Individual Eleven – The World's Cyberbrain

Having been off work during a two-week illness does put a dampener on things, and puts you behind on blog posts. Alas, I shall endeavour to catch up. What do you do when you are a geek and house bound during that time? Why you grab a gadget, improve on it and have a play.

My victim gadget of choice is the HTC Shift. As many are aware, Vista runs below par on the Shift. If you have too many applications open, you feel that it is begging for more coal to be shovelled. I wanted to replace the operating system for a long time, I thought about Kubuntu and maybe installing Jaunty Jackalope. However, I think there’s more challenge in trying out Microsoft’s new operating system. Everyone knows how efficient a Linux distribution is; the HTC Shift has low specifications being a UMPC and I wondered if Windows 7 was resource hungry.

The Install

You will need the following items to follow my procedure:

• External USB DVD-ROM drive (I used my XBox HD DVD drive)
• External USB hard drive
• Hard drive partitioning software tool
• Bart PE CD with Norton Ghost software tool

1. Plug in your external USB DVD-ROM drive and reboot so that the BIOS sees it as a bootable device.
2. Backup your existing hard drive using a Bart PE bootable CD, make a Ghost image of the existing partition and saving it onto your external USB hard drive. You can plug in two USB devices using the provided USB hub that came with your Shift. You can skip this if you wish, but I tend to lean towards caution.
3. Partition the hard drive so that you can dual boot between Vista and Windows 7. If the Windows 7 install goes pear shaped, you have something to fall back on. I gave about 10gb to Windows 7, in hindsight 15gb would have been more comfortable to give room for app installs but I managed. I used a bootable CD that has Acronis Partition Expert to split the drive.
4. Reboot and install Windows 7 RC. It will take a while to extract all the files it needs and then it should reboot itself to finish the install.
5. Once Windows 7 is installed and you boot into it, there’s a handy guide that takes you through most of what you need to do next. However there are some things that aren’t documented, yes I ran into some teething problems…

The Problems

• Intel Graphics Drivers: Stick with the drivers that came with Windows 7 as they seem to work fine. When I tried the Intel drivers from the HTC website it caused a blue screen crash. The graphics card detected automatically and works out of the box.
• Shagctrl Control Center: This does work fine but there are some caveats. You need this installed to use the 3G connection from the WinMo side as you did with Vista. Make sure the modem is turned on when in Vista and BEFORE you install Windows 7. That includes the wireless and Bluetooth, this is to ensure it is detected and drivers are automatically installed. I found without the Shagctrl, the drivers required for the Generic RNDIS (the 3G internet pass-through functionality) refuses to install. Secondly, before installing Shagctrl, ensure Aero effects are disabled. I will talk about why next.
• Screen resolution: After you install Shagctrl and reboot, the resolution will be forced into 1024 x 600. This is all very well, except coupled with Aero effects in Windows 7 you will get a blue screen crash. It’s not the end of the world though, as you can turn off Aero via the registry, using something like a Bart PE CD to edit it outside of the OS (the Vista method works in Windows 7 as well). The easiest way of course is to turn off Aero before the Shagctrl install, as mentioned above. You can set the resolution back to whatever you wish afterwards. The resolution button works perfectly; you can flip between 800/1024 at will as before. I left it at 800 because I like Aero.

The Conclusion

After using it for a while, Windows 7 has given my Shift a new lease of life. It runs much more smoothly than Vista and the on-screen keyboard is a definite improvement. I hardly use the real keyboard anymore now, unless I am typing up a document. Overall, I am very pleased with the results and all functionality is intact. I was apprehensive about whether the 3G connectivity would still work or not, but I was pleasantly surprised. I would advise any HTC Shift owner to ditch Vista and use this, you won’t be disappointed.

Footnote: I forgot to mention, I didn’t have to use the USB Tool which is part of the HTC Shift Liberate pack for the 3G to work. As long as Shagctrl is installed, Windows 7 will see a new device and install as required

There are some new toys being released and one of them isn’t new at all but I only just discovered it as I was perusing play.com. Since I am feeling lethargic, I shall bundle all these into one post.

Media Players
I posted awhile back about my potential purchase of the TViX HD M-6500A media player. I was very close to purchasing one a week ago, except now I am finding alternatives that include MKV playback (yes amazing I know).

