Firefox 3 (you have gotten it already, haven’t you?) comes with support for color profiles. Even though it’s disabled by default for various reasons, I think it’s good news since it means that when everything gets ironed out more images will get to be seen as they were intended to. More info from DRIA.
Thought I’d make a short post about the SanDisk Sansa c240 mp3-player I got a while ago (I ordered it with the Cresyn phones I mentioned in an earlier post, but due to some supplier hiccup they couldn’t deliver it until a couple of weeks later).
The selection process was pretty straightforward – my old player suffered from a loose headphone jack and I was tired of getting batteries for it all the time, so I went to an online store that had sent me a campaign code and selected the cheapest 1GB player with rechargeable battery available at that store.
I must say it turned out quite well, as the Sansa c240 scores quite well in the value-for-money category (the 2GB c250 is even better, but I was short on cash and wanted a pair of good phones as well). Besides my main requirements of storage and rechargeability, I also got nice color display and an SD Micro slot for expanding storage. Considering the price it feels pretty well built with a releatively solid, un-flimsy feel to it even though it’s all plastic, and it doesn’t look too bad (though it has to be said that you have to be a pretty bad designer to fail with basics like black, shiny trim and blue light).
Besides the drawback of being very hard to read without the back-light the display was the greatest surprise on a device in this price range. It is large enough to display four lines of text (about 15 characters wide) plus a header while browsing, and in playback mode it shows artist, track and album while displaying play mode, track number, and battery status at the top and playback status, progress bar and track timer and the bottom. Overall, the interface works quite well, with tracks sorted by artist, album, song and genre. As I said, the display hard to read unless the backlight is on, but I think the size still makes it better than the single line monochrome LCDs found on many similarly priced players.
When it comes to the sound, I have to say it’s what I expected – nothing to complain about, but not remarkable in any way. Good enough, in short. There’s also the standard five EQ presets plus a five band custom setting. I did, at first, think that the player felt a bit weak volume wise – it was just a bit over my comfort range when I cranked it to the max with the fairly sensitive Cresyn phones. I later found out that there’s an option to set the volume control to “loud”, which can be useful for those who want to use more power-hungry phones, while the “normal” setting is useful for getting the volume right with earphones.
So, I mentioned earphones, and I guess that makes it a good time to mention those included. They don’t sound particularly bad with any kind of music I tried, but the overall impression is dull. While they are far from the worst standard phones I’ve gotten with a portable music device, they are not among the very few exceptions to the rule that a small investment of 15-25 dollars or euros will make your new device sound much better.
So, what’s left to mention? According to specifications battery life is 16 hours, and that’s enough for my use which mainly is to entertain me during the half hour it takes to get from my door to my job. I haven’t tried the voice recorder, so I can’t say anything about that. Same goes for the photo display feature (it requires the images to be converted, and I haven’t found any reason to install the software). It has two transfer modes, MTP that allows transfer of WMA DRM files, and a mass storage mode when you only need to play unencrypted mp3s or WMAs (I also think that the MicroSD expansion slot is disabled in MTP mode).
To conclude, I have to say that the SanDisk Sansa c240 fulfilled my very basic requirements, and then some, for a reasonable price. So I’ll say it’s a good low-budget choice from a company that seems to begin to take serious interest in the media player market (the Wi-Fi enabled Sansa Connect looks pretty interesting, for example) instead of just being a memory manufacturer that decided to slap some basic playback electronics on their chips to make a few buck more.
And some Amazon links, good for finding more user reviews, and making me a buck or two when buying :)
SanDisk Sansa c240 (1GB) and SanDisk Sansa c250 (2GB) at Amazon.com
SanDisk Sansa c240 (1GB) and SanDisk Sansa c250 (2GB) at Amazon.co.uk
Researchers experiment with “evanescent coupling” as a way to wirelessly recharge mobile devices. I think that sounds like a brilliant idea. As soon as it is ready it should be written into international standards before people go around proprietizing it and we end up needing to have one wireless recharger for each device, like AC-adapters…
I can imagine a load of uses. Not only for devices like phones and media players – the ones you take out of your home – but for all cordless devices as well as those that could be. Imagine never having to replace the batteries in your remote controls. Or not needing to have base stations for toothbrushes, shavers and landline cordless phones all over the place. My cordless mouse would be even better if it didn’t have to be recharged.
