Tech Tied

I am giving away some Google Wave invites.  To get one leave a comment with a valid email address and i will email you the link to sign up.

Below is my review of the Dingoo A320 portal video game handheld.

This is my review of the Displex Polish (scratch remover) product on the Blackberry Curve 8330.  I am also reviewing the new Blackberry Curve 8330 full case from http://cnn.cn.

This is my second review of the Dell XPS M1530 Laptop. Issue with HDMI Sound, I show the solution. I show and discuss displaying both Hulu and Netflix Online Movies using the HDMI out to a 32inch LCD display.

Lappy at work

Dell created the XPS M1530 because of the success of the XPS M1330.  The M1530 is basically the same as the M1330 except for the screen size, 15inch vs. 13inch.  I was very close to buying the M1330 because of its compact size and long batter life.  I eventually decided on the M1530 because I realized that a 13inch display at a resolution of 1280×720 was just unusable.  The laptop I am replacing is an Acer 9300 which has a 17inch display.  The M1530 is a way better size, way better battery life and is beautiful.  When I bought the laptop from the Dell store they were asking an unreal price for the 9 cell battery ($199 up sale).  I decided on sticking with the 6 cell battery and I bought a 9 cell battery from ebay for $72.  I thought I would be safe because the M1530 is so new that a used battery couldn’t be that bad, I was right it’s awesome.  On normal usage I get about 3 hours of life from the 9 cell.  When I say normal usage I mean the screen is on its brightest and I’m surfing the internet.  I got the 1680×1050 LG display.  You may wonder why I specified “LG” display.  Well I needed to because they are shipping this laptop with three different types of displays, the quality is different. 

This is the second M1530 laptop that I got from Dell, the first I sent back.  I sent it back for two reasons, because of the shitty display and because of the casing didn’t line up.  I could’ve lived with the casing not being perfect but I couldn’t live with the display.  If you want more information about the display problem just do a Google search for “M1530 grainy screen” you will find a lot of results.  The grainy screen that I am referring to is from the Samsung displays they are sending out with this laptop.  They SUCK, really SUCK.  It is dark and very fuzzy.  It pretty much feels like you bought a $300 laptop because the screen sucks so badly.  Now don’t think that Dell will help you with this issue, they are being told not to.  I had to speak with about 10 customer care reps and I had about 7 XPS chat sessions before I got them to agree to replace the screen.  The excuse they are using is that they won’t replace the screen because is not a mechanical issue, it’s what they send out.  The screen I have now is an LG.  It is clear, bright and beautiful.  I think if Dell didn’t replace the laptop I would have gone with an HP.

Aside from the screen issue I am very pleased with the laptop, the quality is top notch.  Brushed metal wrist rests, touch sensitive buttons, opens with a barrel hinge design, slot load DVD read/writer, finger print reader, HDMI port, unique firmware.  The touch sensitive buttons are excellent.  For the volume controls if you hold your finger on the button it will step up the volume level continually.  The barrel hinge is nice because it doesn’t require a latch to secure lid closure, it is held down with the use of the barrel force.  The HDMI port feeds an HDTV with crisp quality, no blur.  There is a quick launch button that you can use to start up your laptop into its firmware program Media Direct.  The Media Direct allows you to view documents, pictures, videos and DVD without having to boot your PC.

See the video I made reviewing the laptop for further details. (Please note I will have a second video on YouTube in about 2 days).

For sometime now the company I work for has been using Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2. It has it’s problems but as a whole it’s a very powerful application. We just recently installed Microsoft Virtual Machine Manager Beta 2, it hasn’t disappointed us. The Machine Manager is a program that you install on individual machines. It is different from Virtual PC 2007 as it is like Virtual Server it shows the VM status (running, stopped etc). It is very user friendly, unlike Virtual Server which was not straight forward and very finicky.

The main motivator for why we moved from Virtual Server 2005 to Virtual Machine Manager 2007 was for its save points feature. Yes Virtual Server has save points I do realize, but with Machine Manager you can save multiple points and label them. When you want to go back in time you can choose a past point and go back as far as you need (reminds me of restore points in Windows XP).

Another major change in Machine Manager is the way that it makes disks and stores them. No more differencing disks! I hate differencing disks. My dislike for them was spawned from my inability to re-organize disk because of there reliance to there parent disk. With a differencing disk if the parent disk becomes corrupt or is deleted or moved all of the child disks will no longer function. The new Machine Manager makes a full copy of the parent disk and then stores both the disk and the machines config file in it’s own independent folder. You can move the folder anywhere you like and it will still work like it always has.

I highly recommend Microsoft Virtual Machine Manager 2007. It is still in beta but in a whole it hasn’t been too buggy. Here is the link to download the Beta 2 Evaluation version. I don’t know how much the full version will be when it is released but you can try it out for now. Tell me what your opinion of the program is, leave me a comment.

- Kevin C -

You can now invite yourself to Joost if you don’t have an account yet!

Follow this link: https://joost.com/presents/gigaom-newteevee/

Please note that Joost is seeming to have traffic issues today and some requests are not going though. I got an error 500 message about 5 times before seeing the invites page.

- Kevin C -

The long wait is over! Pidgin 2.0 is available today. This has been a long awaited release of the open source instant messenger program. If you read though Pidgin’s blog you will discover the reason for the wait was because of the lawsuit AOL had against them for using the name Gaim (Notice the aim in Gaim… how Laim). Anyways for more information about that lawsuit Click Here. To read a complete review of Pidgin 2.0 Click Here. To download this awesome release Click Here!

- Kevin C -