Refresher  – I bought a refurbished iMac 27″ 2010 model from  the apple store on the 3rd June 2011 and apart from one of the USB ports playing up, the machine to my knowledge ran just fine. On Sunday the 11th Sep, I was using the machine and it worked just fine, I powered it down as normal, switching off the Mouse to save on battery. Monday morning I pressed the power button and nothing happened. I started to go through a sequence of tests, I got my meter out to check the fuse, tried a different power cable and checked on-line to see what test I can do. I choose to call Apple Support and at this stage expected for them to sort out this issue by means of a person coming out or whatever, how wrong I was.

What did I expect?

If I buy something and it stops working within a few months, I expect to either take it to a local shop for fix / replacement, get the company to come out and fix it or at worst for them to pick it up. The problem with Apple dealers is they are not common on the high street and only to my knowledge in major towns.

The Support Call

She got me to go through some checking, pressing 4 keys at once while powering on the machine (very hard to do while on the phone) and eventually come to the conclusion that it was in fact dead. She then started to tell me where to take this, I had the option of two shops 30 miles one way, 30 miles the other (plus bridge tolls) and 30 miles in the last direction. The problem with these trips is that I would have to finish work, quickly get changed and then drive to the store and try and get there before it closed. I would then have to repeat this once it was fixed.

AppleCare

They informed me if I had Applecare, I would be allowed to have it picked up, fixed and returned. I was going to buy Applecare at some point anyhow but just not now. When I got into work that day I bought the said product thinking that it would happen in the next 24 hours (as per the support call me told me it would) but no, it has to be delivered by courier and this is not due to hit my house till the 16th Sep – madness.

My next plan

As I cannot seem to get the  iMac fixed quickly, I will drive to the store on Wednesday and see if they can fix it by Friday.  I am annoyed that unlike say Dell who will send a person out regardless, Apple cannot provide the same level of Support unless you buy extra support from them. I still wish I had not bought this machine – long live Apple

If you work in a company that has a lot of Dell computers and you are tasked with going around to get all the details, this is easy enough for the desktop as this is located in an easy to get at place but Laptops in docking Stations are a real pain. I came across this Utility which will not only display the service tag and the Express code (needed when you call up dell support) but also a link to the drivers and the warranty pages.

While hybrid laptop / Tablets PC’s are nothing new, they seem to have resurfaced with everyone wanting the portability of a Tablet PC but giving the full power of a normal laptop. Dell currently make the Latitude XT2 and while this is by no means the cheap option, it may be the very device you are looking for. Unlike the Apple iPad which runs iOS or the Samsung Tab which runs Android – this laptop is quite normal in that it runs whatever operating system you want to install on there such as Windows 7 or Linux for example.

Tech Specs

Recently a friend of mine finally decided to buy a new laptop after his 6 year old P4 model was not working out for him and asked my advice on what to buy. There is quite a few options open to people out there and some people might not recommend Dell for whatever reason. The handy thing with this person is I already knew what he was looking for in a new laptop and getting the thing to run faster and better would be done by myself.

Why Dell?

I have used dell over the many years of working, I bought my i7 desktop from dell and my 23″ monitor and my work laptop is in fact a Dell. I agree you loose some of the customised ability you get with building your own but when it comes to Laptop’s, you might as well go with a brand name right?

The Deals of the day

We checked the website and they had a range of laptops – start from a Celeron 900 (2.2Ghz) at £329 all the way up to a Dell Studio 15 running a core i3-530 @ £549. Basically there was something for everyone and they had various deals with each package. I ignore anything with the word Celeron on there (as should you) and the lowest priced ‘half decent’ system was in fact £369.

The System of choice

Intel® Pentium® Processor T4500 (2.30 GHz, 800 MHz, 1MB)

15.6″ High Definition (1366×768) WLED Display with TrueLife

Mobile Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 4500MHD

3072MB 1333MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [1x2048, 1x1024]

320GB (5,400rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive

DVD +/- RW Drive (read/write CD & DVD)

Windows 7 Premium edition

These are the main points we need to look at really, the laptop he was going from was a P4 model with 1 GIG ram and 80GIG drive I think, so this system with a Core 2 Duo, 3 GIG ram, Windows 7 Premium editon is way more then enough for this person.

