Category Archives: Reviews

Asus eeePC Review

Posted by David Hurst on April 10, 2008 1 comments

I’m constantly searching for the next new gadget to make my life better somehow. Invariably these gadgets fail to enrich my life beyond the initial novelty value, but somehow I just keep getting suckered in. I’m pretty certain that isn’t the case with the Asus eeePC…

Imagine a laptop small enough to fit in a coat pocket, light enough to take anywhere, and powerful enough to perform everyday computing tasks – you have the Asus eeePC. Small notebooks are not a new thing (Toshiba has been doing it for over a decade), but until the Asus they have all been exorbitantly priced. And in the eeePC we have clear proof that Toshiba, Sony et al have been ripping us off for years – charging more for something smaller and less powerful.

And just how cheap is the Asus eeePC? £200 – that’s how cheap. The model I have is the 2Gb Surf, and here’s what you get for your money:

  • Mobile Celeron 900
  • 512MB DDR2 RAM
  • 2Gb Solid State Disk
  • 7″ TFT (800 x 480 widescreen)
  • 3 USB 2.0 ports
  • WiFi 54g
  • 10/100 Ethernet
  • SD Card drive
  • VGA Out
  • In-built speakers and microphone
  • Headphone and mic socket

If you opt for one of the slightly more expensive models, you can have larger disk drives and a built in webcam. It’s worth mentioning also that the Surf models don’t have upgradeable RAM. I did wonder for a while if I should have paid more and had a better specced machine, but on reflection I think I made the right choice for me. I have a webcam built into my MacBook Pro – I’ve used it all of about 4 times in the past 18 months. SD cards are so cheap, why would need a bigger system disk? And anyone who is putting more than 512MB of RAM in, and actually needs more, would have been better off buying a conventional laptop, because this is not a powerhouse.

There is of course no CD or DVD drive – it’s too small – but, you can plug in external drives without a problem, and that includes USB hard drives also.

One of the reasons this laptop is so cheap is the lack of a Microsoft operating system. That’s not to say the eeePC can’t run Windows though, because it can and there is a Windows installation instruction booklet in the box, along with the drivers disc. You won’t be putting Vista on it, but it will run XP perfectly well.

The operating system installed is Xandros Linux, which is based on my favourite Linux variant: Debian. Asus have removed the normal desktop functionality and replaced it with an “easy mode”. I wasted no time in getting rid of that so I can have a proper Xandros desktop. There are plenty of tutorial out there to help you do that, and if you mess up, just tap F9 when you boot up to completely restore the system.

I regularly use Linux and would rather have Xandros installed on my eeePC than Winblows. New Linux users should not be put off though. Mozilla Firefox is the web browser, and the office programs are OpenOffice – an open source office suite that’s every bit as good as, not to mention completely compatible with, Microsoft Office.

The only thing missing on the 2Gb Surf is an email client, and all my attempts to install one have failed. Thunderbird, KMail, Evolution, Sylpheed – they all fail to run. Clearly, Asus has hobbled the OS somehow, and this I’m not happy about at all. If anyone else out there finds a solution, please let me know. In the meantime, I am debating whether to stick with webmail or put Ubuntu (another Debian based Linux variant) on it.

The small keyboard is surprisingly usable – takes just a few minutes to adapt to it. I can type at full speed on it, but I guess those with a larger finger girth may struggle. You can of course plug in a full-size USB keyboard.

The screen is a bit of a struggle though, with a resolution of only 800×480. Most websites these days are optimised for 1024×768 so, a bit more width and height wouldn’t go amiss. That said, it is perfectly usable, and it’s only browsing the internet where you really notice the problem. I have my eeePC plugged into an external monitor at work, where it does run higher resolutions quite happily. This means that this machine would be perfectly usable for Powerpoint presentations at 1024×768 through a projector. Great!

