Real estate agency:

Just a quick explanation: Dr. House is a Croatian translation for the House M.D. TV series.

My experience with iPhone 3GS [Updated]x3

Month and a half ago I bought white 32GB iPhone 3GS (fw 3.0.1) at t-mobile here in Croatia. Since day one there was a problem with battery life. It just drains too fast with all services and 3G turned off (and even faster when on of course).

For example: Fully charged in the midnight, by the 8AM the indicator still reads 100%. Then after two one minute phone calls and one sent e-mail it drops to 97%. Took couple of photos it is at 94% and one pixel column from the battery indicator is already missing. When you use safari over edge you can literally see that the battery percentage is dropping like 1% in two minutes of use.

This could probably considered normal to some users who don’t have other iphones to compare. Fortunately I have, and my iPhone 2G lasts at least 3x more and the battery indicator will stay full for a whole day with average use. My friend have iPhone 3G and their battery life is completely normal.

After couple of days using it normally I concluded that I need to charge it like 2 times a day which is completely unacceptable. Moreover I still maintain that with mine light usage I shouldn’t be forced to charge it daily.

Then I decided to test the phone against apple’s specifications. So browsing over wifi should last around 9 hours, and movie playback should last around 10 hours. So I’ve turned autolock to off, and navigated Safari to a page which reloads itself every minute. Left it that way for whole night and to my great surprise after 9 hours it still had like 25% charge left. Same with video playback. I’ve put Wrath of Khan and the battery life easily exceeded specifications. That was what puzzled me the most. Then I wanted to test it in real Safari use (just normal browsing) over wifi. 10% lasted barely more than half an hour. That means that the battery would last no more than 5 hours.

Then after couple more days of testing (and restoring as new, restarting, setting up on other computers etc) I returned to the t-com center and filed warranty claim. That was 2 weeks after purchase. A month(!) later they called me to pick up the phone. It was the same one accompanied with a letter that the battery was OK when tested and the software was updated to 3.1. I wasn’t hopeful at all and returned home and the problem was the same. Next day I called customer support and demanded to know what are my options of repair. The operator said to return it twice more (!) for warranty claim because after three times they will give you a new one. I of course refused because I didn’t want to be without iPhone for 3+ months (and I have to pay for it anyway) and demanded to know what other options there are. The only other option was to write a complaint to t-mobile. Which I did and sent it by e-mail and normal post office, but certified way. That was 4 days ago so I’m still waiting for the official reply. As advised on the Croatian consumer protection web page I demanded a brand new iPhone or servicing the defective one (I know that you get refurbished one) but on the condition that I get replacement 3G or 3GS (which I didn’t get when filing a warranty claim, only some htc/mda/WM crap which I refused). As the final option I requested an immediate termination of contract without paying early termination fee.

So what to conclude from this experience? This just affirms my suspicions that Apple doesn’t test iPhones after production or in other words their QA falls on the backs of users which is a huge problem for consumers in a country like Croatia where warranty claims are always a nightmare to go through.

Other resources:

Huge thread about the issue at Apple support forums (dunno why it is called “support” because Apple doesn’t read it).

Big thread at mackorisnik.com (in croatian language only) about almost non-existent, evasive, and blame-the-user servicing support at t-mobile croatia.

You can see my previous posts like this here, here, here and here. 

Update 24/10/2009:

Received a response to my complaint: t-mobile will sent my (short) claims of battery life to Apple to probably decide what to do. This doesn’t spell too good of a news, because Apple can simply say that the battery life is ok (and they are keen to say it judging from the apple support group linked above) and t-mobile will just shrug and basically tell me: “sue us”. Another problem is that the whole process is taking too long a time so I can press on with my demands regardless of the negative outcome. Anyways, we’ll see what will Apple respond.

