Motorola Bravo pager

Hands up, all you people that had a pager at least once in your life. Then again, hands up those of you who had THIS pager above, a Motorola Bravo 16. I still remember when I got it in 1989. It cost me $300 then, a princely sum for a pager, but was one that would be with me for almost ten years. One of the reasons why I liked it is because it was hardy and strong…and it was out before cellphones were  even available to the masses. This was the inexpensive way of keeping in touch, but one had to rely on pay-phones being handy when paged. All this disappeared when the mobile-phone appeared and I got my very first mobile phone in 1997, but that is a different story. But I still remember this pager and how it served me well.. I hope my Motorola Defy serves me as well as this Motorola Bravo did!

Blackberry Pearl 3G

I was hankering for the Blackberry model in the picture above, a Blackberry 3G. I have tried many of the Blackberry devices available but somehow, this model eluded Singapore.I would have happily paid for this instead of my Motorola Defy. It has everything I want in a Blackberry…size, shape, special keypad with SureType® technology…everything. I had a Blackberry Pearl 8110 but the Achilles heel was its trackball…it kept getting dirty and tracking was off as a result.

In any case, I was just sad that it was not for sale in Singapore. By the way, the picture above comes courtesy of GSMArena.com

Windows Mango released to manufacturers

According to this article, Microsoft has released Windows Phone OS 7, codenamed “Mango” has been released to manufacturers and looks like it will be ready in a few months time. Looks like there will be three dominant operating systems for phones in the market now, after this release, the three of course being Apple iOS, Google Android and now Windows Phone OS 7. Does this mean that Nokia will now be able to get their market dominance back, now that they said that Windows is going to be the OS of choice on their new phones? Time will tell. A three horse race. This should be interesting.

Dell Zino or Apple Mac Mini?

That is a bit of a tough one. The prices of these mini computers…and the choices one has to make to choose which one. The Mac Mini (pictured above) is going for S$788. It is running on Mac OS X Lion and from what I hear, the box is a bitch to upgrade. Apple just does not like anyone fooling about with the innards of their Macs and this one is no different. But it is a Mac and to some fanbois, that is heaven on earth but now…

This is the Dell Zino. I did a post about it some time back so you can see what it is all about but if you can’t, no worries. I will put up the link here. In any case, this Zino is way easier to play with and upgrade. You can change the hard drive and the RAM and it is way easier to take apart too, not to mention being cheaper. You get Windows with it too but if you do not want to go down Redmond way, you can always install Ubuntu Linux, something I would do in a flash as I think it would make a very nice file-server.

Mac OS X Lion a nightmare for beginners?

I was reading some of the tech blogs that I subscribe to and I came across this one in ExtremeTech. Seems that there are people complaining about it. The very thing that makes people want to change from PCs to Macs (perceived ease-of-use) seems to have been negated. I am not the foremost authority on Apple Macs but the article certainly opened my eyes to what I already suspected long ago….and that is, the fallacy that Macs are easier to use than Windows in general.

Research In Motion (RIM) to lay off 2000 employees.

All I can say is, not good. Apple and Android, two A’s that are forcing RIM to trim their workforce. It does not help that the Blackberry is not as user friendly apps-wise like the afore-mentioned two A’s, even though I personally love my Blackberry and will be sad to part company with it when I leave. But I do have an Android-powered Motorola Defy and hopefully that will fill the incredible wake left behind by my Blackberry

Why I avoid Seagate hard drives like the plague

That should be proof enough. I have had many hard drives from Seagate fail on me. One of the drives that came with this very laptop I am typing on lasted me all of 6 months. I switched to a Samsung hard drive and it has yet to fail on me. But the sad thing is that Samsung sold its hard drive business to Seagate so….

In any case. It seems that Apple is having a Seagate hard drive replacement program because some of the Seagate 1Tb drives that came with the Apple iMacs were faulty. It does not surprise me in the least. That is why all my hard drives in my computers, even my portable hard drives, are all Samsung hard drives. Once bitten, twice shy. Its a shame really because at one point in time, Seagate had/made fantastic and durable hard drives. Those days are apparently long gone.

