Today I bought a low/medium-end notebook: Asus K40ID series, Core 2 Duo 6750 CPU (2.1GHz), Nvidia Geforce GT320M graphics card (VRAM 1GB), 14" HD LED Backlight (1366x768), 320GB HDD, 2GB RAM, 8x DVD RW, 802.11n Wifi and Bluetooth. The OS is Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit. I hope this 64bit thingy will not cause big problem for me due to the potential driver issues. The good thing about Asus is the 2 year parts and labor warranty by default.
I do not trust the quality of notebooks by any vendor. The first notebook I bought is from Dell (Inspiron 600M) early 2003 running XP Home, it broke down twice in the first year. Then it kept alive until 2008 with a problem of the on-board keyboard controller (random key coming out). I still keep it but it is useless now.
The second one I bought is Compaq Presario V3619AU from HP/Compaq in Dec 2008. It is still alive but was sent back twice for repair (after running quite well for 1.5 years) due to overheating issues. The first time they change the AMD CPU, the second time they changed the motherboard. But it still has the overheating issues from time to time. It is covered by 3 year warranty as I paid for it.
The notebook at work is a 4-year old Dell Latitude D610 running XP Pro. It is not bad, Dell's business notebook seems to be much better than the consumer ones. With 2GB RAM and XP Pro, it runs quite well, not very fast but acceptable, even after 4 years. The HDD is a bit small at 80 GB. The battery life is of course quite short now. The accessories are quite bad though as I have changed the dock once and the external keyboard once.
As for Windows 7, my first impression is that it is not much different from Vista (my Acer M6141 Desktop is running Vista Home Premium 32bit). Unlike many people, I have very few problems with Vista. It works quite well on my low-end Acer M1641 Desktop. I feel that Windows 7 with this faster Asus notebook is not at all faster than my Vista desktop.
Asus does installed some junks like the 60 day trial version of Office 2007 and the Anti Virus package and some other things, almost exactly the same thing as the Acer desktop when I bought it. So the first thing to do is to uninstall these two packages. Normally I would install the AVG Anti Virus Free version as the anti-virus, anti-spyware package. This time I choose to install Microsoft Security Essential (just to see if it consumes less memory). I consider myself a pro-user of Windows and normally I do not need to worry about Virus and Spyware. If Microsoft Security Essential proves to be inadequate, then probably I will go back to AVG Anti-Virus Free.
Showing posts with label Singapore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Singapore. Show all posts
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
Monday, January 11, 2010
More Wii Stuff
Over the Christmas and New Year holiday period, I bought quite some Wii related things.
Wii Fit Plus with the Wii balance board is one major item. At SGD159, it is quite a good investment. Now I use it everyday for 30minutes to burn some calories. Wii Sports Resort (table tennis is the most popular for us) and Wii Fit Plus are now the two most played games for us.
The Wii Classics Controller is also a good investment now that I bought quite some virtual console games (2 NES, 1 N64 , 1 Sega Master, 4 Sega Genesis because of the Sega promotion, used to be US$8, bought at US$5).
I also bought two more Wiiware titles (Excitebike and Onslaught). Both are quite good.
None of use are serious gamers but it seems Nintendo really develops a good platform even for non-gamers. One of my colleague (who enjoys PS3 very much, to me PS3 games are too complicated) just bought a Wii as well since it is very different from PS3 and the Sports related games for Wii are really good.
Wii Fit Plus with the Wii balance board is one major item. At SGD159, it is quite a good investment. Now I use it everyday for 30minutes to burn some calories. Wii Sports Resort (table tennis is the most popular for us) and Wii Fit Plus are now the two most played games for us.
The Wii Classics Controller is also a good investment now that I bought quite some virtual console games (2 NES, 1 N64 , 1 Sega Master, 4 Sega Genesis because of the Sega promotion, used to be US$8, bought at US$5).
I also bought two more Wiiware titles (Excitebike and Onslaught). Both are quite good.
