The Next Computer: Growing Pains?

Background: Andrew Is Dying
On Friday, the harddrive array in Andrew failed while I was running BackTrack 4. I then logged out of X which showed me numerous error messages when I returned to the terminal. Not good. I then ‘gracefully’ shutdown the system via the poweroff command and ended up seeing numerous errors for that as well even after I got the harddrive array running again. Alas, it was too late and the damage had been done. Upon booting back into BackTrack, I was greeted with many errors and dropped into a recovery terminal with only busybox to help me.

My RE252s are here!

This morning I received a package from China Express. The HifiMAN RE252s and FiiO E3 that I’ve been waiting anxiously for had finally arrived. Naturally, I captured a few pictures of the package and its contents:

First listen of the RE252: These are by far the most enjoyable IEMs I have ever had the pleasure of listening to. The soundstage is quite expansive with the medium tips on and I truly like I am in the audience in a concert hall in theater. The separation between the instruments is amazing almost to the point where I can tell which string has been plucked or strum or which notes have been played on which instrument. I can even tell where the singer is in relation to the band or orchestra.

I’ll post a formal review when I’ve burned them in and have listened to them enough.

How much is enough?

After reading LAPTOP Magazine’s review on the ASUS UL30A, an ultraportable that can run for nearly 10 hours on a single charge while browsing the internet over Wi-Fi, I’m beginning to wonder, “How long do we need our laptops to run?”. I decided to look at the last CULV ultraportable (released in 2009) to hold the title for longest runtime, the Acer Aspire Timeline 1810T which had a runtime of almost 9 hours (according to LAPTOP Magazine). The two systems really only differ in the capacity of their batteries with the ASUS having a two cell advantage over the Acer. And yet I ask, “How long do we really need these laptops to run?”. If one really wanted to, they could easily install a Linux distro like Arch Linux and tweak it for the highest practical battery life. In doing so, one can achieve a theoretical 12+ hour battery runtime which under heavy usage may fall to 10+ hours under heavy usage. Hardly anyone I know uses their laptop unplugged until the low battery warning comes up except for my girlfriend. Perhaps then, that it is with those people, the mobile power users, with multiple gadgets, each selected for a sole purpose or set of purposes and tweaked to their preferences, that these enduring notebooks are meant for. What do you think?

My Portable Rig

I’m writing this post to coincide with the Pictures of Your Portable Rig [Part XIII] thread in the Portable Source Gear forum in the Head-Fi forums. Enjoy!

Heavy and Lo-Fi but it works!

My new Clip+ is here!

Sorry for not posting in so long. I had copious amounts of homework and studying to do. The blog post that I had been working on during that time has been put on hold due to writer’s block. I will it this week though and try the keep a proper schedule through the months to come.

November 18 is my birthday and in celebration of that, I ordered for my enjoyment a 4GB SanDisk Sansa Clip+. I just received it this afternoon at 1:50PM and I am truly enjoying it’s tiny size and huge sound quality. All that is needed now are either the Head-Direct RE0 or the Denon AH-D1001S and an amp of some sort (later on). I feel sorry for my wallet already.

I’m Back…

The hiatus took A LOT longer than I had planned but I’m much better off now than I was before. I’ve learned much over the past year than I’ve ever learned when working on Gadgetic Musings and now I’m ready to apply the same learning strategy to the blog. Over the next few months I will be posting my thoughts on some pretty interesting topics. The next post will be up by the end of this weekend.

Going on hiatus

I will officially be going on a month long hiatus starting today. I was going to post up my thoughts on Skyfire browser and some of the work that I’ve been doing on my desktop workstation but that’s old news now. I’ll be back after this month having finished my final year at high school.

-Best regards,
Soul_Est

What were you thinking?!

I know I’m not the only one who uses their HTC Touch Vogue for more than just making phone calls so why must I suffer the inconvenience of not being able to use the internet while I’m on the phone? I understand that completely different frequencies are used for EVDO and CDMA networks that Telus, Verizon and a host of other carriers have set up and that the radio used in the handset must switch accordingly between them. That being said, I don’t understand why it has to be that when a phone call comes in, that whatever I was doing on the internet, be it email, or downloading that one important file needs to be interrupted by an incoming or outgoing phone call. I use a push email application called emoze for getting my email to my inbox without there too much of a drain on the phone’s battery. It (emoze) is set to reconnect to the main servers after having its connection stop working. The only problem is that this happens every time I get off the phone even though the Windows Mobile Connections settings dictate that program connection to the internet as needed. Further more, any time I try to get a connection in any program, I can’t connect. So my suggestions to Qualcomm and HTC are: 1. We are not still living in the late-’90s where in order to use the internet, you had to make sure that noone could use the phone when your connecting or while your surfing, 2. Even if a number has to be dailed in order to get online, it shouldn’t have to compete with a phone just get online, 3. EVDO is basically in broadband territory where cable, dsl, and other wired and wireless internet technologies lay. Having to choose between a phone call and an important email should be necessary. 4. If necessary, use two radios instead of having the phone trying to juggle all of its connections on one.

I was going to post a few screenshots I took after being on the phone and trying to sign in to MSN Messenger again after its connection was cut. You would have also seen the ones I took when emoze was trying to reconnect to its servers. Unfortunately though, the pictures got corrupted and I’m not ready to go over bluetooth yet. So I’ll post them up at a later date.

Android on Vogue (P3050)!

Although this may be old news to many that are in the know and if this is so, please this post. If not, then read on since this may just become part of the future of smartphones as we all know it. In this thread at the XDA Developers Forums here and on this page here, dzo (Martin) posted that he got Google’s Android to work on a HTC Touch Vogue running Windows Mobile using the Handheld Reverse Engineering Tool or HaRET for short. I’ve played around with it myself and I must say that both this OS and OpenMoko are set to go way beyond what Windows Mobile has accomplished in the few years it has been around. I unfortunately can’t post up any videos or pictures of this slick, Linux based OS running on my device. Hopefully I can do so in the future as well as make calls and connect to the data network once better hardware support is added.

Brief vacation…

As the title says I will be taking a brief vacation. I’ll be tending to my other blog Supporting The Mobile (if I choose to keep the name) as well as a website I’m working on for a friend of mine (link will be posted in the near future). Until then, please look to my other blog at http://openserveros.wordpress.com.