Update 8/12/2009:

The response I got was to go to the nearest t-mobile center and ask for my phone to be serviced once again if I want to get a new one. Translated that means just another servicing. To be quite honest, that wasn’t the answer I was expecting. So I went there expecting to cancel the contract and demand money-back because they certainly didn’t have replacement iphones. But I was wrong as you might suspect. When I got there it is always the usual stuff. Long tirade of what’s the problem with the phone, and it all ends with the “helpdesk” guys legendary sentence: “we can send your iphone for servicing”. Then I foolishly agreed, but only if they give me iphone as a temporary replacement. (This is the part where I made a mistake. I should have asked for contract termination right away, but no matter, lets continue with what happened next.) They declined of course saying, and I kid you not, that the only phone to get as a replacement is some MDA crap. That was totally expected because I heard the same story (and was foolishly completely convinced by it) two times before. But this time I made a right choice and said that in that case I want contract termination. Believe or not, all of the sudden they somehow did have an iphone as a temporary replacement. Then I made some quick thinking (which in my case never had a good record) and decided to take it and give my iphone to servicing. The guy made a report and even though I clearly described the problem, the only thing the guy wrote on the report was: “Battery is empty in less then 24h under minimal use.” In retrospective, I shouldn’t have signed it and the reason is simple. I bet that those morons at the service center don’t test mobile phones for more than 10 minutes. And in that time you won’t notice the huge battery drain I was experiencing. I should have added a note for those service morons to call me when they get to my iphone. Then I asked if they should attach my mail correspondence with the customer support I had, but no, the guy said that wasn’t needed because those service guys have all the necessary data. Of course they don’t have any of it and they don’t have any interest in those. Then I realized that I was duped so hard by that a$$#ole in customer support because the correspondence lasted more than a month and I got exactly nothing out of it. In any case, I grabbed the replacement iphone 3g and went about my business.

I was a bit anxious about the battery performance with the temporary replacement but that was quickly dispelled. Even though the phone was new, and the battery wasn’t fully formed the battery lasted like 4 times as much then on my iphone 3gs. For example, my 3gs would indicate around 50-60% battery charge left by 5 PM (10h standby – charged overnight). But with replacement 3G, and with around same usage, I would have full battery indicator in the evening (24h standby) and the next day in the morning I would have only 1 pixel row missing from the battery indicator, and by the end of the next day I would still have more than 60% of battery left. Then I would charge it or sometimes I even used it for the third day without problem. I have tested this extensively because I have the replacement for almost two weeks now. So I’m kinda glad that I got this 3G for a replacement because they have almost identical battery lifetime specs (3gs has slightly better though) and I was a little afraid that I would have the same problem as I had with 3gs.

So what to expect when I get a call to from t-mobile?

Case 1: 3GS replaced. Win situation.

Case 2: 3GS not replaced, there is “no problem with the phone”. I’ll print out comparative screenshots (I have those aplenty) and 3G vs 3GS battery specifications and layout them in front of them. If they don’t give me a new 3GS I’ll terminate the contract, and demand my money back. Win situation.

As always, I’ll keep you posted on any news.

Btw, I got myself employed, so I got an extra incentive to post more (no more exams hanging above my head). But the trouble is, when employed, I don’t travel at all, and don’t have much money to spend on new hardware (and consequentially to review) or something else.

http://bayimg.com/JagdGAaCL (I’ll link the same image from another source as soon as I figure out how to bypass bloggers too aggressive image compression)

Notice that the picture is showing phone usage with all services off and 3G off. There are two exceptions though, but those are turned on just before taking the screenshot. On some pictures you may notice some relatively high usage time, but that is due to music playback. That shouldn’t drain battery much so I included those screenshots too.

Update 2/2/2010

Ok, my iPhone 3GS was replaced by a refurbished one a little more than one month ago. For couple of weeks the battery life was the same or even a little worse than my original GS. But around 2 weeks ago things suddenly went better and better which is quite unexpected. Now the phone spends around 20% per day with some use. So I use it for full 3 days and on the evening of the third day I put it to recharge with around 40% battery remaining. I’m not sure what’s the cause because I haven’t changed anything but there is a slight possibility that keeping closed all safari tabs can reduce the battery drain. I haven’t tested with always opened tabs (after I noticed battery life improving), but I’ll try it in the coming days.

Same day update:

Apple released 3.1.3 patch addressing (after 3 moths, no less!) the problem with the “battery indicator” on 3GS models. I hope it will fix my problem (not as much pronounced anymore in the recent weeks anyway) too.

Citizen Eco-Drive Promaster Titanium Diver’s Watch (JV0050-03E) Review

This review was a long time coming, but better ever than never. I wanted to write this review because I couldn’t find an informative one on the web.

