iPod touch 16 GB review. A real world investigation.

Yes! Finally! I got it. I bought my first Apple hardware. Although I have seen, and worked, with Apples since I can remember (ahhh the simplicity of the green-colored monitor. Still brings tears to my eyes. It was that tiring to look at!), it's the first time that I had an urge to go an buy it. I am not sure what made me to make my mind up.

Maybe it's the wonderful touch screen or the bright colors or my need to impress everybody around me (so I can fit in as a cool-hip-kinda-of-guy). Never the less my new toy is a beauty to behold. After a couple of days playing around with it I saw a few things that I like and some that I don't like.

1.) My iPod was the version 1-point-something. So I couldn't use all those nice applications that everybody is raving about, and jailbreaking right-left and centre to make it work. I didn't want to stuff-up my iPod so I decided to pay and download the new update 2.0. So far so good. The update costs about 10 USD and you can buy with credit card or a iTunes voucher. The size of the download was about 225 MB! I had to wait about 2 hours to download. AND IT CRASHED ! TWICE! I'm not sure if it was my connection or not, but the Apple server was timing out.

2.) Installing the update. IT CRASHED WITH A GENERIC ERROR! I was petrified from fear that my new toy was destroyed. But thankfully every time you connect to iTunes, a backup is been performed automatically. So I was able to revert back and try again. Second time lucky. But Apple should have been more careful about things like that. A generic error report is absolutely no help what so ever.

3.) After the update to version 2 I was able to download and install some applications. To tell you the truth there are some gems out there, and others, well let say they need some more polish. Installation was easy and quick. Most of the files are less than 5 MB (The free ones. The ones you buy they might be that size). No problems here.

4.) Itunes. Well it's a piece of software that you will love to hate. I really do not like it. Yes OK it's sync very easy with your iPod, backs it up etc, but you can use your iPod only with 5 authenticated computers. Each time you connected to one you need to authenticate that computer if you want to do something meaningful with your toy. And if you are one of the people that reformat their hard drives quite often, then remember this: UN-AUTHANTICATE BEFORE REFORMAT. That way you retain the “tokens” to use again. LAME! Why is that? Are Apple getting a leaf out of M$ book how to be obnoxious and idiotic? What they don't listen to any of the news? I hate to break the news but people, they want FREEDOM (Que a very famous blue painted actor barging in with a long sword) when it comes to their computers. And if you have two computers and connect the iPod in both, only one of the two will sync at any time with it. One will overwrite the contents of it at any sync. From the other point of view its back up facility did save my iPod.......

5.) NO BLUETOOTH? N-O B-L-U-E-T-O-O-T-H???? WTH? ARE YOU INSANE? ARE YOU LIVING IN A CAVE? WOKE UP ONE MORNING AND YOU HEAD WAS THE OTHER WAY? WHAT'S GOING ON? Well yes iPod touch does not have bluetooth. My last PDA from HP had it. My previous from Pilot had at least infrared. The iPod doesn't have it? That, to my humble opinion is crap! Why? Wifi is NOT always something you want to use. I am missing out in all those things that my PDA was allowing me to do. Foldable keyboard, wireless headphones, BLUETOOTH PRINTNG god damn it! We can't ALL have a wireless network that includes a printer too. And that means you can't exchange ANYTHING with friends. Nope! Forget it son, you are alone. Even the Zune was doing that. (The ony good thing I guess). Shame. Oh well maybe NEXT model? Hmmmmm I see a re-occuring pattern here. The apple looks like more and more with a half-opened window........Hmmmm.

6.) Battery. Well in the tradition of Apple, the battery is NOT user replaceable. And it will cost you extra to take it for a replacement. Well to some people that would be OK, if you don't want to bother, to others will not. If you live away from a dedicated Apple centre then good luck to you my friend. Enjoy your new toy. Oh and by the way. Good luck to me too! Battery life is descent, didn't actually measured it, but I did a recharge after three days while the player was going in sleep mode and playing mp3s and movies every few hours. I only once shut it down to see how that feels like. Having the wifi on lasted for about a day or so.

7.) Using Safari. It's a pleasure to surf with it. The screen renders so nice that I was able to see details in words ever with such small scale. But unfortunately no FLASH support. It's a pity because more and more sites are using flash to present information. Some site are just a big flash covering the whole screen. Maybe next version will support flash.

8.) After a restart I got something very funny. All of a sudden I got NO WIFI as a indication under the settings? WTH? Were is my bloody Wifi? I had to restart for the wifi to come on again! Talking about similarities with Windows. SCARY! The thought is still haunts me right now and I'm going to double check. (After a minute or so......) It's there. Pheeeeewwww. That's a relief.