Then there’s probably more than a few stationary that could use it, for example a smoke detector that feeds off wireless power would be able to keep its battery safely charged all the time. Would work for clocks as well, in many cases even for corded ones like clock radios that only need power to make some noise a few minutes a day.
I guess it would have to be limited to low power/short use devices or all the power in the air would make us face the same experience as a psychopathic kid’s hamster in a microwave oven, but there are enough possibilities to make wireless power as useful as a regular, old-fashioned outlet power.
And imagine the resource savings, I just got inspired to put my phone and the charger on the scales, and the charger weighed in at twice the weight of the phone, and that’s a clunky three year old low-range phone. What a freaking waste – not only the materials themselves, but also the costs and effects of shipping them across the globe.
Oh, and I bet it takes about three weeks from the breakthrough until someone puts the first “always ready to please” sex toys on the market. ;)
Bruce Sterling blogs about wind ‘n’ booze powered hybrid SUVs. Environmentalism – The American Way. Interesting. (link)
Just wanted to mention that I’ve just installed Bon Echo Alpha 2 (which is the code name given to what will become Firefox 2), and I can report that it feels damned fast. In fact, I must say that it’s the first time I’ve noticed a significant increase in such things as rendering speed and tab switching when changing from one browser to another. A very enjoyable feeling, maybe not completely unlike that of getting off a long bus ride and getting into a car. I can even live with the fact that most of my extensions aren’t updated yet.
If it helps me increase the frequency with which this blog is updated is another matter, though…
Update: I just had my first crash, and got acquainted with the “session restore” feature. Nice one. Remembered all the pages I had loaded in my tabs. And when I opened the Windows task manager to kill it a few more times I noticed that memory use looked much lower that the last version. And another feature worth mentioning is the context menu option that sends highlighted text to the search engine currently selected in the search box. Probably something that’s been availible as an extension for ages, but I’ve never thought of how useful it could be.
Update 2 (May 27th): Bon Echo Alpha 3 released. A few months, betas and RCs left to the final release of Firefox 2 in August, but it’s really shaping up now, feature wise. I must also add that I really like the name Bon Echo for a browser. Too bad it can’t be more than a project code-name.
I had some spare cash and decided to replace my old mouse, a Logitech MX700 cordless optical mouse, since it was suffering from recharging issues. And despite those problems I decided for another Logitech mouse, mostly because the ones I’ve had before have been very comfortable. And from what I can from a few days of use, this is the most comfortable mouse I’ve ever had.
The general setup is the same as the MX700, a cordless mouse with a base station that fills the functions of wireless reciever and recharger. A small difference is that the cable from the AC adapter plugs into the base station intead of connecting to the PS/2 plug. I can’t say if that’s good or bad, there’s one more cable on the desk, but one less in the spaghetti behind the PC.
The scroll wheel, with “tilt” funtion for scrolling sideways, has a nice, smooth action, and sits between the “cruise control” buttons that also scroll the page. On the thumb side are the back/forth buttons – a feature I can’t live without after a few years, they are so useful I feel impaired when going online with a mouse that doesn’t have any – and a button for application switching. All the buttons have a feel that I think is best described with the word “quality” – not flimsy, and not to stiff. I havn’t bothered installing the software yet, and it seems the tilt funtion and application switching are driver dependent.
Logitech claims that the MX1000′s laser engine has 20 times the resolution of regular, LED based optical mice. I don’t put too much value in numbers like that, but after trying it with Photoshop and other graphics apps as well as a few games I can say that it feels much more accurate than my old optical mouse. And the ball mouse I used when waiting for the old, erratic mouse to recharge is on a stone age level in comparison.
I’ve mentioned the buttons, but the other aspects of the design of the mouse body are excellent as well. I thought the MX700 was a very comfortable mouse, but trying it after having used the MX1000 for a few days it felt almost as unwieldy as your average brick. The shape is just right – the thumb rests comfortably in the deep groove, the opposite side is easy to grip both with the little finger alone as well as with ring finger and pinky toghether (I alternate between those two modes of gripping depending on what I’m doing) – and the general hand position is very relaxed. The mouse’s “feet” are also good, it slides better over the pad than any mouse I’ve had.
