Buff(ered) Enough?

**Removed. Have to run more tests, getting a lot of inconsistencies.

Is it getting sad in here or is it just me?

Now don't take this the wrong way. I'm all for innovation and moving forward and all that crap.

But 1080p YouTube? Come on. Is that really necessary? When YouTube brought out HQ and eventually HD (720p) content I was shocked at how far Flash can be taken. But running on a dual core or even quad core and having your cpu time eaten by a flash video that your monitor probably can't support is simply ridiculous. The 21.5" LCD I'm using right now only does 1050 vertical lines.

Now, if their compression techniques were amazing and 1080p content streamed like regular content does, I'd be amazed at the innovation. But at this point I have to wait to view anything in HD because my house's 5-megabit connection can barely keep up. That sounds very sad by itself, doesn't it? The cable in my area is terrible, and the DSL is no better. And my school connection, it can't even stream regular YouTube content so we won't go there.

I'm sure Adobe's new Flash 10.1 will come out, and suddenly netbooks will be streaming 1080p content and I'll shut up about it and get a faster connection. But until then, I'm going to keep asking: why is that necessary?

I just felt a great disturbance in the force. It's as if a million already-stressed modems cried out and were then silenced.

Differences.

They come in all sizes. Some can be game changing while others can be so minute that you don't notice. For instance, going from 1.2GHz to 1.4GHz on a netbook. Sad news: it isn't game changing. Noticeable? Yes. Spectacular? Not really.

However, going from a 2GHz Athlon X2 on a 939 board to an AM2 Athlon x2 at 2.8GHz is. Surprising I know. But really. I never understood the impact of clock frequency on games until this past weekend. The difference is between WoW lagging hard in Dalaran at lowest settings to running at 40+ fps in Dalaran on highest settings. And on a 9800GT, Dalaran should be no sweat on any quality settings.

So I've come to the easy conclusion, that my gaming desktop needs an upgrade. The Phenom 9600BE was great when I bought it. Quad core multitasking power for under $120 was a steal, no matter the clock speed. But now that 2.3GHz clock speed is starting to show. My Radeon HD4770, which is technically more powerful than a dying 9800GT, also struggles in Dalaran on any setting on this computer. And I've never understood why. Simple: it's being held back by my processor.

Lesson learned? Never underestimate the impact your CPU has on your games. Time for a cheap way out. Overclock? Not on an old school Phenom baby. I can't get it past 2.5GHz without raising the core voltage, which raises the temperature quite a bit. Lemon much? An Athlon II X4 is in my future. With another 4GB of DDR2 and a second HD4770 for some Crossfire love. Now I just need the cash for it. How much do kidneys go for online?

Take it and run with it.

Into a wall. Haven't posted anything in a while, school's been hell.

Apparently the scene has been moving past me. The ultra-portable scene that is. Things are heating up out there in the big bad world of not-quite-netbooks. All the cool companies are getting into the game for a bit of action. Just like with netbooks, people are snatching them up. All these Pentium CULVs and Core 2 Solos hitting the market are making me a bit insecure about my little Athlon 64 (that I use every day now as a school computer).

So what can I do to combat my processor related insecurities? Well, get a new one. But that's out of reach for a poor college student. And you know how that is.

So what else can I do? Cry? Complain? I try to do as little of those as possible. I make due with what I've got. And overclock.

That's how you do it. Hop on over to this forum and check out a few methods. Getting a cool new wallpaper is optional by the way, but highly recommended.

Cause and effect baby.

Last score was 2.4. Oddly enough, the Aero graphics score went up from 2.4 as well. The processor really is the bottleneck on this system. 1.43GHz doesn't seem like a lot, but if it pushes that score up by half a point, I can't wait to take it further. If it'll go further that is. Locked down laptop BIOSes aren't friendly, and neither is restrictive cooling on a laptop.

On a less warranty-voiding note, I finally figured out a way to use my Gateway on my desk comfortably. As you probably know, typing on a completely flat laptop keyboard on a flat surface can get rather tiring after a while. But reading Lifehacker recently has put me in a "solution oriented" mood. So I rummaged through the crap in my room and found a 2" hard plastic ring binder. Makes a perfect mount for my Gateway. It even brings it up perfectly level with my 19" LCD for my desktop. And I can stuff the AC adapter inside the binder to clear the clutter on my desk. Nice.

Impressions, with a new purchase too!

I've been in school a few weeks now, using my Gateway every day like the workhorse it was purchased to become.

Walking around school and around my (mainly) computer science classes, I've been noticing a lot of netbooks floating around. All of the popular ones have been making appearances. Whipping my Gateway out gets a lot of attention. In fact, I had an Aspire One owner lecture me on the difference between a netbook and an ultra-portable. I chuckled inside, and agreed whole-heartedly with him as he pointed out the obvious differences. When he finished I pointed out that last semester I used to bring an Aspire One with me every day, and he remembered. Then I pointed to the Gateway and said "it's just better for me."

The word better may be an understatement in some respects. Have I mentioned that I use Visual Studio 2008 on a daily basis, and that my computer needs to be able to run it quickly and effectively? I think I did in a past post. Something about this computer just gets along with VS2008. For example: right now I have Chrome open with 4 tabs. This Blogger page, my PicasaWeb album, Facebook (I know, ugh.), and a HQ YouTube stream playing. I click VS2008 and it launches in (and I timed it just now) 12 seconds. To a project. And that includes how long it took to pick which project I wanted to open. My Phenom x4 9600BE with 4GB DDR2 and a SATA 3GB drive can't do that. My Aspire One took upwards of 40 seconds just to launch it, and another 30 to get to a usable state. How? I have no idea, don't ask. And don't think my Aspire One was simply poor software working against it. It had maxed out RAM at 1.5GB, and a fresh install of Win7 at least every month.

Another thing I've noticed about laptops in class, is the noise. I find this Gateway to be a bit on the noisy side, especially when playing Flash video (which is nearly all the time). It isn't by any means unbearable, but it's noticable in my nearly silent house at the moment. But in a classroom, I can't even hear it. Not over other laptops in the area and the ambient noise of shuffling impatient students and loud teachers. In fact, yesterday I tested this. I was sitting in my most boring class. Survey of programming languages it's called, yet we've done no programming at all. More than half of the class is sitting on a laptop to liven up the boredom. I was nowhere near an outlet, so I was on battery. I cleared my Reader feeds and my inbox, so I decided to jump on WoW for a minute. I ended up playing in Alterac Valley for the entire class. That's an hour and 15 minutes of WoW on battery. And my fan's noise never even rose to the point of notice. And not to mention when I logged off and put it to sleep for the next class, it had 40% battery remaining. Considering that it was at 84% when I started playing, that's pretty damn nice.

So the moral of the story? This laptop can play WoW, tolerably, for extended periods of time in boring classes on battery. That's exactly what I wanted to hear before I bought it.

Enough about me though. Have you peeped Brad Linder from Lilliputing's latest unboxing of the Acer Aspire 1410? I can't wait to see his take on the device. Sadly though, he says even it's Intel CULV can't handle full screen Hulu any better than an Atom. Did I even mention Hulu on this device? Fullscreen is semi-watchable, but not perfect. From far away, like sitting on my desk with me building a pc on the floor, it seems perfect, heh.

Really though, I have been waiting for those 1410's to hit reviewers for a long time. I eagerly await your review Mr. Linder.

I'm not done yet either. I finally found a case to replace the thin cloth that came in the box to protect it. I've been using that, and my friends have been laughing at it every day. Well laugh at this beefy unit.

Fits like a glove. And you can spy the cloth I've been using behind it.

It's made for a 12" laptop, so it fits my 11.6" with an extended battery perfectly. Almost as if it were made for my device. Snagged it from an eBay seller. Under 10 bones with free shipping. Ordered it Tuesday the 25th, came in the mail today the 28th. Interested? Get one here.

Saturday night, no date, and a two liter bottle of Shasta.

Technically it's Diet Rite, but who pays attention to details? No one.

It gets boring on WoW sometimes. Occasionally you run across a night where there seems to be nothing you feel like doing in game, so you venture out. Tonight I ventured out to my Google Reader feed page (not very far, I know), and found this amazing piece on Gizmodo. I mean, goddamn, why isn't this guy a millionaire by now? Ideas come and go, but that one is a winner. I've never had trouble with my headphones tangling, so it wouldn't be for me, but I know dozens of people who need help badly with them.

Apparently I've been wrapping headphones (and other long wires) correctly for as long as I can remember according to another (old) Gizmodo post from that page.

It's nice to know that my Razer Pro|Tones won't get damaged, even if they were extremely cheap. Best earbuds I've ever owned, by the way. But recently I've been trying out a pair of Lubix NC1s and I've been surprised. They don't sound as good as the Razer buds, but they don't go into your ear so that was expected.

