Steve

PC or Mac…. Mac or PC

The PC I use is now over 5 years old. Today one of the graphics cards decided to play up, so I’ve had to revert to the internal card and go from two displays to one, which is a bit of a shame. I liked the dual 1280×1024 display set up a lot. Mail in one screen, browser in another etc.

So the obvious quick fix may be is a wide screen single display… but sadly the internal graphics card won’t support more than 1280 x 1024.

So do I just get another graphics card… my machine is quite old so it’s AGP only… although you can still get those cards.

So may be a new graphics card and a wide screen display.

I’ve been thinking about upgrading to a new machine anyway… but what… another PC, with Windows 7 may be… or may be a Mac Mini.

I need to sit down and look at my real requirements and compare the two to see what I actually need.

At first sight Windows machines look cheap and Mac’s expensive… but specifying them up to similar performance, there’s not much difference in them really.

Anyway my spare display can now be used on my notebook, or on my old G4 Mac over in France!

Filofax Focus Group

Are any of you a member of the Filofax Focus Group? See: http://www.filofax.co.uk/signup/ although the same page appears on the US site.

Get the Filofax products YOU want – Join our Focus Group The views and opinions of our customers are extremely important and the Filofax Focus Group allows you to directly influence future products/advertising. You will be asked to complete occasional questionnaires via the web which are simple to complete and you can unsubscribe at any time. In return for your time we offer discounts on website purchases and the chance to win £100 worth of vouchers! To join the Filofax Focus Group, please complete the information requested below and click the Submit button.

I’ve tried to sign-up but on submitting, the page is not found. I’ve reported this and I got a response from Filofax HQ in UK (bows his head in honour!) to say thank you for making them aware of the fault and it is being looked in to.

I will go back to the lady who emailed me to let her know it’s not fixed yet. I’m sure there will be a few people that would appreciate contributing ideas to ‘the maker’!!

Filofax – My Own Story

In a previous post last year, I briefly outlined the history of Filofax. As I said then I started using a Filofax back in about 1986. My old Winchester binder is still in use, but not everyday use. It sits between a pair of Finsbury’s, an A5 and Pocket binders.

The Winchester binder was very popular back then, I forget how much it cost in 1986. I was not aware of the Filofax until I read an article in the Sunday Times about how popular they had become!! What I liked and still like is the flexibility offered by the loose leaf binder. The ability to just fit a new diary, whilst retaining your contacts in another section.

Filofax back then offered a large variety of pages that you could fit in to your binder. Some of these pages and accessories dated back to the very early days of Filofax. For instance in my personal size Winchester I have a page for holding postage stamps.

I rediscovered some of my old Filofax pages still in their packets in an old briefcase, but sadly they are no longer sold, such as the Photo Exposure Record ref 404. I’ve recreated this sheet and others in A4/5 format. Whilst I don’t use film much these days. I like to record the details of each shot.

In the days of Inter-City, they used to supply their timetable twice a year in Filofax format, as a bonus with the winter timetable they also sent you a free diary insert for your Filofax as well. I still have the index dividers from Inter City.

After a few years I went over to using electronic PDA’s starting with a Casio Digital Dairy, then a Psion 5MX finally a HP iPaq 5550. After I changed job, I wasn’t able to use an electronic PDA at work. So I dug out my Filofax in 2005 and rediscovered the joy of using a Filofax.

I bought the A5 Finsbury because of the ease of being able to create your pages on the PC and printing out contact and diary pages in MS Outlook.

I use the A5 binder as my desk diary and journal, it’s not the best solution for most people if you want to carry something around with you a lot. So to overcome this I added the Finsbury Pocket to the collection. I now add my appointments to this one. I also use it for collecting notes and to-do lists. As yet I’ve not added my contact lists to this one. Although I need to do this sometime. This size Filofax is a lot easier to carry around with you on a daily basis.

Since rediscovering Filofax I’ve been surprised at the number of on line resources there are for people using Filofax. I’m a regular contributor to the Philofaxy blog I had time to read through all the previous posts in the past week, which in some ways inspired me to write this post.

There is also a Filofax Yahoo Group that I look after. It’s a growing group of people and although not a hugely active group, but lots of good ideas are exchanged.

I’ve also been contributing to D*i*Y Planner has a large number of page templates and also a forum. It’s not exclusive to Filofax, but it’s a great site for sharing ideas.

Here is a list of the pages I’ve created on the DiY Planner website:

Here is a sample page in my A5 Finsbury:

And finally I thought I would share with you this picture, true porn for Filofax lovers!