9.) Design. It's top class. Very user friendly and the Aqua-like interface (that reminds me a song that I saw in YouTube. Go and see it. I think it's called Mac VS Pc. Lots of fun.) is very crisp and clear. That's why I transformed my Linux interface to look like the leopard. LOL. Seriously it's a very lovely thing to look at. Silver backing with glass top. Excellent.

10.) Extras. Can you spell “We-will-grab-your-backside-and squeeze-out-of-you-the-last-nickel-you've-got”? Yep nothing but the basics comes with it. Even the recharger you have to buy. I really hate to turn on the computer to recharge it. And NO I WILL NOT spend more money for something that everybody else includes. Well I guess they have to make money from somewhere. I mean the price of the iPod it's a steal.(For those you don't get me by now, I'M BEEN SARCASTIC!). On the other hand they have a truck-load of accessories, some ugly as hell, some very good (especially from top companies like Bose and Altec Lansing).

11.) Push email. Well it does that too. Just as long as you are in a free Wifi area. If you are not then WHAT PUSH EMAIL? Go and buy the iPhone then, and leave us alone. I tried with a gmail account and it worked excellent. You can even connect with an Exchange account. Haven't try that yet. Ohh and a small secret. If you have problems syncing your Outlook contacts, as I did, upgrade you iTunes software to the latest version. It will fix the problem.

12.) Audio. Video. Well I'm not a audio Engineer, so I can say that the sound, emmm well for a lack of a better word, sounds nice. Same for the video too. Crisp and clear, just as long you have done a good encoding of your video. Supplied earphone are OK nothing great here. Oh and something that was puzzling me for a bit. The iPod DOESN'T have speakers. It has one just for the beeps and blips of system sounds. Nothing else. No external audio at all. If you need something to listen your music, buy one of the over-priced docks available. Most of them will recharge your iPod too.

All and all the iPod touch is a great new toy to enjoy your music, video and, ahem, portable lifestyle. Don't get fooled though. It's over hyped for it's abilities. For it to be 100% as the marketing department says you need your own wireless network connected to your body AT ALL TIMES. It's not definite 100% value but, if Apple listens (here to hope I guess) it will. Just like my EeePC I would buy one more if I had the money.

Connecting to an Access database and retrieving values

When I first started programming one thing that I needed to do was to be able to connect to a Access database. Yes sure there are other free databases but I was experienced on that so it was a very easy decision to make.

BUT, for the life of me all the programming books that we were given at school, college etc (substitute with your tertiary institute of choice) were plain to say the list. The Internet wasn’t helping a lot to some point that I needed clarification. Some times it was taking me weeks to find something.

Other times the explanation and the ways to do it where, although the “proper ones” too difficult for me as a newbie to understand. (Yes thick as a brick, I know!)

And at the end I was able to put all the pieces together and I had a working model easy to implement. And very proudly I can presented it here for everyone wanting to copy it. I would like to thank all the people that posted messages in all the technical forums. This is my way to giving back. Thank you.

Reading some values from the database

Include needed:
Imports System
Imports System.Data
Imports System.Data.OleDb

Controls needed:
OleDbConnection1
OleDbCommand1

ConnectionString for OleBdConnection1:

Jet OLEDB:Global Partial Bulk Ops=2;Jet OLEDB:Registry Path=;Jet OLEDB:Database Locking Mode=1;Data Source="c:\databaseName.mdb";Mode=Share Deny None;Jet OLEDB:Engine Type=5;Provider="Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0";Jet OLEDB:System database=;Jet OLEDB:SFP=False;persist security info=False;Extended Properties=;Jet OLEDB:Compact Without Replica Repair=False;Jet OLEDB:Encrypt Database=False;Jet OLEDB:Create System Database=False;Jet OLEDB:Don't Copy Locale on Compact=False;User ID=Admin;Jet OLEDB:Global Bulk Transactions=1

C:\databaseName.mdb The name of the file containing the database.

The connection DOESN’T use any password protection or other security measures and everybody can write or delete from it.

Legend:
TblInfo: The name of the table in the database.
SQLString: The string that will contain the SQL command.

The following code takes data from a database with 6 columns (0 to 5) and reads ONLY the values 0 (column 1) and 5 (column 5), being the name of a user (the former) and the date of employment (the later).