On a more WoW and Gateway related note: I used my LT3103u for an hour to surf the Auction House, craft two Frostsavage Sets, and collect some shiny new gems for a server transfer. It was actually out of desperation. A friend is transfering one of his old crazy-geared 80s to our new server so he can leech his money and professions. He rolled from 71 to 80 just farming AV now that you can get experience from battlegrounds, so his new 80 is completely broke. And instead of farming new gathering professions, he decided a server transfer and neutral AH swap would be easier. So I'm using this as an opportunity to gear out my soon-to-be 80 Mage and get him some Gs.

Ah, the desperation part. I built a new rig (out of old parts) Friday night, and threw my old 9800GT in it just so it could play WoW while I'm not at my apartment. It is running decently, especially with Windows 7 RC 64 bit on it. It's an old Athlon X2 3800+ on a socket 939 board with 1.5GB of DDR400. Why 1.5GB? I have no idea either, it was on the board and I didn't feel like swapping it. I'll have to do that eventually. It actually plows through WoW at a high pace, but for some reason it slowed to a chug when I was logging in and out constantly to craft that shit for the transfer. So I hard reset, grabbed my Gateway, and hit the sofa.

And on an ending note, see if you can tell what this is:

**Edit: I just noticed that I took this picture at 640x480 on medium quality. I knew my phone's camera wasn't THAT bad, sorry.

One day down, many more to go

School has begun, and this semester is looking to be what's more commonly referred to as a bitch. However, on the lighter side, my Gateway LT3103u is shaping up to be a fantastic school-bag tag-along. It makes my bag feel smaller than my Aspire One used to somehow. Perhaps because it fits the contour of my bag instead of poking out at the bottom. Battery life was impressive. Keep in mind, this is only after one day of school, so things could change.

I reinstalled Windows 7 RC 64 bit again, and somehow I prefer it. It just seems to run better than the 32 bit version. I can't explain how, because I probably have no logical basis to argue on anyway. It just feels faster. What really astounded me is how it handled Visual Studio 2008. Now VS2008 isn't exactly a lightweight piece of kit. To be honest, I expected it to take its time to get going and to do anything like my old Acer Travelmate did with it. But it doesn't. It launches instantly, and opens even decently sized solutions in under 10 seconds. And by decently sized I mean something like a 5 member term project from last semester. And this was on battery!

In addition to work, I also played a bit yesterday. I jumped on WoW quickly, but the school's WiFi failed me as it usually does. Then I surfed for a bit, probably close to an hour total. At the end of my day (12:30 - 8, but I went home at 7) the battery read 80%. That includes pulling the laptop out in every class to read through the syllabus and surf a bit on the side.

That's good news for me, because I didn't have to bring my AC adapter with me to weigh my bag down. With my new fancy mouse and laptop, I barely noticed my bag was any heavier. It will probably come with me from now on as intended.

All's well then? Perhaps.

Have you spied the new Acer 1410, or Timeline 1810? Impressive. That's the Timeline I was waiting for when I bought the Gateway. Then Dell launches its own 11.6 incher with a ULV cpu. And now we have a Windows 7 ION-equipped Lenovo S12 coming soon. Then the Samsung variant. The end of summer is shaping up to be an exciting one. The Summer of the Ultraportable. Beware, consumers, your day is dawning.

Rosewill RM-8500

20 bones with free shipping. 1600dpi, 5 buttons, metal scroll wheel, rubberized body. Score.

On a more wordy front, I am liking this mouse. I've been trying to use it as much as possible since it came in early this morning. It's the perfect sensitivity for this size screen (the Gateway's). It feels so solid for a $20 wireless mouse. It's very nicely weighted and palmable. And by palmable I mean it can be used with two fingers in a hovering stance or with your hand wrapped around it. It's your choice.

In the box

-Rosewill RM-8500

-Nano USB RF Reciever

-Carrying Pouch

-AA Battery

-User Manual

Size

It's definitely small, that's for sure. Of course, it being named a "notebook mouse" makes you sort of expect that. But it isn't as small as I thought it would be, and that's a good thing. When I ordered it, I was afraid it would be too small. And since I couldn't find a single comparison picture on the entire internet (googled for like 35 seconds), I decided to take the big $20 plunge.

For comparison's sake, that's the Rosewill on the left, my Apple BT Mighty Mouse, then my Logitech G5 on the right. All next to my favorite tool ever, the Utili-key. Above the Mighty Mouse is the BT dongle, not the Rosewill one.

This is the Rosewill USB dongle. It is actually smaller than my BT one, so that's a plus.

Performance

I've used cheap mice before. And this one definitely doesn't fit the "cheap mouse" feel. The tracking and response it gives would be more likely found on an expensive Logitech or Razer (of which I've had many). It isn't light enough to be compared to a Razer though, it has the solid heavy feel of a Logitech.

This heavy feel makes it very precise. I have only been using it for a few hours, and by now I never misclick at all. And this is a fast mouse for a notebook mouse. 1600dpi is what gaming mice used to be less than a few years ago. On my Aspire One this mouse would simply be too sensitive to handle.

The feet on the bottom of the mouse give it an excellent glide. It makes my BT Mighty Mouse feel like it's sliding across gravel. It almost stacks up to my G5 in terms of slidability. But time will tell on that one. My G5 feels like it did the day I bought it, will this one in a year?

Actually, using it now, and switching back and forth between this Rosewill and my trusty G5 makes the G5 feel so...big.

Conclusion

Another fantastic purchase. I highly recommend this mouse to anyone looking for a mouse for a notebook. I stress that. Notebook. Not netbook.

And one last thing. Took me a while to figure out. The DPI is switchable on the fly. Just press the wheel button and the left click button at the same time. Goes from 800 to 1600 seamlessly.

That was fast, right?

Don't you love that sitting at your front door when you wake up?

Hold on, didn't I order this stuff yesterday? Yes, technically. At 1AM yesterday morning.

First box, the smaller one.

And the second, I don't have a picture of. Because it's in my computer right now ticking along nicely.

Does that work instead of a picture of a box? I think so.

New stuff on the way.

I finally bought a mouse for my new little notebook. I've never been a huge follower of brands, so buying something by Rosewill doesn't phase me at all. 1600DPI, 5 buttons, and a nano reciever all sound good to me for 20 bones with free shipping.

Also snagged me one of these. My 9800GT is running a bit on the hot side. 78C idle, 90C under load. Those are simply unacceptable temperatures with a case that has two 120mm intakes and 120mm and 140mm exhausts. My ass-old Phenom 9600BE with a stock cooler still runs at 37C idle 44C load, so it's definitely not an airflow problem. A while back I built a small rig for myself to use when I wasn't near my main desktop, I made some posts about it (mainly the case). I had a Sapphire Radeon HD4830 in it, and it blazed through everything. It even scored higher than my 9800GT (which was overclocked) in every benchmark and in every game. Of course, that card is now in my brother's Core2 Duo rig, and why? Because I'm a nice guy and I LOVE excuses to buy new hardware!

Eventually I'll have to upgrade this old AM2+ board so I can steal myself a Phenom II X4 and another HD4770 for some Crossfire love.

And now I'm off to try and remedy this heat problem with a massive surge of pressurized air through this Antec 300.

I'll leave you with this little fun pic...

Old school gaming bliss

Finally got around to installing and playing a few games on the little Gateway.

Warcraft 3

Runs beautifully. I left the settings at the default, but kicked the resolution up to 1024x768, and it hasn't hiccuped yet. I played a few skirmishes against several computers (and got my ass kicked, jeez. it's been a long time). I also played through a bit of the campaign. I didn't install the Frozen Throne, but seeing as how it's running on the same engine, it should be fine. I'm definitely keeping this one installed. It ate several hours of my day yesterday.

Starcraft

Actually, I have no idea. I've run Starcraft on my Aspire One, and it performed flawlessly. So I don't really see a point in installing a game I know will work.

Diablo 2

Same as Starcraft, actually. I know it will run. I first played Diablo 2 on a Celeron 600 with 128MB of RAM with integrated Intel graphics way back in the day. It'll run on this Gateway, trust me.

Quake Live

I had little success. It runs, but not well. Considering that it runs as a plugin to a web brower, I wasn't suprised. Once I found a decent resolution to play at (1024x768) it was okay. Just okay. It seems to run very smoothly at first, until you start making jerky movements (as Quake 3 demands constantly). It doesn't seem as though the game is lagging from video problems, but from input problems. Like it has to think about what your mouse just did. It's more of a stutter every time you move your mouse fast. It's difficult to explain, but once you experience it, it makes perfect sense.

Imagine playing Quake 3 Arena with 10 people, suddenly running around a corner into a crowd of people, and it lagging right as you turn the corner. You know they are there, but your mouse won't let you do anything because it can't keep up. This actually happened a few times when I played it on my desktop for comparison. I almost want to call it a CPU bottleneck, but when you're playing, it doesn't feel like one. It just feels like your mouse stops communicating for a second while your video buffers. I tried it in IE8 and Firefox 3.5, so it wasn't a browser issue. It seems like if the browser was not there and this was a standalone game, it would be perfect.

So don't get your hopes up on this one. You could just install Quake 3 Arena, I can promise you that would run nicely.

