend is willing to take a picture of me holding my phone like an idiot. I advise you to not wait for that picture because I doubt she will want to waste her time doing that.

Hopefully she won’t mind when I grab her iPhone 3G and start holding it like an idiot trying to get the signal to go down. I have had a 3G and a 3GS in the past and never noticed any problems when I used it without a case, but I am right handed. But anyways then I will truly see if Steve Jobs was telling the truth about this being common to all iPhones!

Then Steve Jobs went into some other stuff that had to do with numbers of complaints and junk which was totally stupid. everyone knows that if .55% of 3 million people are calling to complain about the problem then like 5% of people probably have the problem haha. But I will let you read the live blog or possibly watch the video if it appears somewhere. I think Steve Jobs’s uses of some choice words in reference to a Bloomberg article will probably stop it from appearing on apple.com.

Anyways I just want to say that in this situation is totally agree with Steve Jobs’s first assessment. This really is a non-issue. if I had an iPhone 4 I would have walked out of the store with a case or bought one as soon as one was available, and then I never would have experienced the issue. But I kind of like seeing Apple in the spotlight for a negative issue every once in a while. But really, in the long run this won’t matter, 3 million people have the phone in their hands right now and the everyone that I have seen LOVES it. And I must say I am VERY jealous of that screen.

Peace out ya’ll

Posted in Gadgets, Tech | No Comments »

Verizon iPhone in January? eh I think not

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

Once again there are rumors about the iPhone coming to Verizon at XYZ date. This time it is January 2011. I don’t know about you but I am getting mighty tired of these rumors from “people who know about the plans” sprouting up. Sheez if you are going to say something like this then you should at least be willing to give a name. Otherwise you should just keep your mouth shut.

But anyways I am pretty sure that this newest prediction is going to turn out to be wrong. I was under the impression that there was a 5 year exclusivity with AT&T for the iPhone, which would make 2012 the earliest year possible (but this could also be a rumor. it’s so hard to tell these days.). Also since Apple has brought out the new iPhones in June or July for the last four years why would they suddenly move to a January release date? I could see Google moving release dates around since they don’t seem to care about release date timing (it was quite horrible waiting for froyo) but Apple? I think not.

I think it would be much more likely that the iPhone would be going to T-Mobile first since as they are made right now they work almost 100% on T-Mobile (T-mobile 3G runs on a different frequency than AT&T 3G). So there would be a much lower cost for that new version of the iPhone. Who know’s, those crazy Apple engineers could design an iPhone that works with 3G on both AT&T and T-Mobile.

So I will make my own prediction! I predict that there will be a T-Mobile iPhone 4S in 2012 followed by the iPhone 6 with Verizon and Sprint added in. If everyone else is quoting some prediction why not me? Oh and I was told by this bottle of Mike’s Hard Lemonade that I am drinking. It knows about the plans.

In the end though I don’t really care if the iPhone goes to Verizon or not I still won’t buy it for two reasons:

1. Android has stepped up and, in my opinion, is better than IOS

2. Verizon uses a CDMA network that will only work in the US, Canada, and Mexico. I don’t want to have to deal with getting a loaner phone and all that junk when I leave the country, and who knows if a loaner phone would be available to me as a non business customer

So if Verizon gets an iPhone they can keep it. They may have better reception than AT&T but I doubt that you will be able to travel internationally and use it. But I know LOTS of people who would not care about that restriction, but they may care that the Verizon plans are considerably more expensive than AT&T.

Eh whatever no matter where it is the iPhone will sell like crazy. Something about that Steve Jobs guy just makes everybody want to buy everything they make, except the Macbook Air and of course the Newton. But those two were some hardcore road apples, well the Macbook Air still is a road apple.

anyways, peace out!

Posted in Gadgets, random, Tech | No Comments »

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