Phee-roo!

So I’m moving into a fairly large, 2 bedroom townhouse in August. I am going to finally live the dream of having a home theater room. It’ll be nice to not have to design the living room around a central viewing of a TV. And also, it will just rock to have the most banging movie/game setup ever. I’ll post pictures when I’m done so everyone can see how it turns out. I’ll also try to review some of the key equipment I’m using. I’ve got almost everything I need for it.

Checklist of things acquired so far:
Optoma HD-80: HD Projector
LG LHT-764: 5.1 Surround Home Theater System
Microsoft X-Box 360: Gaming System
Psyclone PSC01: Remote Controlled System Selector
6ft Black Sumo Sac: Giant Squishy Couch Thing (http://sumolounge.com/)
2 Red Sumo Omnis: Giant Bean Bags
Blue Sumo Ottoman: Bean Bag Footrest
Harmony 550 Remote: The Grandaddy Remote, Controls Everything

Things I need:
Projector Screen: I will use Polywall, supposedly better than most expensive screens
Black Felt: Surrounding the screen with a light absorbing material increases contrast
Cheap Black Fabric: To line the walls with black curtains, to absorb light and echo
Speaker Mounts: To position the speakers in the perfect places for the surround effect

Also want:
X10 Infrared Reciever: To be used with the next item
X10 Appliance Control: To dim lights with my remote control
Swivel LCD TV Mount: So I can mount my TV and watch TV while playing XBox

Intro and Overview

I recently bought an Asus eeePC, and it has changed the way I use computers.

Let me run down the specs before I start my review. There are currently a few different configurations at several different price points from $300 to $500. They are all 900mhz Intel Celeron processors clocked at 630mhz with a 7inch screen that has a resolution of 800×480. They have 3 usb ports, a VGA out port, SD card reader, and laptop lock hole. It also includes 802.11g wifi, and built in speakers.

The varying configurations are as follows:
2g Surf: $300
512mb ram (not upgradeable), 2gb solid state drive, 2.75 hour battery

4g Surf: $350
512mb ram (upgradeable to 2gb), 4gb solid state drive, 2.75 hour battery

4g: $400
512mb ram (upgradeable to 2gb), 4gb solid state drive, 3.5 hour battery, webcam

8g: $500
1gb ram (upgradeable to 2gb), 8gb solid state drive, 3.5 hour battery, webcam

Buying Decision and Model Comparison

I purchased the $400 4g model and a 2gb of ram for $42. I think this is the best deal (obviously, since it’s where I put my money). I’ll detail my buying decision for each of the customizable factors. Firstly, hard drive space. 2gb isn’t very much space, but if you are very budget minded and looking for a web surfing email machine, it will work perfect, but you definitely won’t regret going with one of the 4gb models. For informational purposes, I did manage to install Windows XP (nLited), OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Thunderbird, Miranda, and a few other applications in only 1.61gb of HD space. 4gb is more than enough space for all but the largest applications (Microsoft Office 07 is around 1gb itself, and if you want to use it as a GPS, Microsoft Streets and Trips 08 requires 1gb to 1.5gb of space). Also, don’t forget that it has an SD card reader, you can buy 4gb, 8gb, or 16gb SD cards now, and install applications there (even MS Streets and Trips 08). I felt pretty good about the 4gb hard drive in the end and still like it now.

Next is the memory, the three lower models all have 512mb of ram and the high end 8g has 1gb of ram. I purchased a 2gb memory upgrade along with the laptop, however it did not get here the same time as the laptop, so I got the play with it with only 512mb for a while, and the verdict is that 512mb is plenty of memory. 1gb would be ideal, and 2gb is absolutely overkill. What is important to consider is that because of the solid state hard drive, you are going to want to avoid using a page file if at all possible due to the nature of solid state drive wear. So if your going to be using an application that requires more memory, be sure to buy a 1gb or 2gb memory upgrade with your eeePC or go with the high end model with the 1gb memory installed. During the time that I had only 512mb of memory, I had no problems running with a page file, the only issue I ran into was when I was running Google Earth.

