On technology and development

Dell power supply

We own a Dell Latitude laptop. This week it suddenly stopped chargeing the battery and when we inserted the power supply there was an error message stating that there was something wrong with the power supply and that we needed to contact Dell support.

Bummer, I was sure this ment a trip back to the dealer and that both the laptop and the power supply needed to be sent away for months on end. But I called Dell customer support and a was greeted with nothing but understanding and great customer care. No problem they’d send a new power supply in mail straight away. It would not cost me anything (not even postage or handling fee). Two days later DHL  called and wanted to know what time was best for them to deliver the package straight to my door at home.

Wow. That’s what I call good customer support. I’m sure I’ll buy something from Dell the next time I get a chance too. Dell gets 10 out of 10 points for good service.

The new iPad

Unless you have been away in space you probably have heard about the biggest bit of technology news this week. On Wednesday Apple released their tablet PC called…..iPad…., wow that was innovative naming. It’s basically like some Apple designer stumbled on the zoom button on their Xerox copier when copying some iPod Touch/iPhone photos.

Anyway with this latest Apple toy you can use read books, surf the web, read your email and more (sounds familiar?). As with the iPhone this new 1GHz device cannot multitask. That feature is probably reserved for the the iPad Maxi which will come after the iPad Plus that has a camera. It’s important not to give a customer all the features at once. How else are you going to lure your blind followers to pay for upgrades?

Also don’t forget the other big news from Apple. The new Macbook Wheel

Ok, each month I get two new spotify invites since I subscribe to Spotify Premium. Most all family members, friends and colleagues already have Spotify, so if there are anyone out there still struggeling to get their invites leave a comment with your email. Right now I have four to give away.

update: All gone.

Just posting a small note to inform you that my blog has moved again. I wanted more control and decided to move it to my own server and at the same time my own domain. I’ve set up a redirect from the old location so most all links should still work. But if you experience any problems or links that does no longer work please leave a comment on this post.

The new blog domain is blog.codewrench.net.

There are thousands of free applications available for Android based phones. Most of them are avialable though Android market, but where there is a strict policy in the iPhone App Store it seems Android Market is very loose on quality and testing. Some applications just don’t work at all or they are just plain bad quality.

Among them there are some jewles that I’d like to recommend.

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This article is a guide on how to root a unmodified HTC Hero (European GSM model) running firmware latest generic ROM version 2.73.405.5. I found lots of guides on the net for older firmwares, but they did not work on this latest so I had to combine different guides I found in order to complete the operation. The HTC Hero comes locked down, kind of not having Administrator access in Windows. This keeps you from accidentally messing up our phone, but it also keeps you from modifying system settings, installing certain applications etc. Rooting the phone opens the posibility to install unofficials ROMS and updates as well. Read five great reasons to root your android phone for more information. Rooting on Android is the iPhone equivalent of “jail breaking”.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

I recently got accepted to the XBOX Live update preview program. This update is to be made available in Norway in November. The update contains Twitter and Facebook support as well as Zune video store. Last.fm and news are not available in Norway (atleast not in this beta).

Facebook I don’t use so this was not tested. Twitter I can’t really see the value of, not even on a PC and far less on the xbox. But I started the app and tweeted (is it called that) a small message.

The interesting stuff however is the Zune video market place. Movies are offered in standard resultion and HD resolution at a bit higher price.

On the dashboard itself on the Zune menu I am offered the most popular movies. This menu was in english and the prices was lower than the Norwegian menu offers then I enter the actual Zune market place (which is an application). Probably has something to do with the value of the dollar vs. norwegian krone, and I’m sure they will remove the lower prices items in the finished product.

The english menu offers the Matrix at 210 points at standard definition and 290 points for high definition.

When entering the actual store the Norwegian menu offers standard definition at 350 points and high definition at 470 points. This is just yet another sample of how companies screw us over here in Norway.

At present 1000 points costs NOK 82. That translats into about NOK 30 for renting a standard definition movie and NOK 40 for high definition. Since I don’t have a HD TV (in fact I have an old 32″ CRT) I have not tested HD video. But on my setup standard definition videos are looking good and start playing after just a couple of seconds (I have a 10 MBit internet connection).

You can pause and rewind just as a normal video. The movies available in the store as of now does not come with different sound tracks or sub titles, but the menus suggest that this is something that will come. There are not that many movies in the store as of now, but I can only imagine it will grow quicky.

In my limited testing I give the service a thumbs up. This is looking promising. As with the games on demand I feel the prices are a bit high. 30 NOK for renting Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban for 24 hours is a bit high when I can buy the DVD at cdon.com for NOK 59,-

If you are to compete with “free” movies from pirate bay etc. there are two criterias you need to fulfil:

1. It has to be easier to buy than to pirate (I think Zune market place has this one covered).

2. It has to be resonably priced so that the extra work of pirating is not worth the effort.

I’m not sure that the prices are low enough to cover pt. 2. Also I feel that users that already pay to subscribe to xbox live gold should get lower prices.

Pimp my Home Server

Just before Christmas 2008 I bought the HP EX475 MediaSmart windows home server. After reading about it before I purchased it I already knew that the puny 512 MB ram that it came with was too little so I already had 2GB ready for installation when the server arrived.

Now a little over six months later the 1TB disks was already over 75% full and I was tired of the underpowered CPU chopping up performance whenever the server tried to do more than one thing at the same time. The server uses AMD AM2 slot CPU’s and I bought a new 2.6 GHz Athlon processor for just over 300 NOK which is a really nice price for a CPU. Following the excellent guide from Home Server Hacks the procedure was quick and painless. Installing a new 1TB disk was also done in a few seconds.

Now my EX475 has 4 times the RAM, 2 times the storage and a CPU that is clocked at 45% higher frequency (but also quadruples the L2 cache) compared to the original. In other words my EX 475 is now more like a EX 485 than the EX475 that it once were.

And to be honest it was needed. If you want to do anything other than sharing documents and backing up PC’s you need to upgrade the RAM and CPU.

Main screen

v1.1.0.0
- Fixed shortcut keys (F5, F6, F8 etc)
- Pattern matching for select and deselect of files
- New dialog for storage information and server uptime
- Revamped user interface to match the Home Server Console style

I’ve implemented the two top features you the users had voted for. Click to read more and download.

left right left right left

One of my favourite bands Coldplay is once again giving away free music to their fans. This time it’s the live album “Left Right Left Right Left” which you can download in DRM free mp3 (192 kbps) format. So surf over to http://lrlrl.coldplay.com/ and download your copy today.

Thank you coldplay…