Apart from the hobbled OS, which isn’t really a hardware issue, the only problem I have with this is battery life. The claimed 3 hours may be achievable if you do nothing but type a document, with the sound off, WiFi off and screen on lowest backlight setting, but otherwise, the best I can do is 90 minutes. My MacBook Pro 17″ after 18 months of daily use and charging will still give me 3.5 hours. I think this is a big problem on a device that is supposed to be ultra portable. Without an armoury of spare batteries, you won’t be working for long on your eeePC.

Overall though, this is a neat, well-built sub-notebook, and at this price, you really have to wonder why anybody would want to pay over £1,000 for any other sub-notebook. This is a full-spec computer for PDA money. I’m sure Asus will address the issues, and if they do, then they will be set to make a killing of these little babies.

Apple iPhone – why I won’t be buying one

Posted by David Hurst on November 9, 2007 None comments

Anyone that knows me, knows that I am a big Apple fan. I also spend ludicrous amounts of money on having the latest gadgets. So, it would be reasonable to assume that I’d be queueing outside the Apple store today to pick up a shiny new Apple iPhone, but I won’t be. I think Apple have failed to adequately research the UK market, instead building a device for the American market and expecting that to translate overseas.

I’ve not yet seen an iPhone in the flesh. From the videos I’ve seen, I’m pretty sure the touch screen interface would blow me away, but one needs to look beyond the initial romance period and look at the overall usability of the device.

Firstly, the phone isn’t 3G. It uses 2G EDGE. This is basically GPRS on steroids, but the O2 network to which every iPhone will be tied, only has 30% national coverage with EDGE, so any internet browsing on the move will likely be painfully slow. This means you will spend much longer with the iPhone in your hands, ensuring the attentions of every light-fingered chav in the vicinity. This is a huge disappointment really. I have been on the Three network for the past six months with a Nokia E61. The phone is average, but the network is superb. Browsing in 3G is completely painless, and what better companion could there have been for Apple’s excellent Safari browser?

OK, the iPhone has WiFi, and internet browsing on that is fine, but I can’t really see the point in this, unless you spend a large portion of time near WiFi hotspots. Maybe in London or the other big cities, but not anywhere else. And I’m not going to sit browsing the web on a tiny device on my home WiFi when I have a computer I can use.

The iPhone does not offer instant messaging (IM). My Nokia E61 on Three gives me free MSN Messenger. In fact, the majority of Three’s handsets and contracts offer free IM.
The in-built camera on the iPhone is very poor when compared to equivalent handsets like the Nokia N95. Given that the iPhone is directed primarily at the consumer, a better camera would have been appreciated. Using it appears to be very fiddly too – particularly for self-portraits.

I say the iPhone is targeted directly at the consumer, because it certainly isn’t targeted at the business user. It doesn’t have true Exchange server support out of the box, and this is what most business users require.

I have to wonder too at how firmly one will be able to grip the iPhone’s shiny surfaces. I imagine a lot of people will end up dropping their pride and joy.

Of course the main excitement with the iPhone is its built-in iPod and video playing features. These do look amazing, but I have to question just how much music and video one can fit on an 8Gb memory. I have a 30Gb iPod Video, and with my music collection and videos on it, I only have about 1Gb of space left.

In America, the cellular phone market is very different to the UK. They seem more interested in phones that double up as CB Radios. The expectations of the American market are clearly different, because there is no way I would be satisfied buying a latest generation device that uses out-of-date technology. 3G is old hat now. It’s about to be revised to become even faster with download speeds of 1.5Mbits (the Nokia N95 – iPhone’s main competitor – supports this new technology by the way).

