Yesterday I bought an Asus Eee from Pantip Plaza (Thailand) and it’s an amazing little notebook that is great fun to use and does everything well.

I bought it to use when I travel around, as do quite regularly. It was important to me that I can use it with EDGE so that I can have internet access everywhere and not just within range of a wi-fi access point. To my utter amazement I plugged in my Novatel Merlin XU870 via a USB adaptor and the Eee recognised it immediately and virtually set itself up and even recognized Dtac and set up the APN correctly.

What makes this machine so special?

1> It’s cheap, very very cheap.

2> It’s the lightest notebook I have ever seen.

3> The screen and keyboard are amazing for the size.

4> Long battery life and miniture charger.

5> Works with my EDGE card

6> It’s fast.. really fast.

7> Boots up in seconds.

8> Switches off in seconds.

It’s fair to point out that good as the screen is, it could do with being an inch or two bigger with slightly more resolution, and the trackpad is small and not so easy to use.

The reason this is so fast is because it uses a SSD instead of an old fashioned hard drive, and the Operating System is a customized version of linux that works faultlessly and feels very much like windows, only faster.

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!

I’m a Mac fan, but I use Windows too and I don’t get involved in all this Mac Vs. PC thing because actually the Mac and PC both have their strong points.

I nearly fell off my chair when, after installing Mac OSX 10.5 Leopard and connecting to my network (which has a couple of PCs on the network) the default icon for a windows machine is an old CRT monitor with the Blue Screen of Death!   This is funny, but I’m actually surprised that this icon is the default.

Every now and then a technology comes along that changes the way we live, the BBC iplayer is not a new technology but it’s a new way of using technology and it’s changing the way I watch TV.

Being an expat and living in Thailand is great, but there have always been things that I miss, and good quality English TV is one of them.  Not that I watch much TV, but on those occasions when I do sit down with my feet up to watch some TV it’s nice if it’s English and good quality.

Bring on the BBC iPlayer.  I downloaded it to the Windows XP partition on my MacBook Pro and then it complained that I was not in the UK..  Hmm I thought, surely its just my IP address that it does not like so I logged in via a UK proxy server and it was happy.  Even better, it only checks country once and then it’s fine over my Thailand broadband connection.

My Mac Book pro has a DVI connector, and I recently bought a DVI to HDMI cable by mistake so I decided to try hooking my MacBook to my LG 42″ LCD in the living room.  Wow, the picture is super and it set the resolution by itself.

I dont want to take my MacBook Pro into the living room, and anyway my bootcamp partition only has 30gb space, so I decided to take my little Acer computer, which is a “small form factor” PC running 3.2ghz P4, 1gb Ram and 160gb hard drive.  It already had XP on it and I don’t really need it for anything else.   It sites nicely next to my DVD player and sat receiver, and it works a treat with BBC iPlayer, except that I need to use a mouse, I will soon buy a wireless controller.

My son, who is just under 2 years old, loves the BBC kids stuff, I love the documentaries and Doctor Who and it’s really nice to be able to choose when to watch.   I just select the programs I want and go to bed, next morning it has downloaded loads of programs and I can wait up to 28 days before watching them, then after the first time I watch it I can watch it again for up to 7 days.  It would be nice if I could keep the kids stuff, but all the time there are more programs coming in overnight its no real problem.

Oh yes, and the picture quality is really good.  I’m fussy, but I can’t really tell the difference between the BBC content and a good DVD.

I have been using a Acer 22″ widescreen monitor for the last few months, but I needed another monitor last week so that my girlfriend can work on adding products to a couple of ecommerce sites that I run.  She had been using my Mac connected to the Acer 22″ and the wide aspect made her more productive than using a smaller screen so I decided to buy another 22″ for her.

I went to Pantip Plaza in Chiang Mai and looked at all the 22″ monitors for sale, which was easy because there were only two options, the Acer and the Samsung Syncmaster 226BW.  The Samsung looked the better monitor, and for only 12,900 thai baht I figured that on looks alone it had to be done, so I bought the Samsung and gave the Acer to my girlfriend!

The Samsung is a better monitor all round than the Acer AL2251w, which is not to say that the Acer is bad, far from it, but the Samsung is better.  One thing that may be an issue for many is the Samsung’s glossy screen.  It’s no problem for me as I have no light facing the screen, but if you work with a window behind you then it will be an issue.   On the whole I prefer do a matt screen to a glossy one, but the Samsung performs so well that it can be forgiven!

Like most 22″ screens the Samsung is 1680 x 1050 resolution.  On the Acer things looked a bit bitty compared to my Macbook pro which has the same resolution on a 17″ screen, but the Samsung makes it look smoother and nicer.  I have not tried the VGA analog socket yet as both my machines connect via DVI.  The Samsung can switch between analog and DVI at the touch of a button whereas the acer was tricky as you had to go into the menu to switch.

I don’t often pay attention to specs on a monitor, I trust my eyes instead.  The bottom line is simple, if you are looking for a 22″ screen then buy the Samsung 226BW and you will be impressed.

