The Singapore Gadget Talk Show

During the course of my study, we often have to present our project on the Powerpoint. And it is usually shown on the projector connected to our notebooks. My schoolmates sometimes have difficulty detecting the projector on their notebook. Most notebooks have the shortcut key to switch the display; often Fn + F2. Strangely, it does not work all the time. It could be that the notebook is slow to detect or it happens to on a manual mode.

Anyhow, Windows Mobility Center can solve the problem. You can find it under Control Panel (Classic View). I created the shortcut to it on my desktop.

It have quite a number of items on it. But "External Display" is what I am looking at here.

So you get the idea. Connect to your external display then click "Connect display".

It should detect the source in less than 5 seconds. And there you go.

A mobile phone manufacturer is cruising lately and it is none other than HTC with their new HTC Cruise. And this Cruise I say will certainly rank as one of phones looking to dislodge the ultimate iPhone as the market best touch-screen phones. But the question remains... Can Cruise cruise?

TouchFLO finger swipe navigation (HTC Technology)
400 MHz processor
128MB RAM, 256ROM

HSPDA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
3.2MP Autofocus, Secondary VGA camera
Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional (Latest edition of the Windows Mobile)

TomTom Map (Well-known GPS Navgiator maker)
MicroSD Slot
2.8" TFT 65K Screen

Many highlights merry the HTC Touch Cruise. And they are certaintly going to be the major decision points to consider if you are getting it.

First of all, it is one of the latest smartphones to carry Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional. So what is the difference between the 5th and this 6th edition? In short, slight improvement in several areas. This of course is not the focus of review hence check this out if you want details. Link

The next thing to be concern with is HTC's Touch FLO. Very nicely setup but I still likes Apple's. If you havent seen the Touch FLO in action, this video is cool. Link

Thirdly, TomTom GPS is embedden in Touch Cruise. GPS seems to appeal to a good number of people I know and it could proved to be useful in certain situations.

Lastly, an issue I read about in other technical reviews. Starting with the paint of this smartphone. It said to peel easily. Oops. But my Nokia E65 do peel as well especially the area around the Pop-Port. So it really depends on how bad it is. Another issue lies with the poor video processing.

Up to the point of this entry, I heard that HTC Cruise is out of stock in Singapore. I mean most stores do not have the set. Well, is it due to the strong demand or the lack of supply?

HTC Cruise will not come cheap. S$1198 is the common retail price I have seen.

Note that this is not a technical review. Just my two cents on the highlights of HTC Cruise.

Starhub has come up their version of the Parent-Child mobile plan. At S$10.70, you can have another extra 1000 sms and bundle voice call time from the main plan.

Comparison with Singtel' RedPac shows the plans have one major difference. RedPac offers free talktime between the two lines (Parent and Child) while SharePlus offers to let two lines share the bundled time of the main line.

Not alot to choose between them. I mean if you are stuck with Singtel you can only go for RedPac. You are not going to change your operator just for this cause right?

And Starhub has matched Singtel "plan for plan".

And M1 is late.

Link

I think for Pentax to really penetrate the local market, they have to do the following:

Paint the cameras. With the likes of Casio and now Canon whom have come up with cameras of different colours.
Make cameras with better material. The current material makes the camera look like a plastic toy.
Better design. The current design is almost comparable to the ones make by Creative. Simply not classy enough.

I have tried Pentax's cameras. They aren't that bad. On top of that, they are usually value for money.

The promotion will last till 31st March 2008. You can find it at the Best Denki stores.

Taken from TODAY newspaper.

Easter promotion by Lenovo Exclusive Store at Funan Digitallife Mall. From 21st to 23rd March 2008.

Seems like a good deal if you have just missed the IT Show 2 weeks ago.

Taken from TODAY newspaper.

I was surprised when I saw my latest Windows update was approximately 65MB to 427MB. And of course, I thought, it must be the first ever Windows Service Pack for Vista. Indeed it was.

But I did not download it immediately unlike the usual Windows Updates simply because this service pack has been tested by Gizmodo and it turns out that network copy and hard disk read speed will slow. I really have not idea what Microsoft is trying to accomplish here. Make our system more stable but slower?

So unless your Vista keeps acting up on you, wait and see if Windows can do better.

