Aug. 22, 2008
I needed to transfer a file to my phone today, but could not find my USB cable. I figured I’d try out the Bluetooth with the laptop.
After around 30 minutes of struggling with the unintuitiveness and some helpful googling I finally was able to transfer my file using the ff steps, for future reference:
1. Turn on Bluetooth on the Acer Aspire using the Bluetooth button.
2. Right-click the Bluetooth icon on the systray -> Show Bluetooth Devices -> Options -> tick “Allow Bluetooth devices to find this computer”
3. Enable Bluetooth on the N73 via menu -> Tools -> Bluetooth
4. Scroll right on the N73 and the Paired Device screen is shown. Choose Options -> New Paired Device
5. The N73 should list your computer name (mine is PANDA!), select the computer name and you’ll be prompted for a passkey. Don’t input anything yet…
6. Back to the Vista PC, right-click the Bluetooth icon in the systray, then choose Add Device.
7. Tick “My device is set up and ready to be found.” and click Next.
8. The wizard should list your phone. Choose the phone and click Next.
9. Tick “Let me choose my own passkey”, and type a passkey.
10. You get the message to “Please enter the passkey on your Bluetooth device now”, so do just that.
11. The bluetooth connection should be all set up, to send a file to your N73, right-click the bluetooth icon and click Send a file
12. You’re done. Hooray!
Side note: After step 10, Vista seems to want to install drivers for the N73…but it doesn’t seem to be necessary
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Posted by Roy in Daily Life, Geeky, Hardware | No Comments
Jun. 22, 2008
Just a bit of an indulgence.
There was a warehouse sale at the office building from Tuesday to Friday. Like every single time I would make a big purchase I waffled undecisively between buying and not buying a laptop for the first four days, only to succumb at the very last minute when a model with an insane price became available.
On 7:30pm of the last day of the sale, I picked up an Acer Aspire 4920 unit with the following specs:
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Intel® Centrino® Duo Mobile Processor Technology, Intel ® Core™2 Duo Processor T7100 (1.8GHz, 2Mb L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB)
Mobile Intel® PM965 Express Chipset, Built-in Intel® Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN 802.11a/b/g/Draft-N
Genuine Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Premium
1GB DDR2 533MHz Memory/ 160GB SATA HDD (Extended Power)
14.1″ WXGA TFT CrystalBrite LCD (8ms response time)
Built-in New Acer CrystalEye WebCam supporting Acer PrimalLite Technology
Built-in Dolby® Digital Surround Sound (DLNA Certified)
Built-in Bluetooth 2.0+ EDR Technology
Built-in 5in1 Card Reader
Built-in Super Multi Double Layer Drive
Built-in 10/100/1000 Gigabit LAN/56k Modem
ATI Mobility™ Radeon® X2500 with up to 1GB of HyperMemory™ Technology (256MB dedicated Memory, 768MB Shared Memory)
New Acer Arcade Deluxe Multimedia Software
Acer GridVista Technology
Acer Empowering Technology with Free
Microsoft® Office Home and Student 2007 (Trial Version for 60 days)
===================================================================
I felt guilty about the impulse buy for a few hours; I didn’t really need a laptop of course, and I could upgrade one of the home desktops into a top of the line gaming machine for the same price. Still, I’ve always wanted a laptop and if I went by that logic I’d never have one!
So yeah I’m using it now, I also bought and setup a wifi router at home as well, so now I get to blog while watching a DVD of 21. I’m also back to using a Windows OS at home, since the laptop comes with Windows Vista Home Premium. I think I’m going to try using Vista and IE for a while and see how long before I decide to wipe and install into an XP/Ubuntu dual boot. At least I get to experience the thrill of being a Windows shill for a while. 
Posted by Roy in Hardware | No Comments
Mar. 19, 2008
Seriously. Having to hit an extra key just to use “Home” or “End”? For some reason, PrintScreen and CapsLock keys are higher priority than Home and End, meaning you don’t need to use “Fn” to access them. Do people not use Ctrl+Shift+Home and Ctrl+Shift+End all the time? I’m sure a lot of developers do. Whenever I’m on this laptop and need to use Home or End, I mentally pronounce “Fn” as a seven-letter word starting with “F” and ending with “ing”.
I like laptops, but keyboards need to improve in some way. My suggestion? Remove the trackpad and have an extra row for those keys that you would have relegated to “Fn” status. While using the keyboard is around 200 times more productive than using the mouse (citation needed), the mouse is around 200 times more productive than the trackpad.
Who designs these interfaces anyway? Do Mac users have similar issues?
Posted by Roy in Hardware, Tech | 1 Comment
Dec. 28, 2007
Every year I do an end-of-year cleanup of my stuff. (I try to at least) Somehow there always seem to be so many CDs/DVDs/books/comics to sort up and shelf or sleeve or whatnot. I’m growing tired of it all.
The other day I was planning to backup everything on my computer to DVD when I realized I was just adding more to the pile. I’m not sure if there’s any important reason to backup all the episodes I’ve been watching to DVD when I’ve already watched them all. Of course the argument can be made that it makes it easier to lend out to people, but truth be told there are a lot of people I know who already have such copies so my keeping backups is just redundant. And it’s not like the world would end if someone wasn’t able to borrow the last season of Heroes off me.