Need for Speed Underground 2

I really can't explain why I still play this game at all. It was bad even when it came out. But the free roaming city and different cars with different driving characteristics keep me playing. I installed this as soon as I bought the Gateway. It runs nicely. Definitely a CPU hard hitter. You can raise the graphics up and then drop them to the floor and the game runs the same. But at the floor level they run more fluidly. The game never was about graphics to me, it was about driving. So in short, it runs very well, without the crazy effects turned on.

Reading what I just wrote kind of tells a tale not of bliss, but disappointment eh? Not really. I had no idea what Quake Live was until a few days ago. Fantastic idea, but I'd rather a standalone game that works well, rather than a heavy, buggy application that runs in a browser. It's great for running on a computer at school with decent hardware, but when you've got a laptop that you control, what's the point? Pick up and playability? None that I saw. Even on my desktop the game was heavy and buggy for what it was (Quake 3). I can't count the times it "lost" my mouse cursor, forcing me to alt-tab and close the browser to restart it. I have a copy of Quake 3 Arena floating around somewhere, I'll have to find it for some more old school gaming.

Android.

On a HTC Touch? Works great too. More to come.

Also games on the Gateway. Finally installed Warcraft 3 and played Quake Live. Results later.

Steam Games on a netbook?

Not so much.

By request, I downloaded Steam and installed all of the big games I had on my list. Half Life, Counter Strike, Counter Strike Source, Left 4 Dead, and Team Fortress 2.

Half Life

Plays well. A good single player game to pass the time. I couldn't find a scene where it became laggy at all, even with head crabs jumping at me and soldiers shooting everywhere.

Counter Strike

Same as Half Life, but it can get a bit laggy with 10 people on the screen shooting each other. Never unplayable actually. Unless you can't find a server like me, then it's really unplayable.

Counter Strike Source

Don't expect to be yelling headshot every 2 seconds playing on this machine. It's playable with all settings to low and resolution at 1024 x 600, but it slows down in big situations. I was able to kill a few people in tight spots with an M4 by spraying and a few with a pistol. But with more than a few people on screen it lags too hard to aim reliably. For a quick fix? Maybe. Just maybe.

Left 4 Dead

Don't bother. Sure, you can run around and shoot at stuff, but you'll die very fast. Get jumped by a Hunter? Give up, because you won't see it coming. And if you do see him, you won't be able to hit him. I had trouble hitting a Smoker after running into him around a corner. Point blank, I missed several times before I wasted him. The smokescreen he produced brought the machine to a crawl. Zombie hordes coming at you? Just spray and hope your teammates will kill them all for you. Like I said, don't bother.

Team Fortress 2

Another solid "don't bother" with this one. It was worse than L4D. It requires razor sharp reflexes, and those are just not possible. One on one with another player shooting me, and I couldn't even hit him with a Scout's scattergun. It was that bad. With 4+ people on screen, which is like 90% of the time, it was hovering around 3-4fps. Don't even waste the hard drive space.

Verdict: Half Life 2's engine is very CPU intensive, we all know this. And the Gateway's Athlon is not up to the challenge. Half Life 1 based games are doable, and I'll probably leave them installed. But I'll be promptly uninstalling all of the HL2 based games, as they aren't even worth keeping on the hard drive.

On a lighter note, World of Goo runs very nicely. So does Armadillo Run. I'll be trying some older games later. Any suggestions on what I should try?

On a side note, I'll probably be reformatting back to 64 bit Windows 7.

Skype

I read a comment on NetbookTech's review about Skype video saying it was unusable.

I'm on a Skype video call with another person right now. We both have our cameras on. It's laggy, but even my desktop's video calls lag because of the latency. Audio calling is perfect, even conferences. The microphone is very clear, and the camera is actually very nice. I'll probably never use the camera again after this test, but just to prove that it works for the sake of science and whatnot.

I'm also running three tabs in Chrome in the background (one HQ YouTube, this blog, and the Skype download page), and WoW minimized. When I open WoW Skype (audio) doesn't stutter at all. Perfect. Then again how often will I even use this to play WoW realistically while chatting on Skype? Umm, quite a bit I'm finding.

My Aspire One could not handle Skype video calls with anything else running (or even audio conferences) by the way. I must have just had a bad One. See that? Clever.

**Edit: I think I have to clarify something. While in WoW, I was in a Skype voice chat (conference actually), not video chat. If you are doing nothing but video chatting, the Gateway plows through it with no problem. However, my router hiccuped about 10 minutes ago and everything started lagging. Hard. Video went crazy on both ends for both users, but audio remained perfect. I think Skype's video implementation is just not as polished as I thought. My friend on the other line is running an Asus Gamer's Republic laptop. Core 2 Duo E8400, 4GB of DDR2 800, Vista 64 bit, 9800M, etc. A powerhouse laptop. And Skype started to lag his entire computer like it was doing to mine. Only on video, and only after a big lag spike. It was odd, but I thought I should mention it. After a quick recall, it was back to working. It was almost an hour long call at that point though. Can I explain it? Nope.

Quick update

I reinstalled Windows 7, 32 bit this time. Went smoothly as usual. Install Atheros drivers, use Windows Update for the rest. It feels great, just like my last install. However, this time, Notebook Hardware Control installed and runs fine.

A huge thanks to Mr. Falgun C for telling me about Notebook Hardware Control. It detects clock speed of the CPU and GPU, and temperatures of the CPU and hard drive. It is also definitely more lightweight than Catalyst. So thank you very much for the heads up. I'm re-rating the system as I type this on 32 bit Windows 7.

**Edit: Lower score than before. 2.3 Index because of a lower (2.3) CPU score. Possibly because of the 32 bit instruction set being used as opposed to the 64 bit one before?

Also, earlier I came across a fantastic review of this little Gateway I so adore. It's over at NetbookTech, so go check it out. I agree with most of the review, but not all of it. I do, however, love the detail of the review and the pictures!

I disagree with the performane comparisons and assumptions made. Sure, synthetic benchmarks show the Athlon and Atom to be somewhat even matches, but in every day use the story is much different. I've been using this machine solidly for over a week now -- doing most of this blog's postings, image capture, editing, video watching (including 720p), flash video watching, surfing, and even some light gaming. It completely smashes the Atom in everyday perfomance and sheer willingness to perform.

A good comparison just happens to be a car. Drive an automatic 4 cylinder and it can seem decent if just a bit pokey. Slow to start, slow to react, but okay for driving around town. Switch that same car to a manual gearbox, and that 4 cylinder comes alive. It responds exactly when you want it to and it never feels lazy to rev. The little 4 cylinder becomes usable. It becomes fun to drive. Make sense?

I've posted my opinion on the performance of this machine, and I've given many comparisons. I've owned my Aspire One and used it for some time now, and I've had my Acer Travelmate for going on 4 years now. The Gateway feels peppier than my Travelmate with its 1.6GHz Celeron. That could be the RAM talking, but the Travelmate runs XP Home (and ran with 1.25GB since it was purchased until now), remember?

720p video. I agree that watching 720p video is not the brightest idea on this notebook, as it lacks HDMI out and the screen barely has the resolution to display it. But it plays 720p WMV encoded files flawlessly. At 50% cpu usage even. MKV files are a different story, however, as they tend to get choppy in intense scenes.

Enough of my opinion. Oh wait, this is a blog. Right.

**Warning: rant incoming.

And battery life. Now, I can't pretend to be an expert on battery life and what consumers want, but I am a consumer and a long time mobile computer user. As a consumer, I don't understand the obsession with 9 or 10 hour battery life on devices that run a full operating system. My HTC Touch doesn't get 9 hours of connected (3G) battery life, why should my laptop? What would I do for 9 hours straight on a laptop without being able to plug it in? Or for that matter, what would I do for 5 hours (which I've tested the Gateway to get with WiFi on) without plugging it in? How many people surf the internet for 5 hours straight without being near a power outlet at any point? Seriously. Come on.

I could understand if you were on a long flight, or in a bomb shelter after nuclear fallout, you'd want long battery life. But in those scenarios why would you be connected to WiFi?

I can sit on my couch, with my Gateway on my lap, and surf. And surf. And watch Hulu. And play WoW. And look down, and only an hour has passed by. Then I get bored. I'd like to think I'm sort of an average consumer, so other normal people will mimick my habits somewhat. Are you a student? Taking notes all day on your laptop while in class? Great, buy the 9-cell...it's value to you will outweigh any other disadvantage. Why are you in class for 9 hours at a time anyway? And where are the outlets? Are you in a field-study class? Feel bad for stealing their power? Don't, my University charges me a $100 energy surcharge every semester for just that reason.

I like to think of myself as a realist. A highly opinionated realist who doesn't expect 24 hours of battery life from a device that was 400 bucks. By the way, this rant was not directed at any specific reviewer of any device, but at all of them simultaneously.

Long story drawn to a short end: if you want the performance, don't expect the battery life. If you want battery life, buy a PDA or a big ass battery. My HP iPAQ got ~10 hours of WiFi connected use, AND it had great handwriting recognition. I took short notes with it for a semester, fantastic device. Any questions? I love questions.