Code

Dim dateOfEmpl As String
Dim userName, SQLString As String
Dim dateOfEmpl As Date

‘set up the connection data
Dim strConnection As String = OleDbConnection1.ConnectionString
Dim connect As New OleDbConnection(strConnection)
‘ Select ALL VALUES from the Database in the ConnectionString, from the table TblInfo and sort them out by Name in asceenting orderSQLString = "SELECT * FROM TblInfo ORDER BY Name ASC"
Dim cmd As New OleDbCommand(SQLString, connect)

‘open the connection
connect.Open()
Try
Dim reader As OleDbDataReader = cmd.ExecuteReader
‘read the data
Do While reader.Read()
userName = reader(0)
dateOfEmpl = reader(5)
Loop
'close the connection when there is nothing else to read reader.Close()
connect.Close()
Catch MyError As Exception
MsgBox(MyError.Message, MsgBoxStyle.Critical, "Error")
End Try

With this code it’s easy after to expand to further usage. For example you can add the data into a list box as follows:

While reader.Read()
ListBox1.Items.Add(reader.GetString(0))
ListBox1.Items.Add(reader.GetString(1))
ListBox1.Items.Add(reader.GetString(2))
ListBox1.Items.Add(reader.GetString(3))
ListBox1.Items.Add(reader.GetString(4))
ListBox1.Items.Add(reader.GetString(5))
ListBox1.Items.Add(reader.GetString(6))
ListBox1.Items.Add(reader.GetString(7))
End While

And that’s it. Hope you find it helpful.

Run an application from a VB.NET program

Ahhhhh, today I'm a bit bored so I thought to my self why not post a small module for VB.NET that will run an application from within a Visual Basic program.

Ok, you may say "bigggggg deeeallll!!", but hey I'm bored. So here it is:

'======================================

Module modRunMe
Dim myProcess As System.Diagnostics.Process = New System.Diagnostics.Process
Public Sub RunMe(ByVal fileName As String)
Try
myProcess.StartInfo.FileName = fileName
myProcess.StartInfo.WindowStyle = System.Diagnostics.ProcessWindowStyle.Normal
myProcess.Start()
Catch ex As Exception
MsgBox(ex.Message, MsgBoxStyle.Critical, "Error")
End Try
End Sub
End Module

'======================================

You can call it like this:

RunMe("c:\temp\TheTestPdfFile.PDF"). And it will run the PDF file or any file that you want (just as long as there is a program associated with it).

If you find it useful let me know, and you never know I might upload more code. AHAHHAHAHAHAH (sound of crackling thunder on the background)

Comments

WOW! I got 4 comments for my win stack blog. That's amazing. Thank you for your kind words (and yes you too Mr.Window-fanatic). I'll keep trying to update my blog with solutions to exotic errors as soon as I encounter them (and then shoot them and hang their heads above my mantlepiece.)

AutoCAD 2008 LT slow pull down menus

I had to see this to believe it. AutoCAD 2008 LT had a weird problem when a user on a particular computer was clicking any of the pull down menus. It was taking like 1 minute to expand it.

“For crying out loud”, I thought, “what next? What else will make my life difficult?”. It seemed that Autodesk brings out every year a bit more crappier and buggy programs. I had to solve this one too. And it wasn’t easy let me tell you. I had my user nagging me to death over it! I couldn’t take it any longer!

But suddenly……. a post in one of the Autodesk forums (not for the LT version) helped me out. I needed to do the following:

1) go to the directory that the executable was (eg acadlt.exe)

2) Open notepad and create an empty file called acadlt.dll (the same name as the executable but with the .dll at the end.) For those who do not know how to create an empty file with different extension with notepad, don’t type anything and enclose your file name with brackets.eg: “acadlt.dll”

Apparently sometimes AutoCAD needs to read that file FIRST before revert to the normal file that contains some-short-of-information-about-the-pull-down-menus (AKA I can't remember the technical specs).

3) Save it.

And voila! After a restart of AutoCAD, the annoying error went away. God damn it! A great thank you to all the people that take time to contribute in the Autodesk forums. Thank you for saving my mental health. (I saw you there, stop saying “which mental health” YOU ARE NOT HELPING!)

Unable to initialize windows sockets interface, error code 10107

I was called the other day to have a look at a computer that couldn’t go online. I thought “probably something small”. Yeah! RIGHT! On Vista? HA! So I go there. I have a look. User log on was taking minutes, welcome screen more. No IP address. No DNS server. What the hell? I had never seen something like this.

Kaspersky wasn’t working. It was complaining that some components couldn’t run. “Ok”, I thought, “let’s disable some Vista settings not needed. Maybe that will live things up a bit because the computer is ‘flowing’ like honey on sand; not at all!”.

I open up Services and disable the worst ‘evil doer of delays’ the Windows Indexing. As I was moving up and down on the list of services, trying to figure what else I can kill, I saw DHCP service stuck on ‘Starting’. “Wait a second”, I said to myself (yes I talk to me. We have the greatest conversations this way. Full of zest and intelligence. Anyyywayyyys), “that’s not right. Why is this taking so long to start? Isn’t DHCP a service that assigns an IP address from the server? Maybe that’s the reason why. Ok let’s hit Google for answers”.

