I think it’s about time for me to review some of the hardware I bought recently. First up is the new set of speakers that I got, the Creative Gigaworks T20 Series II.

My main workstation where I wanted to use them is a Mac Mini which doesn’t have any 5.1 output except for a digital optical out. Now, I don’t need any 5.1 on my workstation but i do like some loud music so I quickly started looking at 2.1 speakers on Amazon and eBay. Wow, there’s a lot of crap out there.

Loads of unknown brands, cheap little subwoofers, and dodgy looking 2mm-thick speakers. So like any geek I used the power of Twitter to quickly get an idea of what speakers other people liked. I got about 3 responses pointing me at the Creative Gigaworks T20 Series II so I quickly went ahead and looked at what all that was about.

Now, these 2.0 speakers are not the smallest, they are about 23cm high by 14cm deep and 9cm wide, but in exchange for that they don’t come with a big bulky subwoofer. Most of the subwoofers that come with 2.1 systems are very small and cheap and therefore not particularly good. Add to that all the wiring and you’re actually happy that these speakers don’t come with a subwoofer.

These 2 speakers though, wow, I didn’t expect such a good sound from a 2.0 system. The bass won’t bump you out of your seat, but is great for films and music and if you want you can pump up the volume and make your neighbours crazy without causing the sound to distort. The added bass and treble control is handy for controlling the kind of experience you want, especially if you sit only 10 cm away from them all day.

All and all I think these speakers are probably the best ones I ever bought and I totally agree with my Twitter advisors that these speakers are definitely worth the money (currently about £50 on Amazon).

When I replaced my MacBook with a Mac Mini setup I was always planning to invest some time into a netbook. I recently ordered a (RED) Dell Mini 10v with the plan to turn it into a hackintosh. After a few days (*cough* weeks) of tinkering I now have a machine I’m happy with.

In short: It’s a (RED), as in the charity sponsoring colour,  Dell Mini 10v that retails for about £250. It has a 1.6GHz Atom processor, 2GB ram (custom), a 1024×600 screen, and a 160GB hard drive. I installed Windows 7 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.1 on it and things are running smoothly. Here are some photos and some notes from my experience.

The cool

• I love the colour and form factor. I wish Apple would make a (RED) laptop with a 10 to 12 inch screen.
• I installed 2GB of ram (easier than I expected) and made some more changes to the hardware by installing a different wireless module and a bluetooth module.
• WiFi (802.11n) and Bluetooth work
• Sleeping works for the most parts
• Multi touch works including 2 finger scrolling, and 3 finger swiping
• It dual boot with Windows 7
• I managed to sync some parts of OS X through Dropbox, making this machine an almost virtual copy of my workstation when it comes to some of the every day tasks.
• I installed a few handy apps to make the most out of the small screen size and small trackpad.
  • Quicksilver: Most of you will know this app, but for those of you who don’t think of it as every app and document under the tip of your fingers, without having to touch the trackpad
  • Megazoomer: Zoom any app to full screen. Very handy for browsing, although it seems to be a bit temperamental sometimes.
  • Caffeine: Prevents your machine from falling asleep when you don’t want it to. Handy for when you’re giving a presentation or when you’re watching a YouTube video.
  • DropBox: Simply the best app for sharing documents across multiple machines. I can’t live without anymore.
  • 1Password: Never need to remember your password again. Combine it with DropBox and your passwords are synced across all your machines.