I bought this watch almost 2 years ago to replace (or better to say complement) my Casio G-Shock digital watch. I like that asymmetrical look, the diver’s “sign of recognition (1)”, titanium shell, very visible hands, modern design with lcd, digital watch operation (hands are linked to internal digital timekeeping) and of course, solar power charging. Speaking of design it looks futuristic which I always like. Notice that it may seem that the case is quite large in the proportion to the watch face (which looks small comparably) but this is only the effect on the photos. In reality the watch face looks large and the bezel around it looks much smaller. This is of course supplemented by the fact that the case is painted in dark grey around the watch face and unpainted at the edges as you can see clearly from the images. So this colour combination tries (and succeeds) to mask the fact that the case is not that big.

What is to like about this watch? The watch is somewhat light for its size because it is made of titanium and when you compare it to the non-asymmetrical version which is made from steel you can certainly notice the difference in or on your hand (my friend has the latter one). The strap buckle is also made of titanium. The bad news about the titanium is that it scratches easily. This is very pronounced on the darker part of the shell in a way of noticeable light shaded scratches. You can definitely see the scratches on the pictures i provided. The case is made very nicely with every surface lovingly rounded and dulled so the watch is very easy on the hand and skin. When speaking of casing, the glass is of a mineral sort, not sapphire so it too scratches very easily. Moreover, it scratches even more because the glass is almost at the same level as the casing which is not a good solution to be honest.

The timekeeping is solidly done and as I mentioned, the hands are very clear and highly visible. The minute and hour hands have completely separate movement contrary to the some watches I’ve seen. The little hand shows the solar battery charge level. My only complaint about the hands themselves is that the phosphorous illumination (which is bluish) doesn’t last long in the dark. I must note that the timekeeping is very precise. That means that even after a month it won’t lose or add a second on the time. I measured this by synchronizing my computer time with some atomic time server and then synchronizing the watch. Then after a month or more checked the results with synchronized computer again. I was fascinated by the result (I retested it couple of times) because my casio g-shock would go couple of minutes in advance after a few months of use. This watch, on the contrary is as I said, very precise. The LCD display is big and clearly readable too. It is inversely illuminated by pressing the button which means that the content is illuminated instead of background which is a nice touch. The display doesn’t show any redundant information in non-diving mode so that is a plus too. As you probably read somewhere else, you get world clock (in which you can easily swap local and some other time), three different sounding alarms, deep and dive-time alarm, diving log (date, time, max depth, sea temperature and dive-time) and finally watch hands calibration. All the functions are very easy to adjust and almost completely logical. One of the serious downsides of this watch is that there is no timer and stopwatch function in normal mode. This unfortunately is a great downside for me because I so got used to timing my parking time, cooking procedures, etc. On every screen aside from the calibration one, the display and hands return to regular timekeeping after two minutes of inactivity.

This watch gets in the diving mode automatically when two things happen. Firstly the sensor on the right side needs to get wet (or slightly moist, but I will talk about this later), and to indicate this, the lcd displays a diver, then when you start to submerge (left sensor detects higher pressure) below the surface the watch rearranges the hands in the way described below:

• Hour hand goes to 6 o’clock (red DIVE label) and stays there for the full duration of the dive.
• Minute and the little left hand move to position 12 o’clock and 0 respectably.

The minute hand indicates the dive time, the little left hand displays max depth reached. The LCD displays current depth and time (not to be confused with dive time) and a diver (in three rows). In the first 15min of diving the diver is at the first row and afterwards it is on the bottom row. This is made so the minute hand doesn’t obstruct the depth display at any time which is a great touch. At the press of the upper left button you get sea temperature and dive time. The watch even has an alarm for ascending too fast which is audible and visible on the display and the little red LED just below the 12 o’clock mark. You can always cancel the diving mode by pressing and holding the mode button. After a dive you get additional “page” in the normal watch operation which shows info from the last dive and how much time passed since the dive. All in all, diving with this watch is a pleasure.

I just wanted to add some other things I didn’t manage to fit into the previous paragraphs. If you need to see the time in darkness and the hands illumination has faded away, you can set the world time page (usually the first after normal date display) to display your local time and by pressing the mode and light button you can see the exact time. One interesting bit is that the same versions of this watch I found on amazon.co.uk don’t come in titanium shell. You can see that detail because on my watches’ face there is “Titanium” label, and those amazon’s don’t have one. I have already mentioned some of the problems with the watch I just wanted to add another thing which disables this watch from true greatness. Why is that I can’t measure the temperature and use the bloody stopwatch when not diving which are already implemented? But probably the biggest thing that gets on my nerves (but not too much honestly) is the dreaded diver with the ready text pictured below.

