technology, internet oddities & other random stuff
Hardware
New toy – Acer Aspire One
Jul 5th
I was in PC World the other day and I picked up an Acer Aspire One A110 on sale. It’s getting a bit long in the tooth now, so they were selling the 1GB RAM/16GB SSD/Linux ones for €200. It’ll do the job for web & email when I’m out ‘n about.
The factory installed Linpus distro is OK-ish, but it doesn’t get upgraded as new versions of the component software gets released, so still includes Firefox 2, rather than 3. Also, it tries to simplify things too much.
I tried installing XP Home, which isn’t as easy as you’d think because there’s no More >
I upgraded VMware on my home server last night….
Nov 6th
Man what a disappointment! I upgraded because of the promise of 64bit guest support, only to find that it only works on CPUs with VT or AMD-V support. Also, the web UI lacks major polish compared to version 1. It’s fully functional, but it’s very ugly and everything is just crammed in.
Version 1 had a web UI for day to day management (starting & stopping VMs, tweaking networks etc.) and a separate Windows application for console access. VMware tried to make an all powerful web UI for version 2, and integrated the console functionality.
There must have been a backlash More >
Gmail on mobile phones
Apr 6th
The company’s Google apps deployment went mostly fine. The one pain in the ass is with our smartphones. We all still use Nokia e61 phones and used to rely on push IMAP for email on the go. You’d connect once and stay connected all day. The Blackberry platform is great if you need centralised management and control, but total overkill on a small technology company where there’s a reasonable technical competence across the board.
While push IMAP worked perfectly fine with our previous service, it’s a bit flaky on Gmail. We tend to see random disconnections without warning and the phone’s More >
3 Skypephone part 2
Nov 28th
An update on yesterday…… I viewed the FAQ before I went out to buy one for myself in the morning as an early Christmas present and it specifically says that SkypeOut isn’t supported “…as 3 already provides you with great value calling to normal phone numbers around the world“. I think I’ll hold off for a while then….