The not so cool

• Installing was a bit of a pain as it required a lot of reading, diving into tutorials, and most of all knowledge of both OS X and Windows. The most useful resource for everything seemed to be this Dell Mini specific forum.
• I don’t dare to upgrade to 10.6.2 because things might break. Add to that the fact that making a bootable backup is even harder, it doesn’t make for a very reliable machine that you would want to count on for your important documents.
• This is not the fastest machine. It can play SD quality video fine, but the new generation of online videos, including YouTube, seem to be very focussed on HD video, which this machine really can’t handle.
• The standard battery only gives about 2.5 hours of battery, about the same (or even less) as my MacBook did. Where is all of  that power going?! I though these machines were supposed to be energy efficient! I had a look at a 6 cell battery which gives about 5hour+ battery life but they are hard to find in the UK and ridiculously expensive. I had a 6 cell battery with my Dell Mini 10 (non-V) but crazy enough that one didn’t fit on the Dell Mini 10v. Bastards at Dell!
• Hibernation doesn’t work (for now) and I can live with that. The real problem though is sleeping. Although the machine sleeps, if I leave it overnight it will drain quite a bit of the battery (20%). I will have to see if this can be fixed.
• I really need to bring a USB mouse when I’m off to the Netherlands for Christmas for 2 weeks. The trackpad is nice, but if you want to do some real work a external mouse is a must. The keyboard is quite useable though.

The unknown

• I’m not sure if the VGA out works, I need to hook it up to a monitor.

The future

• I might one day take out the Dell logos on the front and back and replace them with something more Apple. I already looked around and found a few articles where people laser cut an Apple logo into their machine and added a glowing apple in it’s place. It seems to require a laser cutter though, which I don’t have.
• I might order a US layout keyboard one day to replace this one. I already set my keyboard to US which means I can type as I’m used to as long as I don’t look at the keys.
• If I hit the F1 key the screen flickers, goes black, and that’s it. This button is somehow wired to do something special that the OS X install doesn’t like. There are some fixes for this which I need to look into.

The photos

So yesterday my new laptop arrived. I decided to get a little Dell Mini 10 netbook as a companion to my new Mac Mini workstation. At the moment I’m at the point of selling it again though.

I found a good deal on eBay for a Dell Mini 10 with integrated wireless-n, bluetooth, 3G/HSDPA, TV-tuner, HD screen and a 6 cell battery. Additionally I liked the model because everyone seems to like the Dell Mini 10 for  turning them into hackintoshes. Yeah, that’s where I was wrong.

The Dell Mini 10 has a little brother called the Dell Mini 10v (where the v stands for value). This model rarely comes with all the extras and has a atom N series processor. It turns out that my machines Z-series atom is actually the reason why I can’t run Mac OS X on it. Doh!

Now I promised myself at the beginning of the year to invest some more time in Linux, so I saw this as a good moment to try it out. I started off with Ubuntu 9.10, which is the newest Ubuntu version. After install the wifi didn’t work, neither did the graphics driver, nor the brightness controls, nor the sleep/suspend, nor the wifi, etc. I spend a few hours getting the wifi and screen to work correctly, and a hack gave me hibernation support. But by then the audio started acting up even more so I decided to do the wise thing to switch to Ubuntu 9.04 (the current long-term-support release).

I chose for the Netbook Remix release because I already started to notice that having a UI that’s optimized for a small screen and a small keyboard might be a wise plan. I managed to get everything to work pretty quickly (except for the TV tuner software) but realized that even the netbook remix doesn’t really run that smoothly on my Z530 with 1GB of ram.

Now to be fair, I’m used to machines with 4GB of ram for the least 4 years, so this is quite a step back. But the screen tearing and slow response is just sometimes killing me. So I decided to look into upgrading the RAM in this machine. This is when I realized this machine doesn’t have any upgradable RAM!

So at the moment I’m really contemplating my options. I love the built-in 3G in this machine, and the 6 cell battery is interesting, but the keyboard is crap, the upgradability sucks, and it won’t run Mac OS X.

So, what IS the best netbook out there that can run Mac OS X? Should I stick with this machine for now or maybe go back to Mac? A Macbook Air is starting to look very tempting.

We got to make a new Swede this weekend (more on that later), but instead of using a real camera we used a Flip Ultra (provided to us by Cisco).

I know a lot of people have been going crazy about this little camera, but I never understood it until this weekend. To give you a bit of background: in the years I’ve played with a lot of cameras both professionally and personally. We had a Sony PD-150 (mini DV) at our company ED-ME in 2005, and I had a Sony HDD digital video camera in 2008. You would assume I would view the Flip as nothing but a toy, and have to admit I did up till now.