As I mentioned before this screen appears when the right sensor detects moisture or water. And during the summer here this happens a lot. So it is quite usual for lcd to display that screen obscuring the other data you may have when riding a bike, just sweating or washing hands. One more thing that really gets in the way is that the hands rearrange themselves in the 12 o’clock position when you want to adjust something or when you are just looking at some screen like log. That wouldn’t be a problem you may answer, but the actual problem is that the hands move somewhat slowly and one by one and you can’t interact with the watch when those hands start to move.

As some of you bots readers may recall I had a true agony with this watch the last summer but ever since it was fully repaired it works great.

The full photo gallery you can find here.

(1) I wanted to buy a truly diver’s watch because you can generally recognize a diver in the crowd by his watch. So when you see a guy with generally big watch with a sensor you can bet that he is a diver. The other guys which have big watches with sensors are some terrain folks with casio protrek watches but those are easily recognized because, in general, diving watches don’t have much plastic parts (as protrek has them) which isn’t a bad thing of course, I’m just stating the difference.

Dive at Ćutin

I had a great dive at the Mali Ćutin island last weekend. The sea was crystal clear, so you could see the surface from 40 meters. The dive is wall-dive and the scenery is great. There was a great school of fishes, a lot of holes in the walls, deep purple gorgonias etc. The bottom is sandy and the upper flat part (around 7 meters) is covered in posidonia oceanica. The photos below took my dad (I was modeling at the time, I didn’t take my camera with me because of unrelated reasons).

Gacka Eco-Action 18.7.2009

Majerovo vrilo

Yesterday, our diving club KPA Adria from Kraljevica attended an “action” (in Croatia: where group of people do something for public for free) which consisted of cleaning the riverbed under some bridges near river Gacka’s bridges. So we were 9 divers and some other support staff (friends and family) which was divided in 4 teams. Another friend and fellow diver and me cleaned the riverbed below the bridge which you can see on the photo below. The link to the actual map is here.

General map of the location

Majerovo vrilo was our base point and a great place to dive by the way (huge cavern system, and the biggest of the three exit points of the Gacka river). The place is shown on the first photo. Each team was assigned couple of helpful local people to get the trash out of the water. Our dive lasted around and hour. The water was somewhat clear and not too fast, but the temperature was only 10.8 degrees centigrade. That wouldn’t be a problem if I brought my dry suit but I didn’t (its summer after all;) but still that wasn’t a problem to be honest. The most important thing on a wet suit is to seal properly. Around 5 or 6 large sacks later (around 1h) we were finished with our bridge. My dive buddy found an unexploded mortar shell among other trash which we reported to the authorities immediately. After the dive we meet up at Majerovo vrilo again and we had a great with the rest of the team. Overall, our team took out quite a chunk of discarded trash so I do look forward for the cleaning at the generally the same place in some future time.

Take a look at the photo gallery.

Fireworks Rijeka 30/6/2009

I was at the opening of the Summer Nights at Rijeka (“otvorenje ljetnih noći”) the previous Tuesday. I was there only because of the announced fireworks. The opening show was to last 50 minutes with fireworks which were “never seen before”.

And I wasn’t disappointed. The fireworks were great. The music in the background was great too. The explosions were colossal, the range was mind boggling. There was even a moment when they launched some into the sea and from the sea there were flying fireworks. Absolutely fantastic. But the fireworks that fascinated me the most was some which burst in yellow glowing dust which slowly descended over a large area with a great sense of 3d space. It seemed like some cgi trick in some fairy movies.

Well, I’m not here going to melt like an ice cream but here are some of the pictures from the event.

You can see the full gallery here.

Canon LBP-5000 “out of paper” problem solved

Today the mentioned laser printer refused to print because of “out of paper” error. Naturally, the paper tray was full of paper. Printer reset, toner removal didn’t help. After examining the the underside of the printer (the part above the tray) I haven’t seen anything that was malfunctioning either. No mention of this problem on the web too. Then I realized that I could try to print the pages by using manual paper feed (seems obvious now;) and it worked. But still the notification light for missing paper was still on. But luckily, after few printer papers from the manual feed slot the notification went away and everything was fine.

One interesting thing about this printer and the other canon printer I have (cp520) is that they are some strange models canon doesn’t want to display any information. What I mean is that the latter printer I can’t even find on their web page (even in discontinued printers), and the former doesn’t even have 64bit drivers.