I’m especially wary now about committing stuff to optical media; going through all the discs I had I encountered quite a few that were already beyond recovery. I’m considering reburning some of the older stuff from CDs to DVDs, both to conserve space and to make sure I can still access those old files later on. But I’m unsure now how to dispose of the stack of dead CD in an environment-friendly manner.
So, am I too much of a packrat? I dunno, like I said I know people who have loads more stuff on CDs/DVDs than I do, and they’ve never watched them all. At least I’ve managed to consume at least 90% of the stuff I archive. I guess it’s a geek thing, to want to have access to “historical data” and stuff. Organizing all of it is probably a geek thing too. Heck, I’m trying to think of a way to have everything be searchable.
I’m considering buying something like a 250 GB external and just using that as a backup. Eventually it would run out, but by then something like 1 TB drives might be common enough. Tempting…
Posted by Roy in Daily Life, Geeky, Hardware, Tech | 2 Comments
May. 10, 2007
I bought a new phone yesterday.
At the recommendation of my brother, I got one from the Nokia N-series, the Nokia N73. As a relatively recent smartphone release, it cost quite a chunk of cash. I was having second thoughts for a while, because I’m almost never comfortable parting with a significant amount of cash. If I’m going to spend more than a week’s salary on something, it better provide me with a decent amount of entertainment
I was also hesitant, because I didn’t really need a new phone. It’s not like I’m the type of guy that buys shiny new stuff just so he can show off to other people. Hell, I’ve avoided having a phone until, what 2005? Getting a smartphone is pretty much an indulgence. I’m not buying a new phone so much as I am buying a new toy. As I said to one of my officemates “I want a phone that I can really tinker with.”
That being said, I’m sort of settling into the purchase now that the exchange has been made. I like the camera handy. I like having an MP3 player handy. I also find a phone useful. So having all of these functions in one device is pretty okay I guess. Ooh and it also has a radio! How quaint!
I would post a picture, but I’m not yet sure how I can get the phone to take a picture of itself.
Posted by Roy in Hardware | No Comments
Oct. 30, 2006
As promised, a picture.
That desk used to hold an entire monitor! Now it has my wallet, a watch, a couple of flash drives, a landline, a cellphone and a whole bunch of wires!
Posted by Roy in Hardware | No Comments
Oct. 29, 2006
I wish I had a camera right now so I could post a picture of it, but yeah, I now have a brand-new 19-inch widescreen LCD monitor on my desk. Wow, I have so much space! Both physical space and desktop space!
I came home at past 12 midnight last night and was so sleepy I would have immediately went into a catatonic sleep had my brother not brought home and installed this new monitor. I pretty much had to play WoW for a few hours on it first. As my friend said, “It’s the law!”
In other news, I may be spending too much. =/
Posted by Roy in Hardware | No Comments
Oct. 27, 2005
Update: Sold for the low, low price of P1500!
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Oct. 23, 2005
After seemingly being the last man in the Philippines without a cellphone for so long, I broke down and bought one a couple of weeks ago. I’d post a picture, but I can’t find the digicam, and the phone can’t take a picture of itself.
The 6020 itself seems pretty okay, although as a phone newbie I really have not much of a basis for comparison. The camera is nifty, but it took me a while to find a data cable for the phone. And now I can annoy people by SMS! (Not that I do, just that I can.)
I am of course fairly good with technical stuff, but also a newb with regards to phones. Being so, I have had trouble setting up things like MMS/GPRS/Email using the phone. I did have the GPRS up the other day, but then I downloaded some setting using Nokia’s service, and I lost it. Oh yeah, I’m on Globe.
Speaking of Globe, is their customer support service really so bad? In this internet day and age, why do I have to call a hotline or go to a Globe store to get help in setting up my phone service settings? Their forums are a mess, their website looks terribly messy, and any setup info I could get from their website doesn’t seem to work.
So yeah, I have a phone, and I’m whining already.
Posted by Roy in Hardware | No Comments
Sep. 5, 2005
Bought a brand-spankin’ new 160GB hard drive yesterday. Seagate Barracuda 7200. Yessir, ups the total hard drive capacity at home to 240 gigs, I hope we don’t fill it up too fast.
Moved the 40GB hard drive on the primary computer to the secondary (for a total of 80 on the secondary), and installed the new one on the primary. My brother Alvin was working with me on this, and it took us a better part of three hours to get the connection right (one of the casings wasn’t very agreeable)
Installed a fresh XP on the primary, that took a while. Almost immediately after setting up the network/internet the first time, got smacked by a couple of trojans and a virus, seemed to have lost some important system files as everything went wonky. Lesson learned, I reinstalled XP clean and this time, I installed my free antivirus package of choice before starting the internet connection.
I learned something new today. It seems the OS has some sort of limit on the partition size? It wouldn’t let me install it as a single 160Gb partition, so I had to settle for a 128 gig main partition and a 21 gig secondary (the unfortunately uneven division due to my not knowing how to handle the situation correctly during the initial install). Ten gigabytes lost, bummer.
Everything seems fine now. Took me most of the night (up to 2AM) to transfer the files from the old hard drive (across the network cable). On hindsight, next time I should try to see if some disk-imaging utility would be better.
Notes for next time:
- Make sure all the installers are handy before starting. We were pretty lucky this time.
- Apparently, the order in which the hard drives are connected on the IDE cable does matter
- Divide the partitions neatly
- Install antivirus before opening internet connection.
- See if a disk-imaging utility can be used to transfer the files/OS/settings
That is all.