Category Archives: Hardware

The end of the netbook: it’s been here a while

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hp 2133

The end of the netbook is already here. The Guardian has posted a nice piece here about the stats and the numbers pointing to the fact that the end for the computer format is already here. This question has been much discussed ever since the explosion of the market for consumer tablets, heralded by the birth of the first iPad.

When the first iPad was born in the marketplace, my main tool for working on the go was actually a netbook. I still own this netbook, an HP Mini Note 2133 with the VIA C7M ULV processor and its accompanying chipset. It was quite interesting that HP decided to use the VIA processor when everyone else was going the Atom route. This resulted in some interesting experience trying to install Linux over the shipped Windows Vista Business OS.

Overall, I found it quite frustrating to work on the small screen, cramped keyboard and the 3-cell battery (lucky to last more than two hours). Taking it to a cafe to browse on their wifi connection was quite painful at best, but luckily, or unluckily, the woefully inadequate battery life makes the experience quite short. I hardly ever tried to write articles or code on it as it did not give me enough working time away from the power point. This problem was somewhat alleviated by my splurging on an extra large battery (6-cell model).

I decided to replace this woeful machine with two different devices. One was a Macbook Air, which took care of all my writing and coding needs, while for other things, I got an Acer Iconia Tab Android Tablet. The tablet is an excellent tool for browsing, writing short emails or comments on blogs, updating facebook, and many other light tasks. It is quite easy to operate for short periods of time, but it also has the stamina to sustain a five to six hour browing or movie session.

I am not sure if I should have gone for an iPad to accompany my Macbook Air, but I definitely see a place for a tablet in my gadget bag. I did not choose the iPad at that time because I had an Android phone and I thought giving up Android’s configurability was not an option (maybe it is now?). I chose the Acer tablet because it had a MicroSD card slot, full-size USB slot (yes, I can plug in a portable HDD into it) and it was running Android.

So from a personal standpoint, the netbook certainly has had its day. I have not used my HP Mini Note 2133 since I got the Acer tablet and Macbook Air last year. Do you still use your netbook?

 

How to fix Snow Leopard “compress” issues

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I have just recently noticed that some folders in Snow Leopard just refuse to be compressed using the “compress [folder name]” command (available under the right-click menu). For the life of me, I could not get the folders to finish compressing, with the symptoms including the famous “5 seconds remaining” progress bar status and the progress bar quickly jumping to about 90% and then just hanging there forever. I once left my Macbook Pro to compress a folder overnight (around 8 hours) and it was just stuck on “5 seconds remaining” status.

Initially I managed to avoid this issue by using utilities based on the 7zip compression, although it is less than ideal, since most of them want you to pay before they let you create  archives other than the 7zip format or .7z. After a while I was getting fed up with having to skirt around the issue and decided to investigate and guess what, the culprit is the usual dot files. If you have taken the folder to a Windows machine, say from a USB stick, then brought the folder back to OS X, then you are likely to encounter this issue.

The fix is quite simple. Just bring up the terminal.app (applications > utilities > terminal.app) and type “dot_clean” then drag the errant folder into the terminal window and terminal should display “dot_clean” followed by the path to your folder. Press enter and voila! You should now be able to compress your folder from the option click menu and it will finish. I have not yet encountered this bug in Lion, but who knows, it might be lurking in there somewhere.

Getting the GoFlex Home to play nice with OS X Lion

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Recently I acquired a Macbook Air Mid 2011 model and I wanted to find a good backup regime. Since OS X has had a great backup software called Time Machine, which has been around since OS X 10.5 Leopard, I thought buying a Time Capsule would be the way to go. Unfortunately, due to budgetary constraints, I found that a 1TB Time Capsule that costs more than $300 a little bit of a stretch.

I went for a cheaper option and acquired the Seagate GoFlex Home 2TB drive for $100 less than the time capsule. When I took it home, though, the Time Machine could see the drive in the network, but did not want to backup to it, complaining about “The network backup disk does not support the required AFP features”. After persevering for a while, I went to search Google and found out in the Seagate forums that there was a firmware update for the drive, which I promptly downloaded through Preferences > Administration > Software Updates.

When the update was finished, I restarted the drive. I checked on the software version and I got version  2.5.3:2.0.0.367:1.2.331. Then I went to create a new user through Preferences > Administration > Add User.  As per the advice in the Seagate forum, I made sure that the user was not an admin user (do not click on the “Create As Administrator” checkbox in the GoFlex interface). I also ticked the Enable Computers Backup feature under Preferences > Administration > Computers Backup. I entered a password and then I restarted my MacBook Air and fired up Time Machine and Voila!

Time Machine is now working to backup my MacBook Air and it went on for 5 hours (my wifi is still on g, not n). I hope that someone will find this useful as I was getting a few gray hairs trying to make this work. I am not saying that this will work for everyone, but I hope it could be a starting point towards a solution.

Why I got an Acer Iconia tablet

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For quite a while now, I have been taking my trusty Macbook Pro everywhere I could. I always felt that there might be a time when I would need to pull my Macbook Pro out of my STM backpack in some public place to quickly work on a document or to write an urgent email or something. However, this scenario never eventuated. As it happened, most of the things that I needed to deal with on the run, were mostly emails that I could easily reply to using my Android phone.

As time went on, I realised that most of the places that I visit during my work routine allowed me computer access as well as wifi. After weaning myself off the laptop and the backpack idea, I slowly was able to go to work with just a USB stick and a portable Hard drive. Even though the phone was great for firing quick emails here and there, I felt that I needed something that could function like a computer if I needed it to, light enough to carry around all day and has the battery life to last all day.

Originally, my thoughts went straight to the iPad2. However, I soon realised that the iPad2 had quite limited utility for my purpose. Its lack of expansion options and the lack of USB ports and the marginally useful camera had pushed it down my list of tablets. The tablets that were near the top were the Asus Transformer TF101 and the Acer Iconia A500. After a few days of agony I decided to go with the Acer A500 simply because it had a full-size USB port which makes transferring files to a work computer a breeze.

A couple of years ago the top of the list would have been filled with netbooks, but after buying one which was bundled with a 3-cell battery (lasting a lengthy 1.5 hrs–I am looking at you HP), netbooks just didn’t do it for me anymore. I just found the idea of having to wait for a netbook to boot into either Linux or Windows XP kind of took up more time than the short task that you wanted to do with it in the first place. Plus, the short battery life on offer in the netbooks just did not fit into the idea of all day mobile computing. I decided to go with a tablet because of the instant-on nature of both Android and IOS.

A few days after I got the Acer tablet I decided to put it to work. I would go to work with my bag filled with the following items:

  • USB stick to carry small files
  • A Western Digital 1TB portable hard drive
  • Acer tablet
  • A Ricoh GX200 camera
  • A USB to micro USB cable for transferring files
  • A Huawei wifi modem for internet connectivity.

I would fit all the above items in a small shoulder bag which barely strains my shoulder.

After a few days, I found that I did not need a notebook at all. I found that my notebook was sitting idle for a few days, not seeing much use at all, other than for heavy-duty typing of documents. Even the USB stick was becoming marginally useful when I could use Google Docs to work on various files on the tablet and continue it on the desktop computer at work.

The only problem that I have encountered so far was the fact that one of my workplaces still used Internet Explorer 6 as the standard browser and that made me bring my notebook to work once a week to be able to edit files on Google Docs.

It’s good to travel light. Plus, Angry Birds and the comic reader software keep me entertained on long bus and train rides.