It says nothing on the box about Mac compatibility, but then few monitors do!  It works perfect with a Mac, no setup needed and no adaptors so long as your mac has a DVI socket (all Intel macs do).

I was in Tachileik (Myanmar formerly known as Burma) the other day and I saw a range of what looked like Blu-Ray movies.  On closer inspection they are no Blu-Ray at all, neither are they HDDVD, no..these are HD-Disk!

Just about everything in Tachileik comes from the Chinese border which is only about 150km away, without exception every DVD or Music CD on sale in the town is counterfeit, but the police in Myanmar appear not to care at all as hundreds of shops openly sell counterfeit goods such as copy handbags, copy shirts, copy DVDs and copy CDs in their thousands.

Knowing this to be counterfeit I bought a couple anyway in order to see what they are and how (or if) they work.

I put one in my Mac and I was surprised to see that it played OK using quicktime (though it prompted me to download an add-on codec first), it’s full 1080p High Definition and using a HDMI to DVI cable I can hook my macbook pro up to the TV, the results are impressive to say the least.

The second movie is in a .ts format and would not play on my Mac, but it played on a PC no problem.

The back of the box has the following text (spelling errors included):

“Compared with Blue-Ray and HD DVD, HD DISK provide  you the same qulity and pristine picture in a easy and convient way!   HD DISK not only for Home Theater Personal Computer users, a various of HD players,Media Box, can also play it smoothly.  HD DISK delivers the greatest high-definition programs up to 1080p in all kinds of formats: MPED2-TS/TP, WMVHD, H264, XVID/DIVX…”

Further down the back of the box it describes 3 HD player devices that are compatible, they are:

• IPHD-DVD made in China
• HD Media Box made in Korea
• HD Player made in Europe

It’s worth mentioning here that the actual media is just a normal dual layer pressed DVD.

I’m hard on printers, they always end up going wrong within a very short time of me owning them.  In the last 3 years I have had 3 Canon, 1 lexmark, 1 HP and 1 Brother Printer.  Actually the Lexmark, HP and Brother have all been Muti Function Devices.

I use both Mac and PC, so I need full compatibility with both.  I have plenty of room in my office but I don’t want to waste space by having a Fax, Printer & Scanner all on the desk, but I require all three devices to be top quality, oh and I dont want to spend too much money either!

I bought this Brother when my HP C5180 screwed up when printing labels and decided to say screwed up.

I don’t need to print colour, so this time I decided to buy a laser printer based multi function device.  There was plenty of choices, but the Brother has cheap toner and easy availability of both the toner units and other consumables, and the fax and copier work without the computer being switched on.  It has proper drivers and software for both the Pc and Mac.

I installed this on a PC first, the install was smooth and includes paperport, which is an amazing application.  The scanner can stack and feed hundreds of documents and archive them as PDF files..great.

The Mac software is good, it does not include paperport but my Adobe Acrobat software (not Adobe Acrobat Reader) seems to do a good job or archiving documents.

I don’t use the supplied scanner software on my Mac, just the Twain driver.  I can import a scan straight into Photoshop and edit it there.

The printer is great, the scanner is super, the fax is fabulous and plain paper faxes are very good if you are used to the old thermal paper rolls as I am.

This device just sits in the corner of my desk and gets on with the job, I can recommend it to anyone with a home office, small business, or just the requirement for a Fax, Scanner, Copier and Laser Printer.  Don’t ask me the spec, I don’t even know the maximum resolution, how many pages per min or whatever but I know it does the job and that’s what counts.

Now that I have downgraded my Sony Vaio VGN-TX56SN to Windows XP it runs like lightening.  It starts up about 12x faster than it did with Vista, and the whole experience is totally different.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking Vista, I’m just saying that Sony Thailand made a big mistake choosing to supply Vista on this machine.

Sony DO NOT provide XP drivers for this machine, I had to go to the Sony UK site and download drivers for the Vaio VGN-TX5XN, which is the same.  The only bit I cannot get working is the bluetooth, but as I don’t want to use blusetooth this is no real hardship for me.

I’m not enterely sure why Vista was so slow on this machine, the Sony shop (Chi Chang) offered to install more memory but I did not see that an increase from 1gb (supplied) and 1.5gb (Max) would make such a difference. 

These days I use a Apple Mac for everyday computing, but my little Sony is so easy to carry and has such amazing battery life that it’s hard to resist using it when I’m on the move.  Interestingly I read a website with instructions on how to install Mac OSX Tiger on my Sony Vaio, but it’s a bit too much trouble for me, I simply dont have the time.

If you own a Vaio VGN-TX56SN in Thailand (or anywhere) then get rid of Vista and Install Windows XP, it makes such a difference.

I expect to get better battery life too on XP, as with Vista the HD was continously churning away and it took so long to boot under Vista that it must have had a negative impact on battery.

If you need any help with drivers for this model, just ask.

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.

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.