Canon selphy cp520: completely erased existence on canon web pages, those print kits (“cassettes” and paper packages) just went up in price by substantial amount

Canon i-sensys LBP-5000: completely discontinued drivers, no 64bit version. Expensive toners (4x500kn when the printer price with new toners is 1500kn)

One could say that I could switch manufacturers but I bet they are even worse. The canon inkjet printer I had before this laser was expensive but was good actually. Died only couple of months ago (had it for around 6 years). The printer before was a HP deskjet 690c. That printer was ok for couple of months but then it mysteriously couldn’t pull the papers in so you had to supply it sheet by sheet. The scanner I bought for my dad 2 years ago was somewhat expensive hp one. I can only say to you this. It takes like 4 minutes to start scanning the first page and the drivers are around 400MB! Unbelievable I know. And they have one of the worst UIs I have ever seen. So I won’t buy any of that HP crap ever again and I advise you do the same.

Accidents do happen

A car went down from the road straight into a sea in the middle of last night. Interestingly enough, the driver wasn’t hurt at all.

 

 

Caska, island of Pag, Croatia archeological excavation 2009

I know that I haven’t updated in a while so I’ll try to make up somewhat with this post.

I’ve been to archeological underwater excavation/survey at the small town called Caska (latin: Cissa) which is located on the beautiful island of Pag in Croatia. I’ve been as a part of Croatian-lead, French, Italian and Macedonian team of archeologists who were excavating an ancient wooden ship which was found last year. My job there was to photograph both underwater and above water as my knowledge of archeology can be summed up in two words: below basic. Lets first talk about the place itself. Ancient Cissa was a large estate (many villas and probably ships) of some famous roman senator which name escapes me. I did read it, but of course I forgot it. The place now is very interesting. The whole bay is very shallow (few meters at most) and somewhat well protected from wind (except from the Jugo – south wind which can produce big waves). All along the beaches (which are very narrow, only a couple of meters) there are still preserved huge ancient walls, walls of the houses (the other 3 walls collapsed in the sea with time or because of some other reason: earthquake(?) or maybe some plundering), walls from the water reservoirs etc. The reason why the beaches are narrow is that because the soil comes almost to the sea line so the big waves erode it revealing the stone base.

Our ship was around 15m from the beach at the depth of around 1.8m. The good news is that the whole bay has a thick layer of mud and sand (and a stony basis) so the ship was lying on the rock base and was covered in mud/sand. Mud doesn’t let oxygen in so the ship’s wooden construction is well preserved. Well, it is not as well preserved as the one at Pakoštane, but well preserved enough. This one is smaller and the west half (probably starboard) side is not well preserved. The general idea about the ship is that it about 2000 years old and was used by the population called Liburni(ans) which was then under Roman administration.

The ship is roughly facing north-south orientation and only 5 (2x2m) squares were excavated in the two week time the expedition was there. And that is a somewhat unusual thing for someone who is not familiar with archeology. The actually digging (usually removing the sand/mud from the wooden construction) is the fastest part and only lasts for a few days. Afterwards comes the slower part which takes many more days where they put numbers on every excavated bit and piece, take measurements, draw drafts of the ships layout, take exact measurements of the ship frames, take out some of the parts which are not connected to the ship itself and some loose parts, very fine cleaning etc. As our chief archeologist said, and if I remember correctly, the diving part is only 1/10th of the job – documentation in the office is another. Continuing with the ship, the frames and the planks are well preserved. But there is a very interesting finding though. The planks were sawn together to insure the water tightness which is a very rare finding.

So not to bother you more with the text – on to the photos.

You can see much more of them in my gallery at picasa gallery.

Disclaimer: All the history part in the text can be complete BS, I’m no historian, I wrote from memory from the things I heard.

Find Me If You Can

The picture below is showing a list of files which are various (and unfortunately necessary) drivers for Lenovo N200 laptop which passed through my hands.

Can you identify any of the files by its name? Can you tell me which file will get me wireless drivers?

No, because some moron(s) at Lenovo decided that file names should be completely meaningless to users.

 

And btw – a short one sentence review, the laptop itself is a piece of crap. In no particular order: cheap plastics, horrible huge size, vacuum cleaner is more silent than this laptop, comes preloaded with crappy and useless Lenovo software, the hinges are just covered with plastic but painted to look like aluminium, the touchpad is coarse and even if your finger slides ok on it, there is just a right amount of friction to heat up your fingertip (I never thought it was possible), the power brick gets very hot, and did I mentioned that it arrived with the battery which refused to charge? So much for the famed Lenovo quality.

