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Sony VAIO T140P/L Review
Sony VAIO T140P/L (ExactChoice Product Profile and Review of Features). Well the T140P/L is finally in stock. About $1800 for the 40GB/512MB model. Runs XP Home. Its about “Pricegrabber”:http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=4762539 shows that it is $1870 from “Page Computer”:http://www.pagecomputers.com/cgi-bin/page/B1481334.html, so it’s not expensive.
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Insider scoop on PCs
AnandTech in Taiwan. A great insider scoop on what is up in Taiwan. The big news is that PCI Express ain’t selling well. The 915 boards are stacking up like cordwood. Shows once again that even with a brand like Intel, you can’t just sell stuff that ain’t faster. Interesting to see that in terms…
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DFI LanPartyUT 855GME-MGF
Tom’s Pentium-M desktop motherboard. The latest strange inversion in the Intel product line. The mobile processor Pentium M 73x (codenamed Dothan) is actually faster and uses less power than its erstwhile “big brother” desktop chips Pentium 74x and 75x (codenamed Prescott). More than a little embarassing to Intel, the Pentium M is really an evolution…
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ebay hacks and tools
!{float: left; margin-right: 10px;}http://jillofalltrades.homestead.com/files/ebay_store_test_1.gif!:http://stores.ebay.com/Auction-Profit-Education-Consulting This is a huge sub-economy. There are many insights about this and many, many sites. Ebay itself is complex. Janelle is really great and a total expert. Some of her more interesting points and connections to great ebay tools are: * Auctionbites – Free news and resources for online auction users.…
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Unlocked Nokia 6620s
The best place to get Nokia 6620s that are “unlocked” so that you can put it anywhere. Actually, they are amazingly cheap given they are unlocked. We bought three phones for $99 each but had to sign up for a three year contract. If you check out “ebay”:http://attr-search.ebay.com/6620_Phones-Only_Nokia-AT-T-Wireless-Unlocked_W0QQa10244ZQ2d24QQa25662Z25624QQa25664Z25636QQa35Z25644QQalistZa25664Q2ca25662Q2ca35Q2ca10244Q2ca3801QQcatrefZC6QQcoactionZcompareQQcoentrypageZsearchQQcopagenumZ1QQfromZR2QQgcsZ1440QQpfZShowQ20ItemsQQpf_queryZ6620QQpfidZ1720QQsacategoryZQ2d100QQsbrftogZ1QQsocolumnlayoutZ3QQsocomparecolumnlayoutZ1QQsofocusZpfQQsorecordsperpageZ50QQsosortorderZ2QQsosortpropertyZ2QQsotrZ2 you can find dozens for about $250.…
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Nokia Stereo Headset HDS-3
Nokia Stereo Headset HDS-3 For 6600/7200 series Phone. Nokia for instance needs special headset attachments. So you need to buy this for $15 and then if you have fancy earphones like this, you get “Adrian”:http://smithstuff.net to cut it off and put a 2.5mm connector on it.
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Nokia 6620
Russell Beattie Notebook – My Shiny New Nokia 6620!. We got three of these and this is a great review by Russell Beattie. Am still charging it and am anxious to test the screen. The main bummer is that they have some funky headset attachment so you can’t plug in any headphones and the MMC…
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NEC ND-3500A DVD Recorder
AnandTech DVD Review and “Tom’s Hardware”:http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20041102/. _A new champion for DVD drives_ _From Anandtech_. From our results, we can see that the Pioneer DVR-108D, LG GSA-4160B, and NEC’s ND-3500A came out on top with their ability to burn any type of media almost flawlessly as well as burn 2.4X dual layer media at 4.0X speeds…
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Latest on LAME
Hydrogenaudio Forums -> MP3 – General, It’s hard to find the latest data on what version of LAME (Lame isn’t an MPEG-3 Encoder). But, Hydrogenaudio seems to have it. Basically, today the version to use is Lame 3.90.3 which is a little older than the current 3.96, but seems to work better. It’s also hard…
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Headphone Buying Guide
HeadRoom | Portable Listening. The folks at Headroom do such an outstanding job doing recommendations for headphones and portable equipment. The best recommendations are the Etymotic headphones. I’ve gotten a bunch for folks. They are expensive, but boy do they sound amazing. The ER-6P is $99 and is very good. If you are splurging, the…
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BlogIt for Firefox
JustBlogIt with a simple right-click.. Eureka, I love Firefox, but one announying thing is that tools like QuickPost for MovableType don’t work well with it. In particular, the popup comes up behind the main windows instead of in front. This fixes that (I hope). Also SharpMT doesn’t seem to get along with my version of…
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Buying List
Ok, so many things to look at right now…here’s a list of what we’re in the market for right now: * “iPod”:http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_attrib.php/page_id=161. Probably the 4G 20GB version. No VC can really invest in consumer products without having an ipod. They are their own universe right now. Man these these things *are* expensive. About 50% more…
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Dream Laptop nearly here
Page Computer — T140P/L NB PM1100 512MB 40GB CDRW/DVD 10.6IN WXPP. My dream laptop is nearly here. It is the low-end Sony VGN-T140P/L, cost if $1905 and it is backordered. Can’t wait to get it.
