The Sony VAIO VGN-AR61ZU is a good desktop replacement notebook with great performance and entertainment capabilities.

This VAIO is an impressive notebook sporting a large 17in display while clocking in at high speeds with one of the new Intel’s Penryn processors - a Core 2 Duo T8300 running at 2.4 GHz and 4 GB of RAM.. But on the downside, it’s a bit expensive, heavy (4kg), and has a short battery life.

In terms of entertainment, this notebook is enough to keep you satisfied. Turning out 29fps, its GeForce 8600M chip will support the needs of most gamers as well. It also comes equipped with an internal TV tuner that allows the user to watch and record programmes with the Media Center PVR applications which is standard with the Windows Vista Ultimate Edition. Not to mention the internal Blue-ray DVD drive combined with the 1920 x 1200 high resolution display make a perfect combination for watching high-definition films.

The weakest point of this Vaio is a battery that lasts approximately 71 minutes. Seeing as it cannot be far from a power supply for long, it is not the most appropriate notebook for traveling. A larger touchpad would also have made it much easier to use. In fact, it’s hard to understand why Sony installed such a small touchpad on a notebook with so much space

Sony VAIOs have always been a bit spendy, and the VGN-AR61ZU is no different – priced at ₤1799. Nevertheless, it does offer reasonable performance and reliability for the price.

The UK government is now planning to keep a database of all the phone calls, emails and internet sessions of UK citizens, as part of the fight against crime and terrorism.

Before September 11th 2001 no UK government would dare try such a thing, but now the perceived threat of terrorism in the UK means that the people will probably stand for this.

This is not about the police, they already find it easy to get all this info, it’s about control of the people.

Take phone calls for example, all the UK phone companies have police liaison staff whose job is to provide police with information about phone calls, this can be used for intelligence gathering or for evidence.  The police may complain that the procedure required for getting data that can be used as evidence is slow due the the requirement of a court order, but there is a big difference between data that can be used for intelligence and investigation compared to data that can be used in evidence.  The later assumes that a case is going before a court anyway and we all know that cases can take years to get to court.

Slowly the rights of the individual are being taken away in the fight against terrorism, surely we need to stop and think about how real this threat really is?

Despite all the improvements in Hard Drive technology, they are soon to become obsolete. How do I know this? Well, it has to happen. The Hard Drive contains a chunk of metal spinning at about 5000 rpm with little heads suspended just above the surface reading and writing data using magnetic pulses.. they are fragile, power hungry and they all fail in the end. Often before failing they get noisy.

The future is the SSD, the Sold State Drive which is faster, silent, much more reliable and unfortunately still much more expensive.

SSD drives are catching up in terms of capacity, and the price is falling all the time. Within a few short years the old hard drive will be like the CRT monitor, we will wonder how the hell we ever put up with them!

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.

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 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.

A friend of mine who has lived in some very interesting places around the world shared a theory with me a little while ago. His theory is that you can judge the cost of living in any country by two things:

1. The cost of a Big mac
2. The price of the cheapest washing machine.

I was not convinced, however after a bit of research I have to agree with him. It’s True!

In Thailand a Big Mac is about 70 baht , Thats 1 UK pound or about $2 US, and a basic washing machine in Tesco is about 3000 Baht which is 46 UK pounds or about 91 US Dollars.

I’m sure that if I had the time or the inclination I could work out a formula to prove this theory, but I don’t have either.. let’s just say that I am convinced and it should at least be taken as pretty good indicator of the cost of living.