 

Dell Vostro 230

Budgets are always tight when running a small business. You need computers, laptops and etcetera, not to mention servers. While servers are absolutely essential to store data, they can wait. What cannot wait is for your workers to hit the ground running. So you need to get the PCs and laptops first. And that is where Dell come in with their incredibly low-priced Vostro desktops, in this case, the Vostro 230

From the reviews I have been reading, this desktop is pretty good. There are heaps of things you can change and add, like for example, the hard disk drive. You can change it for one with more capacity. RAM also can be changed. It comes with Windows 7 Professional too! The Vostro 230 slim tower for one has an online price of  $619. It comes with 2Gb of RAM and a 320Gb hard-disk drive. The Dell Vostro 230 minitower is out of stock at the moment and Dell confirmed that with me through a phone call but I dare say it will be cheaper. And if you do not like Widows, install it with a Linux os like Ubuntu. These Vostros are Ubuntu-friendly

I can almost hear the geeks saying, “Build your own!” Yeah…I agree, but to a certain extent. I always build my own PCs but to a business owner who just needs the goods here and now, this offer cannot be beat. And if you, dear reader, are starting a business, remember, if you cannot get a server, do backups of your data every day. I cannot stress how important backups are to any business.

Nokia trailing Apple and Samsung

Don’t laugh. This was my very first Nokia phone way back in 1999, lasting all the way till 2001. It was a Nokia 5110. True, it was bulky and lacked a colour screen like so many phones now but it was simple, SMS worked fine and the battery…oh the battery…lasted a long time because it was pretty big. One thing I did not like was the little stubby antenna that tended to poke your…ahem…privates if your phone was in your pocket. But I liked it and only changed to a Nokia 3210 because someone bought it for me as a present on my birthday

I was pretty sad to see this article here that said that Nokia slipped to third-place behind Apple and Samsung. I suppose the writing was on the wall. But one thing I like about Nokia phones is the ease of use. I now have a Motorola Defy, an Android touch-screen phone that replaced my Nokia E51, which was worn out (buttons breaking, battery shot…you get the idea). I am not one of those users that needs a new mobile phone every three months but I have friends that do.

Nokia was the leading phone company for 15 years. That is a pretty long time to be in the number one position. I still like Nokia and I do own some of their cheaper phones. One of them I use as a phone for long-distance calls. It has a prepaid card and it works out fine. I suppose Nokia is still number one for the emerging markets like India and China because they still manufacture inexpensive, no-frills phones, a market that Apple has no penetration in. Samsung has some el-cheapo phones though but Nokia is just more popular.

Well, it is wait and see time. Let us see if Nokia manage to pull up their socks. It is make or break time for them because they just inked a deal with Microsoft to release phones running Windows Mobile.

JBL Control 1s and Control 12SR

Back in the day (I do not know why I like to use this phrase so much. It has almost become a cliche of sorts) I had a friend that bought four of these JBL Control 1s for his house. Why he bought them I do not know. They were small, inobstrusive and dare I mention, cute. They were s topic of conversation everytime he played his stereo. One problem was that his system lacked bass. I mean look at these pics. Can you see any sort of bass coming out of speakers like these? But I did and still do have a very high opinion of JBLs (Besides some people saying that JBL stands for Jazzy, Bassy and Loud) and these babies had clarity. But I was after something with a bit more kick and one day, I came across this:

The Control 12SR. God, how I wanted these. Imagine, the clarity of the JBL Control series, coupled with the robustness to handle sound reinforcement. That is what the SR in these babies stood for. I was ready to plonk down a huge sum of money for it because I did hear that they cost a bomb. Just imagine, a pair of Control 1s back in the day cost about $300. These would have cost a pretty penny! But, they did not have these babies in in Singapore so I had to make do with cheaper Peavey 112H speakers.

I still dream of owning a good pair of speakers. Who knows, if JBL still make these, I will definitely get them