Finally, there is battery life and the included webcam. For me battery life is one of the most important features, especially with a laptop as portable as this one. I carry it everywhere and bust it out every spare moment to kill time or check my favorite web sites and email. If it only lasted an hour and half or so, I’d be pretty sad. Luckily, even with the low end battery, you get 2 hours and 45 minutes on average, and with the bigger battery you get 3 hours and 30 minutes. Almost 25% battery increase is pretty significant and it really affected my buying decision. And there is also the webcam. I’ll admit, as much as I dislike Macs, I was always envious of that little camera they had built in. I wanted it. You may not. However it is awesome having what it essentially a little video phone with me where ever I go.

Review

This review is of the 4g Asus eeePC. It’s size truly must be seen to be believed. It weighs in at around 2.5lbs, slightly less than the MacBook Air and while not thinner, it leaves a much smaller footprint on your workspace at only 9″x6.5″. The keyboard is slightly smaller than your average desktop keyboard, it’s about 8.5″ wide, and it takes some getting used to. After about 30 minutes I could touch type as accurately as on a desktop. The touch pad is tiny, but you honestly won’t notice as you use it.

The screen is a 7 inch 800×480 LCD with backlight. When I first looked at the Asus eeePC I was immediately turned off by the small screen and low resolution, however, I still wanted an ultra portable computer so I looked at it’s competitors. It appears that 800×480 is pretty much the standard, I couldn’t find anything competitive for the price, so I decided I would try it out. And honestly, it’s not that bad. You can’t really multi-task, but word processing, instant messaging, email, and web browsing all work pretty well on the small screen. For the price and size, the screen is fantastic.

The eeePC does not come with Windows, it comes with a custom version of Linux, which seemed fairly functional for the 2 hours I used it, and it probably perfect for the average user. I used nLite to create a custom Windows XP install that cut all the fat following a guide I found here. This got Windows XP installed in just under 600mb. I used an external DVD drive and the whole process was fairly painless. I am told there are ways to install from a USB stick as well if that is what you have.

Windows XP runs great on this little computer. Due to the slimmed down version of XP I installed as well as the ultra quick solid state disk it boots up fast. Like really fast. From off to usable in 30 seconds. Asus provided drivers for all the hardware for Windows including a utility which lets you set the screen to 800×600 and scroll up and down (so you can change it temporarily for windows that are too tall for the 480 resolution).

The little Celeron 900mhz processor is up for most tasks clocked at 630mhz, browsing the web, watching Youtube, video calls with Skype all work well. I’ve only experienced lag when watching high resolution videos. I was able to watch these videos by clocking the processor to 900mhz temporarily, which is totally safe, just a greater drain on the battery. Asus doesn’t provide a utility to do this unfortunately, but it wasn’t hard to find one online.

It’s great being able to take out the laptop whenever I have some down time and boot it up to browse the web. It connects to any wifi hotspot you can find. I was also able to use my HTC Excalibur Windows Mobile 6 Smartphone as a modem to get internet places that don’t have wifi or don’t have free wifi.

Final Thoughts

If your looking for a portable web browsing machine or something just to have with you that can do most computer tasks, this is great. It’s doesn’t have the power for games, high res photo editing, or video editing, so it’s not going to replace a desktop. But at 2lbs, it’s so light to carry everywhere that you can keep with you always. And the 3 hour battery life is really nice as well. I wholly recommend this computer.

I’ve recently tried to consolidate my life online. Limit the number of networks I belong to to a bare minimum and then limit my interaction with them as much as possible. I wanted to host everything I possibly could on my site, and then reference as much as I can back to my site.

