All posts in Hardware

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.

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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.
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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.
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Sony SZ1XP/C

Sony SZ1XP/C with lid closed…is one very shiny 13.3″ with Core Duo 1.83GHz, 1GB of memory, 100GB SATA 5400 disk, all required wireless and Bluetooth, with the choice of two graphics options (Intel GMA950 and nVidia GeForce Go7400), all packed in premium carbon 1.69kg package. Sounds quite amazing and it mostly is. Sony really ticked most of the the right spots with the SZ line.
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How to switch buttons on MX900 mouse and whole lot more

Logitech SetPoint software woes again. One of the things that troubles me most with this software is that I can’t permanently set left button as right click and vice-versa. SetPoint software does not allow that, and when I do it through Control Panel it is back to default after logout. Now, this software is anything between 30MB and 50MB download heavy and it does allow you to do such basic stuff. Maybe to protect me from being stupid and setting both buttons to right click or something? Who knows, but certainly is annoying.

You see, I use the mouse with my left hand (and I’m not left-handed) even though MX900 is ergonomic model for use with the right hand.
Reason is simple, really – the only two good BT mouses on the market are this and MS Intellimouse and they are both right-hand only. The other mouses on the market are simple entry models. There are no neutral versions which is really a shame. It seems that bluetooth-enabled mouse market is rather small. :S

Anyway, Logitech’s software…the answer to all my problems is what else but enthusiasts that know: uberOptions pack by Richard Lowens. His options pack – in his own words – simply changes Logitech’s own XML files. Now, Logitech – why you don’t have this, via some Basic / Advanced modes? I mean, really…such a fabulous piece of hardware is being crippled by mediocre software package.

Richard, many, many thanks.