Normal user

I know for a fact this person does not game, it does not matter that it has Intel 4500 graphics card in there, it will play HD movies fine. 3Gig Ram is also just right, he will have no concept of 64Bit Operating system and virtual machines. The last one which I always look at is the resolution of the screen, for me 1366×768 would not cut it but it is a jump compared to his last one, so he is happy with that spec.

Look and Feel

It comes with what is classed as 3D Black or in other words, a print all over the laptop. I am not sure if this makes it look tacky or stylish, depends on the person I guess.

The keyboard is soft to the touch, I am not a fan of this type of keyboard and prefer the logitech style myself, also the Enter Key has a key next to this and I am not a fan of that either (You keep hitting page down instead of enter all the time). The trackpad is off to the left as you can see, I never had any issues with this myself but I did eventually plug in a mouse while setting it up.

There is no ports at all on the back, they managed to squeeze the lot on the left hand side as you can see. Three USB Ports, One VGA port and a RJ45 is all you have. It includes B/G/N Wireless of course (as do most laptops now) and a dell styled power brick.

Software as standard

It comes with Windows 7 Home Premium which will suit most people to be honest, I never took much notice if it was 32bit or 64bit. I spotted office but then seen it was a 30 day demo with the option to buy on-line. McAfee Security Centre was installed as the AntiVirus / Firewall of choice (15 months Licence), which kept asking me if I wanted to allow program ‘whatever’ through. We also had Computrace LoJack for Laptops, 1yr license – this is to allow you to get the laptop back should it get stolen.

The Webcam

I am a fan of webcams and wondered what was installed into this – we see this is a 0.3MP webcam probably made by Creative and I tested it out. As expect the quality was pretty bad in low light (aka – my room light), this would maybe suit the occasional skype with your family but maybe get a better one later on if youo do more (such as Live Streaming).

Removing the junk

I removed just about all the included software including the McAfee Security centre – even though this has a 15 Month subscription it asked me a lot of questions to register and a couple of points to note – in 15 months it will just end and the constant pop-ups are not good in my eyes. Once all the software was removed, I installed some workable software that did the same job but for Free and at least it won’t run out on him

Conclusion

For the price of £369 – this is not a bad built laptop, you can probably by the similar specification from Acer, HP or whatever. The good thing was he ordered it and by the next day, it had arrived ready to go.

A very brief review of the Dell Latitude 2110 Netbook (USA people click HERE). There is a few good reasons why this might suit your needs over the Acer and others out there and the price range is $400+ or £289 – a lot depends on the specs your choose of course such as operating system, memory and hard drive etc. This is just an overview as I only had one day to take a look at this device and get it ready with Windows XP.

First the Specs

It is running an Intel Atom N470 which runs at 1.83Ghz with 512KB L2 Cache.

The Chipset is Intel NM10 Express

Display options are all 10.1″ but can either be 1024×600, 1024×600 with touchscreen or 1366×768 TrueLife LED

Graphics is powered by Intel GMA 3150 (optional Broadcom Crystal HD media accelerator

Memory can be up to 2 GIG Ram DDR2 (One slot)

Hard Drive is 250 GIG or 64GIG SSD

3 x USB, VGA port, Network port, Audio.

Built in Webcam

The beast in action

Model Tested

The model I had to get ready was the 10.1″ 1024×600 with touchscreen and 3G card fitted (for mobile broadband) with 2 GIG ram and 250GIG Drive fitted plus the 6 Cell Battery. It came pre-installed with Windows XP Pro from Dell and pre-built with all there apps.

Initial testing

The screen size presented a problem (as it does with all netbooks) and the first task was to update windows with every single update and this process was very slow indeed. After the first round of 23 updates and a restart, Explorer would crash upon starting and finally fixed this by de-installing Explorer 8 and reverting to 7 until it self updated itself later. Dell had managed to install Windows Search which made a already slow laptop slower and more work to get rid of all the junk.

3G Problems

With a sim fitted – it stated it could not find the 3G Card (that’s the hardware not the sim) and eventually had to get on the phone to Dell who took control and 3 engineers later – finally they installed some Vodafone software, they could not explain why there software did not work.