Windows 7 beta build 7068 x64 impressions

I won’t bother you or myself with detailed descriptions of this build (which you can get on other sites anyway) but I am going to share things I did notice.

1. Team Fortress 2 runs like Usain Bolt, that means fast and smooth! Even faster than my Windows XP. I kid you not. On xp when I enabled Multicore Rendering even though I did not get bigger slowdowns, there was a constant choppiness, the game wasn’t smooth at all. But with this build the difference is very tangible and welcomed. (Just for your information I play at 1920x1200). Another problem which vista x64 and previous build had was hl2.exe crash when exiting the game. That was solved by Valve in some recent patch, it wasn’t microsoft’s fault.

2. That file permission bug I was talking about is still present! That bug really showed up much sooner than expected and that means yesterday (same as install day) all the files in my documents folder were locked (at least there is a nice little icon with a lock so you know they are locked) so I couldn’t view or edit them. But I did manage to fix the problem, more precisely, the symptoms, rather then the cause. But as I can treat the symptoms now, I’m not that much worried because I certainly can’t fix the cause (only microsoft can). So enough with the medical claptrap and onto the solution itself.

Solution to the file permissions problem in windows 7 beta 7068 x64:

1. Download the takeownership.zip from blogsdna.com article. The file included two .reg files and one of them adds Take Ownership to the right mouse click as seen below. You can download those two files individually here and here. You need this reg hack because without it you have to take permission for file after file manually which is extremely inconvenient.

2. Select the folder where you have the locked files and Take Ownership.

3. Go into “Advanced Security Setting for $yourfolder” [1]. Add yourself and administrators. Be very careful to absolutely click on the “Replace all child object permissions with inheritable permissions from this object”. I didn’t click on that checkbox the first few times so it didn’t work for the files in the folder.

4. There is no step 4.

[1] To get there you have to go to folder properties->security->advanced->change permissions.

As you can see, I’m not complaining about anything else at this time, so stay tuned because something will probably come up.

If you need any help with the file permissions or anything else, be free to leave a comment.

 

What’s going on these times? Gmail mobile app, Drupal, Windows 7 changes…

Gmail mobile app

The gmail mobile app on my nokia 6500c is great (too bad iphone doesn’t have similar version), but it lacked full screen support for my mobile. The problem was that google didn’t have special version for that mobile too so I always had to download generic app which doesn’t run in fullscreen. Another problem was that I always downloaded finnish or swedish language version so that didn’t work too. The idea that I had was that I had to trick google in giving me a version for nokia 5320 xpress music which has pretty much the same electronic hardware. Or even identical. So that part in guessing the address took me some time, but I finally managed to guess it. The language problem I didn’t solve completely (I wanted english version), but the trick is to set your phone to your own language (croatian in my case) and then it will download that version. The link will probably work with 2.0.7 or whatever other version.

The link is this:

http://www.gmail.com/app/gmail.jad?make=Nokia&model=5310&ver=v2.0.6 (link broken now unfortunately)

Drupal

Wasted two days to install it on my windows xp desktop. Couldn’t manage do the same on my macbook even though the installation is supposed to be simpler. I wanted to write a guide how to do it (the official one is out-of-date), but after a few days I forgot what was os special about my installation. Sorry. It is a CMP (Content Management Platform), so I guess that means it is a superset of CMS. Everyone is talking about it nowadays so I gave it a go. In any way, I didn’t use it that much because in one way it seems too simplistic, and on the other too complex. Adding some “blog posts” is easy enough, but it just seems that I’m doing something wrongly, probably I don’t even know what Drupal is all about. In any way, I’m going to explore it a bit more and report back.

Windows 7 beta build 7068 x64

After a very unpleasant experience concerning file permissions with build 7000 I decided to skip a few builds and go for some newer. This build was released yesterday and I’m just testing it at the moment. The problem with the file permissions bug is that it doesn’t manifest from the start, it can take days or weeks for problems to emerge.

It seems that some Microsoft employee has maybe seen my improved picture from my previous blog about build 6801, as demonstrated here:

My suggestion for this window (build 6801).

 

New Win+P window (build 7068). I like my solution more though,

same functionality but better looks.

 

More impressions and talk about performance soon to come as I test this build more closely. Update: see my post after this one.

