Environmentally friendly laptops have made their way to the shelves. In Japan, Fujitsu is taking the Kyoto treaty one step further with the production of two new eco-laptops.

The concept of a ‘green’ notebook was first released with the WoodShell, which was showcased by Fujitsu at the Japan Design Innovation 2008 convention in Milan. Since then, the wooden FMV-Biblo (pictured above) has made it to the shelves and is being bought up in a storm by environmentally conscious consumers. The FMV-Biblo is sheathed in a cedar case and the interior parts are made mostly of bio-plastics. Thus the amount of hydro-carbons released into the environment during production is significantly reduced.

Asus has followed the green trend with a new production concept ‘DIGIvision’. They aim to bring an environmentally sound balance to both the design as well as the hardware within. Asus is now showcasing their version of a wooden laptop, but it is not yet available for purchase. Time has yet to tell whether these sustainable designs will compromise their durability.

Copyright © Florian Dobson

My friend bought a IP camera with pan and tilt the other day and I agreed to help him set it up.. turned in to a real nightmare.

This camera connects via a network cable and allows you to log in from anywhere in the world via the internet and view the camera, allowing you to pan and tile and to zoom, great security device.  Trouble is that the instructions supplied are hopeless!

I wasted a whole afternoon, when I try to log in to the camera I just get the admin panel of the router, I decided it was because they both use port 80 so I changed it but it still doesn’t work.

In the end I found UK company on the ‘net selling the same camera, cheaper than it was in Thailand and the UK site has a set-up guide in clear English that explains it all, but it’s still more complicated than it should be!  It turns out that the gateway IP on the camera was wrong, I’m convinced that without the manual downloaded from the UK site I would never have got to the bottom of it.

Cheap Chinese electronics can be a bargain, but they never ever have a manual that makes sense, if you are buying a IP camera and you need to access it via the net then better to buy a brand name that offers support, I see the D-Link do a nice one.

Click Image above to Zoom.. 

When the police in Chiang Mai started to clamp down on unregistered bikes I sold my Kawasaki Vulcan and my Suzuki GSX400 and bought a cheap chinese 200cc road bike.

I also bought a new Platinum PX 175 enduro style bike for riding short journeys around Chiang Mai and also because I take a couple of short cuts on a bike that have bumpy and unpaved roads.

I read up all that I could on this bike prior to making the decision to buy it, and it’s fair to say that lots of people have bought earlier Platinum PX175’s and had nothing but trouble, but this is a second generation Platinum PX 175 which is actually a whole different bike built in a different factory.

I remember back in 1981 my friend bought a new Honda XL125, I rode his bike a few times when it was still fairly new and this bike really does feel like an early 80’s Honda XL 125 with a slightly more powerful engine and electric start. Really it’s an old honda design made on the cheap in China with engines made in a factory that actually make OEM Honda engines, hence whatever the complaints about these bikes nobody has ever criticized the engine.

Things I like about this so far:

• Great Engine
• Full Size Bike
• Very Cheap

Things I dislike:

• Gearing is wrong, needs to be changed.
• Front Brake not very strong.
• Indicators hard to cancel.

I can fix the gearing by changing the sprockets easy enough, I can buy a Honda twin pot brake caliper on eBay cheap enough, and I can change the switchgear to Honda just as easy.

The bike was 52,000 baht, I reckon that if I need to spend another 20k on bits and bobs to bring it up to standard then it’s still a bloody good deal.

This is my second Chinese bike, so I knew that I had to go over it with a torque wrench, to my surprise there were no loose nuts and bolts on this one and it seems to be well assembled.

If Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki or Kawasaki sold a full size enduro style bike for under 125,000 baht in Thailand then I would have bought one, but they don’t. Platinum fill a gap in the market, time will tell if this was a good buy or not, but I’m willing to take a chance and I’m confident that it will be OK.

I recently needed to use my Eee PC whilst on the move, no problem at airports and other areas with (sometimes) free wi-fi but I ended up in a Travel Lodge where they wanted ten pounds extra to use the wi-fi, so instead I bought a “3″ sim card for a tenner and it came with 1 gb of internet use.. more than enough for me to answer a few emails and surf a couple of websites.

I had my trusty Novatel Merlin XU870 in my bag and my USB adaptor so that it plugs into my Asus Eee PC, I slipped in the “3″ sim and the next thing I knew I was surfing at true broadband speeds via HSDPA at nearly 3 mbps… amazing.

My Novatel Merlin is the most flexible of data cards as I can connect it to:

• Expresscard directly
• USB Via USB Adaptor
• PC Card Slot via a Caddy
• PCI slot via a PC Caddy and PCI Adaptor.

All the adaptors and the datacard itself came from Tim at www.edgethailand.com who always seems to have the best prices and a wealth of information that you just wont find elsewhere. Thanks Tim.

My iPhone was one of the first, I bought it from the US and it was already unlocked, but the unlock was one of the early patches so not all of the functions worked. I have been meaning to update it since I saw a friends iPhone with all the cool enhancements that have been made since my old version.

I searched on Google and found a vendor selling a unlock solution, what I got for my 17 UK pounds was a PDF file with instructions to download a free program that unlocks the iphone.. I guess I was not cheated as I got what I wanted, but it’s a bit cheeky selling a link to free software!

Using the software was easy, just one click and it was done, now I have all the latest features and I’m upgraded to the latest firmware.

Map location works fine with DTAC, it pinpoints my location to within a few hundred meters, not as accurate as GPS but it’s still impressive.

Now that Toshiba have announced that manufacturing of HD-DVD players will end this month the future of HD-DVD is unknown.