What about the laptop?

It has a rubberised coating both top and bottom and feels quite durable and the chic keys are something you either love or hate. The speed of the device felt very sluggish though this might have something to do with all the junk Dell like to Install. The only user serviceable parts is when you take off the battery allowing you to slot in a SIM Card for the broadband. What if you had a lot to built – this is were another call to Dell comes into play…

Getting down and dirty

I was un-sure how you took the hard drive out and called Dell – they were shocked I needed to remove the hard drive and questioned me why. After explaining that I need to make an image and build a lot – they soon got the manual out. You have to remove that battery, remote Two screws and now the Keyboard comes out, unclipped the connected flat cable of course. Now you need to remove 3 Screws and flip the thing over, remove another 4 and now the Laptop comes apart - revealing the motherboard. From here you need to take another 4 screws out of the hard drive and you can now image that beast. I am not looking forward to repeating this over and over again – Why on earth did Dell not make it easier?

Thoughts

The battery (6-Cell) forms a sort of stand and lasts quite some time and the touch screen is sort of responsive but not amazing. I personally think it is no better then any of the other Netbooks out there and seems to cost more. The 3G built in is a nice feature though and may suit some people.

Recently at work I moved from a Desktop to a Laptop, full specification after the break. The Desktop I had was also a Dell Model but featured 1GIG Ram, Windows XP Pro, Dual Core P4 Range (they are about 3 years old) and basically the desktop ran very SLOW indeed compared to what I was used to. Let us first go through the complete check list of specs to get us started:

Specifications

Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 (2.53Ghz, 1066Mhz, 3MB)

Mobile Intel Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator X4500HD

Display: 14.1in Widescreen WXGA+ (1440×900) with LED Backlit

Camera: Integrated 2.0 Mega Pixel Camera with Microphone

Memory: 4096MB 800Mgz DDR2 Dual Channel

Hard Drive: 250GB (7200RPM) Free Fall Sensor

8x DVD+/-RW Drive

Battery: 6 Cell 54W/HR LI-ION

Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth

Intel WiFi Link 5100 (802.11 a/b/g 1×2)

Internal Dell Wireless 5530 Card 3G/HSDPA (Mobile Broadband)

Keyboard: Backlit Keyboard

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate (32 bit)

In Use at work

I have a docking station combine with 2 x 19″ Dell Widescreen monitors and this feature 2 x DVI Connectors. It is a case of working as if I had a desktop but of course a lot faster then before. Should I need to go to a meeting or out on site, I can un-dock the laptop and carry on working, with the laptop only been a 14″ model, it is very light indeed. Of course when docked, I cannot use the built in webcam for example or have quick access to the Mute button for Audio – I cannot see a day when I might actually need to use the webcam though, I am there to work not chat with people on skype.

End of the working day

I un-dock the laptop and pop it in the back and I am off – no extra parts to carry with me and as I have already mentioned, it is very light indeed. I have computers at home so I am in not immediate rush to use the work laptop there but it may come in useful in some instances. Been a work laptop, I need to be careful what I am installing on here, might work out well for a mobile streaming platform though given it has a built in webcam.

Full Review

Rather then me provide a rather poor review of this laptop, if you want to find out more – it maybe best I route you to a very good review I found. Remember this review is old and is not the specification of my laptop but it is pretty close – Latitude E6400 Review

It is a well worn subject of the Mac vs. The PC (They mean windows right), we have Xbox360 vs. PS3, iPhone vs. Android and the list goes on. While there is a need to think what you have or what choice you make on buying something matters, the reality is the people who are making the stuff are lining there pockets with the money the Fan boys spend on this gear they think is so wonderful. I aim to discuss what I think the reason this all comes about and to dispel some myth’s along the way if I can.