OPPO BDP-83
This is a Blu-ray/DVD player so technically it does not fall under the media player type category as I see it. However, one thing to note is the plethora of media type support this machine brings to the table. I currently own an OPPO DivX DVD player OPDV971H, and I did consider upgrading. In my opinion, OPPO manufacture one of the best if not the best Blu-ray/DVD players on the market. Unfortunately, you cannot buy this very easily; mine was from a specialist supplier and there aren’t that many that stock them in the UK. However, the specifications for the BDP-83 are fully loaded and the firmware is upgradeable. For some reason, the specs on their website neglected to list the file formats it should support, on Amazon it does list them and does have my beloved MKV on there. Reading user feedback from the early adoption program, it looks like a stable release. The only downside is that I would need to burn all my media onto DVD to playback my movie files, not as convenient as streaming them directly from a media center.

Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player
Going from £350 or so to £89.99 is quite a come down. But this little gem looks very simple to use, connect it to your TV and then hook up a hard drive to it where it can stream from. Of course, it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of say the TViX but you can’t argue with the price. Connectivity is also good, with a choice of HDMI, composite and optical out, which for me is very useful if I connected this to the amp/surround sound system. Downside, I am a fussy soul and this does not have Ethernet connectivity and considering all my media is on a NAS this is going to be troublesome. Unless I wanted to copy the movie files onto a USB drive and then connect it, a bit counter-intuitive.

Touchscreen Mobile Phones
There’s two here I am interested in, and in my eyes they are direct competitors against each other all vying for your hard earned cash.

HTC Hero
An Android phone and a step up from the G1, this looks very nice indeed. Buttons wise, it uses the “nipple” trackball that is reminiscent of Blackberrys and has a 5MP camera with all the usual music playback function, microSD card slot, HSDPA connectivity etc. I have seen some YouTube videos of this in action and it looks very, very slick. The interface is what will sell this phone, and this will pit directly against the iPhone 3GS. If it is as good as they say it is, it may even tear me away from my Touch HD. However, I have a gripe! That is the bottom of the phone is curved, so the unit is not completely flat. Negligible aesthetically I know, but I can just see me getting frustrated with it when it is in my pocket. I will look forward to it’s official release so I can get my hands on it. P.S: The Hero monicker needs to be changed to something else I think.

iPhone 3GS
3rd time lucky I suppose, this is what it should have been. I still find it humourous that they list Cut, Copy & Paste as a key feature for this. At least it has this fundamental feature now, to the happiness of many iPhone users I’m sure. I am wondering if they could have put a 5MP camera on there and a microSD card slot. Also new is the digital compass but unless I am going to go rambling somewhere, I am more likely to use the Google Maps/GPS combo like I do on the Touch HD… which by the way was extremely handy when I was in Chicago and I got slightly lost along Michigan Avenue. Apple didn’t re-invent the wheel, but they shouldn’t need to. Users will be happy about the 2x increase in speed, but they have to buy another iteration. Apple must feel their user base have a lot of money to burn on their products; such is the price of progress.

In case you have not been following my Twitter feed, I have been frantically putting my life in order before I left for my holiday to Chicago. Apart from the rapid drop from 34000 to something-quite-low feet within a matter of seconds during descent, I landed safely yesterday afternoon. I am looking forward to the epic exploration into the unknown, in this wonderful city.

I had not slept since Thursday; I had too many butterflies in my stomach to get much sleep on Friday. I did just get some prime snooze time after a very long day, but still I will need to acclimatise myself to the current time zone of minus 6 hours GMT.

Being a heavy technology user, I have brought along some of my trusty gadgets that has served me well on past trips. So what exactly do I pack in my suitcase?

Footnote: You may notice a lot of Sony products, no I am not a Sony fangirl they just happen to produce products I wanted at the time.

Do not get me wrong, this is gorgeous. It is a very desirable piece of kit and gives us an insight into an interesting couple of years. The Sony XEL-1 was the first OLED TV on the consumer market as of September 2008. Other manufacturers have jumped on the bandwagon, but Sony is the one I am keeping an eye on at the moment. OLED stands for Organic Light Emitting Diode, it has the benefit of being environmentally friendly and uses less energy.

I decided to take a peek on their website, you can get your hands on one for the not so bargain basement price of £3,489.00. There are numerous ways to spend that money, but putting it towards an 11 inch TV would be a bad financial decision. Unless of course, you are stinking rich and can afford such luxuries.

When looking at its profile, it is seriously thin. At the current size, it does not matter too much. However, if new models arrive at 32+ inches, this will look good when mounted on a wall. In terms of specifications, picture quality is astounding. I mentioned this technology back at the CES 2009 show, with a contrast ratio of over 1,000,000:1 (yes that is 1 million to 1!) this is truly impressive. You have to see this with your own eyes to experience just how good it is. In addition, it will come with the now standard HDMI connections, USB 2.0 and optical output.