The only thing I update now is my site which runs Wordpress and my Twitter. I actively belong to :

• LiveJournal
• MySpace
• Facebook
• Twitter

My site is the main hub, it has all my updates, pictures… pretty much everything about it me. It’s all you really need to access me. But most people don’t want another page to check daily so I felt it was worthwhile to integrate into popular services. Currently the flow looks something like this:

The simplest aspect of this is that my blog is mirrored to three services. MySpace, LiveJournal, and Facebook. The LiveJournal integration is provided by the LiveJournal Crossposter Wordpress plugin, and it’s it’s perfect. It completely mirrors your Wordpress blog to Livejournal and it works great… if you have an LJ, you should definitely give it a try. MySpace integration comes from a php script that runs on my server and is pinged when I post… it goes into my database and pulls the latest entry and posts a link to it on my MySpace blog. It is available here. Finally I just use the RSS functionality of Facebook to have it mirror my blog, works really well.

Twitter integration is done through a plugin called Twitter Tools by Alex King. It basically sends a Twitter update everytime you post that links back to your blog. It also will either create a post from each Twitter update or create a 1 post digest of all your Twitter updates each day at midnight. It works really well and integrates the services together nicely so you can use both.

This has made my life drastically easier. I post short quick updates via my cell phone to Twitter which mirrors them to my blog nightly; and I post longer updates to my blog directly, which mirrors them out to all the other services my friends might use, it’s fantastic and very streamlined. It’d be nice to have Facebook and MySpace be able to draw directly from the pictures hosted on my site and I’d like to integrate the commenting better, but I’m very happy with my setup right now.

Every 6 to 12 months, I get the urge to format my home computer and install whatever the current hip distro of linux happens to be. For the past few times it has been Ubuntu. So about a month ago, I installed Ubuntu on my computer. Let me disclaim that I am a geek, I know this stuff inside and out, so your results may vary… this is not necessarily written for people looking to get into linux for the first time, there are definitely better write ups about that.

I did some research first, as I always do, to make sure that the common tasks I use my computer for would be supported. All I really use my home computer for are the following things, along with the Win32 software that provides that feature and what I expected from linux:

• Anon Proxy Server: proxy for access web sites blocked at work (linux obviously supports this with squid, better than windows)

• µTorrent: downloading torrents remotely (torrentflux ended up filling this need rather well, only quip is no support for broadcatching rss feeds)
• MediaMonkey: sorting, tagging, renaming, and organizing mp3s that are downloaded (I was pretty sure I’d find software for this feature, such as amarok or banshee but it wound up being a problem)
• MediaMonkey: syncing above mentioned mp3’s to my Creative Zen Vision:M (mtp device) (a few packages e.g. gnomad2, amarok, mtpfs claimed support but all wound up being problems)
• Skype: Skype with my Linksys CIT200 wireless USB handset(there is linux support for Skype, but no drivers for the CIT200 handset, I was aware of this issue going into it, so I don’t hold anything against linux for this, mainly Linksys)

I know this article seems pretty negative so far… but there are some benefits to linux based operating systems. I love how the file system is laid out, I love how the services work, I prefer KDE/kWin to the WindowsXP interface, I like k3b better than Nero, and a few others. I think open source is a good idea, and I like being able to hack my own features or modifications into software and then recompile them for my own use, or submit the patch for integration into the main software if I think others will use it.

Anyway, on to the breaking point for me this time. Currently, Linux support for my MTP portable media player is HORRIBLE. The support barely functions in applications that claim it… the device crashes after syncing every time and needs to be reset and spend 20 minutes rebuilding it’s library. Also, I’m definitely spoiled by MediaMonkey. You can look elsewhere on this site for a MediaMonkey write up. But Amarok (a solid software package for what it is) doesn’t even come close to MediaMonkey’s functionality, especially when it comes to retagging and reorganizing mp3 files. I feel like tagging from Amazon is a feature every mp3 organizing software package should have, and I literally can’t live without it. It also syncs flawlessly with my Zen as well. I can’t blame Amarok for the poor syncing, I really think it’s the fault of libMTP, which may improve drastically in the next few months I hope.

