RIP Sony Vaio PCG Z505

I think I finally have to abandon any hope of reviving my Vaio even after paying to have it fixed. It seems that the 1st shop that was unsuccessful in repairing it forgot either unintentionally or otherwise to put back the hard disk bracket and harness. Without that I cannot put in a new hard disk. If only I have known earlier I would have either not repair it or go back immediately to the 1st shop and demand the  missing item. How are we to know since that have put back the laptop! I love this Vaio and it served me well. It's really a cool and portable laptop. I am happy with my Macbook now but I am sure this laptop can still be useful. Well RIP and who knows if I can find that spare part I may just revived it.On the other hand, i had just listed them on eBay so that some other people might find it useful.

Join the bandwagon!

My preferred mode of  communicating is sms, call and email. I do all 3 through a mobile phone. Nevertheless nothing beats surfing and getting emails using my laptop.Thats easy when I am at home or at the office. If you are mobile then it's more of a hassle, easiest would be to find a free wifi zone. Most of these are at cafes and so it's not exactly free and after a coffee and cheesecake it will add up.So next alternative is to subscribe to the various mobile broadband available. However why pay so much when we already have broadband at home or at the office? So 'pay as  you use' seems logical but this can be very expensive affair. So far Celcom offers the best package, the RM8 for 24hr, it's still cheaper than a cafe latte and cheese cake. You can even use a prepaid 3G card and connection is quite easy. I am actually uploading this blog on this setup using my trusty Macbook and SE P990i as a wireless bluetooth modem. Alternatively  you can sign up for rm68/mth unlimited package for speed up to 384kbps or rm2+/day. now that is the cheapest offer in town. Why bother with the offer of a USB modem when a bluetooth 3G handphone is the cheaper and better alternative. I may just go for this setup.

New Gadjet

I was in Singapore for a few days of work.Sim Lim square was just 10 mins from where I stayed. Not much difference from Low Yat Plaza KL, infact  LYP is newer and better in my opinion. When you convert SGD to RM there's not much difference. The only thing I found worthwhile getting is the iTech Radio Clip. This is a bluetooth stereo headset for mobile phone with a built in radio. Works great with my SE P990i, sound quality is  good, radio reception is not bad. Unfortunately still does not work with OS X which lacks A2DP, understands that Leopard may solve this issue. Then it will be cool, listening to iTunes on the Mac and answering calls coming in too,wirelessly......almost.

New Phone

I was looking for a new phone because my Nokia 6600 is a little long in the tooth and I needed a new phone with more up to date features. I needed a 3G phone, 3.5G would be better,it must have BT and most importantly be able to be used as a modem with my Macbook. Friends familiar with Mac tell me to go SE because it's connects with a Mac without much trouble. Hmmm I am a Nokia guy and know that their PC suite works seamlessly and I have Parallels. All the other features like megapixels camera, GPS and Wifi initially was secondary features that is good to have but I'd rather prefer a nice big screen. I narrowed down to the Nokia 6233,6110 and SE810i. The 6233 was cheap and got everything I wanted, the 6110 had 3.5G plus GPS while the SE got 3.2mp cybershot camera! Finally I decided to get the 6110 but it has to be black. Unfortunately when you want one it's out of stock, so what the heck, I don't really the GPS. Then I saw the SE990i, initially was dismissed from my list due to the form factor but when it's in my hand it's not actually much bigger than my 6600. It's a smart phone, got almost everything except the kitchen sink. Hmm interesting,what attracted me was that it's got WiFi , it's a music player with limited PDA functionality and super sharp 240x320 screen. Between Wi-Fi and GPS, I reckoned I will use the Wi-Fi more often and still could get a better standalone GPS transceiver. However the best feature was it's price! It's 60% off the original price and I feel getting acquainted with it would be fun,boy was I wrong! The SE990i is not for someone not willing to learn how to use properly and that's why the price has dropped much! it's almost like a mini computer and you have to scour the forums to make it working properly and it took me almost a week to do so. After reinstalling the firmware,upgraded to 2GB memory I can connect it to the Mac either wirelessly or through USB, have tried wifi on it, played music and radio and even downloaded movies to it. Picture turn out great too and I am beginning to warm up to it. For the price I paid I cannot complain and actually it's the cheapest wiFi 3G smartphone around at the moment!

Friday 17, Finally managed to update to the latest firmware R6E28. It was like doing  brain surgery, you foul up you end up with a brick of a phone. Thanks to fellow blogger and other forums,making the 990i much more stable and useable.

Upgraded MacBook & a hand me down iMac!

Finally upgraded my MacBook to 2GB ram after about 60 plus wonderful days with it. I have maxed out and I am happy. I remembered the time where my 1st PC had 1mb RAM, sooner than later upgraded that to 4mb and never looked back since. Now my handphone have 60mb ram which I will blog about later. Anyway had Moorey installed and checked it just incase for I am still in the 90days warranty period. At the same time had him figured how to published this blog to my sub domain.

Another great news, my daughter inherited a iMac from a friend of hers. Still a great machine and so happy she is introduced to Mac at such an early stage.I have converted another friend of mine who was looking for a laptop to go to college with.He went a bit overboard and got himself a Mac Book Pro!I am jealous!