I also think its appearance is quite striking, especially they way Logitech made the MX series’s left and right mouse buttons “invisible” by making the top part in one single piece. Makes the design stick out of the general mass of mice in a subtle way, you see it is different but it takes a moment to see why. I don’t now if it’s true for the regular blue version, but the top of the black/charcoal “Midnight” version I got has a glossy, laquer-like finish that’s a nice change from the regular matte plastic that computer hardware usually is made of. The plastic of the sides has a smooth, rubbery texture – and I can say from experience that that is better than the real thing, I had a rubber clad mouse that became a little icky after a couple of years’ exposure to skin.� The only thing that could have made it look better is if the battery LEDs were blue, but that’s probably just me being a sucker for blue LEDs in general.
So far, everything I’ve said has been positive and I havn’t found any traces of major flaws, but nothing is perfect. One slight annoyance is the battery LEDs I mentioned. It’s not that they are too bright, but the fact that they go out when the mouse has been inactive for 5-10 seconds, and I find that little glint when I switch from keyboard to mouse a bit distracting. Maybe it’s just me, and I guess I’ll get used to it pretty soon. Then there’s the non-replacable battery – I know from experience that though lithium-ion batteries live longer than older types they do lose capacity over time, and that could affect the possible lifespan of the mouse. The mouse is also relatively heavy (175 grams according to my scales), but personally I like the extra weight.
But overall, I think the MX1000 is simply excellent, and I don’t regret buying it a moment. Without doubt the best mouse I have ever used. The price might seem a bit high, but for anyone who spends a lot of time at the desk I’d say a comfort/performance mouse like this is well worth checking out.
Some links: Logitech product information, DesigntTechnica review, HEXUS.net review. I havn’t compared prices, but it’s availible at amazon.com
“I will pledge to never purchase a CD contaning any form of Digital Rights Management (DRM), but only if 500 people around the world will too.”
— Elizabeth Stark and Fred Benenson, Freeculture.org
I signed up on this plegde to boycott DRM the moment I saw it (which was a couple of days ago, but it seems I’m a bit slow with the blog updates here). They reached the 500 signature mark shortly after that, but the deadline isn’t until February 6th, so it’s still open for anyone who wants to join in.
Why? I feel that all that is achieved with that kind of technology is to cause inconvinience (or, as in the case of the Sony DRM debacle, possible damage) for the customers, while not doing anything to effectively hinder music piracy. I don’t that will be achieved even if they come up with a DRM software that makes it impossible to make an unauthorized copy directly off the CD, even for a power user (or “hacker”).
All it takes is a good CD-player hooked up to some studio grade recording equipment, and you’ll have a copy that’s perfect to everyone but the most discerning audiophile. And that kind of equipment is probably easily accessible to the kind of people who, for example, also can access movie reels long enough to run them through a telecine machine to get a good copy to distribute.
So it will end up on the internet anyway, and all the DRM does is not only to annoy the consumers by not letting them play back the media the way they want, but also send a message that the producer considers their customers to be possible crooks.
Usually I think extravagantly designed computer cases all look like they are targeted at 14-year old FPS gamers – all cliché sci-fi-ish shapes with gaudy neon colored bling-bling. Tasteless, in short.
The people at Lian Li have made good cases for a long time, with clean but not escpecially spectacular designs. Then they let there designers create a special design for their 20th anniversary: the conch-inspired PC-777.
If anyone thinks I need somewhat expensive computer items for christmas, this would be a good start.
I live on the fourth floor, and I usually take the stairs instead of the elevator. Like I did today. I went out, and on the short way to the stairs I got out my phone to check the time. I’m obviously not a woman, becuase it was proven that I lack the coordination required to look at a phone while walking down a stair.
After only a few steps I dropped the phone. I don’t know how, it just somehow left my hands. And, for some reason, the designer of the stairwell decided to put gap between the wall and the stair, providing an excellent free fall experience for dropped items. And not only down to the ground floor, but all the way to the basement. That’s where my phone went.
From where I was then that means a ten meter drop – or about 33 feet, in case you’re imperially impaired. So my Nokia fell. Literally. There was no cartoon-like bouncing between the walls or anything. Just straight down onto the stone floor.
And somehow it survived. Without a scratch. (It did break up into its removable components, though – the battery and front part of the cover were at the other wall)
I didn’t expect it to live through that, but I’m glad I don’t have to buy a new phone right now.
Oh, and my ISP upgraded me to a connection with 8Mbit downstream today. That’s quite nice. I’ll try not to drop the dsl hardware down the stairs.