Eventual disk problems

My Seagate Barracuda 300GB SATA hard disk (not a primary disk) started to sound strangely. When I start Norton Ghost it just starts to produce some metallic sound and windows really slow down. The end is near I think. What is strange is that the disk is only few months old because it was swapped under warranty because the old barracuda died as I said in my rant post about lack of quality in modern electronics.

iDeneb 1.4 on msi wind u100

As you are probably interested in OSX hackint0sh installations as I am, you might have heard about new gen of those distros. iDeneb brings OSX to version 10.5.6 and supports point upgrades.

Still, speedstep isn’t supported very well, because the battery lasts for exactly 1h:30min when almost fully idle (some web pages open, wifi on, display on) versus 2h:40min which Windows 7 beta 7000 managed.

Another problem is that resolution loves to revert to some unstandard and broken one when you restart computer manually.

So to keep things short, even though this “distro” is still unsuitable for a msi wind, I do think that it would be completely okay for desktop use.

 

Microsoft Sidewinder X6 Gaming Keyboard Review [Updated]

Bought myself this keyboard. I won’t bother you much with the facts you probably obtained easily in other reviews as I prefer writing my reviews just with the information other reviews missed. So lets get started.

The main reason I bought this keyboard is because of the removable keypad. I just prefer somewhat narrower keyboards (ie numpadless) because I hate having keyboard off-center to the monitor if I want mouse not too far to my body. In reverse case if I want the keyboard centered then I have to move the mouse further to the right so it gets very uncomfortable to do anything serious. The solution is a keyboard without numeric pad because I can have centered keyboard with regards to the monitor and mouse close at hand. The solution this keyboard uses is in my opinion great and should be used on other keyboards as well.

The keyboard itself is sturdy build and not that heavy (as other reviews imply) but heavy and unmoveable enough. It isn’t built as bomb proof as razer’s tarantula (for 2x the price here), but it is not worse either. It has good build and nothing less, you don’t have to worry about it.

Keys have similar feel to the razer’s tarantula which is good, that means that they are softer than microsoft natural multimedia keys and logitech’s diNovo. Good thing is that they have a threshold for tactile feedback so the typing doesn’t feel like typing on a sponge or worse, on pack of wet towels.

One of the main “problems” I read about in the reviews/forums about this keyboard is the famous “ghosting”. This is just a wrong word to describe a problem when you press multiple keys at once. Bad keyboards register just a couple of key presses at once, good ones register more then couple. There is much talk that pressing ctrl+w+r doesn’t work (reloading while moving forwards crouched). I can confirm this. This combination doesn’t work. I got nifty program called KeyScan which can tell which keys are registered when pressed. Using this program I have determined that only ctrl has only a problem with R+something. Every other ctrl+key+key+key+key works. If you’re like me and don’t rely on ctrl that much every other key combination works without problems. So for example if you use shift for crouch (I dunno why would anyone use ctrl to be honest) the keyboard will register this shift+w+e+r+a+s+x or any other similar combination. So if you are really heroin-like dependant on ctrl maybe you can buy some other keyboard. Just as a little sidenote, my msi wind’s keyboard registers up to 12 (yes you read it correctly – 12) key presses at once. Quite remarkable and totally unexpected. I used the same program to determine this fact.

This is the infamous CTRL+R+W which doesn’t register. But ctrl+r+alt+printscrn works though;)

This works easily, even without alt because I was pressing print screen at the same time so you can press q and a or whatever at the same time. If you have three hands this can be very useful.

So my conclusion regarding ghosting is this: this keyboard will put up with pretty much any key combination except ctrl+r+something(1).

There is much talk about placement of the space bar and escape key. I can confirm that the escape key is placed a bit to the left but in this few days time I have completely adjusted, it isn’t a big deal at all. What will take a bit more to adjust is the placement of the alt gr (right alt) key. The space bar is actually very long (14cm vs 11,2cm of a normal logitech keyboard) especially on the right side. There is couple of mentions of smaller ctrl/win/alt keys on the left side but that is not the case or a problem, but the right side is. Alt gr is placed too much to the left. That is a problem when you use (especially in croatia) alt+v (@) or alt-f/g ([]) or alt-q (\). I used to press alt gr with my right thumb, but cannot anymore. I have to use my right pinky which feels awkward and will need a lot of adjustment because I don’t use those keys that much.

