Archive for the 'Hardware' category

Apple should ditch DVD drive in their notebooks

I wrote about my disappointment due to Apple’s removal of ExpressCard/34 slot in the last generation of its Macbooks. I can’t imagine this is due to cost issues — it’s probably the space constraint since they wanted to add SD card slot.

Here’s a proposal: remove the DVD drive entirely. I don’t know about you, but I have used that thing less than 10 times in last 2 years of owning Macbook Pro. It mostly collected dust and stopped working reliably rather quickly due to that same dust; last few times when I wanted to do anything with it, it spent ages trying to recognize the disk. Or even failed to read it — even Leopard original install disk, which is in pristine condition. Or last night, when it failed to write an empty DVD, which I then burned with no issues on my wife’s Sony VAIO drive.
It’s by far the worst part of the otherwise great notebook.

It’s useless outdated thing, ripe for replacement. It would free up huge space in the notebook for many, much more useful things like:

• integrated SIM card slot
• ExpressCard/34 or even /54 slot
• one or two eSATA connectors
• at least one more USB port

For anyone that needs the drive, they already sell external SuperDrive for Macbook Air and there’s plenty of 3^rd party external packages.

What’s not to like? Eh, Apple, how about that?

Apple killed the Pro line of its notebooks

Surprise appearance at the WWDC turned out to be the least welcome, at least for me. Refresh of the entire notebook line with better hardware and lower prices is fantastic and I would be tempted to buy new MBP when Snow Leopard is out (same as I did with Leopard). Especially given the fact that I would very much welcome huge increase in battery life (got to be seen to be believed).

However, I was quite shocked to see that Apple decided to remove its only expansion slot — ExpressCard/34 — while keeping the FW800 and 2 USB ports, with no additions at all. No eSATA port. No additional USB nor FW ports. No integrated SIM slot for 3G connection.
Instead of EC/34 slot, we get measly SD card reader. Wonderful, it would serve as nice dust conduit.

It’s ridiculous change. On the so-called professional machine, you’re stuck with slow connection methods, you’re stuck with consumer-level card type and you have no means to add what’s missing. Expresscards are not exactly large presence on the market but are by no means non-existing. I own two. Novatel Wireless Merlin X950D for 3G connection and Digitus eSATA 300 card. Both add the stuff pro-level notebook should have outright, but I didn’t mind getting them because the machine itself is great.
These new models are so good, but sadly crippled in the expansion area.

So, if you buy MacBook Pro you’re left with 3 ports and no other option to expand. All that with the portable machine which is a dream to own otherwise – very large hard disk, up to 8GB of RAM (amazing stuff for a 15″ which is my target size), very, very fast CPU and strong graphic card and 80% better battery life than anything else out there. You can do wonders on a machine like that. But if you do video, you’re stuck with FW800 and USB2, both 2-4x slower than eSATA so you’ll be left twiddling your thumbs while things are copied back and forth. Or if you use CF-cards (most hi-end DSLRs do) your best bet is FW-based card reader, instead of EC/34 types which connect directly to PCIe bus and offer much faster transfer rates.

I hope Apple will come to their senses — like they did with bringing FW800 back to all models — and bring EC/34 back. After all, if they wanted to add SD, they could supply simple 5-in-1 card reader that uses that slot — something Sony did with 13″ VAIOs several years back. Those things probably cost few bucks now.

The way things are now, I will not buy a new MBP. I doubt Apple will lose a moment of sleep for that, but if there’s enough of us sending them appropriate feedback, we could have something next year.

Make your own UB7: Apple iPhone headphones + ER6i buds

Ultimate Buds is company with an interesting business model: instead of making their own buds — and thus invest a lot of money on R&D — they combine existing hi-class headphones with Apple’s stock iPhone headphones. They pick the cable with mic/skip switch from Apple and sound drivers from the well respected headphones.

The most known product is headphones – UB7. They combine Apple’s cable with ER6i from Etymotic Research.

Which (ER6i) I happen to already have. I also have an iPhone and the stock headphones. I always hated the lousy ER6i cable, but the noise isolation and sound quality is so fantastic that I put up with it. From UB’s approach it’s obvious that the combination is doable and last weekend JeffB’s Flickr photo set gave me enough incentive to try it out.
The biggest benefit of this little exercise is that I now have fantastic buds combined with the best thing that Apple did on their headphones — exquisitely small microphone / switch white thingie. It’s used to answer a call, talk through it, pause or skip a song while playing. Brilliant and very well working.

JeffB on Flickr

Continue reading Make your own UB7: Apple iPhone headphones + ER6i buds

Sony SZ1XP/C: battery problem resolved

In my review of this notebook, I mentioned that battery died rather quickly after being purchased, which was very unfortunate for me as my warranty was not valid in Serbia (Sony is not selling notebooks here).

At the end of January, I finally had a chance to go to UK, for four days. As soon as I got there, I called Sony support numbers and got online with CS guy who was a pleasure to talk to. After hearing reports that other companies are using off-shore CS, it was nice hearing a person speaking excellent english.
Continue reading Sony SZ1XP/C: battery problem resolved

Reinstalling Sony VAIO

Initially, when you buy Sony VAIO notebook, you get things setup as Sony sees them fit. You have C and D partitions, both with 40+GB, and a hidden partition of 7GB, which is factory-restore partition. All this on 100GB disk (which is actually 93GB if you count 1024 instead of 1000 for kB).

On those partitions, there’s amazing amount of software installed, both Sony’s own and from partner deals. Adobe, Symantec, Office 2003 trial, lots of other shareware…Out of all of that, I had use for…none. I don’t need security-encrypted folders, I don’t need biometric login, I certainly don’t need Norton’s crap etc.
The only software that seemed to be of some use was Intervideo WinDVD for VAIO (v5.0). It would be useful if it wasn’t 2-speakers only edition. :( Since I have 5.1 speakers connected to VAIO over Creative Live! 24bit sound card, this was useless and I de-installed it.

It really is shame that Microsoft is not providing DVD decoder for the Windows. For all you MacOSX owners out there, if you didn’t know – Windows can’t play DVD movies on its own. You need to purchase DVD player that has the decoder: Cyberlink PowerDVD, Intervideo WinDVD and lots of others.

To cut the story short – I decided to reinstall Windows, remove the hidden partition and resize the C and D to what I like. Heh…not a small feat to do.
Continue reading Reinstalling Sony VAIO