The Flip

So what is the Flip? It is a little video camera that you hold like you’d hold a cameraphone. It’s actually quite similar to cameraphone as it’s about the size of one (an old one) and as light. There is a big red button on the back for turning recording on/off , and a four-way control for some of the “advanced” videos. When you managed to record your video you just plug in the Flip into the USB port of your PC with the nice flip-out USB connector (hence the name).

If you are a Windows user, you’ll get a nice bit of software that’s actually loaded and run from the Flip itself. It allows you to quickly edit and share your videos to major video sites. If you are on a Mac you can use iMovie or any other bit of video editing software.

The great thing about the Flip is that the digital files that it records your video to are actually editable in most software packages without needing any conversion first, unlike the kind of files you get on most JVC or Sony HDD cameras. So over are the days of Mini DV to digital conversion, or trying to figure out what to do with that .mod file.

The Downsides

There are some downsides to the Flip too. First of there is no image stabilization in the camera, and add that to the very unstable way of holding the device it makes for pretty shaky video. Most people probably won’t notice, but some might. Add to that the fact that there is no way of extending the camera with other accessories like lenses or microphones and you have a very limited device. The internal Mic is great but very limited, and if you ever want to add a better microphone to your camera you’re stuck with getting a new camera.

But inherently that’s not what this camera is made for. This camera is made for people that want to have a quick record-edit-upload workflow at a great price.

Making sense of Flip Ultra vs Flip Mino

The guys from Pure Digital who make the Flip have 4 models of it in production. There is the 4GB Flip Ultra, 8GB Flip Ultra HD, 2GB Flip Mino, and the 4GB Flip Mino HD. It took me a while to figure out what the differences are, but I figured it out. The difference between the Flip Mini and Flip Ultra is the form factor. The Mino is smaller and lighter and therefore can hold less capacity than the Flip Ultra. The Flip Ultra is also designable.

The biggest difference though is that because the Mino is smaller, it can only hold half the amount of video (60 minutes) as its bigger brother. Both the Mini and Ultra come in a larger capacity High Definition version which has the same form factor and video capacity as the normal versions (60 mins for the Mino, 120 minutes for the Ultra).

Where to buy?

I almost forgot! The best thing of the Flip is the price. The simplest model is about £95, the Mino HD is about £150 RRP. All and all a lot cheaper and easier than most other cameras.

Together with my acquisition of a D80 came the time to get a nice prime lens. I had been looking at the Sigma 30mm F1.4 for a while, but at a whooping £234 it is way more pricey than some of the alternatives. I therefore decided to go for the Nikkor 50mm F1.8 prime. The lens has a bit longer focal length than the Sigma, which (on my D80 with a crop factor of 1.5) makes it a nice portrait lens (~75mm). It has the added “bonus” of not having a build-in focus motor, which makes it cheaper and lighter (and unusable on my D40).

The Lenses

The lens comes in two “versions”. The first version, labeled the Nikkor AF 50mm F1.8 was made first released in 1986. It is easily recognizable by the large pushpin on the side.

The pushpin locks the aperture ring into place. On most modern cameras you will want to keep the aperture ring into the highest aperture number (F22) so it’s a bit big for such a useless function. The rest of the lens feels pretty solid, dare I say heavy.

The second lens that’s a interesting alternative to the Sigma is the Nikkor AF-D 50mm F1.8. Notice the little added “D” that was added tot he previous model. By specification the new lens (launched in 2002 and replacing the previous model) is exactly the same. The most noticeable cosmetic changes are the loss of the push pin and a more plastic (and lighter) casing.

Technically there’s one more important difference between the lens with and without the “D”, except for the fact that the earlier version has only one layer of coating. Which brings us to the showdown.

The Showdown

So what is the real-life difference between the two lenses? First off there’s a price difference of about £15 depending on where you get it. This doesn’t sound like much, but as the modern model goes for about £80 this sums up to about 18%. For a student or amateur on a budget the non-D version is therefore an interesting option.

