Techie at Heart

When the Atom processor, just doesn’t cut it.

Jason — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 06:33:14 +0000

I currently have a Dell Mini 9 netbook which has an Intel Atom N270 processor running at 1.6Ghz on a 533Mhz FSB. Since the “netbook” is supposed to be a mini laptop, you’d expect the processor to handle what you’re trying to do, right? Not exactly. We live in an age of Flash video, 720p/1080p everything, really complex websites and everything being in the “cloud”. Since netbooks are meant to be internet only laptops, they incredibly fail at this point and I’ll tell you why.I don’t know who came up with “netbooks”, or who came up with the initial specs of them, but let me tell you, they suck ass. I know they’re meant to be inexpensive counterparts to regular (read: expensive) laptops, but when the hardware on these guys fails to do what they’re supposed to do, you’d think these comapnies would take a step back and try to fix it. There’s a few inherent flaws in the design of netbooks, the first being the screen size/resolution. My Mini 9 has a 9″ screen (thus the 9…clever I know) but a resolution of only 1024×600. That’s not even the resolution of the iPad or anything else for that matter. 1024×600 is such a low resolution, you can’t do very much, and you’re stuck with incessant scrolling on web pages. Second, is the video card/chipset. The Mini 9 (and countless other netbooks) utilize the Intel 950 chipset, which gives you the GMA950 graphics chip and the 945E (for Express!) chipset. What’s horrible about the GMA950 is that this is the basic of basic for graphics chips, and barely has enough power to give you Aero Glass. Since the GMA doesn’t offer any sort of acceleration, don’t even think about using Flash 10.1. The 945E chipset unfortunately only support 2GB of RAM and will refuse to POST with anything larger. Why would you need more than 2GB of RAM? Because you can never have enough RAM. Now I understand that there are some netbooks out there that have the ION chipset from nVidia or even the ION2, but it’s still paired with the Atom processor (which I’ll get to in just a quick minute). Third, since the netbook is small, so is the keyboard and space to rest your hands while typing. The keys are so tiny on these these, I feel like I could type faster using my cell phone. I also don’t have all the keys that I’d normally have on a keyboard, even with the Fn key. And finally, the Intel Atom processor! Most netbooks use the Intel Atom N270 CPU, which is only a single core processor with “HyperThreading” (read: a crap attempt to make you think you have a dual core CPU). Some netbooks out there, do have dual core Atoms, but these are significantly more expensive. Since the processor only runs at 1.6Ghz, it’s definitely not the fastest thing out there, hell the Nexus One is close to that speed alone!

Let’s give you some examples as to how the Atom processor simply fails (and netbooks in general). As I mentioned earlier, people love watching YouTube/Hulu/Vimeo/etc…which uses Flash. As most of you know, Flash is an incredible resource hog and since it’s a bloated piece of software, it runs everything in software mode (read: uses CPU). Just running a basic 360p video from YouTube causes the CPU to jump to 50-60% if not more. Why? Why should I have such a high CPU usage just for watching a simple 360p video? That’s not even counting the CPU usage from the OS itself, any programs you have open, etc…So just watching that video, could tax your CPU to 100%. Great, stuttery video. Don’t even think about watching a 720p video on YouTube, it just won’t play properly. This is just video alone! Imagine trying to play Farmville, or CafeWorld on Facebook, you’re going to get 100% CPU no doubt. So while you were able to play these games on your desktop or even your latop, you’re shit out of luck on a netbook, mostly because of the shit CPU inside. There are HD accelerators available for netbooks, one being the Broadcom Crystal HD miniPCI-e card. However, inside the Mini9, there’s only one miniPCI-e slot, so you have to lose WiFi (ugh…). This card only allows acceleration of Flash for video (not the card’s fault, pure on Adobe), so if you wanted to play those Flash games, good luck, this card won’t help. This card WILL help if you wanted to watch 720p HD mkv videos, but beware of Windows sucking up CPU usage randomly, causing your HD video to stutter like crazy. So there’s another thing that your netbook can’t do.

So is there really anything a netbook is good for? Not really. Unless you only view google.com or sites that aren’t graphically intensive, or doesn’t use any Flash, you’re going to have a horrible experience. I love how small the netbook is, I love how convenient it is, but each time I use it, it makes me cry as to how lacking it is. Why do I have a netbook instead of a desktop/laptop? I had to consolidate (read: needed money) things and sold my laptop, so I’m stuck with the netbook for now. I need power, and this thing just doesn’t cut it at all.

I hate my cell phone, and why I want an Android phone!

Jason — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:48:09 +0000

I recently lost my iPhone 3GS, and I couldn’t be more miserable. My replacement phone? A Nokia E71. While this isn’t a bad phone per se, it’s a far cry from the iPhone, and I’m getting sick of it very quickly.

First off, the Symbian OS is far, far from user friendly. It’s clunky, requires a lot of button presses just to get to certain parts of the OS, it doesn’t even give me a live call timer (for when I’m on a call), it doesn’t have a touch screen, and the screen is limited to 2.4″ and a resolution of 240×320 (which is QVGA). What’s good about it is, that it’s very slim, it’s shiny, and it has a QWERTY keyboard for typing, which helps a lot with texts or IM. While I do have an upgrade available on my at&t account, I could just get another iPhone 3GS; however, come June, there’s going to be a new iPhone, which is supposed to be much better than the 3GS. But what really has me jonesin’ is Android.

