Zit Seng's Superwall

My not terribly old 320GB Seagate hard disk thought it has worked hard enough, and complained through its S.M.A.R.T. interface about overheating, so I decided it was time to buy a new hard disk so that I can pre-empt potential problems. I learned that hard disks are awfully cheap nowadays. It wasn’t too long ago that my Maxtor OneTouch Plus cost over $230. I know, that’s an external disk and there are some overhead costs with casing, interface, power, etc. But hey, it seems an internal hard disk of 1TB size costs just a little over $100 nowadays.

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So, the inevitable question came when I had to re-install Linux on my PC. The PC isn’t new, but I got a new hard disk, and my old Fedora 7 was too old that the current latest Fedora 12 wouldn’t detect as a installation it would upgrade from. I don’t mind a fresh installation of Linux. It seems like a good idea to start afresh rather than let years of upgrades accumulate cruft. So, what will it be: Fedora or Ubuntu?

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The Nexus One, Google’s branded Android phone, finally arrives in Singapore. It comes in a nice packaging that on opening, kind of resembles how iPods are packed. Singapore customers are automatically offered a 3-pin charger during the order checkout. This will be an additional charger over the US 2-pin charger that is still included in the box. If you want to save a few bucks, the 3-pin charger isn’t all that necessary. The Nexus One charges via a micro-USB port (the new standard mandated in the EU), so if you already have one such charger, you don’t have to get another one.

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Now that everyone (almost) at the office are totting around identical MacBook Pros, I felt the urgent necessity to personalize mine. Otherwise, I imagine, when at some time that we leave our MacBook Pros in close proximity to one another, it’ll be all too easy for us to grab the wrong MacBook Pro. What if we grab one MacBook Pro, pack it into our bag, go home or somewhere else, then only realize that we’ve gotten the wrong one? I can just picture some of us struggling at the login/screensaver password window trying to re-enter our passwords repeatedly into the wrong MacBook Pro.

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Google’s new phone, the Nexus One, has started to turn up some problems. It’s their first mobile phone, and probably also their first real hardware they’re selling on their own (apart from appliances like the Google Search appliance). I thought it was somewhat too soon for the company to jump into something so new without much preparation. Customers are now facing a myriad of problems, problems that are not difficult to address even before they start.

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When I got my brand new Apple 13″ MacBook Pro notebook, it wasn’t too long before I discovered that it “hung”. Nothing I did would revive it, so I resorted to a hard reset. It happened more than once. It happened in office, and it happened at home too. At the end of my second day with the new notebook, I was starting to get very annoyed with the several incidences of “hanging”. Something was seriously wrong. This is not something you’d expect to happen with an Apple computer. I decided to check out Google.

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I just got my hands on an all new Apple 13″ MacBook Pro. It’s the latest generation “Revision G” MacBook Pro with the aluminum unibody design that was announced at WWDC in 2009. I know, that’s like 6 months ago, and it is far along enough in the product cycle that some product updates should be expected soon. But anyhow, I’m still happy and excited enough to be unpacking this box.

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I finally got around to connecting up a secondary monitor to my MacBook. More screen space is always nice. But even though I’ve had a spare monitor around for some time, both in the office and somewhat also at home, I’ve been a bit lazy to get them connected. The reason is that I tend to get comfortable with a certain setup and I don’t want that setup to change. With a dual monitor setup, I have to get used to the fact that I will not always have the secondary monitor available.

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Google has launched their own Android-based phone, the Nexus One. It’s available for purchase immediately, and we lucky fellows in Singapore are one of the few countries which Google will ship to right now without any contract. Google’s Nexus One page lists the phone at US$529 without contract. Android phones are coming of age. Verizon’s Droid (from Motorola) isn’t too bad either, and this Nexus One adds on to the repertoire of high-spec’ed Android devices.

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The coolest laptop of the future… take a peek at it. It’s a conceptual presentation. Technology will make everything (well, almost) possible, given time. So while it may seem farfetched at this point in time, it is not too difficult to imagine that it will happen in the not too distant future. In fact, there is nothing terribly revolutionary about it, at least technologically speaking.

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