Function keys (F1 etc) are quite narrow and somewhat long, and this is not bad at all because the more shorter they are (height doesn’t matter much) it is quite more harder to find exactly the one you need without looking at them.

All keys have tapered(?) edges so they don’t feel sharp and they don’t look rounded. This is always commendable because I hate keyboards with keys with sharp edges. Those kind of keyboards always want to chop off your fingers.

There are multimedia and macro keys which are easy to press and have medium travel. Contrast this to razer tarantula which have too short travel and are too hard to press (and tarantula doesn’t have pause button, wtf). Multimedia keys work from any program so you can be in say firefox and control your playlist in itunes without problems.

There are two large knobs on the right part to the top of the keyboard and one is brightness of the led backlighting and the other one is the volume. Both take 270 degrees from 0-100%, and both turn smoothly. Volume knob can be turned endlessly. Background lightning doesn’t flicker (contrary to razer tarantula on which every led flickered horribly)

Macro buttons are simple to use and configure (as a contrast to tarantula’s which are frankly useless). You don’t even have to use the supplied drivers/software to configure macros. You do have to have that software installed though, but it is lightweight, powerful and easy to use. You can program any key combination, key sequence (including large strings, for example bpush the cart!enter) etc. Memory banks are easily selected with a key etc. There are more on other reviews but I just want to stress that macros work flawlessly and they are very easy to configure and use.

There are some words on the reviews/forums about strong magnets on the sides, and they are somewhat strong but they don’t seem to influence my mouse at all. If they did in the future I’m not reluctant to remove them or isolate them somehow, but I don’t think there will a problem with them at all. Moreover, you can use them as paperclip holders.

There are no audio or usb ports. Razer’s keyboards have usb ports but those ports are ver1.1 which means they are completely unusable (yes, even for usb flash drives). Well someone will miss those ports but I don’t them so much.

Handrest is not “huge”, nor it is uncomfortable or made of cheap plastic. It gets the job done, of course, it isn’t removable but it doesn’t get in the way. Moreover, it is lower than the key so you don’t have problems pressing the keys. I don’t really know what the fuss is all about. One more good thing about the handrest and the keyboard itself is that the back of the keyboard is very clean and as the keyboard is raised couple of millimeters from the desk you can put A4 papers below it (short side first). This is very handy when you have to have paper between your hands while typing on the keyboard.

Just as a curious sidenote: the keyboard does really style well with logitech’s g9 (which is a good thing). They look like they are designed by the same guy. They use same font colour, same visual cues and curves (or lack of them).

To sum up: I have this keyboard for a few days now, but I’ve been using it full time. Aside from the alt key which migrated eastwards.

If you have any questions, suggestions or anything else, please leave a comment below. I will reply as soon as possible (probably the same day).

Here are other images of Sidewinder X6 gaming keyboard. On this site you can find all of this plus more.

btw, Windows Live Writer is great.

(1) just to clarify, ctrl+r works without problems.

By popular demand, ctrl combinations (all w/ print screen):

So just to make this one very clear: All usual ctrl+key+key+… key combinations work. There is only one problem and that is with ctrl+r+any_other_key_on_the_left_side. That means that ctrl+r works, ctrl+c+whatever+whatever works (as shown in the screenshots) etc. The only case this keyboard isn’t suitable is with ctrl+r+some_other_key. For any other key combination it works perfectly.

[Another update] The bottom of the keyboard

[14/6/2009 Update]

I had some problem with the keys numbered 9 and later 8 and 0. They were easy to press (as usual) but didn’t register all the time. For a few days there was only the problem with the key 9 then the problem spread on the previous mentioned keys. The keys are easily removed and I noticed that the rubber layer somehow moved a little in the direction of the handrest. The only way to repair that was to disassemble the keyboard and move the rubber layer. The keyboard is easily opened but be very careful to remove three (3) screws which are underneath the two stickers. I just readjusted the rubber layer and the problem went away. I’m not really sure why the problem occurred anyway.

But to this day, I’m very content with the keyboard aside from this little problem. I would lie though, there is another problem, but not with the keyboard, probably with software (drivers probably). The problem is that the media keys (play, pause, next etc) don’t work from another application in windows 7 RC1 x64. I’m hoping that will change in the near future.

[19/9/2010 Update]

New Microsoft Intellitype drivers fixed the media keys, so now they work on a global level. In other words, you can control iTunes while browsing the web.