In performance though, the lenses seem to be very, very different. I like most of Ken Rockwell’s articles on lenses, but in this case he seems to be rather wrong labeling the D functionality as a “almost meaningless feature”. To understand the difference between the single coated and multi-coated (D) lens you have to understand that lenses with large apertures quickly suffer from lens flares. Coating on a lens can help prevent the lens flares to some level and this makes a lot of difference.

Here is a photo I took with the single coated lens.

As you can see in the left bottom corner there’s a big lens flare. It’s not that much of a problem in this photo but it also shows up as a more annoying and larger flare in normal conditions (I couldn’t find any of the worst photos because I deleted them already). 

The modern multi-coated lens still has this issue sometimes but not as large and intrusive as the single-coated version. It is for me at least the reason to get rid of the non-D version and get myself a D version. Even with a hood on the older version still generates massive lens flares and discoloration from time to time. A good example is this photo I took of Reinier:

Conclusion

It seems that the AF-D lens performs much better under low light conditions with consideration to lens flares. Yes, the older version can be found about £15 less but it’s definitely not worth the trouble of lens flares and lack of build quality.

I love my Nikon D40 ever since I got it, but it has it’s limitations. I have been playing with some other Nikon models the last few months and learned a lot about the differences between any upgrade possibilities that are out there for any Nikon user. This article gives a quick summary for a user coming from a Nikon D40 thinking of upgrading or extending their camera equipment.

Photo: Nikon D40 by Allen Qu

The Nikon D40

The Nikon D40 (announced in November 2006 and since replaced by the 90% similar D40X and D60) is Nikon’s entry-level DSLR. The camera is clear compromise between features and price, scrapping many conventional features to keep the weight of the camera limited and the price low. It is the perfect first DSLR for the beginning photographer and therefore a popular choice among switching amateur enthusiasts. [a full review can be found on dpreview.com]

This low price does come with some clear disadvantages for any amateur that wants to bring his/her photography to the next level. Most importantly the Nikon D40 doesn’t have built in focus motor, which means that it will only auto focus with the relatively new AF-S (since 1992) or AF-I (since 1998) lenses. To make things worse, none of the ultra-light sensitive and affordable prime lenses like the 50mm F1.8 (about £60 on Amazon) are available in AF-S, making the D40 worthless as an evening photography camera unless you want to invest in a decent flash or expensive alternative lens (starting at about £250 on Amazon).

Upgrades

So given the fact that you like the D40, and most likely already have one, what are the options for well priced upgrade? This is exactly the question I ran into when I decided I could spend £250 on the Sigma 30mm 1.4 lens, or £75 on the Nikon 50mm 1.8 AF-D instead and invest in a second body. The options for a second Nikon body within a relative specification and price range of the D40 were the D40x, D50, D60, D70, D70s and the D80. The D40x and D60 are no real contenders as they are nothing more than some very badly designed upgrades of the D40 with the same inherent problems. The D70 and D70s, though interesting, where not on my shortlist because of numerous reasons, ranging from the fact that they used CompactFlash (not SD), had very small LCD screens, where relatively expensive to the other models, and were generally regarded inferior to any of the other cameras. So that left me between a D50 and a D80.

Nikon D50 by deleepgeorge

Nikon D50

I actually managed to get my hands on a Nikon D50 on eBay for about £150 but I must admit that they tend to change hands for quite a lot more. The D50 (introduced April 2005) is the technological predecessor of the D40, containing much of the features as the D40 like the 6MP sensor, new generation menus, SD card for storage, and the optical pentamirror. Add on that the clear advantages over the D40 like a build in focus motor and would think the D50 is a great deal for anyone that is used to a D40. [a full review can be found on dpreview.com]

Well, unfortunately that assumption is wrong. Because it was the predecessor to the D40, it has most of the specs of the D40 in a more bigger and professional body, but with the obvious drawbacks of it being a camera thats an entire generation older than the D40. The white balance is awful, especially inside or in cloudy conditions. Most of my photos ended up greenish, leading to me just shooting everything in RAW and setting the white balance by hand afterwards. The auto-focus is horribly slow and inaccurate, and the menu system is no way near as intuitive as that of the D40. In general the entire camera just felt like a lesser product than the D40, which is not the feeling you want to have when spending this much money.