None of use are serious gamers but it seems Nintendo really develops a good platform even for non-gamers. One of my colleague (who enjoys PS3 very much, to me PS3 games are too complicated) just bought a Wii as well since it is very different from PS3 and the Sports related games for Wii are really good.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
An interesting blog -- PhD holder now a taxi driver
This is an interesting blog.
http://taxidiary.blogspot.com/2009/04/preface.html
It was even on the Straits Times Breaking News web site.
http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_418626.html
This has been a hot topic recently and today I got the time to read this blog. It is an interesting read and the comments are also interesting. Is it really that unique in Singapore? I do not think so. I highly respect his choice. But I do not think I agree with the bitterness towards his ex-employer. Nobody is indispensable. Period. Just move on!
http://taxidiary.blogspot.com/2009/04/preface.html
It was even on the Straits Times Breaking News web site.
http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_418626.html
This has been a hot topic recently and today I got the time to read this blog. It is an interesting read and the comments are also interesting. Is it really that unique in Singapore? I do not think so. I highly respect his choice. But I do not think I agree with the bitterness towards his ex-employer. Nobody is indispensable. Period. Just move on!
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Singapore GDP to fall by 6 to 9 per cent for year 2009
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporebusinessnews/view/422164/1/.html
"The Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) said gross domestic product (GDP) would fall by 6.0 to 9.0 per cent this year, a stunning downgrade from the previous official estimate of a decline of 2.0 to 5.0 per cent". This is quite bad. Hopefully things will get better in the 4th quarter.
Singapore retrench blog tracks the retrenchment activities in Singapore and it paints quite a bleak situation as well.
"The Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) said gross domestic product (GDP) would fall by 6.0 to 9.0 per cent this year, a stunning downgrade from the previous official estimate of a decline of 2.0 to 5.0 per cent". This is quite bad. Hopefully things will get better in the 4th quarter.
Singapore retrench blog tracks the retrenchment activities in Singapore and it paints quite a bleak situation as well.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Monday, December 22, 2008
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Nokia 6280 Problem
Now my wife has the E71. So I took over Nokia 6280 and I'd like to use it to replace my old Samsung SGH-E388 phone and the old MP3 player. I think I would keep my Sony portable FM radio but just in case I could use 6280 as well.
However now I got a problem. My Starhub Green Prepaid SIM card does not work with the phone. The same SIM card works on my old Nokia phones and even the new E71 but just not this 6280. It rejects the SIM card no matter what I tried (cleaning up the SIM card and the phone SIM card holder). A trip to the Starhub service centre does not help either. They would not be able to help me to keep the number if they change the SIM card for me (SG$18 charge is acceptable to me). To me that is not a good idea as I have used the same number for 4 and a half years. So in the end, I may have to use my old Samsung phone. Or maybe I will look at some Windows Mobile Phone -- they are getting cheaper and cheaper. Windows Mobile SE phones like the Treo 500V is selling at SG$299 when I went to Sim Lim Square to buy the toner cartridge for our Samsung SCX-4200.
By the way, it is quite hard to find shops selling the SCX-4200 toner cartridges. Last time I tried Funan and only one shop was selling. And in Sim Lim Square, I only managed to find two. I paid SGD112 finally for the cartridge even though it was about SG$100 last time when we bought the printer.
For the trip, I also bought an SG$9.9 Sandisk 2GB SD card for the Wii and a SG$39 USB IDE harddisk enclosure for the old 250G IDE disk from my failed desktop.
However now I got a problem. My Starhub Green Prepaid SIM card does not work with the phone. The same SIM card works on my old Nokia phones and even the new E71 but just not this 6280. It rejects the SIM card no matter what I tried (cleaning up the SIM card and the phone SIM card holder). A trip to the Starhub service centre does not help either. They would not be able to help me to keep the number if they change the SIM card for me (SG$18 charge is acceptable to me). To me that is not a good idea as I have used the same number for 4 and a half years. So in the end, I may have to use my old Samsung phone. Or maybe I will look at some Windows Mobile Phone -- they are getting cheaper and cheaper. Windows Mobile SE phones like the Treo 500V is selling at SG$299 when I went to Sim Lim Square to buy the toner cartridge for our Samsung SCX-4200.