As far as torrents go, uTorrent is probably still the best software. I personally can’t stand Azureus, I really don’t like java software, and Azureus really just seems to lag where uTorrent screams. I wound up using TorrentFlux which was AWESOME. It’s a PHP based front end for BitTornado which is a great console torrent client. If uTorrent did have it’s own awesome web interface, I’d probably miss it.

Other than that, the desktop has come a long way, I think the average person can be really happy with linux as it is now. I prefer KDE over Gnome, both are good, but I think KDE is better for first time users. And I think Ubuntu is the best distro regardless. I’ll check back in maybe 6 months, see what the state of libMTP is and if it can truly replace the syncing ability that my device has with Windows right now.

So if you want the absolutely best Windows software for organizing and syncing your music, this is it! I’ve been a rabid user of MediaMonkey for a long time for organizing my music, but because I had an iPod, I was more or less at the mercy of iTunes for my music library needs. Now that I have a Creative Zen Vision:M I’m able to use MediaMonkey to manage my music and it works fantastic.

As music library software, MediaMonkey is as good as it gets. It’s not flashy, it doesn’t have a store, and it doesn’t show you your albums in 3d to use up all your computer’s resources. It is however, fast, efficient, and feature rich. It can sort your library by any vector imaginable, it will also tell you which tracks are missing art or other tags. When it finds an item that is missing a tag, MediaMonkey has some quick ways to resolve that, you can look it up on Amazon and tag it from there (typically a 3 click process), or simply tag it from the filename. When you get a library of 100gb+ of music, tagging is important, and MediaMonkey makes it easy to keep everything organized.

If you own an MTP compliant device, you really owe it to yourself to at least try MediaMonkey, it’s free version is very rich feature wise, and works great for everything but ripping and converting. It has smart playlists for syncing which are what I use the most. It also syncs over album art and ratings perfectly. It syncs with all devices I’ve tried flawlessly, including the iPod (the only reason I stuck with iTunes was for podcasts and videos).

I didn’t even touch on some of the advanced features for the true collectors of music. It has some treats for Audiophiles that you won’t find in other music management software. In the end, it’s fast, free, and good for your music library, it follows standards and doesn’t massacre your files. If you looking for some new music management software, MediaMonkey is for you!

Yup, be jealous. =P Almost 8mbit sustained downstream.

I just got a Zen Vision:M, so far its rocked. Its pretty much just like a bulky iPod that supports more video formats, and has the radio built in and records voice.

Setup was stressful, but only because I was too impatient to follow the instructions. I was actually worried it might be defective but it wasn’t. The screen is similar to the iPod, maybe 1mm larger. The thing I like best is that is has a customizable button and it supports the semi-open MTP interface which gives me a few software choices to sync it with.

I’ll update more after a couple of weeks with it. I’d say if it was as slim as an 80gb iPod, it really could be an iPod killer. But right now, its just an iPod alternative.

When I first got the black and white Sidekick from T-Mobile, it was awesome. It was the first device ever that really let you be mobile on AIM. That was it’s big selling point back then. It also had 100% push email for your tmail address and allowed you to check your own pop/imap accounts as well. The keyboard has always been fantastic, the button layout on the keyboard is perfect for large and small hands. I can touchtype at completely usable speed, and no one ever believes me when I tell them I’m on my phone because I am able to use proper capitalization and punctuation effortlessly.

The “killer app” for the Sidekick has always been AIM, and later Yahoo! and MSN as well. It is the first, and still the only, device to really ‘get it right’. Other phones and PDA’s use text and web hacks to get the instant messaging to work, this works ok, but not perfect. The Sidekick maintains a constant GPRS connection whenever you are not on the phone talking, this allows you to see when buddies sign on, when buddies sign off, when they go away, return, etc… basically everything you can see on the desktop AIM. You don’t have to be in the AIM application to use these features, if you are playing a game or browsing the web, you’ll get AIM updates on the upper right hand side of your screen. And with the great keyboard shortcuts feature of the Sidekick, it’s only a couple of keypresses to go from the web, to AIM, reply to your friend, and then back to the web.