Another reason I won’t be buying one is the cost. The £269 is not subsidised in any way. Normally, when buying a contract mobile phone, the cost of the phone is subsidised by the contract. For £35 per month with Three you can have a state of the art Nokia N95 (with 5 megapixel camera, and GPS) with 300 anytime cross-network minutes or texts, plus 300 Three-to-Three minutes, free IM, free Skype and unlimited Internet. The iPhone will cost me £35 per month too, but I also have to pay £269. It’s just too much money considering the iPhone’s limited feature set. Not only that, I’m forced to go with O2, a company I have found to be completely useless in the past.
Don’t forget too that Apple constantly upgrade and change their models. The iPhone is not new – it’s been around for many months in the USA, so it is due for a feature upgrade pretty soon. Early adopters will pay for this. At some point, Apple will be upgrading the memory, and the feature set. No doubt they will give it 3G capabilities too. Perhaps they’ll also drop the ridiculous network tie-in, which seems to breach every rule on monopolies, and open it to any network. Then we’ll get competition, and better pricing.

I think the iPhone is amazing in terms of its user interface and the way it looks, but I can’t ignore the shortcomings. I know that if I were to buy one it would be purely for the gadget factor, and that is not a sound basis for making a decision on an important business communications device. For now, the Nokia N95 represents far better value for money.

Seadragon and Photosynth – jaw-dropping stuff

Posted by David Hurst on September 7, 2007 None comments

I got sent this link (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129) by a colleague, and after I picked my jaw up from the floor, thought I had better share it.

I first heard about fractal coding a few years back, but the theory has been around for over 15 years. Without getting into the complexities, fractal coding offers levels of file compression far beyond your average Zip program, which makes it ideally suited to compressing massive images and making them usable – kind of like the digital version of microfiche. The sticking point has always been that you need very powerful processors to decompress the files in real-time, but with modern dual core processors this is ceasing to become an issue.

Watch the video above – you will be amazed.

Microsoft Surface

Posted by David Hurst on September 4, 2007 None comments

Here is the definitive proof that Microsoft can make decent stuff: www.microsoft.com/surface

My love of all things Apple is well known, but I wouldn’t call myself a Microsoft hater. I’m a Windows hater. It’s a rubbish operating system that has helped unleash a plague of viruses around the world. I do, however, like Microsoft Office & Exchange, and I absolutely love the XBox 360. Surface is another one of their products that looks awesome and is a genuine innovation (not something commonly associated with Microsoft).

Surface is a touch sensitive table top computer. You use your hands to drag things around. The best bit is the way it can detect things that you place on the surface (e.g. cameras, mobile phones, MP3 players) and allows you to drag and drop files to and from these devices with ease.

It’s not really a home consumer product, it’s more suited to business applications, but at some point in the future it will start to cross over into the home computing market. I hope Apple are watching, because this is undoubtedly the future.

Have a look at the website (www.microsoft.com/surface). When I first looked at the demos, I thought it looked more like science fiction, but no, these things ship this year. Amazing. Well done Microsoft.

Windows Vista versus Mac OS X (Tiger and Leopard)

Posted by David Hurst on June 12, 2007 None comments

I’m a Mac user primarily, but I haven’t always been so. I grew up on Windows from version 3.1 and finally moved to Mac when they bought out OS X 10.2 (Jaguar). I do still use Windows on a daily basis (mostly for Internet Explorer testing), and have both XP and Vista installed on my MacBook Pro. Due to all the media hype, I have been naturally interested in what Vista has to offer. I subscribe to the Microsoft Action Pack so I get all the software at Beta stage and on final release in full version. Vista was no exception.

The Vista Beta was awful. Sluggish, unresponsive, no driver support. We installed it on a powerful machine in the office and were astounded at the miserable performance. Suffice to say, we re-installed XP. I’m not going to criticise a Beta release though.

Final release did not have the performance issues and more drivers were available. The system seemed stable and Vista looks nice. That’s great. However, after using it for a little while, I concluded that the new security features weren’t really that secure (a password authentication for system changes would be better, after all, most people just press “accept/ok” whenever a dialog box pops up – kids especially). More disappointing though is the fact that Vista offers nothing new apart from eye candy.

The current version of OS X offers true plug ‘n’ play, rock solid stability, no crashes, no viruses, no malware, and real security. It also offers real time-saving devices in Expose and Spotlight. For those that haven’t used OS X, I’ll explain each quickly.

