New Palm Centro

For years I used Palm devices, starting with an IBM Workpad provided by my employer back in the 90s, a Palm III, some Palm that I got for free for opening a online stock account, and finally a Handspring Visor Edge that has served me faithfully for several years without rebooting once.  I’ve been itching to get a Treo smartphone for years, but held off since I couldn’t get one cheap as an upgrade from Sprint.   I was unsuccessful in getting Sprint to give me a Treo 650 when I moved to the SERO plan, but the transition was bungled by the wonderful Sprint CSRs and the inflexible computer system which they use.  Finally I got a mailer from Sprint offering me a Palm Centro for $99 if I signed a two year contract.  My SERO plan, especially with corporate discount, is too good to lose, so I went with the upgrade.

There are so many reviews on the phone since it was release 4Q07, so no need to give another one here.  Let me just summarize the pros and cons of the phone as I see it.

Pros:

- It’s very small, not much bigger than a traditional phone

- Reception seems to be quite good, better than my old Samsung A620, almost as good as my Sanyo MM8300

- The Palm OS is fast, especially compared to Windows Mobile, and seems to be pretty stable.

- There are a plethora of applications, some free, others paid.

Cons:

- Battery life is nothing to write home about.  I can barely get a day’s worth of use without recharging.

- The keyboard is small and the alternate characters, accessed by pressing the white key in the lower left corner, are even smaller.  I’m having a tough time reading them with my Lasik corrected near vision.

- The power connector is different than all the other Sprint phones that I’ve had.  They do provide one adapter with the phone, but it makes it difficult to use all the accessories that I’ve accumulated over the past decade or so with Sprint.

So far, I like it a lot.  I’ve upgraded to SplashWallet v.7 from the old V.2 on my Visor, so I can can carry my passwords and account numbers with me securely.  In subsequent posts, I’ll describe the applications as I add them in.

A part of the future of mobile computing? The Asus Eee PC 701 starting at $199

I didn’t make it to Computex so this post is based on the news reports. Probably the most interesting product shown, at least to me, is the new, 2.5 lb Asus Eee PC 701. Based on an Intel processor, a small LCD display, and 2GB flash drive, the $199 notebook PC is targeted as a second notebook. The idea of the Ultramobile PC never made sense to me; why pay 1.5 – 2.5 more than a base laptop for a smaller PC with a ton of compromises? The Eee PC has a reasonable size keyboard, a small, but apparently usable display, and what appears to be a Linux OS. The only compromise is in the amount of storage. Now if they would just implement good utilities to allow you to access Internet-based storage like Amazon S3 or a Windows Home Server, as long as you’re connected to the Internet you could have access to all the storage that you need. And with online apps like Google Apps and Documents and Google Gears, it looks possible that you could do a lot of work whether connected or not. Suddenly 2GB of onboard storage doesn’t seem so restrictive.  Now as long it has built-in wifi or accepts a 3G card.
I’m looking forward to buying one of these when they launch in the retail channel in 3Q07. Now the only question is which one to buy… the 7″ model for $199 or the 10″ model for $299. 

No more posts about Windows Home Server beta – confidential

It turns out that the EULA will constrain me from providing useful feedback on the Windows Home Server application since screen shots, features, documentation, etc., are confidential.  I’m afraid I won’t be able to blog about this for a while until it comes out of beta.  Sorry.

Backing up data – or lose it!

I work in the hard disk drive (HDD) industry, so I know that it’s a fact of life that hard drives fail. No matter how well engineered the drives may be, sometimes s*&% happens. Whether it’s a drive crash, a OS malfunction, physical shock, accident, abuse, or vandalism, one day you may lose your data. I was never much one for backing up to external drives; unless it’s automatic, it’ll never happen. That’s why I bought a Mirra server to back up the data on all the PCs on my home network. As great as the Mirra is, it has it’s limitations:

1. It has a single disk drive, and multiple single points of failure.
2. There is no way that I know of to back up the HDD in the Mirra.
3. The Mirra resides in your home, so if disaster strikes your home, you lose your systems and the backups.

Big business addresses these issues with storage systems with no single point of failure, off-site backups, remote mirroring, etc. But what’s a home user to do?

You could get something like a Buffalo Linkstation and set it up remotely at a friend’s house and back-up via FTP your critical data via broadband. Problem is you tie up both broadband connections, yours and your friend’s.

I’m intrigued by the online backup services like Mozy and Carbonite that provide unlimited backup storage for basically $5 per month or $50 per year. Since I like to use networked storage to consolidate my files on my network, one limitation of these services is that you can only back up local drives, not external drives nor mapped network-attached storage drives. So, you need to leave the PC that you want backed up on all the time. The power draw of a modern PC, while lower with the new advances in dual core processors, still is considerable and can exceed the cost of the backup service itself. And if you have multiple PCs like me, you need multiple accounts and multiple $5/month payments.