Couldn't resist

I had to post something about this. Right now I'm running World of Warcraft in the background. I'm alt-tabbed typing this. The background downloader is pre-loading the early patch 3.2 content. And not a stutter to be found. Amazing.

But that isn't my point. I'm on battery. Here I am, sitting in my living room on my couch watching the Science Channel, wondering if any of my auctions sold or if any of my friends are logged in. So I launch it, it loads up, and I'm in the middle of Stormwind. 10fps. All kinds of people running around and such, not so great. I alt tab and launch the Catalyst Control Center (yeah I got it to work, and the latest drivers...). The core is clocked at 110MHz because I'm on balanced battery mode. With a predicted 3 hour 18 minutes remaining. What?...

Scott at Gadling remarked that he couldn't get any ATI driver package to install, that he had to rely on Windows Update for a working one. I used ATI's legacy driver package for Vista 64 bit. It said something about support for x1250 chipsets. The x1270 is simply a derivative of the x1250, and it even recognizes it as x1270 and installs perfectly. Well it recognizes a device ID of 791f with a vendor ID of 1002 (which is the x1270). Catalyst works perfectly and even detects the correct clock speeds. It has support for Powerplay as well, so it can scale the graphics performance with the Windows battery mode (which mine is doing, it scales to something higher on high performance mode). So if you'd like to have Catalyst, even though it really doesn't seem to have changed the performance at all, give the legacy driver package a try.

I like not having to worry about this thing dying half way through a post. And actually being able to type without my fingers cramping.

Updated Battery Tests

Go here, added idle test. More benchmarks to come as well.

Hectic day today eh?

An Atom Comparo

Decided to see exactly how fast the Atom and Athlon are compared to each other.

CrystalMark 2004R3

SuperPi

Was I correct in my assumptions last benchmark post? Yes, quite. The Atom gets stomped in the SuperPi score. A flat out CPU clock race. Which one can get more data in, crunch the numbers, then get it out fastest. The Athlon wins by a good amount.

When it comes to the synthetic benchmark known as CrystalMark, the Atom wins. Somehow. In fact, the Atom won by a large amount on most of the tests, including the graphics tests. You tell me how an Intel GMA950 can beat an ATI x1270 in ANY test. Something is definitely wrong here. CrystalMark also says the hard drive in my Aspire One is much faster, which I know is false. The memory scores in Windows 7 both recieved the same score (4.4) but CrystalMark scores the memory (cheap Kingston DDR2 667) higher in the Aspire One. Odd.

The scores recieved by the graphics on both systems was also off. The Atom board recieved a 2.2 in Desktop Graphics and a 3.0 in Gaming Graphics. The Athlon/Radeon board pulled a 2.7 in Desktop Graphics and a 3.0 in Gaming Graphics as well. Somehow though, the Atom board can't run ANY game at a decent framerate. WoW on the Aspire One was limited to Auction House use. But I can actually play on the Gateway. On the Aspire One, chatting was difficult because the screen is so small, and typing was a chore.

Hmmm, is it all in my head? Or are synthetic benchmarks a scam? Probably both to some extent.

On to other issues. Using my Aspire One for the past hour has reminded me of why I never used it as constantly as I thought I would. First, the touchpad. It is very awkward. I thought I could get used to it, but I was wrong. The buttons on either side are just plain awkward to hit reliably. Second, the keyboard. It's tiny. Enough said. Third, the screen. It is very bright and clear, but again...tiny. A strain on the eyes. The resolution is rediculous. Notice the image of the CrystalMark score above? How it's cut off at the top and bottom. That's because that is all that would fit on the screen for me to crop. Scrolling is very necessary. And it isn't easy on the tiny touchpad. Fourth, the fan. It's louder at idle than the Gateway's at full on. I know why I used AA1FanControl before.

I had to capture the screens, upload the pictures, then migrate to my desktop to edit and write this. It would have taken an hour on the Aspire One. At least netbooks are cheap, right?

More battery tests

By request, I've started to test the LT3103u with Battery Eater. So far, I've finished the "stress" battery test, and I'll update with the idle test when it finishes. The battery is recharging as I type this, so it may take a while.

Maximum Performance test:

-brightness at full

-WiFi on and connected

-all battery saving (hard disk suspend, backlight dimmer, PCI clock power saver, WiFi power saver) turned off or turned to maximum performance

-graphics turned to full

-USB BT removed

started: 12:49pm

ended: 3:09pm @ 7% battery (400mAh, full at 5195mAh)

total 2 hours 20 minutes

I'm actually surprised at that. That means I can play WoW for 2 hours and 20 minutes in class before I have to find an outlet. Or 2 hours and 20 minutes of CPU, GPU, and HDD intensive "work." This was not a real world test, merely a benchmark.

**Edit: finished the idle test, results below

Idle test:

-brightness at 1/4

-WiFi on and connected

-all battery saving (except dimmer, screen saver, and sleep) enabled

-graphics turned to default power saving

-USB BT removed

ended: 5.8% (~315mAh)

total 5 hours 4 minutes to hibernation

**Edit: just for fun, I installed Battery Eater on my Acer Travelmate 2420. Celeron M 1.6GHz, 768MB DDR2, 40GB HDD, 14.1" LCD, WinXP Home. It got 27 minutes to 7% battery. Nice.

HD Video Test

I can't sleep again, so I decided to run some more tests. HD video time!

On battery, on "balanced" battery mode, I ran several 720p and 1080p WMV encoded files. The 720p is excellent, not a stutter or even gasp of breath from the machine. The 1080p file, however, wasn't so smooth. It plays, then hiccups for a second, then resumes. Like it's filling its lungs for a sprint, then runs out of energy and has to stop and refill again in 20-30 seconds.

Verdict: fantastic for 720p, don't try 1080p for serious viewing.

Why would you want to watch a video that has higher resolution than the screen anyway? 720p is beautiful on this display. If you must, 1080p is watchable, just don't expect too much, okay?

Hard Drive Performance - LT3103u

Toshiba MK2555GSX

250gb

8mb cache

SATA 3.0 interface

Tested with Disk Bench:

Read

1.76kb file .108 mb/s (small files eh)

4.1mb file 93.98 mb/s

1.78gb file 100.42 mb/s

Write

1kb x 24 block (24kb) file infinity mb/s (too fast to read)

4mb x 24 block (96mb) file 85.48 mb/s

10mb x 24 block (240mb) file 86.42 mb/s

100mb x 24 block (2.4gb) file 51.01 mb/s

Temperature during tests: 38' C

All done on battery. Decent performance actually. Better than expected.

Gateway LT3103u Review

I've been raving and posting about this machine for two days. So to be fair, I must say that I've only used the machine for two days. The battery has been fully cycled 4 times now, and I'm writing this on the fifth. So this will serve as more of an "initial reactions" review than anything else. Please keep that in mind.

Aesthetics

This is a beautiful machine. I definitely admire the way it looks. Classy, yet subtle enough to not draw too much attention. The subtle chrome accents give it a touch of class. The machine definitely doesn't look like it should cost 400 bones. I haven't taken it to any large social gatherings or to school yet, so I'll have to repost later when I do that. I can imagine that it will draw a bit of gawking and questioning.

However, the stunning visual aspect of the machine is not all peaches and cream. It looks great. Truely stunning little machine. When it's clean. Remember me mentioning that I still have the plastic on the unit's lid and screen bezel?

The first unit I purchased had fingerprints on the lid as I peeled the plastic off. The bezel absorbs fingerprints like a sponge. Every tiny adjustment you make to the screen leaves a trace. The glossy screen is the same way. I'd recommend bringing a nice microfiber towel with you everywhere this machine goes. If you don't care about fingerprints as much as I do, then do it for the machine's sake. Keep it clean, and it'll love you back!

By the way, I still haven't removed the plastic...I can't bring myself to do it yet. But eventually I'll have to.

Chassis

I am liking the size of this machine more and more as I use it. It's the exact size I was looking for in a notebook. It sits well on my desk, on my lap, and even in my hand. It's palmable just like my Aspire One, without being too small to comfortably sit on my lap. It's very well balanced as well. My Aspire One and even my larger laptop seem top heavy. When they sit on my lap, they tend to fall backwards unless I'm holding the palm rest with my wrist. That was quite possibly the largest gripe I had with my Aspire One.

My hands can rest on the bottom of the unit comfortably as I touch type with ease and speed. The large battery sticking out of the back gives it this advantage of stability that is hard to describe. It makes the unit hard to tip over backwards. I like it. I really thought I would hate the idea of a battery sticking out of the back of the machine, but I was very wrong. The advantages of the extended battery life, superior desk positioning, and stability far outweigh any aesthetic disadvantage.

So the final word on size and weight: perfectly balanced. Not too heavy or big, while not too small or light.