Unfortunately there was NONE to be found for Vista. It was like Micro$oft didn’t want to give MORE evidence of their crap OS. I was getting angry and frustrated. I had the user asking me every 5 seconds if I can fix it? Why the damn thing is not working? I tried ipconfig /all. Media disconnected. Ipconfig /renew. Media disconnected. Nothing. I was getting even more angry in the point to just format the damn thing and put Linux in it.

All my tries with the Windows repair suggestions were getting to the same result. Nothing. But as M$ is putting it: “It seems that there is still an error with your connection. Please contact your System Administrator”. In other words “Piss off and leave us alone. Find your solution yourselves.”

But I would not get defeated. I will get to the bottom of this. As I was searching the internet, I stumble across in an article about repairing the winsock. I found some helpful commands that I run straight away:

Sfc /scannow

The command found some errors and repaired them. But at the end the connection wasn’t up still. So I tried the next command:

Netsh winsock reset

After a short run the TCPIP stack was repaired and I could see a connection again. I was overjoyed. My user was happy too. I can’t understand why M$ couldn’t add that simple command into their Automatic repairing crap that they have??? I will never find out (NOR I CARE!)

I would like to thank all those people that contributed to the technical forums that helped me fix this error and moved my knowledge, on the mystic arts of fixing Vista problems, on step further. I bow to you. Thank you.

ASUS eeePC 701

I have been using this small laptop for over 3 months now and I can say it’s a very nice piece of hardware. I can pop it in any bag an off I go. So without any more delays here is my review.

Construction:
It’s plastic, but of good quality. My only grief is the plastic area around the Ethernet port. When I remove the cable from the port, the plastic tends to move outwards. I’m afraid in a violent movement it will brake. The hinges are top knots. I haven’t seen such good hinges in bigger laptops.

Speakerphone/Microphone ports:
The speakerphone port was giving me heaps of problems. If I put my headphone with the L shaped connector at the end, it need lots of pulling strength to come out, and this is a worrying matter.

Inbuilt speakers:
Located on the side of the screen there are not the most fantastic ones (what did people expected? Honestly now!) but they do their work ok. I wouldn’t use them to light up a party though.

Screen:
It’s 7 inches. With 2 resolution modes. I have read a lot of criticism in technical magazines in regards how bad some Internet sites are looking and so on. Yes it’s true, you need to pan around a lot, buuuuuuuuut after a while you do get used to it and it doesn’t feels that much of a strain. I have find more of a nuisance that I can’t have the task bar on screen all the time. To make things better I have the bar on autohide and installed the excellent software RocketDock from PunkSoftware to give me the ability to clean up my desktop and have my most used shortcuts close.

The quality of the screen is very good, but it does gets tiring for the eyes after couple of hours.

Keyboard:
The keyboard is very plasticy and the weakest link on the laptop. The keys, again despite what technical magazines say, you can tough type if your hands are not of considerable size, aka tennis rackets. The only problem is that sometimes the keys are not responsive to hits resulting misspelled words. This is definitely something that ASUS needs to work on. A somewhat better quality keyboard it would very good.

Mouse:
The mouse that comes with the laptop is a wired optical. Quality is OK and the keys responsive. Nothing amazing but it does its job.

Hard drive:
Well it doesn’t have a mechanical HDD but a Solid State Disk. That has the advantage in case of drop that it will not scratch the platters. But on the other hand it doesn’t have enough storage (8 GB) and it’s welded on the motherboard so if there is any problem you can’t change it for something else. Speeds are not breaking any record. I wish it was a mechanical one. Anything better than this. Although the SD card reader (High Capacity one) gives you a bit of breathing space.

If you have the Windows version, like I do, it’s a good idea to install all programs to the SD card. This way you can back it up in an external HDD or flash drive and when the new 32 GB cards became cheaper to copy everything there. Presto! Instant expansion of space.

Battery:
With wireless on about couple of hours. Nothing different than any entry-level laptop at this time in the market.

Power brick:This is the BEST power brick I have seen EVER in a laptop. It’s small, with long cable and weights less than anything I have seen. If all laptops had a power brick as this we would all be much happier. Points to ASUS for this. And it comes in white too.

Conclusion:
The first try of ASUS to the ultra portable laptops has been a bulls eye. If ASUS fixes some small niggles with the 900, they have a big chance to continue be number one in the entry ultra portable laptops this year also. If someone asked me if I would buy again, I would say YES. Definitely!