As a possible workaround, I’ve been playing with the idea of a dedicated backup box. Long ago I bought a low power Via Nehemiah processor (1.3GHz) on a Syntax S635MP motherboard for $5 after rebate that can almost run air-cooled. I slapped it in an Antec case and am using the integrated graphics. So, computationally it’s a dog, but with a 200GB HDD in it, it’s a fairly low power PC that runs Windows XP reasonably well. If I could just get Windows networking to work reliably, I could use something like NTI Shadow to backup key files continously from all my PCs to a shared folder on the Via system and have that continuously backed up remotely via Mozy or Carbonite for a single $5/month fee. Seems like cheap insurance to me.

Any thoughts or comments?

Setting up the Zyxel P330W router as a wireless bridge

I’ve been trying for some time to link wirelessly my entertainment gadgets with my wireless LAN. For years I was using an Airlink AP411W as a bridge, but unfortunately it only works with WEP encryption. Thus, my network was less secure than necessary, since WEP is easily hacked nowadays. This is especially true with the large amount of data flowing wirelessly as MP3s or video data. I tried setting up another Linksys WRT54G with Tofu 11 in WDS, but couldn’t get it to work at all. I also tried the CompUSA 802.11g router that was sold after New Years for $2.99 after rebate in WDS, but again couldn’t get it to work. When I returned it last week, I saw that my local CompUSA had one of the Zyxel P330W wireless routers that was advertised to work in both bridge and wireless ISP modes for only $20 without rebates. Being the incessant gadget addict, I had to buy one.

Tonight I finally had a chance to set it up. First a decision had to be made: bridge or wireless ISP mode. Bridge mode links together two LAN segments, while wireless ISP mode uses the wireless LAN module to connect to another access point as if it were the WAN port. Because I want bidirectional communication between the entertainment clients like the MP101 and Sling Box, I chose bridge mode. Setting up the Zyxel in bridge mode was incredibly easy, using the instructions by janderso1 in this thread on dslreports.com. Here are the steps that I took:

1. After connecting my laptop to the Zyxel via ethernet, I changed the IP address to 192.168.0.254 so that it’s on the same subnet as my WRT54G.
2. Turned off the Zyxel’s DHCP server in the LAN screen (The Linksys will be serving up the IP addresses to the entertainment clients.)
3. Set the Zyxel’s SSID to the same as my WRT’s.
4. Set the Zyxel to bridge mode in the Operation Mode menu.
5. Set the Zyxel’s wireless to client mode.
6. Set the encryption to WPA PSK and entered the same passkey on both the Zyxel and Linksys.
7. Went to site survey on the Zyxel, clicked on the radio button for my Linksys, and clicked connect.

That was it! My laptop got an IP address after a release/renew sequence and I was surfing! After moving the Zyxel to the entertainment rack and plugging it in, it immediately connected to the wireless LAN of my Linksys, and I was streaming video from my sling to my PC, albeit using a much more secure WPA encryption compared to the WEP used on the Airlink. Plus, I can connect up to four entertainment clients to the Zyxel unlike one on the Airlink (without adding a switch). So here’s what my network looks like now:

http://www.fileh.com/shutrbug/NetworkDiagram011706.jpg

My networked gadgets

I’m a firm believer in the power of networks and Metcalfe’s Law, and try to hook up as many of my gadgets to my wired/wireless network. Hooking up all these toys to my LAN forced me to become much more of a network adminstrator than I really wanted. but I learned a lot along the way. Here is what my network looks like today:

Trying to keep all of these gadgets running is quite a daunting task. For example, my Linksys NSLU2 which is running the Twonkyvision media server is not operational right now because the fan burned out in the Apricorn enclosure that holds the hard disk drive with many of my MP3s on it. Also, the wireless connection between the Airlink+ AP411W and my Linksys WRT54G is unfortunately rather flaky, often interrupting the video stream from the Slingbox, like right now as I’m typing this sentence. Still haven’t figured out why the wireless just drops out periodically.

I’ll talk in much more detail about my experiences with many of these gadgets in the coming weeks, so check back again soon.

Why this blog?

I really am a gadget addict. As soon as a new gadget is announced, I start thinking about how I buying it. As an example, in terms of MP3 players, I have:

1. A Rio PMP300
2. A Creative Nomad Jukebox (6GB)
3. A Creative Nomad II
4. A TDK Mojo
5. A Creative Nomad Zen Xtra (30GB)
6. An Apple iPod mini (6GB)
7. An Apple iPod shuffle (512MB)
8. A Netgear MP101 digital media adapter

As you can see, it seems like I just can’t stop buying new toys. So why this blog? Well, unlike a lot of the review sites that play with a gadget for a bit, I actually use my toys and try to learn as much as possible about them to get the most value and enjoyment from them. My modus operandi is to scour any fora on the gadget to learn about others’ experiences and usage tips. My intention with this blog is to document much of what I have learned about my gadgets so that others may benefit from my trials and tribulations.