Display

My first unit had a bad screen, probably from damage in shipping. My second unit has a dead pixel. Bad luck? Probably, I usually have terrible luck anyway. Other than those problems, the screen is fantastic. Bright and extremely vivid. It's actually brighter at medium than my Acer 21" LCD at full. Glossy is usually not my style though, so I'll have to wait and see about that. So far my only gripe with the screen is with the glossy coating and its attraction to fingerprints and smudges. This machine is turning out to be a lot like my first gen PSP. Can't use it without fingerprinting it, so I carry a small cloth with it. But damn does it look nice.

The resolution on this monitor is amazing. It runs the same 1366 x 768 that my friend's Asus 15.6" gaming laptop uses. On an 11.6" screen? Talk about pixel density. I love it. The screen real estate bonus compared to a normal netbook (I have to compare it to my Aspire One, it replaced it) is astounding. In fact, posting on Blogger from the Aspire One was a chore. The text input box I'm using now barely fit on the screen on the One. At the moment it has white space to the right and on the bottom. I can dock two windows and type in this one while I watch Hulu in the one to the right. Overkill on a netbook? I like overkill.

Verdict: bright, vivid, dense, and crisp. But a bit smudgy. Don't forget to bring your towel!

Input

At the store and for the first few hours I thought the keyboard would take some getting used to. The keys have a very short stroke, but are spaced very much like a normal full sized keyboard. So if short stroke laptop keyboards aren't for you, then why are you reading this? Laptop keyboards are normally a problem for me. I can't seem to touch type on any laptop keyboard without screwing up very frequently. This one, however, I'm not finding errors very often. And I'm typing quite fast. The keys may not travel much, but they have great response. A nice subtle click from the scissor switches make fast typing a breeze.

A few other reviewers noted a bit of flex in the keyboard. This, I have not noticed. It is perfectly solid for me. But the machine is brand new. So only time will tell on that one.

The touchpad is another story however. I am a rigid mouse lover who refuses to play nicely with touchpads. I can use them, but I'd rather not if at all possible. This one is rather good though. Again, size comes into play. It is large enough to use comfortably, without accidentally hitting it while typing. On my Aspire One, I frequently hit the touchpad by accident and move entire lines of text without realizing it because it is simply too close to the keyboard. And turning the touchpad off and on becomes tiring if you do more than type for very long periods of time. I have only turned this touchpad off when on a desk using a mouse. By the way, I love ChiralMotion scrolling now.

One gripe with the touchpad is actually more of an aesthetic thing. The button(s) on it are plastic chrome, and it attracts fingerprints easily. And since I hit it constantly (because I turn tap to click off) it is always smudged. A quick swipe clears the smudges though, unlike the rest of the case.

I'm going to use the word usable often in this review. That's what they keyboard and touchpad are. Extremely usable. Moreso than any other netbook and most laptops I've used.

Performance

I can't be sure of what to classify this device as. It's raw numbers don't put it ahead of the Atom. The single threaded tests put it ahead, but the CrystalMark CPU scores the processor lower than the Atom. This is disappointing. And misleading.

Real world tests and experience are the factors that cannot be ruled out in a performance review and comparison. I can't give you the laptop and let you use it for two days to determine it for yourself. But if you have a Best Buy near you...by all means go and try it out for yourself.

It feels faster in every way. I don't wait for things to launch, even while multitasking. It doesn't seem to lag at all in every day applications. For instance, I can run Hulu SD video in a window, and browse the web at my leisure with no hiccups in the audio. In fact, as I type this, I am playing an episode of American Dad. I am also viewing my Picasa Web album for when I link pictures, viewing another review I wrote for consistency's sake, and reading a laptop review of an Acer Timeline on Notebookcheck.net. 5 tabs. CPU usage is at 50 - 65%. Playing a Hulu video and running several other heavy tabs. Launching IE8 with all of this took 2 seconds to a full MSN page. Nice.

I play a lot of games, so you knew there'd be a part in here for them. Can this thing rin Crysis at very high with 60+ fps? No. Get over it. What it will do, is help me get my fix when I'm away from my desktops. It gets 20+ fps in battlegrounds on World of Warcraft. In fact, Alterac Valley was churning out 10+ fps in large fights (20 people or more), and that's amazing. Questing and grinding rep/farming is very doable on this machine. Much more so than my Aspire One. I also installed Armadillo Run, an addictive little physics puzzle game, and it runs perfectly with everything maxed. Need for Speed Underground 2 runs well at minimum as well. I'll have to install Steam and try out my entire collection. Not like the hard drive isn't big enough :)

I'd really like to get a comparison of this processor to a Core 2 Solo from a Timeline notebook (the 13.3" Timeline was my other consideration, actually). I can't imagine the Core 2 Solo being much faster.

I do seem to be an AMD fanboy, so take what you will from this :)

Battery

From my limited experience I've measured 4 hours from full to nought with WiFi and screen at half brightness. This was usually with a Flash video playing constantly and my BT dongle plugged in. What more can I say about battery life on this machine? It's good for the amount of sheer usability I get out of it, but bad compared to other netbooks with 6 cell batteries. Does that help?

**Edit: Turning on "Power Saver" battery mode in Windows 7 makes the expected battery life jump up quite a bit.

I think that's all I can say right now. I'll have to post more as I use it more. Updates will probably come frequently. If anyone has a question or if you'd like me to snap another picture or two of it, I'm more than willing to help. It's a fantastic little machine, I do not regret this purchase at all.

Windows 7 boot and shutdown.

Completely fresh install. Updated and running very nicely.

Cold boot: 50 seconds to a launchable browser (40 seconds to a black screen with my BT mouse working)

Shutdown: 15 seconds to fully off.

Must be my slow hard drive then eh? I guess a nice 7200RPM drive is in this machine's future. Or a shiny new SSD perhaps?

My full review is still cooking, simmering if you will. Should be up later tonight to give the big picture. I'm finishing up my (semi-formal) battery tests now.

Windows 7 time.

Just loaded my fresh 64 bit files onto a bootable USB drive. I'll see how this goes before writing any more of my formal review. Shouldn't take long. Hopefully I can use the D2D Recovery system from within Windows 7 if all doesn't go according to plan. I don't have an external DVD burner, unfortunately.

**Edit: Went smoothly as expected.

Scale increases, overall score decreases. Saddening. And odd. Apparently Scott Carmichael at Gadling got something slightly different.

I have a few tests to run.

LT3103u Benchmarks

These were done after a cold boot, with nothing running in the background.

CrystalMark 2004R3

SuperPi

From what I've seen online, the Athlon in this Gateway wins by a large amount over an Atom 1.6 on the SuperPi score, but gets stomped in the CrystalMark score. Because of the HyperThreading support in CrystalMark I believe.

**Edit - for comparison I also ran a 1M SuperPi on my Acer Travelmate 2420 with a Celeron M 1.6GHz (1MB L2 cache). It scored 57s.

All I know is, the Gateway feels much faster than my Aspire One. HyperThreading doesn't matter if you're still waiting for 20 seconds for something to happen. With the handicap of Vista the Gateway still feels so much more alive and peppy. Even while multitasking.

Now, I'm no professional by any means, so keep that in mind.

Any others? Let me know.

Gateway LT3103u - fresh photo op

Excuse my dusty work area please! :)

I'm starting to love this lap... netbook. Funny story here actually. When I purchased the little thing from Best Buy yesterday (yeah I know..who goes to Best Buy on the fourth of July?), the nice sales girl who helped me warned me several times that this was in fact a "netbook" and not a "full fledged notebook." I then conversed with her over why I was interested in this particular model over say, a HP Mini or EEE PC.

Speaking of Best Buy. Buying the unit and exchanging the unit were a breeze. It took zero time to find someone to help me, and she knew her stuff. Then checking out was painless and fast. The exchange went without a single hitch. The assosciate and a geek squad member even booted the machine and apologized for the screen as we joked about how manufacturers should have higher quality standards. By far the best (see what I did there?) experience I've had at a Best Buy store.

I'm starting to doubt the netbook classification it carries. I have been using it this entire time. Using it in pictures, then opening it up quickly and editing or uploading the pictures. It performs like any other notebook I've used. Honestly, if you gave me absolutely zero specifications on the unit and gave it to me to test, I would have called it a laptop, not a netbook. The size, however, shows it to be a netbook. The specs classify it as a netbook. But it is simply far more usable than any netbook I've tried, including the 10" EEE series and HP Mini's. I need to start writing my full review now. After I get some benchmarks quickly. Until then, enjoy the pictures!

Boot and shutdown.

Timed them after I finished de-bloating the Vista Basic install.

Cold boot: 52 seconds to a desktop with launchable browser and working BT mouse.

Shutdown, nothing running: 12 seconds to fully off.

This is after I removed the bloatware, ouch. The apps I removed include: Google Desktop, Google Toolbar for IE, Microsoft Works, Microsoft Office Home and Student trial, Adobe Reader, Norton Internet Security, Microsoft Powerpoint Viewer, and a few other small things.