Expose operates with a single button press and instantly shrinks all your open windows so they all fit on the screen at the same time, then you just choose the one you want. Vista’s window flicking system is just not as intuitive. In fact, I would argue that offers little more than the ALT+TAB key combination (which, incidently, also exists in OS X as Command+TAB, and works better in that you can also click your mouse on the program selector that appears).

Spotlight is the OS X search tool and it is lightyears ahead of Vista. You start typing and the system immediately brings back results and categorises them. It even searches your emails. This is the feature I miss most whenever I’m using Windows.

So, OS X is still better than Windows. Now, Apple are about to launch OS X 10.5 (Leopard). The launch has been pushed back slightly to allow Apple to launch iPhone, and Leopard will now hit the stores in October. Unlike Vista it won’t cost the earth, and it will run on the significant majority of existing machines, without any hardware upgrades.

I’m not going to start describing all the new features here, instead I encourage you to have a look at the introduction on the Apple Website – pay particular attention to stacks, time machine, spaces and the phenomenal improvements to finder – all of which are innovative features that will actually improve workflow, rather than just being extra eye candy. There is a bit more eye candy too of course – check out the reflective dock!

I’m sorry Windows users, but you have an inferior system.

Microsoft XBox 360 versus Sony Playstation 3 versus Nintendo Wii

Posted by David Hurst on April 27, 2007 9 comments

Three next-gen consoles, two of which I own. The web is thoroughly saturated with enthusiastic gamers swearing allegiance to one of the mighty three to the total exclusion of all others. Personally, I think what we have here are three different, and very nice, consoles to choose from – it’s a buyer’s market, and most people want to get the most gaming bang for their buck. So, I’m going to look at this from the viewpoint of the prospective purchaser.

Read more »

My MacBook Pro 17 inch has arrived!

Posted by David Hurst on November 9, 2006 None comments

I’ve been trying to decide between a MacPro desktop to replace my aging G4 PowerMac, and the MacBook Pro 17″ for some time. I finally came to the decision to go with the MacBook Pro, on the basis that it would not only replace my G4, but also my Sony Vaio machine, as I can run Windows on the MacBook Pro with Boot Camp. My new favourite thing arrived today – here are my thoughts… Read more »

Alternative Apple Keyboards

Posted by David Hurst on October 17, 2006 None comments

I really liked the old Apple Pro keyboard – I had one with my G3 iMac and it was a pleasure to use. The new Apple keyboard however is not so great. At £19 a pop, they’re not the cheapest keyboards in the world, so you’d think you would get something of superior quality, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. The keyboards are heavy and feel of good quality construction, but the design is flawed. The open top chassis of the keyboard is just inviting debris to get stuck under the keys, and then thanks to the clear perspex base, the thing just starts to look really messy. Any pro Apple user will know exactly what I’m talking about. Read more »

BT Total Broadband Review

Posted by David Hurst on October 13, 2006 13 comments

NOTE: This article was written back in 2006 and was a reflection of my experience at the time. I am no longer with BT, so I don’t know whether my review is still valid. There are a few comments below from other visitors that will help you get the full picture. 

It seems that BT have really got their act together with their new Total Broadband packages. Whereas the UK market is leaning towards bundled, low-cost or even free broadband, BT seem to be heading in the other direction. They clearly subscribe to the old adage that you get what you pay for. This is certainly true of broadband. I have many clients who have tied themselves into shoddy cheap or free broadband packages that just don’t work, or have appalling levels of support. The BT Total Broadband package stands head and shoulders above the Talk Talks of this world!

Read more »

Apple Boot Camp – run Windows on Apple Hardware

Posted by David Hurst on August 29, 2006 2 comments

With the release of Apple’s Boot Camp software, it is now possible to run Microsoft Windows on Intel based Apple computers natively – i.e. without using Virtual PC etc. Whilst this is hardly fresh news (Boot Camp has been about for a few months now), I have only today had the opportunity to try it out for myself. I actually installed it for a client on a brand new Macbook. Read more »