XBOX360 vs. PS3

I shall attack this one first as I own neither and can only go on what I have heard. I asked a guy at work which is better and without any hesitation he said Xbox 360. He went on to say that he is now on his 5th XBOX360 due to them having the Red Ring of Death or just plain breaking – why would someone having been through 5 of these things sit there and tell me I should buy an XBOX? There was a few reasons I could think of why he went with XBOX rather then PS3:

• He had spent a chunk of money on the console already
• He had built up a collection of games (they cost a lot of money)
• Live service already paid for – so he could play on-line.
• He was blinded into think the XBOX360 was the better system.

iPhone vs. Android

I am afraid I do not own an iPhone, I have seen them, played around with them and know a lot of people who own them but the simple answer here is that once you lock yourself into a 18 / 24 month deal, no matter how good the ‘other’ phone is – you are going to sing the praises of what you have. I find it very funny that people will ignore and not talk about the things they cannot do and suddenly one day they update the software and fix the thing that did not work and they treat it like the second coming – very odd indeed.

I like comparing devices on what you can do and the question is “Can the other device do something outstanding compared to it’s rival” – normally the answer is no. The Android can:

• Play Music (easier to put music on too)
• Call People
• Save a lot of contact information (Pictures, address, emails, various phone numbers and much much more)
• Display Maps
• Be Used as a SatNav
• Browse the Web
• Cope with office emails
• Download Apps
• Has Multi Touch

The list goes on and on – sounds like an iPhone right? If I had bought an iPhone, I would sit here and tell you it was the best thing since sliced bread but I saved my money and went for Android – was I wrong, was I been cheap or was I been sensible and not blinded by “must be iPhone” brigade?

Mac vs. Windows vs. Linux

I have owned them all, I have used them all and what makes any computer more then just a fancy door stop is software. I can take this Dell with it’s Intel Core i7, 9 GIG Ram and so forth and make it run OSX with ease. But it is not about just running the software right? What about the bragging rights to saying “I Own a Mac Pro”. I want to be honest here, ANY Operating system of late can do most of the basic tasks out there such as writing a letter, checking email, browsing the web. they can also edit videos, make music and plan projects. What about the argument of “It Just works” – a valid one right? What if My Machines running Windows 7 “Just work” ??

Bottom line

When people go on and on about Apple and sing it praises no matter how much is not there, missing and so forth – then I tend to switch off. If I state I do not need or have no need for an iPad then no matter how much they shove the facts into my face, I am not going to buy one – it’s that simple. They can tell me the iPhone can print money, as long as I’m locked into a contract with my Android – then I live and work with that.

If you splash $$$$$$ on a PS3 and buy 20 games – you are not going to sit there and say it is crap, same goes for Apple good and whatever else. I always see this type of thing as “Preaching to the converted” – Can we have an AMEN !!

I dug out yet another Old Laptop – this time A Dell Latitude C840. The Tech specs I shall post in one second but for this exercise, I choose to download Ubuntu 10.04 Beta One (been new and all) and went to work installing Ubuntu plus working with Compiz to give me a radical 3D Desktop – this was not to be as you shall soon find out..

The tech specs

Running a Mobile Pentium 4 at 1.8GHz, it has 1GIG Ram, 40GIG IDE Hard drive and a nVidia GeForce4 440 Go graphics chip which runs the screen at 1400×1050. The battery has since died and this only runs off the main power supply but it still is more then capable when running Windows.

Install

Ubuntu 10.04 installed just fine and I was soon up and running but it warned me that the HD is about to fail as it has so many read errors. I enabled compiz and rebooted the machine as instructed – this was the last time I saw anything on the screen as such.

The problem with the Graphics

I almost gave up to be honest at this stage but I went on a *working* windows machine and I soon found out that the nVidia GeForce4 440 Go graphics chip has an issue in Linux – shock and horror !! The problem it seems is that it enables the VGA Connector as the default device instead of the screen actually built into the machine.

I had a few options but I took the one which basically edited the xorg.conf file and added a line to use the default device of DFP (Digital Flat Panel). Once I rebooted I had the desktop up and running once again.

No 3D Graphics?

I went through and enabled all the normal settings such as Cube and so forth but NONE worked, so here we have actually two issues – the Windows Key (use in many settings for 3D) does not even get picked up and also the driver and/or the card is incapable of actually doing 3D Graphics.

Conclusion

I do expect that a *new* device not work as it should on Linux but I expect people to solve the problems of older hardware due to it been out for a long time and I am sure I am not the only person ever to own a nVidia GeForce4 440 Go graphics chip. This is why time and time again – I keep saying that Windows (even though it costs money) beats this Linux hands down time and time again for the desktop – I shall be installing Windows 7 on this machine later.