Things I've installed since then: updated Catalyst Control Center and drivers, Google Chrome, VLC, CPUz, HWMonitor, World of Warcraft, and Amadillo Run. Also threw a USB BT dongle in and I'm using my Apple BT Mighty Mouse. The glossy white mouse doesn't match the gloss/matte black of the Gateway. Guess I'll have to invest in a Logitech VX Nano soon :)

A return to the norm.

I've paused my intense WoW playing for a short time to write some.

I bought a new netbook, again. I'm ditching the Acer Aspire One for my brand new (plastic still on it, but more on that later) Gateway LT3103u. Picked it up from Best Buy today for the low price of $399.99. Actually, I picked it up yesterday. The unit I purchased had a stuck pixel and the right side of the screen looked as if it had pressure damage. The exchange took 10 minutes though. Very pleasant experience. There were only two units when I went in yesterday, and I've had both of them. I almost feel bad about it. Now no one else can buy one. I'm so selfish.

Not all great though. This unit has a dead pixel too. Fortunately, it isn't a stuck red pixel in the middle like the last one. This time it more subtle. It just looks like a small spec of dust. I don't notice it until I look for it now.

A formal review will come later. But just so I remember later I'll throw some numbers out there.

I've been using the, let's say netbook, all day. I'm at 30% battery and Vista says 55 minutes remaining. I believe it for once. The battery doesn't want to die. I was even playing WoW on it earlier. More on that later too. I was uninstalling all of the bloat and updating for a while earlier too. All on battery. I'd estimate around 3:40-4 hours with WiFi on and brightness at medium. I'll have to do a more scientific test some time. But the battery life so far has blown away my Aspire One with it's 3-cell. And performance-wise...

I'll gush about that later too. Hopefully with some benchmarks.

As I type this I have Hulu in another tab playing an episode of American Dad flawlessly. My Celeron M 1.6GHz laptop can't even do that. My Aspire One couldn't play Hulu at all without stuttering. Color me impressed.

24 hours a day.

I haven't slept in several days. I have no idea why. There is a feeling I get, it's hard to explain.

Not wired, and not tired. Somewhere in between. Not well rested or necessarily alert. I do this a lot, actually, so I'm not shocked. I write here to get things off of my mind, and lately I haven't found the time to write about anything in particular. Whenever I sit down and try to throw something onto the keyboard, my mind goes blank. Like a damn Etch-a-Sketch.

That can be very frustrating. No sleep and a mind full of vague ideas and unfinished thoughts. Some people say this requires medical help. But I say games are my medicine. I've finally figured out why I play games so much. Specifically games that don't require TOO much thought. Racing games, RPGs, FPSs. They all cater to the part of me that wishes I could turn my brain off. To end the constant thinking that happens inside my head. I play racing games because they are time consuming, and require little to no thought, just gut reactions. I play RPGs because questing is like an endless grind where I can sort my head out in peace. FPSs are for when my head is full of stressful things. 

I've got it completely mapped out now. My habits are formed as part of some method of procrastination tied into my NEED to stop the internals of my brain from working too much. Games give me something to occupy the part of my brain that encourages thought, while the other part that does the thinking sorts itself out. And I need a lot of that sorting out. It also gives me a way to somehow CREATE obligations to put before the real ones in my life. 

Depressing much? Not really. Simply an interpretation of myself. People say that's good. If you can't laugh at yourself, you know? Think of it as constructive criticism. Time to go level that warlock some more, heh.

It's quad core from here on out.

And let me tell you why.

I'm a multitasker. I NEED four cores, really. At any given point of my computer usage, which is running near 24/7 (seriously), I have more than 3 programs I'm cycling through constantly. And I'm not talking about browser windows here. Although, I usually keep at least two or three, each with several tabs, open. I'm talking about hard hitting programs. Visual Studio 2008 is running nearly all the time, along with WoW, and VLC playing some video file. Add to that my browsers, Digsby, Steam, and other random programs, and you've got a computer that's utilizing its maximum 4gb of DDR2 on a regular basis.

Why do I do this, you ask? Well, like I said, multitasking. I'm always doing something in WoW, so that one is pretty much a given these days. Whether I'm questing or farming or just chatting, it's always running and I'm always logged in. I keep Visual Studio 2008 open at all times in case I get a bit of inspiration for a project I'm working on. Like my computer, my brain never stops working, so having it close by is essential. And VLC is another given. I like movies. And animated shows. Easy enough.

The ability to have all that crap open is not entirely why I feel a quad core is necessary, however. It's the speed at which I can access each individual program. Alt-tabbing needs to be instant and stutter free. Lag kills me. Waiting for something to render in a window is unacceptable, especially if it's in RAM. When I alt-tab to VS2008, it needs to pop up instantly. On my Phenom, it does. On my Athlon X2 box, it doesn't.

Don't get my wrong, my Athlon X2 box (the one I just built and made a custom case for) is plenty quick. It plays games very well, but it isn't a workhorse like this one. I don't leave many programs running on that box, simply because it can't handle that many things. Partially the 2gb of RAM to blame there. I have noticed that recently I've WANTED to stay at school simply so I could keep using my Phenom box that's parked on my desk here instead of the Athlon X2 box at home. Even though my Athlon box has a better graphics card.

Therefore, I have to agree with nearly all internet tech writers for once.

Once you go quad core, you can't go back.

Let's for a moment.

Discuss brilliant, but stupidly simple ideas. Like the steering wheel. Or the toaster. Or this. What? That's such a good idea it's ridiculous! Many times my friend's with iPhones or iPod Touches will come over and whip it out to play a game or play some jamz. The slightly annoying problem rears its head when mostly playing games with sound. Your hand covers the sound output holes. And if you need your thumb on that side to push buttons, your hand will most definitely cover the holes and muffle the sound. This ingeniously simple device redirects the sound towards you, rather than off to the side.

Now, I don't have an iPhone or iPod Touch, obviously, but this idea is just too much for me to handle. You could really make some money making a part like this. I'd buy one for sure, especially so cheap for such a useful part.

Now to discuss some more pressing matters: Mobile Software. Windows Mobile 6.5 has been generating some buzz lately, a lot of it positive. But there are some negative spouts as well. Like the one on Engadget I read earlier, from my phone actually. I almost agree with the editorial. Although, I am really excited to see SOME kind of update for Windows Mobile. I mean, my phone, in it's current state, is perfectly usable via touchscreen. Especially because it has nearly no hardware buttons. I can navigate all around the WinMo environment using one hand and one thumb very easily. I never have a problem hitting the close button, or the start bar, or even scroll bars in explorer. Maybe my fingers are just more accurate than most ;P. I'm using a custom rom with TouchFlo 2D, and it's perfect. I have a launcher already, a la the honeycomb, that I rarely use. All my apps are accessible from scrolling on the bottom bar. Home, Messaging, Internet, Music, Maps, Launcher, etc.

The only thing that disappoints about my phone right now, is the on screen keyboard. It is usable in keypad mode, where T9 is used extensively, but it could use some work. I want a bigger keyboard, and possibly landscape mode. In its current form, TouchFlo 2D can't go landscape, so I'd have to disable it to use landscape at all. So I'm stuck in portrait view, and with portrait oriented keyboards. I can turn on the qwerty keyboard, but then I'd have to use my stylus, or be very careful (still with mistakes). I want a landscape keyboard that has vibration feedback. The one implemented in the port of Android to the Touch was nearly perfect. When it came up via a hardware button, it flipped the screen and engulfed everything except a small line at the top so you could see what you were typing. Something like that. The Touch is so small, it can be used in landscape mode very easily with one thumb or two. When I was using Android a lot, my typing was very fast and accurate. I could tap out messages in a flash, and posting to Twitter or whatever was a snap. I want something that could pop up via a hardware button, maybe the center select on my Touch (I never use it), and switch to landscape mode. Then when the keyboard is turned off, back to portrait. It sounds so simple, but my programming skills on a mobile platform are well below where they need to be for that. I'll get to work right away though.

Another problem I have is with the internet experience on my phone at the moment. Opera Mobile 9.5 is perfect for viewing Google Reader or Gmail. In fact, it even handles clicking links very well. I was browsing my Twitter feed earlier, and I clicked on that Engadget article above. It loaded the entire page, comments and all, in under 35 seconds on EDGE. Not the image, that took longer, but the readable parts. I couldn't do anything except pan around the unzoomed screen while loading, however. I think, soon in the future, popular sites like those will be forced to make mobile versions that can seamlessly integrate with their feeds and such. Or make the feeds much nicer. Some feeds I have on Reader display like a Twitter feed. You know, less than a paragraph, with no picture. So I have to open another window just to read the rest of the article. I should make a wishlist of things I want in a phone. It'd probably be too long to list.

I've been holding this in for too long.

A talk (with myself) about cell phones and multimedia gadgets.