Mobile Broadband

I recently needed to be able to access the internet over Easter weekend when we were staying at my Mothers. In the past dial-up at this location was very slow (DACS line) and piggy backing on other people’s WiFi was also a little bit hit and miss.

Looking around at 3G mobile data solutions, I found that T Mobile Broadband Daily seemed a good offer. £29 for the USB modem and £2 a day for unlimited (within reason) data. I’m already a T Mobile PAYG customer as I don’t use my mobile that much these days, so I ordered the modem and it arrived the following day.

Included with the modem was a USB extension cable, a driver/software CD and a set of instructions. The modem has an external antenna socket if required, and also a micro SD slot. So you can plug in a 4GB memory card and use the modem as a standard USB key. This facility also saves you a USB slot, which might be important on some machines.

Plugging the modem in to my NC10 netbook instantly popped up a window and the Web N Walk software and drivers were installed. So no need to use the CD. This was also the case with my son’s Apple Macbook Pro laptop, I’ve not had a chance yet to try it with a Linux PC to see if it works on that as well..

The software allows you to see the signal strength and the amount of data transferred. There is also a facility to send and receive SMS text messages. As the USB modem has it’s own number I was able add the modem account to my existing My T-Mobile account to add credit to the account.

I thought at first that £2 a day was a little expensive, but looking through the booklet that came with the modem there were different options. A 7 day pass costing £10 and also a 30 day pass for £20. Not as cheap as some of the contracts available. But my immediate requirement was just a long weekend, so the 7 day pass was perfect, it also allowed me an evening or two to try out the service at home to make sure it worked ok.

During my use of the modem in the North West of England I have found that your location indoors can greatly influence your 3G signal strength, not surprising as it’s a 2GHz signal. If the signal strength isn’t sufficient the USB modem will drop back to GPRS on 2G, but this limits the speed to 56k, but it will revert back to 3G or 3G HSDPA at 3.6 Mbps in both upload and down load directions. Once you have discovered the ‘sweetspot’ in the house and you stick with it I’ve found that it will hold that signal for hours on end.

So all in all it’s been a sucessful purchase, we have used 3 different laptops on the USB modem, all using the same account, so we will have got our monies worth from it over the weekend.

As long as I use it once every 6 months (similar to a PAYG mobile) the account will stay alive. If we can find a similar tariff in France that might also prove useful in future.

Samsung NC10 Netbook

Well it’s happened.. I have finally got a netbook. It’s a Samsung NC10 in blue. There’s plenty of info on the machine on the net. But here is my take on the machine after using it for a week or two.

In summary, the NC10 is a 10.2 inch netbook featuring a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, up to 160GB of disk space, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, three USB ports, a special anti-bacterial keyboard, and Windows XP.

I’m not disappointed in the performance of the machine. I upgraded the RAM to 2GB on the day of purchase so I didn’t use it very long with the 1GB in it. It’s loaded with MS Windows XP, which suits me, not that I’m afraid of Linux, I use it on other machines here. I might try a USB install of Ubuntu.

I’ve installed Open Office for my office suite (word processing, spreadsheet etc) needs. Also Firefox and Thunderbird have been installed. Also on Thunderbird I have added Lightening and provider, this gives me access to my Google calendar as well as all my Google mail on the machine.

I’ve installed Skype which works very well with the built in microphone, speakers and webcam (1.3 Megapixels)

The machine as a SD card slot reader which supports SDHC cards, so I’ve tried out a 4GB card in there as well as using my external USB hard drive and an external USB DVD writer.

I took the machine on a recent trip to France and although we had our Dell 15.4 laptop there as well, I never once reverted to using it.

I’ve found the common complaints about the touchpad on this machine being a little on the small side to be justified, although I have been using mine with an Apple Mighty Mouse (Bluetooth) when I’m sat at a desk or table. But for the sort of use I am using the machine the touch pad is fine. The keyboard is very good and I find it easy to touch type on it.

I’ve yet to fully run out of battery, with the screen dimmed down and bluetooth disabled I’m getting over 4 hours of life before it reports 50% battery capacity. Other reviews have reported 6 hours as being a typical battery life for this machine, which I think is justified and can be exceeded with some battery power management. Boot up time is also very quick, not timed it though.

My netbook is effectively replacing my Psion 5MX, my iPaq Pocket PC PDA, but not replacing my Filofax!!

The built in Samsung utilities are very good I have no complaints about them. I wish other laptops I have/use included some of them.

Anyway that’s just some first impressions of mine….