Android is the Google mobile Operating System based on Linux. While it took a little while for Android to get on it’s feet, there have been several Android handsets that have come out recently, that have really piqued my interest. One major handset that I’d really love to have, is the Motorola Droid. It boasts a 550Mhz processor, 3.7″ capacitive display, 854×400 resolution, etc… The only problem here is, it’s only on Verizon. While there is a GSM version called the Milestone, it doesn’t have the US 3G frequencies required by at&t, so I’d be stuck with EDGE. The second handset, is the “Google Phone”, or otherwise known as the Nexus One. This bad boy boasts a 3.7″ AMOLED screen, a 1Ghz Snapdragon processor, 800×480 resolution, 720×480 (or DVD resolution) video capture and 512MB of RAM. Only problem here? It’s only available on T-Mobile, meaning it’s 3G frequencies only work on T-Mobile, or in Europe. So where are at&t’s Android handsets you ask? There aren’t any. Verizon has two, T-Mobile has three, Sprint has two, but where is at&t? at&t have been extremely closed lip regarding Android handsets, however at CES, they’ve announced that Motorola, HTC and Dell are all bringing Android phones to at&t. So far, Motorola has announced the “Backflip”, which if you can tell by this link, it’s ugly as sin, not to mention, horrible specs:

http://gizmodo.com/5428379/leaked-att-android-phone-looks-unexpectedly-like-a-crappier-motorola-cliq

If that doesn’t frighten you, I don’t know what will. With Dell’s “Mini3″ phone, that doesn’t have a keyboard, or any exciting specs, that only leaves HTC to bring home the gold, and wow us with a desirable Android phone. at&t also announced that it will bring two Palm webOS phones some time in 2010. They don’t mention which phones they’re bringing, or anything else. So it could be a rehash of the Palm Pre (which, imo, would be very nice), or of the Pixi, or it could be an entirely new device. Some of you may have used an Android phone and hated it, and gone back to the iPhone; while that’s very tempting, I do like the ability to have open access to my phone whenever I want. “Why don’t you just jailbreak the iPhone” you say? I could, but jailbreaking it has the potential of being unstable and slow, especially in the iPhone 2G, and 3G. The ability to multitask is another major thing with Android. Say you’re in an IM conversation with a friend, and BAM, an SMS message pops up. What do you do? With iPhone OS, you only have two options, go to the message, or close the popup. Say it’s an important message and you choose to go to the message. What happens to your IM app? Because of the lack of multitasking, that IM app is closed, and you’re logged out. Now certain IM apps now feature push notifications, which is nice, but you still have to essentially log back in to your IM app when you go back into it. With Android, you don’t get an annoying pop up, and if the message is important, you can go to the message without worrying about closing the IM app, it’s running in the background. Very nice if you ask me.

Seeing as how it’s that time of year when Apple unveils it’s latest iPhone OS, there have been some rumors as to what iPhone OS 4.0 is going to bring. Thanks to Gizmodo and The Boy Genius Report, the rumors that are spreading around, are the following:

• There will be multi-touch gestures OS-wide. (Would make sense for that as the rumored OS for the iTablet is close if not the same as the iPhone)
• “A few new ways” to run applications in the background – multitasking.
• Many graphical and UI changes to make navigating through the OS easier and more efficient. We haven’t had this broken down, but we can only hope for improved notifications, a refreshed homescreen, etc.
• The update will supposedly be available for only the iPhone 3G and 3GS, but will “put them ahead in the smartphone market because it will make them more like full-fledged computers” more than any other phone to date. Everyone is “really excited.”
• The last piece of information is the most vague, but apparently there will be some brand new syncing ability for the contacts and calendar applications.

This is copied verbatim from Gizmodo, so thanks! Apple’s event is on the 27th, so I hope any of these things would make it into the new OS. But that brings us to the possibility of what’s going to be included in the new iPhone. Some people are saying an OLED screen, some are saying a 5MP camera (which doesn’t help if the senor in the phone is crap), better resolution, different casing. Who knows? Honestly, they do need to bump up the screen size, most definitely the resolution, (as the iPhone only has a resolution of 360×480), a better sensor in the camera, completely different case (i.e. go back to metal instead of plastic), and more RAM (as honestly, more RAM doesn’t hurt anything). I honestly can’t think of anything else to go into the new iPhone, unless they want to copy HTC’s HD2 (4.3″ screen, 480×800 resolution, 488MB RAM, 1Ghz Snapdragon processor, 5MP camera), I wouldn’t argue that at all.

When it comes down to it, Nokia is no longer in the smartphone game, even with their N97 or 5800 Xpress Music. Symbian OS just is not consumer friendly enough to be a major player here. I mean, I’d rather use a Windows Mobile phone, than a Nokia. (yeah, I know, I’m using a Nokia now…) Apple has to really step up it’s game if it wants to remain on top of the smartphone business, and not lose ground to Android. Better hardware, better software, that’s all I want, and right now, Android has both!

Testing iPhone posting

Jason — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 23:42:19 +0000

Testing to see how this works.

Starting over

Jason — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:00:05 +0000

Well, it seems that moving to WordPress 2.9 requires a MySQL database that’s 4.1 or higher, and my host, 1and1 only supports 4.0 for their 4.x databases. So how can you go to 4.x to 5.x? Simple, backup your database, create a new one (5.x) and re-import your old data. Sounds easy right? Not at all. I backed up my data, both with PHPmyadmin, and WordPress backup, but it seems that PHPmyadmin wouldn’t take the backed up database into the new database. So now I get to start over! Awesome. I’ll see if I can’t copy and paste some of my better posts so I’m not missing that. Just a word of advice, don’t use 1and1 as your web host.