Today, even if you have a PC on your desk you are still using an interface and mouse system which was first introduced to the public in 1984 by Steve Jobs of Apple Computer. Ok, I know that the idea was first developed by Xerox in a lab, but the first person to bring it to the masses was Apple.

So your computing experience today is a direct result of that first mac introduced in 1984. I remember standing in a computer shop in 1984 looking at the mac and thinking “This is the future”, and I was right.. You may remember that at the time it was ridiculed in the US as a 2500 dollar etch-a-sketch, which was exactly why it was so good..it was easy to use.

Today the first couple of million Americans will be getting their hands on the iPhone , and in 5 or 10 years from now we will all be using iPhones or at least we will be using phones that mimic the features found on the iPhone today.

Apple is expecting to ship 10 Million iPhones in 2008, barely 1% of the market, and they will surely do so.

Critics point to the past failure of the Newton, but that’s not fair because the world was not ready for the Newton and in fairness the newton was not ready for the world when it was released. But with innovation comes risk, and Apple is all about innovation.

It’s under 1 month since I bought a shiny new MacBook Pro 17″, and they have just released a new one, however I’m not kicking myself for not waiting because these things happen when you buy any new computer.

Changes include Nvidia GeForce 8600m GT in place of the ATi that’s in mine, and the option of Core 2 Duo 2.4 which is a small improvement.  Also there is the option to have a higher resolution screen with 1920 x 1200 resolution in place of the 1680 x 1050 on the current model, and the introduction of 802.11n wi-fi in place of 802.11g.

OK, the faster processor would have been nice, I’m sure the Nvidia is better than the ATI graphics, and the faster wi-fi may be useful one day, but I’m still happy that these changes would not make any real difference.

Im not sure I would want 1920 x 1200 resolution on a 17″ screen, it seems top me to be the ideal resolution on a 22″ screen but may be a bit cramped for everyday use on a 17″.  Also, for me the benefit of 1680 x 1050 is that it’s the same as my acer 22″ monitor and everything stays in the same place on my desktop.  So, given the choice, even at no extra cost, I would (probably) not have taken the 1920 x 1200 option.

I guess the next step would be for Apple to offer a 19″ MacBook Pro screen option.  That would be nice, but already I find the 17″ a bit of a handful to carry around.   Anyway, I guess apple are to busy with iPhone’s to put too much effort into new MacBooks!

Living here in Thailand is a wonderful life.  I remember spending years in the UK dreaming of living overseas in a tropical paradise, and my dream came true more than five years ago.   It can be tough, it takes a while to get used to the Asian way of doing things, but the rewards are fantastic.

I decided the other day that I might like to go to the beach this weekend, perhaps Phuket, Koh Samui or Cha Am.  Going to any of those places for the weekend is no more difficult for me now than a trip to Brighton or Bournmouth would have been when I was in the UK.

Having a young son means that we often end up taking the car, but even then the cost of fuel here is well under half the cost in the UK.    Domestic flights in Thailand are very cheap though, and there is a very good first-class train service which includes a very nice air-conditioned cabin.

When I get to any of Thailand’s beach resorts I know that with a bit of expat savvy I can usually find a decent clean and well equipped hotel for less than 10 UK pounds per night.   My favorite resort here in Thailand is Cha-Am, situated on the western coast of the gulf of Thailand, about half way from Bangkok to Samui it’s a charming seaside resort where I can stay in a brand new hotel with 4 star facilities just a few meters from the beach for the equivalent of UK 7.00 (US$ 14)  per night.

Yes, this weekend would be a good time to take a break, I will be sure to pack my camera and post an update.

I have been a Mac fan since the start, well actually even before the Mac because I was a Apple ][ user many years ago.    I have been using PC’s for work since the 80’s, and I have switched a few times between Mac and PC for home use.

These days my home use  and professional use is blurred because I work from home in Thailand, I actually have 3 computers and a couple of old ones hidden away too, but I’m using my MacBook Pro 17″ notebook attached to a Acer AL2251W 22″ LCD screen on my desk.   The 22″ Acer is the same resolution as my MacBook’s screen at 1680 x 1050 so things look more or less the same when I switch from attached screen to built in screen.

Anyway, the point is that I’m using my Mac on a daily basis for website stuff, surfing, answering email, keeping lists in excel, and dabbling in forex and some trading stocks.. The Mac does all of this and does it better than any PC I have ever used, except for one application, FTP.

I discovered Cute FTP Pro on the PC a few years ago and it instantly made my life easier due to it’s ability to upload compressed and to recover from a lost connection without having to start a transfer all over again. This is something that many FTP programs do in theory, but in practice Cute FTP professional is the best one for me.