Of course, being new technology the price does not surprise me too much. You can compare this to when LCD and plasma TVs were first introduced to consumers. The price of those has plummeted; you can pick up a 42 inch LCD TV for around £500 or less. Having said that, I think Sony has put a heavy premium on this model even though it is new tech. I currently own a 42 inch LG and it has been a trusty work horse for 5 years now. My better half discussed about upgrading as we have a dead pixel, but I have managed to stave off his temptation as OLED could be the way to go.

The downside with OLED is that it is difficult to manufacture in large sizes, but it is possible. Samsung was able to manufacture a 40 inch OLED TV, apparently the largest size possible. Secondly, the lifespan of an OLED screen is debatable. Initially, the stated lifespan was 30,000 hours while compared to LCD, which is typically 50,000 hours. Toshiba have increased this to make it on par with LCD, so it may not be an issue anymore. Either way, I am not buying anything until I see how the market pans out. Right now, it is not financially viable and screen size still needs development.

The temptation to whip out my wallet, take out the credit card and grab the nearest flight attendant was unbearable. This is what happens when you have idle time on a flight; as I flicked through the British Airways magazine in the seat pocket, I noticed something that caught my eye.

I already have a set of Sennheiser in-ear headphones, the MX90, which by the way are fantastic but to have that sound quality wirelessly is quite something. Introducing the wireless MX W1, the ear buds look similar to the ones on the MX90 but in the magazine, it did not show how the wireless part actually worked. A quick gander on Amazon reveals a slightly less impressive wireless receiver to go with it. Do not get me wrong, it is still compact enough but you have to connect it to your MP3 player, which adds to the bulk. The supplied elastic band wraps around the receiver and the player into one bundle.

The idea seems sound (no pun intended), but the thought of having to carry the receiver of that size is a bit of a letdown. Bargain is not a word I would use here either, at a rather extortionate price of £272.31. I am more inclined to wait and see if they can come up with a smaller receiver to tempt me to buy. It is not gargantuan but at the same time, I believe they can come up with a more streamlined solution. Still, it is a good starting point to build from and if Bose can produce something similar, it could get interesting.

Celebrations started over the weekend, with Paddy parades and all things green. It was fantastically glorious, weather wise, so it was nice to be able to enjoy the rays. Unfortunately, for me, I had many chores waiting for me and studying with new course materials so I was stuck indoors. However, during my tidy up, I found my old AMD FX55 CPU and ASUS motherboard.

A trusty chip, AMD really provided a viable alternative to Intel in those days. Now, well what can I say? They have started releasing their 45nm chip, but is it all too little too late? I got my Intel QX9650 quad core about a year ago, which uses the 45nm process, and AMD only just got round to theirs? What’s going on… I’m not going to incite fanboyism, because I did like AMD a lot since K6 and beyond. But, you can see why Intel is the strongest right now, less heat, more efficient, and with each iteration the processing power gets better and better. I just hope their little kerfuffle with Intel doesn’t derail their plans even further, but I suppose getting rid of one’s main competitor is an instinctual thing for a large corporation. So right now, unless AMD pull something spectacular out of their hat, I am sticking with Intel… and their latest i7 “Nehalem” chip is simply delicious.

Now here is a cool thing, someone decided to mod the Apple logo on a Macbook lid to make a fully functional LCD display. I don’t own any Apple products myself, but this is very impressive indeed and makes you wonder why they didn’t think of this before. The possibilities are out there. I particularly like the music visualisations and webcam function.

And finally… it was gadgets ahoy a couple of weeks ago at CeBIT 2009 held in Hanover, Germany. I have to say, I didn’t see much coverage about it but still I do like my gadgets so I was keen to see what they had in store for us this year. Over at CPU3D they did a nice coverage of it, the main draw for me was the ASUS booth. The graphics cards they had on show had “buy me” written all over it, I like my existing dual-card SLi setup but the cards they had was just wow. One card had Tri-Fansink for cooling, are the fans 80mm or dare I say 120mm in size?! I’m finding it hard to fathom how that is going to fit inside a normal ATX case. Also, being a hardware engineer junkie, the liquid cooling server rack by Supermicro was just jaw-droppingly desirable. Our cooling problems at work would be completely eradicated with that thing, one can only dream. There were also some nice mobile devices from Blackerry, Nokia et al. If I had my way, I would buy Alcatraz and have the entire island set up as a massive server farm for LAN gaming, with OC12 internet capability and all the CeBIT kit inside.

Now back to reality, I got to hit the books, sigh. But hope everyone has a happy St. Patrick’s Day! Don’t forget, drink sensibly (or try to).