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»»handhelds get a price cut!
»»4GB SD cards are out!. Hope the 2GB sd card's price goes down as well
»»Tapwave|go. do. play. killed?

weekend.life.driver

I'm supposed to write a full review of Hamachi but I guess I'd blog about my latest gear acquisition first lest I forget to write about it again. Besides, I'm not finished evaluating Hamachi just yet. Anyway, after 2 weeks of deciding and about a week of 'PDA-less' existence, I finally submitted myself to the urge of buying one. I phoned microwarehouse(palmOne distributor in Davao) and inquired about their latest offering,The LifeDrive. Palm (they already dropped the PalmOne moniker guys) came up with a so called 'mobile manager', a new line of handhelds (the LifeDrive being the first product in its category) that basically 'carries all the essentials of your busy life and use them as you will' in other words, listen to what all the Palm users have been wishing/ranting about for years and slap a 4GB harddrive in the mix :D



The new device sports built-in WiFi (802.11b) and Bluetooth (yeah, finally they listened) it uses the same 416Mhz processor as the Tungsten T5 and IMHO, has the best form factor that Palm has ever released. Audio output coming from its internal speakers is considerably better than all the older Palm units, and pairing this with a set of very good Senheiser earphones would make the LifeDrive a very capable audio/mediaplayer (it supports *.asf movies too). Although not a direct competitor for the iPod but considering that the LifeDrive is more than the usual PDA gives it a more compelling reason to buy. I would go to the extent of saying that the LifeDrive is the swiss knife of the PalmOS-based PDAs, but like the usual swiss knives we use, its not necessarily the best tool for a certain job.

The LifeDrive's main advantage is its internal 4Gb harddrive...imagine the number of documents, audio, movies and other data that you could store, on the other hand, that is also the LifeDrive's achilles heel...while older PalmOS-based PDAs are known to be lightning-fast in loading applications in memory, the LifeDrive lags tremendously, of course some users will disagree with my statement, but anyway I was a Tungsten C user so permit me to say that it was, as I have experienced, very slow for my taste. The system waits for the harddrive to spin so there really is a considerable delay. There is a 3rd party application called Sharkcache that is supposed to fix this, I downloaded a demo copy online and played around with it for a few hours, Unfortunately the application is limited to only 4MB of ''cache"(out of 4GB), there are reports of users getting huge improvements in application load times but in my case I have to be honest that the speed boost was not noticeable.

The LifeDrive is basically a very good concept that was poorly implemented. Bugs are always common on a first generation device, but when you pay Php 30,500 ($1=PHP 55) for a handheld you'd expect it to be worth every penny.

I eventually decided to return the unit and got a T5 instead. I finally convinced myself that I was better off using a universal keyboard + T5 + WiFi card + Nokia 6230, very bulky I know but they all fit in my pocket and more importantly it works...better than I expected :D

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"Happy 27th birthday to the boy who lived...and became a man. God bless and may the prophecy of good health and wealth come true" --flo

Got this SMS greeting from a good friend and an obvious Potter fanatic :D thanks flo, and yes I owe you a free lunch! (yes I will read the book, promise!)

I'm finishing my LifeDrive review this weekend, hope to put it up online by monday.
Longhorn is long gone! well they changed the name anyway, and moved the release schedule to 2006. With a new OS coming we might need a new approach to application interaction, suddenly the computer UI in Minority Report seems so real.

»»http://tactiva.com/tactadrawmovielarge.html
»»reactions on the name change...its supposed to be a big deal?

hamachis.that.doggie.in.the.window

Want a secure zero-configuration VPN for your LAN gaming needs? Check out Hamachi. A detailed review later guys, I need to finish a few things up first.

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Parabolic Heat Transference Case Mod - another classic example of using a chainsaw when a knife would do :)
I've been scouting for stompboxes lately, so far this has the most disturbing name. Hypnorays and magnetic cannons, the next generation WOMD. And lastly, another reason why we should learn Phyton.

HP.Trade-in.Promo

Wifey and I went to the mall the other day, HP held a cool promo participated by its partner stores here in Davao. All you need to do is bring an old printer(any brand) working or not and replace it with any of the 3 models they are offering. Obviously this is a marketing effort by HP to push their entry level printers (because they can't compete with Canon in this market segment) as well as selling a lot of ink in a few weeks time :D...the concept actually worked and there were a lot of people interested. We eventually exchanged an old defective HP printer for a brand new HP PSC 1315, of course we had to shell out PHP 2,999 but for a printer/scanner/copier valued at PHP 4900+ I think thats a good deal already. We had to wait for a two hours before the unit arrives but thats ok, at least we don't have to wait for 1-2 weeks (like the people on the next both). Incidentally they were also showcasing two gadgets(Ipaq h6335 and Ipaq rx3417) subject to the same trade-in scheme except that you'll have to trade it for a mobile phone instead and get PHP 10K off from the regular price. Looks interesting, so I talked to the product rep. and ask him about the device. Of course my first question was how fast is the rx34127? and he answers "it has a Samsung processor". Ok so maybe he didn't hear me right, so I asked again "I'm deciding on which one to get, how would you compare this with the h3665?" and he tells me "the h3625 has an OMAP processor sir"...OK...I'm pretty sure it wasn't going anywhere so I guess I'll have to ignore his answer, play with the gadgets and judge it for myself :D

I never really liked the h6365's form factor so even if it has a cool package(triple wireless) I opted to skip it. Besides, the 29K tag price (after the phone trade-in) made the decision even easier :) so I toyed with the rx3417 instead and it seems pretty cool. It has Bluetooth, IR and WiFi, a camera (but the cam was not that impressive) and a good LCD screen except I found it to be a bit dull compared to most models. The system response wasn't as fast as I wanted it to be but overall it was a good device. At this point I really wanted to buy it. I told the rep that i'm buying it except that I don't have a mobile phone for exchange, so he tells me to go buy an old one so I can have it exchanged for the rx3417. I insisted that the bottomline was for them to push the products right?(because not a single person bought any of the rx3417s anyway) so why deny me the purchase. After a few minutes of convincing, the rep still wouldn't allow me to buy it without a phone for trade-in so I told him to forget the whole thing because I'm no longer interested. The supervisor cuts in and tells me to reconsider and forget about the phone, I can now buy it if I want. And I was like What??!!! Man, I hate it when that happens...so did I bought it? Nah, too much hassle...I'm getting a T5 tomorrow ;)

pda.dilemma

After more than a two-week hiatus I finally got to blog, a lot has happened the past few days that has diverted my attention. Well, anyway i'm back and this time suffering from day1 of my PDA withdrawal syndrome :P . I sold my Tungsten C the other day without thinking of a device to replace it with and now im in search, 'again', of a possible candidate. I'm down to 4 options as of the moment

1. Get a LifeDrive and carry along my Treo 600
-LifeDrive offers Bluetooth + WiFi
-LifeDrive costs around Php 30,000!

2. Get a Treo 650 dump the Treo 600
-No WiFi option for me
-costs around Php 39,000!
-I basically need to sell my Tungsten C and Treo 600 for this

3. Get a Tungsten T5 + Nokia 6230
-Swap my Treo 600 with wifey's 6230
-Pair the T5 with the 6230
-Buy a WiFi card for the T5

4. Stay with my Treo 600
-I need more screen estate

Still too many choices, I could just take option 4, save a lot of money and forget everything. But I guess I'm forever a technolusting geek, and I must admit that with these gadgets around I can no doubt double or even triple my productivity.

So while I mull over this otherwise trivial matter, you guys download and play around with Google's latest toy. Oh btw, Big Brother is watching :D