Link

NAS, Network Attached Storage, will be the gadget to own in this new year. Maturing technology coupled with the benefits it brings to the consumer will ensure a success story sooner or later. More recently, at MacWorld Apple's CEO Steve Jobs unreveiled the Time Capsule. Or on a local scope, the Suzuki's SumoDRIVE, produced and manufactured locally. Comparing the two devices will give us a clearer picture to the emerging trend of wireless storage.

Portability
This is what SumoDRIVE is made for (which limits the drive space to 30GB). However considering the fact that if I can bring my portable hard drive around, I can easily plug the USB cable into another computer. I mean I want a wireless function in a device only when the device is not too mobile. Nevertheless, SumoDRIVE can be a flashy gadget to impress others. So in this case, I do not see NAS moving into this area anytime soon.

Features
Time Capsule is certainly more of a full blown NAS and it could function as a router as well. So it is like a router with storage. As Apple begin to move into the NAS market you can see that NAS is going to get popular. And Apple did not forget to include Wireless-N almost a must-have for new gadgets. Actually since I am going to backup my computer wirelessly, I want to have it done quickly too, hence Wireless-N will be important. Only the fact that my notebook does not support Wireless-N is holding me back from moving to the new standard.

Another key feature that I feel NAS should have is the ability to add more drives. Recently I am looking at RAID, a method to configure several drives such that they will back each other up. In a nutshell, you can backup your data in the configured drives and if one of the drive breaks, you can do a recovery from the other drives and retrieve the lost data. In our case here, Time Capsule do allow you to connect another external hard drive through USB but no RAID.

The bottomline
NAS is still expensive for most of us as the idea of central storage is rather unfamiliar. Price plays a part too. 500GB Time Capsule costs S$489 and 1TB's is at S$788. An internal 500GB hard drive costs no more than S$250 (I check the prices today and it range from S$150 to S$249). So you get the idea. SumoDRIVE on the other hand costs about S$300++ I think as I do not know where you can get it. In short, NAS could prove to be expensive but the good idea of backing up my MP3 library wirelessly means I might want to bring out my old PC and D.I.Y it to be my NAS!

I really have to hand it to Mr Jobs. Since the MacWorld, Apple has been announcing new upgrades to nearly all their products (Check our previous entries!) This time round, iPod Touch now comes in a 32GB version. This announcement is made over in the USA a few weeks back but it is only shipped to Singapore now.

What a time as well, with the ongoing IT Show. iPod Touch 32GB will not come cheap, at S$848, it is more expensive than a notebook!

Link

Folks its the 3rd month of the year again as the IT SHOW begins today. More observation to follow! Meanwhile, check out the leaflets of this event uploaded by a kind soul!

Link

IT Show falls right in the mist of my list of project deadlines, so straight to the point from me!

I have to agree that ASUS is doing a good job in Singapore. Besides slotting their advertisement in TODAY, the newspaper, they have also build up a diverse notebook line-up. So the following are my observation:

Intel's Penryn processor has been included! Check out G2S, F8Sr and F8Sn.
Freebies' standard remains relatively high for ASUS. Additional batteries and 160GB Western Digital hard drives are also seen at SITEX 2007.
X51R is missing from the leaflet. It happens to be the lowest price ASUS notebook at SITEX 2007. It is replaced by X80, a 14.1" which costs S$1,398 and it is only a Intel dual core.
ASUS's worldwide hit, EEE PC is not in the leaflet as well.
Lastly, the price watch. Well, its general price drop for all models. Nearly all models had a S$100 price drop. With the exceptions of:
- W7S has a whopping S$450 price drop
- A8E seems to be the only model that maintains its pricing but its processor has since been upgraded to T7250
- The ASUS-Lamborghini VX2S has a identical price and freebies from SITEX 2007

Promotion ends 7 March 2008. And yes this is the new series of MacBook. And no there won't be a black MacBook in this promotion.

Meanwhile, Singtel 's iOne and iTwo students plans are at half price. In addition, its broadband prices are also halved.

Singtel has really been busy after annoucing the RedPAC plan for parents a few weeks ago.

Link - MacBook's promotion and Broadband offers
Link - iPlans and RedPAC

The Singapore Gadget Talk Show

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