For starters, I own several mp3 players and several cell phones, and several PDAs. I have a Sprint HTC Touch (vogue) as my current phone/PDA. I use my 30GB 1st gen Zune as a media player in a sort-of desktop mount, a Creative MuVo n200 512MB as my "portable" mp3 player, and now a mini-notebook! In the past, I have owned: a Nokia candybar style phone, a LG flip style phone, a Moto C290, and a Samsung m500 phone. As for mp3 players, what I have now is what I've had. I technically "had" a 30GB 6th gen (the video series?) iPod, but more on that below. As for PDAs I've had a Casio Casseopeia BE-300, and a newer HP model.

First, music players. I love my Zune. Every bit of the hardware. It has survived for a very long time, and it is scratch-less and every button still "clicks" with authority. No dead pixels, great battery life, excellent sound quality. Simple design, fantastic software (on the device itself, I don't much care for the desktop Zune software). I bought it after using my brother's iPod 30GB for an extended period of time. Notice what I did there? I bought the Zune AFTER using the iPod? Yes. I said it. My brother had no use for the iPod whatsoever, he simply bought it to be cool and whip it out in public. A black one, very sexy piece might I add.

Here's what I DON'T like about it. The controls. Ever try to use that wheel while moving? Running on a treadmill, bicycling, driving(!..)? It's difficult. And yes, I spent almost 3 months with it, so don't say "Oh silly dude you gotta get used to it." No. I was perfectly used to it. Using it sitting down, or lying down was no problem. Even walking at a very slow pace was doable with some mistakes. What else? After like a week of usage by my brother, it was FULL of scratches. Because he didn't keep it in a case. In his school bag, in a desk drawer, on a table, not even a slip cover. In fact, the scratches are so bad it's almost not worth putting video on the bitch, which is another story. Use iTunes on a regular basis without a Mac? Yeah, it's bad, I know. Shit, I'd rather use Windows Media Player 9 than iTunes. And that shit WAS bad. Converting a video? Good luck. Converting audio? Good luck? Got audio spread out across a HD? Good luck, hope it doesn't kill your directories. Yeah, there are settings for all of these things, but not easily defined settings. Settings you have to set AFTER it scans and starts replacing directories. This is unfair though, I haven't used iTunes in a long time, probably a year or so now.

I want simple. If I HAVE to use your software, let it be good software. Talking to you too, Zune team. Zune is pretty, and decently quick and unbloated, but it has flaws too. I find it a bit nicer on the eyes, and a bit easier to get where I'm going, but it's still flawed. Which is why when I want to quickly swap files on a device, I use my Creative MuVo n200. Shows up as a flash device, drag and drop. Windows Explorer simplicity. Great battery life and audio quality too. It has customizable EQ, take that Zune and (old)iPod. And it's TINY. Which is why I use it almost daily for my walk back from class. It holds enough music to last me a day, and the battery hasn't been replaced in months. Probably because I only use it at 20-30 minutes at a time though. Still. It's easy to use with one hand, I can't fuck up with a dumbass click wheel while I'm walking, and it's very easy to read backlit screen shows exactly what I want to see. No big ass album art, no dumb ID3 info like when it was produced. You think I care about that shit when I'm trying to pick a song? No, because I've already got it organized into folders with albums and artists. Simple. Plus, the screen is tiny, and only displays text most of the time. Ah, simplicity really is bliss for my mp3 player.

My Zune, on the other hand, has found a nice little niche in my life. It sits on my desk, resting on a set of small desktop speakers I bought from Woot.com a very long time ago. It sits vertically for music, horizontally for video, and the screen is great. It plays episodes or movies I've thrown on it so I can fullscreen my more important shit on my real desktop (games or homework, usually games). I like playing WoW or CS:S or L4D at 1440 x 900, or 1680 x 1050. It plays video next to my big monitor for several hours unplugged. But since it's right next to my computer, it's usually plugged in anyway. Like I said, a niche. Most people think it's a good idea, and I love it.

When it comes to these new fangled devices like the iPod Touch, I laugh. I see kids of ages no older than my young sister (who's 9) running around with them. Really, is that necessary? Do they even know how to use one? I could teach my sister how to operate one, but she still wouldn't know what to do with it. Play some music? Great. Watch some video? Sure. Well, no. She uses my dad's 15" laptop for video and music, but still. Would she use the powerful web browser (when it's not crashing..)? Would she use the push email functions? Would she use the calendar? The other nice features it has as a semi-powerful PDA? No. Maybe some games. She could get by using my MuVo 512MB for her audio. Hell, an iPod Classic would set her right. The point is, it isn't necessary. Kids don't want them for all the features. They want them for the wow factor, the cool factor, the fart apps. Hell, I know people MY age who still brag about completely useless apps on theirs. My brother, actually, wants an iPod Touch. The same kid who bought an iPod before to be cool, who bought a "Juke" phone to be cool, and who wants a Blackberry. To be cool. Right. So I ask him, what would you do with an iPod Touch? He responds, play music on the bus home from school. The 20 minute bus ride? Mind you, he has a cell phone, the Juke, that is MADE to play music (although it does it terribly). No, he wants it to be cool. So people will at school will look at him and go, "Hey you got an iPhone, cool. Even my friends still do that when someone in the "group" gets one. But when I got my Touch BEFORE the iPhone came out, and it did all kinds of cool shit like finger navigation, fluid animations, the TouchCube, no one cared. Well, because I didn't call everyone I know or text everyone I know. I got a text a while back from someone I haven't spoken to in a long time, it was to inform me that they had gotten an iPhone, and that this was their first message on it. They sent it to every person on their contact list. REALLY? Has social life and social acceptance stooped THAT low?

It has.

Moving on. PDAs and cell phones. My first PDA was a Casio Casseopeia BE-300. It was a mouthful back then too. I used it for its calendar, its scheduling, its note taking, to doodle in class, for music, video, SimCity 2000 etc. I used it for a lot, and I took it everywhere. I was only like 13 too. But I used it, to its fullest extent mostly. My parents didn't care that I was buying a PDA at that time, because at that time I also had 3 computers in my room, 4 game consoles, and 3 handhelds. I also knew how to rip DVDs and had compiled a distro of Gentoo on an old box I had lying around from scratch on a 56k line. I wasn't an average 13 year old kid. To put it lightly. It finally died it 2005 when the battery gave out. And since I had only purchased the device for $99, it was senseless to buy a new battery for $60. So a few months later I invested in an HP something-can't-remember-the-crazy-model-number. I paid just under $200 for it. And having a job then, no one cared then either how I spent my money. It was great. Did everything the BE-300 did, but with a newer OS, twice the ram, twice the processing power, and in a sleek sexy case. With WiFi. During my first semester at college, I used it constantly. Set all my homework as tasks, set up my calendar to reflect my classes, and bought a big SD card and filled it with media. Then along came the "smartphone" revolution. Stuff starting coming out that made me wish I had a do it all device. At the time I was using an old Nokia candybar style phone. I yearned for a PDA that could make calls. I sold the HP PDA just three months after buying it, and after my semester was over.

I went without for a long time, but trading phones in between. I bought a Motorola c290 TracFone model, because my parents would not add text messaging to our plan. So I got my own. Three or four months of that got old really quick, because I began using the TracFone as more than just a text device. I had planned on using my parent's planned Nokia for voice, they were cool with that. I started using the TracFone for all my calling and text. People don't like keeping track of two numbers, trust me. I'd get texts on my parent's phone, and calls on my TracFone. It was hard to keep up with myself. And it started to get expensive. So I found a SWEET deal on a Sprint plan. The SERO (Sprint Employee Referral) plan. Unlimited data, unlimited text, 500 anytime, free nights and weekends, for 30 a month. I could do that. That's the plan I'm on now, and I love it (don't care what anyone says about Sprint, I love them, but that's for another time). I bought a Samsung m500 dumbphone just to hold me over until I could scrape together the cash to buy my new wet-dream inducing piece of tech: the HTC Touch.

I bought it, unlocked, Sprint branded, for just under $400 with overnight shipping. A steal when it came out. I painlessly transfered my number to it via Sprint's tech support, and set to revolving my life around it. It had it all, finally. Windows Mobile 6, TouchFlo, and all the processing power I could want in a mobile device. No one had it either, so I felt good about my purchase. You didn't see every idiot kid in the mall walking around with one. I didn't blast it out in public and wave it around either. It was a device to satisfy MY lust, not the masses around me. Then the iPhone came out. The 1st gen, without 3G. Not too many people I knew bought one. Just one or two Apple fanboys. Then the 3Gs came out and they cried. And everyone ELSE bought one. It quickly became the phone to have. So now, when I pull my phone out in a hallway, it gets trounced by the 30+ iPhones in the 20ft around me. People look at it and go, "what is that?" I say, "HTC Touch." They go, "It looks new, why didn't you get an iPhone?" They're right, my device does look new. It looks BRAND new, actually. And I've had it for well over a year now as my daily cell phone/PDA. Not a scratch, not a blemish, and it has a plastic screen. Why didn't I get an iPhone? Well, explain to me ONE thing the iPhone can do that mine can't. Multi-touch? No thanks, I like using my phone with one hand. Games? Please. You got Age of Empires on that iPhone? How about SimCity 2000? Oh. You do. Right. Nevermind. How about a browser? Safari? Opera Mobile doesn't crash every twenty seconds, thank you. And I speak about this from experience, not just internet wisdom. A close friend has one, and when he comes over he is always bragging about the thing, then Safari crashes and I'm like, "what happened...." and he makes an excuse like "the site was buggy" or "my battery is dying." And I laugh inside. Calendar? Got a really good one, thanks. Text and picture messaging? Those too. Push email? Got that too, and I can do Gmail natively. I mean, really. I have GPS too. You got me on the accelerometer. You win there. Because I like moving my phone around in my hand in fast motions and miss that on mine.

