Steve

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….

What’s in my camera bag

I mentioned my current camera bag in a previous post here,

It is a LowePro Orion AW, a combination of a small rucksack and a belt pack case. The rucksack isn’t intended for carrying your camera equipment, it serves as a day sack for your jacket and maps and lunch. But when joined to the beltpack it forms a very comfortable to use rucksack. Alternatively you can use the beltpack with a shoulder strap and the waist belt again this combination is quite comfortable to use.

At first I thought I would be limited in what equipment I would be able to carry in the new bag. I still have my Mini Trekker, which I use to regularly ‘over load’ with everything, but I haven’t found the smaller size of the Orion that limiting.

LowePro’s page on the Orion AW is here

So what is in the bag… well all of this gear:

Canon EOS 20D DSLR + grip
Canon EOS 30 SLR + grip
17-85 mm zoom
28-105 mm zoom
75-300 mm zoom
420ex flash gun
And various accessories

The clever thing is way of fitting all of that in to a case that looks like this:

The 75-300 mm zoom is in the lower left hand corner, above it is the flash gun. On the right the EOS30 body is slotted in with the grip bulge towards the bottom of the case, the 28-105 mm, is in the top right hand corner, with a the cables above it. In the center section, in the bottom sits the battery grip for the EOS30 with a pad over the top of it. This is then big enough for the EOS20D with it’s 17-85 zoom lens attached and it’s battery grip also attached to sit face down supported by the padded dividors at the top and bottom of this section. The dividors have spare batterys and other accessories stored behind them.

Fully loaded it looks like this, unzip the top of the bag and the EOS20D is instantly available:

Filofax

I’ve been a user of Filofax since the mid 1980’s, I wasn’t a yuppie!! but that era made them more popular than ever. At the time I liked the flexibility (and still do) of the format.

The history of Filofax started in 1921 when the company Norman & Hill introduced for the first time the simple but extremely effective concept of mobile pages maintained together into a leather sorter of great quality
During the Second World War, the buildings of the company were destroyed by the bombs during the “Blitz” Filofax would not have survived without the perspicacity of a remarkable woman: Scurr Grace
Grace had entered to Norman & Hill as a temporary secretary and had created his own file of information (file of facts)
Each evening, it brought back to it this sorter which contained all the co-ordinates of the suppliers and the customers. With this information, its competences and its determination, it contributed to the rebirth of the company which exists today under the name of Filofax, the name which it chose then imposed in the whole world
Today, Filofax helps people in more than 40 countries organizing their professional and personal life

I started off with a classic personal size Filofax I still have that original binder, sure it looks old and well used, but the leather is nice and supple now and I use this binder for my French language notes.

Like a lot of people I moved over to electronic organisers of various kinds, but following a change of job in 2005 I was forced in to giving up my HP iPaq and I went back to my Filofax. But to make life a bit easier I went up in size to an A5 filofax, printing from Outlook on to A4 paper in booklet mode gives me an easy to produce calendar and contacts pages.

However, recently I’ve also bought a Pocket size Filofax which is a more convenient size to carry around in a jacket pocket.

Using RAW format on my camera

I know this might come as a shock to some of you… but up until now I’ve hardly ever used RAW format on my camera. Laziness I suppose to discover the hidden joys of what RAW format has to offer.

I saw an excellent tutorial on TWIP Photo that made me look in to this again. Like all of these things unless you use a feature or application you quickly forget how to use it. That to a certain extent was my problem… hence only using JPG for ages!!

Anyway I’ve reset the camera to take RAW + Medium size fine resolution JPG’s and with a 2 Gb card that gives me about 170 photos, enough for most days… Medium size is still higher resolution than I tend to use anyway, or if I need higher I can use RAW anyway…

I’ve also updated my Canon Software that lets me fine tune the RAW format files and get the best out of them.

TomTom Go 720 Further Update

Using the 720 in France has confirmed my earlier thoughts about how well the TMC receiver would work over here.

With all of the transmitters on 107.7 MHz removes the need for the receiver to retune at regular intervals as it does in UK.

I have also been impressed with the detail of the mapping over here in France. Every small road and country lane appears to be on the map. I have added a couple of map corrections in my local area where roundabouts have been recently built, replacing traffic lights.

I haven’t used the phone interface much yet, but it does interface well with my Nokia 6300 phone.

The iPod interface works well, I have used the direct line-in connection and the FM transmitter. The later suffers the same problem of all FM audio transmitters, that of finding a clear enough channel for the full length of your journey, which for me in France this week wasn’t easy. The audio quality is comparable to my original Griffin iTrip that I have used for a number of years.

The direct line interface worked even better, I used this on our Mini Cooper, another advantage of using this interface is that you can set the car radio to pick-up traffic news via RDS and the radio will swap over, however, if you do this, it is best to output the spoken instructions from the TomTom via its own internal speaker.