Nikon D80 by Allen Qu

Nikon D80

Lucky for me the D50 had some other technical issues which meant it had to be send back, allowing me to reconsider my options. I had a look on Amazon this time and found a Nikon D80 body for only £300. That’s more than twice the price than I spend on the D50, I know, but for that you get a 10MP sensor, 11 point autofocus, and most importantly a camera from the same generation as the D40. The D80 was launched in August 2006 (before the D40) but features an identical LCD screen and menu system, full support for SDHC, superior auto-focus, and a fast 3FPS RAW burst mode. [a full review can be found on dpreview.com]

I must admit that I have fallen in love with the D80 about as much as I have with the D40. Although it only offers a few major upgrades from the D40, the superior (more pro-like) body makes and the full range of modern features make the camera feel like a D40 in a superior shell (call it the D40Pro). The body (although from plastic) feels very solid and has mostly the same button layout as the D80. Furthermore, the images (besides being 4MP bigger) are quite similar as on the D40. The camera seems to have the same tendency to overexpose so I set my camera to -0.6EV and the white balance is often spot on. 

Nikon D40 vs D80 by Allen Qu

The only problems with the D80 from a D40 perspective are related to size. First of the camera is quite a bit bigger (522g vs 668g a.k.a. 0.74l vs 1.04l) but the image file sizes are also considerably bigger (6MP vs 10MP a.k.a. 5.5mb vs 12.4mb). Still, I take it you chose for this when considering an upgrade, and realize that most DSLR cameras are actually of the same or similar size.

Additional links

Nikon D40 vs Nikon D50 vs Nikon D80 specification on DPReview.com

Yesterday saw the introduction of yet another “revolutionary phone”, the INQ-1. Where the iPhone and GooglePhone seem to be clearly targeted at those with some serious money to spend on a phone, this new phone is clearly targeting those on a budget.

The new phone I’m talking about is the first phone by new company INQ, backed by company Hutchison Whampoa who are also behind mobile provider 3. The phone gets its nickname – The Facebook Phone – due to its heavy integration with Facebook. The phone is a clear cut implementation of what Tim O’Reilly has been calling the “Web2.0 Address Book”.

The Good

The idea behind the Web 2.0 Address Book is that with the rise of social networks we have been organising and maintaining more and more of our social interaction with others online. Most phones on the other hand (including the iPhone) still require us to maintain the contacts on our phone manually or through laborious sync services.

This is where the INQ-1 comes in. The phone ships with an application for Facebook, MSN, LastFM, MySpace, Skype and many more. The first thing you do when you get the phone is log in to those networks and import your contacts into your phone. And this process is not a one time procedure: your contacts will stay synced continuously! So if your contact changes his Facebook avatar, the avatar in your phone changes along.

The integration of the phone with Facebook and the other services is quite extensive, and most of the features are able to run in the background. In short: the INQ-1 does everything right what the iPhone did wrong. It even has a fairly easy copy-and-paste function.

The most important thing though is the price point. The phone is available for £79 with a Pay As You Go plan, or for free with a £15 a month plan that gives the owner unlimited data on the applications, unlimited text, and unlimited 3 to 3 calls. All and all this makes the cost of ownership considerably lower than an iPhone, GPhone, or similar internet enable device.

The Bad

Even though the INQ-1 does so much right that the iPhone does wrong, it totally ignores some of the details that make the iPhone such a success. Admittedly the phone has a totally different price point so the lack of a touch screen, full keyboard, location services (GPS) and other hardware features are understandable. When we asked the people INQ about these lacking features we were told to wait for different INQ models in 2009.

