Archive for the ‘technology’ Category
Review – Dell U2711 Monitor
I’ve lusted after a 30″ monitor for a while now, and got to use one some time ago (an Apple Cinema display) . The price of those beasts is headed in the right direction, but still – ouch. 27″ seems to be a different matter. A few weeks ago my brother was being disparaging about my […]
Filed under: review, technology | 2 Comments
Tags: 2560x1440, 27", Dell, monitor, review, U2711
Lenovo fail me again
OK – before I even start on this, I should know better – this sort of thing has happened before. Let me begin by saying that I love Lenovo gear. I like the build quality and durability. I prefer trackpoint over touchpad. I’ve had 4 Thinkpads over the last decade and they’ve all been brilliant. […]
Filed under: could_do_better, grumble, technology | 7 Comments
Tags: cancelled, end of life, fail, lenovo, x121e
I’ve been a fan of powerline adapters for some time. Ever since moving into my house I’ve had a PC in the garage, but sadly my attempts to run an ethernet cable there failed (despite the presence of trunking for the power cable). Initially I had a WiFi link out there, but it was always […]
Filed under: review, technology | 2 Comments
Tags: 500, AV, ethernet, HomePlug, Netgear, powerline, XAV5001
Another Microserver
After switching to using my tablet PC as my main machine I was missing the local storage and optical drive from my desktop. The solution was to get another HP Microserver to be a sort of sidecar when I want the extra drives. As the HP cashback deal is still on this is a surprisingly […]
Filed under: howto, review, technology | Leave a Comment
Tags: 2008R2, codec, divx, hibernate, HP, iSCSI, Media Player, Microserver, transcoding, video, Windows
For many years I ran a desktop PC in my home office, and it was always on in order to provide various services to other machines scattered around the house. The one good thing about this arrangement was that the room was always warm in winter. After getting my NAS and Microserver I started paying […]
Filed under: technology | Leave a Comment
Tags: always on, cool, desktop, docking, dual, energy, green, heat, laptop, Microserver, NAS, PC, quiet, quieter, screen, sleep, tablet, Thunderbolt, Ultrabase
No laptop, will travel
I’ve just returned from my third trip without a laptop – the longest so far, with a whole week in the US. Mostly this has worked out very well. Power to weight ratio Just like with fast cars/bikes, this is the key to success. I’m finding that the iPad 2 can make it through a […]
Filed under: technology, travel | 4 Comments
Tags: bluetooth, Galaxy Tab, iPad, keyboard, laptop, tablet, travel
iPad 2 versus Samsung Galaxy Tab
I ordered an iPad 2 on the day that they were made available in the US (and had it shipped to a friend I was visiting a few weeks later). A few days later I got a note from one of the R&D guys at work saying that a Galaxy Tab was on its way […]
Filed under: review, technology | 2 Comments
Tags: apple, Galaxy Tab, iPad, IPad 2, review, Samsung, Swype
Review – HP Microserver
This might well be the bargain of the decade, and I must say that I’m quite cross that the news took so long to find me. A couple of days after I bought my NAS a friend tweeted: I asked Leslie how it was so cheap. It turns out that the (ex VAT) price was […]
Filed under: did_do_better, review, technology | 16 Comments
Tags: HP, Microserver, review
Playing DivX and Xvid on iPad
One of the great frustrations for me with my iOS devices (and PSPs before them) has been the need for transcoding of video files before watching. This was always a time (and CPU) consuming and fiddly process, and for some insane reason the files often ended up being larger than the original. When I got […]
Filed under: media, review, technology | Leave a Comment
Tags: avi, AVPlayerHD, divx, iPad, mkv, Xvid
For quite some time I’ve run my main PC as a hybrid workstation and server. When I built the machine (over 5 years ago) I got a fancy motherboard with onboard RAID5 and popped in 4x300GB drives. It got a mid life upgrade to 4x750GB (which gave a usable 2TB volume), but that was bursting […]
Filed under: howto, review, technology | 3 Comments
Tags: DNLA, DP-600, DP600, DS411J, Kiss, mount --bind, NAS, RAID, rc.local, symlink, Synology