Everything integrates with the Sidekick. If your friend instant messages you an email address, phone number, or web page, you can click on them to send an email, phone call, or visit the site respectively. You can select to email or text message an AIM conversation to a friend, or you can can copy and paste information to the clipboard to use in other applications. You can really tell that the Sidekick was designed by nerds… who like to have things work together to maximize productivity. While you may see this device in the hands of celebrities and hip-hop icons, don’t be fooled, this is a truly powerful device for anyone who wants to stay connected.

The information on the device is all backed up to the web automatically. What this means is that if your device crashes or is destroyed, your replacement device will automatically download EVERYTHING back to it. If you make a note on your device, it will appear on the web sites within seconds, make a note on the web site, and it will appear on your device. This is all automatic, no manual syncing or ever worrying about it. Data loss is pretty much a thing of the past. You can also install an application to sync with your Outlook if that’s how you roll. It’s basically a Blackberry for the rest of us.

The Sidekick currently comes in two flavors, both have all the features that I’ve raved about in this review. The Sidekick iD is the low end device, only $99 with contract after rebates. The Sidekick3 is $199 with contract after rebates. It has all the communication stuff as well as a camera (of which you can attach pictures to emails), mp3 player, memory card (for pictures and mp3s), bluetooth (for headsets) and faster EDGE internet. I own the higher end Sidekick3, but I’d be fine with the Sidekick iD, the only feature I’d really miss is the camera, because I love taking pictures and sending them to friends and blogging.

Basically, this is what it comes down to. If you goal is to stay connected via IM, SMS, phone, and email, then the Sidekick is the only device currently available that will flawlessly fulfill all these needs. I work for a phone company, I see what comes through our shelves as well as our competitors. Right now, the only devices comparable to the Sidekick are the Windows Mobile, Palm, and Blackberry devices… and they simply don’t do instant messaging right. If you need video for some reason, or absolutely require a full media player, the Sidekick isn’t for you, but if you want to stay connected everywhere you go, get yourself a Sidekick, you won’t regret it.

So my girlfriend just got a new Windows Vista powered laptop. I’ve been supporting Windows Vista for Sprint since before it was officially released, but I’d never actually used a computer that had Vista on it. It’s not bad.

I’d say for the average computer user, like Kelsey, or anyone who isn’t majoring in Comp Sci or MIS Windows Vista is a worthwhile operating system, perhaps better than XP. It simplifies everything for things that people want to do, including listening to music, viewing pictures, browsing the web, etc.

It’s pretty slick and took Kelsey only a few minutes to get up and running by herself, I was there to help advise her, but she had a pretty good handle on it. And while she’s as computer-savvy as a college bound teen might be, she’s certainly not the type that knows computers inside and out.

Due to hardware incompatibilities, I wouldn’t recommend upgrading an old computer yet, but if a new computer is in your future, you probably won’t be disappointed to find Windows Vista on it.

So, I’ve been kind of neglecting my PSP in favor of my DS for a while. Mainly because a man can only tolerate so much Lumines. But, while I was away, Sony released a new firmware that allows you to play PS1 game rips on your PSP.

And because I’d been away for so long, this firmware had already been hacked to allow you to play homebrew, umd isos, and ripped PS1 games (normally you have to pay) on the PSP. So, score. AND the guy that is behind all this firmware hacking, Dark-AleX has done something truly incredible. It used to be that you had to reboot your PSP into different firmware, use loaders, and many other less than stellar methods to boot non-official software. Now, Dark-AleX has released complete firmware replacements, with all the great features and compatibility of the newer firmwares as well as reduced security so you can run whatever you want on it. Fantastic.

I use to dread the release of the GPS and Camera for PSP, since it meant I would have to upgrade my PSP to a firmware that would not allow me to run non-official software, but now I can’t wait. It truly is a good time to own a PSP.