There are more problems though. The Facebook demonstration we got was very impressive and we could all see the potential of the OS behind the phone to develop some applications for our own personal favorite social networks. I was missing the Flickr application, Melinda was missing a Twitter application, and Dan was missing Tumblr integration. The phone’s OS allows developers to write Brew or Java applications, but to get access to the APIs that allow the full integration like the Facebook application would require any dev to go through INQ to get permission. 

Conclusion

I think I can talk for hours about this phone (which probably means INQ did a good job) so let me quickly made a list of the pros and cons of the phone including some I haven’t mentioned yet.

Pros:

• Very nice integration with Facebook, MySpace, MSN, LastFM, Skype phone wide. 
• Applications can run in the background
• Most applications can work without being online, and then sync up when internet is established
• Both the Pay As You Go and the Pay Monthly plans have a way lower cost of ownership than many other properly internet enabled phones. 
• Phone is a proof of concept that will probably sprout innovation in other phone makers

Cons:

• No touch screen, GPS, QWERTY keyboard, or other cool hardware
• Not the most pretty phone (or: is the phone shinny enough to get the attention of the average ADD teenager?)
• OS look and feel very Android-ish and natural
• No app store or proper SDK that allows developers to write similar apps for other networks
• The Facebook application does not show the mobile enable Facebook applications
• Phone will only be available at one provider per country
• International social integration success will rely on INQ’s understanding of all the local popular social networks as there is no app store
• Data plans provide “unlimited data for the phone applications”, but it’s not clear how other sites will be measured
• Although the phone has a music player, it has it’s own proprietary headset 

It is clear that the INQ-1 could offer a real revolution in Web2.0 Address Book implementations. Still the success might fall under the lack of shiny features, gadgetiness, and a developer community. I am looking forward though to the phones that INQ will come up with in the next year as it seems that (like the GPhone) this is only a starting point.

These days every mac has a remote control receiver and Apple has stopped shipping remotes with their machines because admittedly we all already have one by now. There are a few people though that have a Mac perfectly capable of running Front Row but can’t use the Apple Remote with their Mac because it is too old.

I am one of these, as I have an old Mac Mini G4 setup as a media center. I love it because it can play all my movies, even HD, without many problems, but unfortunately I had some remote-trouble recently. As a solution to my initial lack of remote I bought the Keyspan RF Remote, which did the trick of simulating an Apple Remote  for a while until the Keyspan remote died. As Keyspan doesn’t sell these anymore and they go for quite a few buck on eBay, I started to look for a different solution.

This is when I found about the Mantra TR1 sold by Twisted Melon which is a simple IR receiver that can work with the standard Apple Remote. These guys at Twisted Melon normally write the remote control software Mira which can be used together with the Mantra TR1, which was in turn created to give those people without a build-in remote control receiver a cheap solution. The Mantra TR1 was just £14.38 including shipping from Australia, so it was a very good deal (better than the Keyspan RF Remote).

Software

I wouldn’t recommend buying the Mantra TR1 together with the Mira software though. The software hasn’t been maintained for a while and is buggy as hell, on both my Mac Mini and my Macbook. Instead I would advise you to go for SofaControl (£9) which is another application that can work with this receiver and does a way better job.

About the Mantra TR1

Finally I thought I’d share with you my opinion of the hardware. The photo on their site is pretty big although the receiver seems to be small. I thought it would therefore be quite bulky but it isn’t. It’s quite cute and small and weighs basically nothing. Reception is pretty good and basically works through my TV as I had it behind my TV for a while and it still worked.

It has a little red light that blinks when it receives a remote signal. This can be quite annoying if you want to keep the receiver in sight but as I said it works fine even out of sight. One of the interesting things though of seeing the light is that I noticed that sometimes it receives my command but doesn’t do anything. I don’t know if this is because of bad reception or not but it is very seldom and not that annoying.

All and all I know have a proper remote for my Mac Mini media center again and that for only £24.