By the way, it is quite hard to find shops selling the SCX-4200 toner cartridges. Last time I tried Funan and only one shop was selling. And in Sim Lim Square, I only managed to find two. I paid SGD112 finally for the cartridge even though it was about SG$100 last time when we bought the printer.
For the trip, I also bought an SG$9.9 Sandisk 2GB SD card for the Wii and a SG$39 USB IDE harddisk enclosure for the old 250G IDE disk from my failed desktop.
A New E71
My wife would like to combine the functionality of her current three device into one. Her brother would recontract his Singtel mobile contract so this was just nice. He would buy the phone as a gift.
But it turns out that here requirement is actually high even on surface the high end requirements (Wifi, GPS) are not there.
1) Nokia 6280 Phone for voice/sms, MP3, FM radio. This was bought in the Christmas time of year 2006 as a gift. It is a good phone but the built-in dictionary is not good enough for medical study.
2) HP Jornada 545 (my old Pocket PC 2002 PDA bought in 2002) for dictionary function (MDICT and medical dictionary). It is old and heavy.
3) BESTA electronics dictionary with keyboard and voice. It is easy to use but
I was looking at Windows Mobile platform initialy since MDICT works. FM and Keyboard combination seems to be the problem. There are quite some Windows Mobile Professional (Standard is not considered as I think Windows Mobile is designed more with a touch screen in mind) with keyboard but most of them do not have FM radio. The only one selling in Singtel is HTC Touch Pro which costs SGD988 for recontract without trade-in (SGD888 for new line). She would not give up the FM requirement. If she gives up the requirement for the keyboard, there are some more choices like LG KS20 (SGD268 for recontract), some MWG (O2 XDA) device and some HTC devices. However after trying out a lower-end Asus P320 Windows Mobile 6.1 Phone, she did not feel like the keyboard requirement could be dropped.
The I started to look at Symbian OS platform. LG KT610 has keyboard and is cheap, unfortunately it does not have FM. In the end, we bought a Nokia E71 which has a lot of functionality (Wifi seems to be of good use, GPS is no use now). Most of the phones used at home are from Nokia and the quality of Nokia is really top notch based on our experiences.
Initially my wife did not quite like the outlooks. But now she thinks the phone is great.
But it turns out that here requirement is actually high even on surface the high end requirements (Wifi, GPS) are not there.
1) Nokia 6280 Phone for voice/sms, MP3, FM radio. This was bought in the Christmas time of year 2006 as a gift. It is a good phone but the built-in dictionary is not good enough for medical study.
2) HP Jornada 545 (my old Pocket PC 2002 PDA bought in 2002) for dictionary function (MDICT and medical dictionary). It is old and heavy.
3) BESTA electronics dictionary with keyboard and voice. It is easy to use but
I was looking at Windows Mobile platform initialy since MDICT works. FM and Keyboard combination seems to be the problem. There are quite some Windows Mobile Professional (Standard is not considered as I think Windows Mobile is designed more with a touch screen in mind) with keyboard but most of them do not have FM radio. The only one selling in Singtel is HTC Touch Pro which costs SGD988 for recontract without trade-in (SGD888 for new line). She would not give up the FM requirement. If she gives up the requirement for the keyboard, there are some more choices like LG KS20 (SGD268 for recontract), some MWG (O2 XDA) device and some HTC devices. However after trying out a lower-end Asus P320 Windows Mobile 6.1 Phone, she did not feel like the keyboard requirement could be dropped.
The I started to look at Symbian OS platform. LG KT610 has keyboard and is cheap, unfortunately it does not have FM. In the end, we bought a Nokia E71 which has a lot of functionality (Wifi seems to be of good use, GPS is no use now). Most of the phones used at home are from Nokia and the quality of Nokia is really top notch based on our experiences.
Initially my wife did not quite like the outlooks. But now she thinks the phone is great.
A new Wii for us
I was thinking of buying a Wii for physical exercises for sometime.
After doing some research, I bought an authorized set this Wednesday
(public holiday in Singapore). I paid SGD710 (after comparing 7 shops
in Funan IT Mall) for the following.