Seriously, there is no hate here. I like the iPhones I've used. The UI is polished, the screen is fantastic. However, whenever someone calls me, I can always tell they're on an iPhone. That nasty echo that seems to accompany all callers using one. And I can't blame that on my phone, because all other phones sound great. I like the 3D graphics it boasts, and the touch capabilities are amazing. I dislike mutli-touch, though. I can't seem to understand how you'd WANT to use your phone with two hands when browsing a site or viewing a photo. All the gestures on my phone are one fingerable. Zooming on a photo is a cirle around the place I want to zoom on. ON a website it's double tapping an area. I don't know, I just don't see the allure. The iPhone (or iPod Touch) seem to big for my hands, and too big for most other people's hands. I don't know about other people, but I use my phone by holding it in my palm, and using my thumb to do everything. It makes it very convenient and easy to do while I'm walking, or even just sitting there. I've tried that with a friend's iPhone, and dropped it. Several times. They left my house quite annoyed that I dropped their new symbol of coolness on a bed from 3 inches up 5 times in 10 minutes.

Speaking of. I dropped my Touch the other day walking into my room, because I was twirling it between my fingers. 4 feet in the air, onto very thin pile carpet. Battery popped out, no damage. Just a "thud." A friend drops his iPhone onto the floor of his car and worries like crazy until he picks it up to find a tiny scratch. Then he goes insane.

So why do people want these things if they're going to worry about them so much, and have to get a 3rd party app to do things? Dunno. Guess only they know. Can't wait for the Palm Pre. Heh. I'm such a whore.

I love technology so much. Speaking of technology, I just turned my desktop here at school into an access point (secured, of course) using my wireless card and wired lan connection. Instant wireless netbooking (can I say that?) in my apartment. Hope they don't cut my connection for "internet sharing," I'll go crazy on them again.

Like Christmas.

You know, when you come home and get a new gadget in the mail. Or from UPS rather. I have been checking my TigerDirect account every 3 hours to see if UPS would update tracking information. It actually said my package was delayed until tomorrow, or today, the 13th. Friday the 13th? Ouch. Anyway, a knock on my door at 3pm corrected my fears.

I opened the package so fast it was amazing. Had it out and charging before the UPS guy was back in his truck.

A few hours later, and I'm hooked. Started out by removing all the excess bloat from the XP install. WinDVD on a netbook? Come on. That's just senseless.

Apparently, my fears of buying a refurb have been dashed. This is a flawless unit. Glossy all around, perfect keyboard and trackpad. Even the screen is flawless. Excited.

I popped in my USB bluetooth dongle, and paired with my BT Mighty Mouse for a perfect harmony of device and peripheral.

And don't worry, I'm downloading another ISO of Windows 7, so that will come shortly. I also plan on stealing that 1GB stick from my old laptop and throwing it in here. And speaking from first hand experience, this is one snappy little machine. At the moment I am typing this in Firefox, with Hulu playing in another tab. The fan is off, so the machine is a tad hot. A bit disappointing, however, is my first glimpse at battery life. I'm at 81% and Windows estimates 1:35 remaining. That's not as great as I'd hoped. Then again I am playing a Flash video and typing, with WiFi on, screen brightness low, and a BT dongle still plugged in. More testing will have to come, especially before I splurge on a 6-cell.

On a lighter note, I was copying some files to the hard drive earlier (WoW), and I discovered that my HD is 160GB, not 120GB. Score. I'm enjoying it so far. It's taken 10 minutes to get used to the keyboard. Except for the delete key, it's shorter than usual, so I keep hitting the = key by accident. No big deal, I'll learn eventually. The trackpad will take some getting used to though. I normally turn tap-to-click off immediately, but with the buttons on the sides, it's difficult. The buttons are also rather hard to press, and they make a very loud "click" like an old IBM model M keyboard. But tap-to-click may be better than I normally treat it. The touchpad is very slick and responds to even the slightest taps, So I'll see. The scrolling is effortless as well. I turned off the pinching and other multitouch gestures. Two finger scrolling would have been nice, but it doesn't seem to be here.

Now I'm at 74% and 1:26 remaining. Sad.

Should I be ashamed?

I bought a mini notebook.

Pause.

Should I be ashamed for going against what I said before? For not necessarily needing something, but wanting something? I guess not, that's the great part about being a consumer in a capitalist society. I can say things and do the opposite. And here's the required bit: I got a great deal!

Really.

I am ashamed, I know.

Now that that's done with. It's an Acer Aspire One. The old 8.9" XP model. The newer 10" D150 is coming out, so I guess places are trying to clear stock. I grabbed one from TigerDirect.com. Honestly, I've never ordered from Tiger before. I love to look at their deals, and I watch ComputerTV on YouTube religiously. But Newegg has always been my store of choice. Oh well, hopefully Newegg won't be mad with me. Hell I spent $400 a month ago at Newegg. That'll distract them.

What kind of deal, you ask? Well, a good one. $252 shipped. Atom N270, 1GB DDR2, 120GB HD, 8.9" LED-LCD, White, what more could I want? How about a 3-cell battery (I'll get a 6-cell soon)? How about a refurb? Ouch. The way I see it is, if it's been factory reconditioned, it's probably okay enough for me. My Zune was a refurb, and it's still holding up great. I'm watching a video on it right now, actually. Bought this thing for $80 a long time ago. I've bought used items on eBay before, great experiences. My iBook G3 was used, and a year old. It came to me in flawless cosmetic condition with a near brand new battery. So if a factory reconditioned it to be resold, it's probably in good condition, if it was even used before. I'm just trying to make myself feel better about buying a refurbished item. It usually works.

Hopefully it will make a nice companion for those classes that don't have computers, or my time spent waiting for the classes that do have them. Already have a bluetooth usb dongle and a mouse waiting for it. Also a GB of fresh RAM for it. Before it turns on it'll be maxed out at 1.5GB. Remember that GB I bought for my aging laptop? I feel it will see more use in the netb--mini notebook. Should be in by this weekend. I can't wait.

To justify this further to myself, I'll compare my latest acquisition to my aging Acer laptop. My current laptop is an Acer Travelmate 2420. Celeron 1.6Ghz (1MB L2, 90nm), 256MB DDR2 (stock, now has 1.25GB), 40GB PATA HD, Intel GMA900 graphics with 128MB shared VRAM (max), 14.1" LCD, 1.6" thick. When I bought it, it was a very svelt, compact laptop for the money. At the time I believe was $429 plus $60 for the extra RAM. It slipped into my school bag nicely, and served as a daily machine while away at school for a semester. And when I say daily I mean I carried it to school every day in a school bag NOT made for laptops in any way. It has weathered all of that, and today it still chugs on. At the moment it serves virtually no purpose.

As a side note, I tested Windows 7 on it, and it ran decently. About as snappy as XP, but with more bugs. I couldn't watch any flash-based media in full screen or it would lock up and require a hard reset. Any other video at all, streaming from another computer or local, would do the same thing in WMP and VLC (lock and require a hard reset). Other than that, it browsed the web the same and did everything else I asked of it. But I put XP Pro back on it, the full screen Hulu and YouTube issues annoyed me. Actually there's one purpose it serves, a media player while I'm working on my desktops (when they can't be used to do the same).

Some things the old lap rig can't do. It can't play HD YouTube or 480p Hulu, only basic streams (and HQ on YouTube). It struggles playing DVD's occasionally (no exaggeration either). It has less than an hour of battery life after a full charge, but that's its old age. And with batteries costing a hundred bucks for 2 hours of charge, it wouldn't be worth it to fix. Yeah, even brand new it only managed 2 hours with wifi on and screen brightness at low to medium simply browsing. I'm told this 3-cell on the Aspire One will do that no problem. That really isn't a problem though, because I'll rarely be away from an outlet for more than an hour if I'm using it away from home.

So lets see. Atom 1.6Ghz vs Celeron 1.6Ghz. Atom has Hyper Threading, and runs on 45nm chip. Should be a close one. 1.5GB to 1.25GB? Easy. 120GB vs 40GB. Also nice. Intel GMA950 vs GMA900? Like putting a civic with exhaust against a stock civic, neither are going to go anywhere very fast, but one will be louder about it. By the way, not hating on civics here, just using them as a readily available comparison. The 8.9" LCD may be a hassle, but I've never had trouble reading small screens. Hell I use my HTC Touch to read my RSS feeds all day, every day.

Expect pictures soon. And a review. And Windows 7 testing, you know that.