We got in some new servers at work, this been the Dell R900 4U Servers and what peaked my interest was the fact that this servers comes with 2x 6 core Xeon CPU’s – that’s 12 Cores of 2.4Ghz Power. It is easy sometimes to forget what is going on in the server / business world when sitting at home and looking at awe at the 8 Core (2 x 4) Mac Pro or the new 6 Core I7 CPU. This post is just to serve as a means to show you what you can get, this is for a box that might run 12 virtual servers and maybe not quite suited to playing the latest games (the noise would annoy you too much anyhow – its like a jet taking off).

CPU

First this server can take FOUR six-core Xeon processors – running at 2.6Ghz each. What we have here folks is 24 core box that can take out any Mac Pro that may come along – yes that is no doubting some serious number crunching ability.

Memory

It can take up to 128GIG ram – combine this with your 24 Cores and we agree it can run a whole bunch of Virtual machines while taking up only one space in the rack.

Hard Drives

Let us add to this 15K RPM SAS Drives in a RAID configuration – this will stop any bottle neck that might be caused by slow 7200 RPM Drives. The goal of this server is not to serve out 100TB of data. you have other servers for that (NAS etc) but to have pure speed, even so you can stack in some 600GIG Drives x 4 or so and your good to go.

Money

One of these does not come cheap – not by a long stretch – with the money for One fully loaded server you could buy a very good car indeed. The noise of this thing when it spins up can be heard a few streets away and no space for your top end graphics card – this is not a gaming rig.

When I got my Dell computer, along bundled with the software was Dell DataSafe Online - this is a free online service (with 2GIG Plan) to allow you to automate backing up for pictures, documents and other important files on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. While I discarded this to begin with – I have took another look at this and will explain how it works and how it is different from say dropbox.

The Cost

The prices go something like this:

2GIG – Free

10GIG – $29 per year

30GIG – $39 per year

50GIG – $49 per year

100GIG – $59 per year

How does it work

You create an account on that dell page and at the same time download the client (Windows only from what I can tell) and this will attempt to work out what to back up, picking any document, pictures and so forth. It is by no means perfect on this automated selection process and will not go and find picture stored on another drive, working only inside the User account folders. If like me to the backup came to more than 2GIG – then you will have to revert to folder view and now we can drill down and tell it what you need to back up – this part though does not count up how big each folder is.

Once you are happy with what it is you need to back up – you need to pick a frequency on how often it should backup (Daily, Weekly, Monthly) and at what time or you can tell it that the backup will be started by you on a “as needed” basis. Just a case of now pressing backup and leaving the machine to try and upload 2GIG (or close to) worth of data.

Speed

The initial backup, if you choose a lot of files (in my case 1.89GIG) and how fast your upload speed is (mine is 768K) can take 5 hours, shocking though it sounds, this is how long it would take me (roughly) to upload that much to a FTP Account. You can pause jobs while they are running should you find you have no bandwidth left for anything else or if you are subject to a restriction (such as capping).

Recovery of the files

You have a couple of choices here – you can use the client program or you can go to the website and login to get your files. At this stage of the program though, what I am not sure about is this:

If I delete some of my files and let the program backup as normal, will it delete the files that are no longer there? I will have to test this function much later and report back – I am suspecting it keeps all and you have to maybe manually go and delete them online yourself.

Is it not just another drop box?

The simple answer is no, dropbox works by creating a folder in your “My Documents” folder and anything you put in there is replicated online. Dropbox is more suited to sharing files with others easily or keeping a file in sync.

Thoughts and conclusion

The initial backing up is a long and drawn out process, this is the fault of my upload speed and not the program though. It gives you a complete dump of all your important stuff online and you can even access the files from any computer with a web browser – this can be handy in the event I need access to my CV for example.

There is MANY solutions out there, Dell are not about to go out of business and you can buy some space if that is important to you. This is not a solution to backing up your entire harddrive and I would never suggest anyone try and do that anyhow as it is a pointless task and very time consuming.

Gibe it a try anyhow – its Free and it may save your life when you need that important file you just deleted.