Amazon have slashed the price of hundreds of HD-DVD titles, so much so that for a while some titles were at the top of the Amazon bestseller list! This suggests to me that the only reason it has not been a success so far is because it was over priced.

What we really need is more dual-format players that can play both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.

I’m sure that there will be healthy market for HD DVD movies for years to come, after all there are lots of people who spent lots of money on the players and they wont just go away.

I have been riding my Gusto Rumba since I bought it last week and it’s just about ready to go in for it’s first service.

This is a Chinese built motorbike, imported and assembled in Thailand by JRD who are the exclusive distributors in Thailand.

The engine on this bike is a 200c twin with twin carbs, and it really does pull strong for a 200cc bike, it’s also smooth and quiet.

The engine appears to be based on a Honda 250cc twin, this particular engine is also found in the Lifan 250-4 (in 250cc form, mine is only 200cc) and quite a few other Chinese bikes.

There have been some problems with the way it was assembled, from a over tight chain and no brake free-play to a rattle from the headlight and a incorrectly fitted exhaust, but i’m confident I have checked and adjusted everything now and hopefully it will be OK.

There is no problem with the electrics, but the connectors and the wires look cheap, also wires are routed in a couple of places that look like there should be grommits to prevent chaffing in the future, so when I have time I will attend to that.

Above all, this bike feels good when it’s out on the road, and it has more than enough power to keep up with the traffic and overtake safely.

The bottom line here is that if you are looking for a full sized and well spec’d bike then the Gusto Rumba is well worth a look..

I have been an avid user of oscommerce for years now, so I was interested to see a new open-source ecommerce platform on the scene called Magento.

Oscommerce by itself is not much use, but a few mods on the layout and a handful of add-ons and it becomes really useful, but it has it’s issues . Magento appears to try and address these issues and make the customers buying experience more fluid and intuitive, but the only version available for download right now is a beta version with new updates being very frequent if does not look like a sensible choice yet for a fully operational commercial website, but I’m watching and waiting for a stable proper release.

You can see Magento at www.magentocommerce.com

Have been the proud owner of a Gusto Rumba for more than 24 hours now, and have been slowly clocking up the kilometers.

I did an inspection and found the following assembly faults:

• Chain far to tight
• Brake adjustment incorrect
• One of the exhaust flanges incorrectly assembled
• A few loose nuts and bolts!
• Idle speed needed adjustment
• Exhaust joint bolt positioned wrong.

Chain being too tight is almost expected in Thailand, but annoying none the less. Took just a few moments to adjust.

The back brake was binding slightly, adjusted the free play in the pedal and now it seems OK.

One of the exhaust flanges was not fitted correctly, if I had not noticed this then I’m sure the bolts would have fallen off before the 500km check.

When going over bumps today I heard a knock, that was just before noticing the exhasust flange problem, when fixing the exhaust flange issue I noticed that the clamp between the 2 into 1 downpipe and the silencer section had the bolt about 1mm from the frame, causing it to knock when going over bumps, easily fixed.

The idle speed seemed a bit slow but the adjuster is easy to get to on the twin Mikuni Carbs.

I checked lots of nuts and bolts and found a few were loose, I don’t know what torque wrench settings to use so I just tightened them carefully.

I will invest in some locknut stuff and treat the threads of all the nuts and bolts around the frame and ancillary stuff, just to be on the safe side, I will also change as many of the visible nuts and bolts to stainless hex fittings as these are really cheap in Chiang Mai and the shop (just down from the railway station towards the bridge) will match nuts and bolts so I can pull up outside the shop and and hand them a handfull of nuts and bolts at a tine.. but I need to check that this won’t make problems with the warranty.

I’m sure now that I will discover a few more little problems in the following days, but these are issues relating to the assembly of the bike after it was shipped in a crate and not issues with the quality of manufacture so I’m not too bothered. Actually I did expect to be sorting a few minor issues after reading about other peoples experience with chinese manufactured bikes.

A couple of my mates who have seen the bike have been quite impressed with the overall quality, I think it’s better than they expected it to be anyway.

I expect to be up to the 500 km first service/inspection in a couple of days so it will be interesting to see what they check.

Conclusion: I have bought 3 new bikes in Thailand before (all Yamaha) and none has ever had any of these kind of issues, It’s not a problem for me as I have the time and patience to fix these little issues but it suggests that JRD as a distributor are not doing as good a job on assembly and pre-delivery inspections as they could. Still: I’m happy for now.

I bought a new Gusto Rumba today from Scooter Arena (Thailand).

I was looking for a new bike since the police started impounding bikes that don’t have number plates (my other bike is a Jap Import with no reg number) and demanding 10,000 baht to release them.

So far I have ridden only about 30km, enough to form an impression but only just.

I paid a total of 60,500 baht, thats 59,000 for the bike and 1,500 for the Registration, Tax and Insurance.

It’s a big bike in terms of size, but only 200cc engine, thats fine for me and I really am quite impressed with the performance but it will be another 500-1000 km before I will really open it up and see what it can do.

It feels comfortable to ride, all the plastic bits seem to rattle a bit but I’m hoping that once it’s all settled down and I have properly tightened all the nuts, bolts and screws that it will be OK..

It has a nice sturdy feel to it, it feels much more like a 400 or 550 bike rather than a 200, but the exhaust note gives the game away, it sounds a bit tinny.

The engine seems sweet enough though, no noise or undue vibration.

The first thing to change will be the handlebar grips, they look plasticky and they do not feel comfortable at all.

I will update shortly and include a lot more pics of details. So far I reckon it was a good buy for me, but I do acknowledge that it will not suit everyone’s tastes.