I tried a bunch of FTP apps on the Mac, the best one I found is the free Cyberduck FTP, but it’s not perfect because if the connection is lost half way through uploading a big folder then it just starts again and it can take ages.   I bought Cute FTP for the Mac, and I was very disappointed, it’s next to useless for me.

The answer was to use Cute FTP Pro for Windows and run it on my Mac in what’s called coherence mode using parallels.  That means the application opens just like any other and runs the same as it would on a PC.. only it’s on my Mac desktop. It runs like a dream, and I dont need to visibly run windows, I just click on the Cute FTP icon and the app runs after a delay of about 5 seconds whilst parallels kicks in, in the background.

I’m getting closer every day to being 100% Mac centric.

I can’t believe what I saw today. A SELF SERVICE fuel station in Thailand, what is the world coming to? Of course I drove off and found a proper fuel station, I am buggered if I’m going to put fuel in my own car, it’s bad enough having to drive it.

I guess if you are not familiar with Thailand this may seem like a rant about nothing, but here in Thailand it’s just accepted that every fuel station has a ample supply of spotty teenagers in gaudy uniforms to do all that for you, and clean your windscreen and check your tyres at the same time.

I can’t see it taking off, hopefully they will go out of business sooner rather than later, then we can all forget about self bloody service. Whatever next, before you know it we will have car wash machines like in europe and even more Thai’s will be out of work or forced to work in factories making hard drives.

Back in March I was in airport plaza shopping mall in Chiang Mai and in a fit of compulsive buying I bought a Sony Vaio TX56SN. Actually it was a expensive mistake because I have since discovered that I cant be bothered with switching between computers when travelling and being at home, so I have since switched over to a Macbook Pro. But, I still have the Sony which I have not really used because its hopelessly & pathetically slow when running the supplied Vista Business with the 1Gb of memory.

Strangely the Vista enabled TX was 10,000 baht cheaper than the XP enabled TX, which whilst it had a different model name is identical in all respects except a 80gb HD instead of 60gb…I was buggered if I was going to pay 10,000 baht for 20gb of drive space.. no I figured I would get the Vista model and then put XP on it.

My mistakes were as follows:

• It’s next to impossible to get XP drivers for the TX56SN as it has only ever been supplied with Visa.
• 20gb may not seem like much difference, but the drive in these Sony TX machines is not anuything like a “normal” notebook drive.. it’s a special, slimmer, smaller drive that uses much less power but is very very slow.
• The supplied configuration was so slow it felt like a i486 from the 90’s…but slower.

Anyway, as I have recovery disks (so nothing to lose) I decided today to install XP.

First the basic XP install is easy, whilst the video card is not identified it still works at the correct resolution even before any drivers are installed.

I downloaded the drivers for the closest model I could find (same hardware spec) a TX3HP/w, that got the chipset drivers installed, network & video. Before I could install the sound driver I had to apply a microsoft patch as it kept saying I had to install a Microsoft Bus Manager.

Now I just have a couple of exclamation marks in my device manager, and my AV buttons, Volume buttons, HDD protection and Bluetooth still dont work as I dont have the utilities. Im working on that.

But, XP is about 600% faster than Vista on this machine , I know that sounds stupid but it really is, XP works like a real computer on the TX, the supplied Vista was so slow it was not really useable. The 7 hour battery life was wasted because it took forever to do simple things..xp is great on here.

Now that we are close to the US release of the iPhone, many of us expats here in Thailand are looking forward to being able to buy one here. I know I am.

Looking at the spec it should work fine in Thailand straight out of the box, the reason for this is that the iPhone uses GPRS/EDGE rather than 3G/HSDPA/EV-DO/CDMA or any of the faster data services and THATS GOOD! Thailand has virtually wall-to-wall EDGE service across the country, and even where there are holes in the EDGE network it will fallback to GPRS.

I spoke to Tim at EdgeThailand.com the other day. Tim had been importing and selling all the latest gadgets for years and I’m confident that he will have a batch of iPhones for us here in Thailand within days of the US release..he did not confirm that, but he did not deny it either.

I will be interested to see what the UK spec iphone will have, there is no EDGE in the UK and GPRS whilst it’s ok for fallback is still a bit too slow. Anyone importing “grey market” iphones into Thailand will have it easy if they source them in the US.

Expect to see a review here soon after US launch!

Back in January I decided to buy a Motorbike, and I had figured that a cruiser was what I wanted. I started to look around the bike shops in Northern Thailand and discovered that

1. There are a hell of a lot of bikes for sale in Thailand.
2. Most of them are crap!

I looked at lots of bikes and then decided the choice was down to a Honda Shadow, Kawasaki Vulcan or a Yamaha Dragstar. If money was no object then I would have bought a Harley, of course.