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Markdown
Daring Fireball: Markdown. We’ve been using Textile 2 for a while as the markup languages for all of our blogs. I see now that using Markdown, so it is an interesting language to try. Textile is great and powerful, but hard to teach folks the more sophisticated stuff. BTW, this is another amazing script that…
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Commenters must register
Because tongfamily.com is literally beseiged with spammers (even with MT Blacklist, I get probably 50 spam comments a day), I’m turning on the registration required. In order to comment you’ll need a free “Typekey”:http://typekey.com registration in order to logon. Sorry about this, but I’m wasting too much time editing out spam. We will convert the…
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Final Move from MT 2.661 to MT3
Learning Movable Type: TypeKey Authentication for Comments. I thought I was done, but it turns out there is a ton of work to be done. MT 2.661 blogs are *not* automatically converted to MT3.0. There is a boatload of work to do as covered in Elise.com and also in “Anzi”:http://www.anzidesign.com/archives/000443.html You can see this because…
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Final Fix for Blackberry 7230, Windows XP SP2 and Outlook 2003
Well its taken forever to figure out how to fix the various problems. There are lots of postings. I basically got the install problem to work with XP SP2, but I’ve been unable to synchronize because when I go to the Desktop Manager and choose Intellisync/Configure PIM/Address Book/Choose/Browse, I don’t get an folder enumerated. Also,…
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Quantum String Costume
Calvin wants to be a quantum string for Halloween (I know, the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree). So we need a picture of a quantum string for the front of his sweatshirt (black of course) and the equations on the back. Here are the places to look for photos of strings: * “Cosmic…
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Portable Speakers
Need one of these portable speakers for presentations. Got an el cheapo Radio Shack thing for $40, but it is incredibly heavy and you have to bring two speakers. That’s because it uses 4C batteries each and is very bulky. The reviews for portable speakers absolutely stink from the mainstream sites, but “Ipod lounge”:http://www.ipodlounge.com/reviews_more.php?id=5016_0_6_0_C seems…
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Coolest Bluetooth Headset
Since we are getting all kinds of new phone stuff, might as well try Bluetooth headsets. I’ve never liked them because they are so gigantic, but a little trolling shows this Bluespoon to be pretty amazing. Just 10 grams and not expensive. There is a big brother that has a DSP in it that costs…
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Need MMC for Nokia 6620
MMC vs. SD and “Flashcards.co.nz”:http://www.flashcards.co.nz/knowlege-base/mmc-card-vs-sd-card.html. We are getting Nokia 6620 for various demonstrations and need a big memory card. It takes MMC, but I’ve never understood the difference with SD until now. Basically SD is newer and has a higher transfer rate, but has some mysterious copy protection scheme. They are the same shape, so…
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Hosting Your Blog
Hey if you are thinking of getting a blog, go hang out with Mark over at “tqbloghosting”:http://www.tqbloghosting.com/. I’ve been working with him for two years now and he’s great. We have about a dozen blogs all running on his servers.
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Trek 5900 Headset Fix
_David Diamond wrote me pointing out that the 5900s from 2000-2003 had a problem where the headset was not loctited down so they are sticky. Its a little complicated to fix, but he has the procedure. Trek will fix under warranty too apparently. Here are his fix-it notes or maybe take it to your local…
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More on the NSLU2 Delayed Write Problem
_More on the delayed write problem from Erik who is struglling like me to get the thing to work_ I bugged tech support at Linksys and they suggested turning off write caching on the local disc of the machine doing the writing to the NSLU2, disable all software firewalls, and if that doesnt work try…
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WMV on DVDs and Photo on a DVD
_Great questions from my buddy Dan about how to get formats back and forth_ Say Rich, what’s the best way to: # Burn .WMV files onto a DVD in DVD format? # Produce a photo slide show video? Well, there is the best way and there is the easiest way. So, easiest way answers are…
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Marketing Playbook is born
Hey for those of you who don’t know, our book, the “Marketing Playbook”:http://marketingplaybook.com was officially released. Hit #199 on the Amazon list and in the top 25 for business books on Amazon, so it is in the top 1% of all Amazon books! Wow. Kind of neat. Some good reviews at “Marketing Playbook”:http://marketingplaybook.com/praise.php and also…
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Low-cost Hotel Rooms and Travel
Great ways to get low cost hotels: h4. Airfares Use “Fare Chase”:http://farechase.com, this is a meta search engine. As an example, tomorrow I’m flying back to Seattle. Rack rate on Alaska is $451, it is $251 on Jet Blue and $165 on Delta. That’s quite a spread! There are a couple of tricks. First, always…
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Audio Books on the Road
Well, not exactly music, but the kids and I love to listen to books on tape or CD these days. They are really in an inconvenient format since a typical book takes 5 CDs because the encoding used on regular CDs is tuned for music. Even with MP3 or OGG encoding, a book takes 700MBs…
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Nokia 6620 and Bluetooth Headsets
Well, time once again to get a great phone. The prices are pretty reasonable right now. You can get a Symbian phone that has full stereo plumbing for $100 with a 2-year plan from AT&T. This is an EDGE phone, so it is incredibly fast. “Letstalk.com”:http://letstalk.com is about $50 more expensive than Amazon.com for this…
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Debugging Video Codecs
AVIcodec. Al that money and Windows doesn’t come with an MPEG_2 (e.g., DVD decoder) as part of it, so you are reduced to buying various codecs that may or maynot work with Windows. Right now I’ve found lots of problems with CyberDVD’s codec and lots of oddnesses with the Ligos codec. Here’s a good site…