1) Wii Sports Official Singapore version with 3 months warranty
by Maxsoft. Listed price is SGD499 but many shops sell for SGD519.
The so called official Singapore version is just the US version
plus an official 240V AC power supply for Singapore.
2) Extra set of Wii Remote (bundle with Wii Play: SGD79) and Numchuck (SGD39)
3) Active Life Outdoor Advantage (my wife's favorite) (SGD109).
The shop is GameScore (#05-05, Funan Digital Mall). The other
shop (Zavi) seems to have good deals with SG$499 basic sets
and SGD588 basic sets+extra set of controller offer. Many other
shops only sell SGD645 bundle (basic sets with three games and worst
is that you can not choose the game).
I was paying by cash so that the shop gave a bit of discount.
SG$710 is about US$500. I think it is much cheaper in US. Anyway,
Wii is only soft-launched in Singapore.
On Saturday, I also bought 1000 Wii Points (US$10) and spent 500
points on the Internet Channel. I spent the other 500 points on
a casual WiiWare (Defend Your Castle).
We are not serious gamers. If not, Xbox (60G Elite version is selling
at SGD499) and PS3 (basic set is selling at about SGD530) seem to
have better price performance ratio.
So far the experiences with Wii seem to be positive among three of
us in the household.
After doing some research, I bought an authorized set this Wednesday
(public holiday in Singapore). I paid SGD710 (after comparing 7 shops
in Funan IT Mall) for the following.
1) Wii Sports Official Singapore version with 3 months warranty
by Maxsoft. Listed price is SGD499 but many shops sell for SGD519.
The so called official Singapore version is just the US version
plus an official 240V AC power supply for Singapore.
2) Extra set of Wii Remote (bundle with Wii Play: SGD79) and Numchuck (SGD39)
3) Active Life Outdoor Advantage (my wife's favorite) (SGD109).
The shop is GameScore (#05-05, Funan Digital Mall). The other
shop (Zavi) seems to have good deals with SG$499 basic sets
and SGD588 basic sets+extra set of controller offer. Many other
shops only sell SGD645 bundle (basic sets with three games and worst
is that you can not choose the game).
I was paying by cash so that the shop gave a bit of discount.
SG$710 is about US$500. I think it is much cheaper in US. Anyway,
Wii is only soft-launched in Singapore.
On Saturday, I also bought 1000 Wii Points (US$10) and spent 500
points on the Internet Channel. I spent the other 500 points on
a casual WiiWare (Defend Your Castle).
We are not serious gamers. If not, Xbox (60G Elite version is selling
at SGD499) and PS3 (basic set is selling at about SGD530) seem to
have better price performance ratio.
So far the experiences with Wii seem to be positive among three of
us in the household.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Happy Chinese New Year!
Chinese New Year is coming closer. The first day of Lunar New Year starts on February 7th this year (the year of Mouse/Rat). Happy Chinese New Year!
To know more about Chinese New Year and the year of Mouse/Rat.
http://www.chinesefortunecalendar.com/2008.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_New_Year
To know more about Chinese New Year and the year of Mouse/Rat.
http://www.chinesefortunecalendar.com/2008.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_New_Year
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Google Page Created
Long time ago (back in 1997), I learned some HTML and created a simple homepage (initially hosted in NTU and later hosted in Geocities. However, after some time, I got not much time to maintain the page and it is gone now. And I almost forgot how to write HTML. Interestingly, somebody used my original website as a template to create the homepage for my Master of Engineering supervisor Dr Luo. One of the page got left over. Those links are mostly dead now.
Now I just created an empty Google Page and hopefully I can pick up HTML again. At the same time, I also created a (again empty) Google code page called picusb:
http://code.google.com/p/picusb/
Now I just created an empty Google Page and hopefully I can pick up HTML again. At the same time, I also created a (again empty) Google code page called picusb:
http://code.google.com/p/picusb/
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Top 100 jobs in Singapore (2007)
http://www.salary.sg/2007/top-100-jobs-in-singapore-2007/
It seems electronics engineers are not too bad.
It seems electronics engineers are not too bad.
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