I found my Kawasaki Vulcan Classic in a small bike shop near the airport at Chiang Mai, the shop owner seemed to know what he was selling and his prices were fair. He had a batch of Kawasaki Vulcan VN400A imported bikes that had just come off the boat from Japan, so I picked a bike and then got him to swap a few bits from the others in the batch so that I had just about all the best bits on mine.

When I collected the bike it had a fresh paint job, and all the alloy bits had been polished to look like new, but there were a couple of problems. The front brake was useless and the headlight was not working, so I decided to fix that myself. I traced the headlight problem to a faulty switch and ordered one on ebay which took about a week to arrive. I bought a uprated twin pot caliper with a new set of brake pads, and I changed the brake fluid so that the front brake is like new. The tank badges were not with the bike, I found a new set on ebay for about US$20, and a handful of other bits to finish it off.

The bottom line is that this bike, which is a 1996 model now looks new, drives like new and cost me about 90,000 Thai Baht (under $3000) with all the bits that I bought. Or, about the same price as a new Honda Phantom 200 which is the biggest new bike you can buy in Thailand.

Now I am enjoying my Kawasaki Vulcan, I have not been on any long rides yet but I will do as soon as the rainy season is over. Call me a wimp, but I don’t like getting caught out in the monsoon rains.

My most valuable accessory is the Clymer Workshop Manual that I bought from the states, it turns out that this model is also manufactured by Kawasaki in the USA so parts are plentiful and cheap on ebay.com

I have been a big fan of Apple ever since I got my first Apple II computer way back in the 1980’s. My first computer was a BBC Micro, but it was that Apple II that really got me hooked. There has always been something about Apple products that goes way beyond the call of duty.

For most of the last 10 years I have been using PC’s for my work. In 2003 I bought a 15″ iMac (the fancy dome with a 15″ lcd on that stainless steel arm) and swore I would never buy another mac, it was slow, the modem kept on disconnecting, and both the hard drive and the screen failed in the first month.

Last year I was wooed by the MacBook because I could run windows as well as Mac OS.. within weeks it was shutting down at random and I had to fix it myself because at that time Apple did not recognise the fault that is now well known as the RSS (Random Shutdown Syndrome).

I ended up selling my MacBook to a friend and buying a MacBook Pro 17″, and in the last few weeks I have managed to stay away from windows as I can now do everything via Mac Os Tiger..and I cant wait for Leopard as it looks great. Im keeping windows on my mac so that I can run Flight Simulator X, and so that I can still rin windows apps if I need to.

Today I read that Apple have released Safari Browser for the PC, I will download it and try it in the next couple of days. Im not keen on Safari because it replaces buttons on websites with it’s own aqua style buttons, which often looks bloody stupid. I guess they may not have done that with the PC version.

I’m convinced now, as I was 25 years ago, that Apple make the best computers in the world. There is something very special about a Mac that no PC has ever been able to achieve for me, despite serious quality problems a few years ago, they are still the ones to beat.

If you want a taste of Apple, download Safari Browser and you should get a feel for what makes Apple enjoy such fierce loyalty from its customers.

I’m not sure that the iPhone will be the revolution that they are looking for.. but I will certainly be a buyer in the first few months..like I have been for so many new Apple products over the years (remember the Newton..yes I bought one) provided they see fit to sell them here in Thailand.

Lenovo have announced the Thinkpad Reserve Edition notebook, a special edition that is encased in hand stitched leather.

It’s not obvious from the picture, but the leather is part of the notebook and not just a case.

As a limited edition each Thinkpad Reserve will have an individual number, though it’s not clear how many will be made.

I have always been a big fan of the Thinkpad range, I know people who complain that they look boring or that the specification is not great, but these people just dont get it, the Thinkpad has always been an extremely durable and business like notebook, you need to use one to truly appreciate them.

Lenovo engineers had to find a way of keeping a leather clad notebook cool, they did this by creating a vent that is sandwiched between the bottom of the laptop and the leather casing.

Lenovo are putting a lot of emphasis on service, as well as 24 hour customer support they will provide worldwide on-site service by the next day for 3 years.

No indication of the price yet, except you can bet it will be expensive. I like the look of this, it looks like a great choice for someone who is looking for a special notebook and money is not an issue.

The options for the discerning buyer at the moment are limited to some nice Sony’s, Apple Macbook Pro, Acer Ferrari or possibly the ASUS Lamborghini. The Lenovo appears to offer a more classy option.