32 posts tagged “laptop”
Acer Aspire One 751h
Netbook
Link: Acer
Leo has had a slew of netbooks, and Dick finally gets his first. It's the Acer Aspire One 751h. The selling point is the big screen, 11.6" LED backlit LCD wide display, 1366 x 768 dots, and a full size keyboard. It also means a larger size, 11.2" x 7.8" x 1", but remains light enough (3 lbs with a 6-cell battery), which really blurs the division between netbooks and notebooks. It also comes with its own multi-touch touchpad.
Versions of Slough
Learn all about slough from Leo: Petaluma's tidal one, and the dead skin version from his fingers. He even throws Gough Street in San Francisco into the mix. Now you ought to have a rough idea of how thoroughly thoughtful Leo is.
Dick Starts Reading
Dick is not generally into reading books, but has started reading Audible books. He was listening to Wayne Dyer's Excuses Begone on his way to Petaluma.
Irrational and Nonsensical
Alfred Chan of insideDGW has found it well nigh impossible, short of having a full transcript, to keep track of what Dick and Leo talk about on the shows (and why would anyone in his right mind want to do that?). It's not just the sheer number of shows. The real reason is, you never know what listeners would pick up from the conversation, and they would pick up the most insignficant, tangential and off-the-cuff remarks in that rambling dialogue between Dick and Leo which they call the Daily Giz Wiz podcast. A prime example is counting the number of days in each month (Episode 876), which listener Anish commented on in Episode 888 - the Knuckles Calendar. Then another listener Verena Fuchs sent an email to Dick, attaching a pictorial illustration of the Knuckles Calendar (via lifehacker.com). It's all irrational and nonsensical, and that's why we're keep listening.
Versions of Slough
Learn all about slough from Leo: Petaluma's tidal one, and the dead skin version from his fingers. He even throws Gough Street in San Francisco into the mix. Now you ought to have a rough idea of how thoroughly thoughtful Leo is.
Dick Starts Reading
Dick is not generally into reading books, but has started reading Audible books. He was listening to Wayne Dyer's Excuses Begone on his way to Petaluma.
Irrational and Nonsensical
Alfred Chan of insideDGW has found it well nigh impossible, short of having a full transcript, to keep track of what Dick and Leo talk about on the shows (and why would anyone in his right mind want to do that?). It's not just the sheer number of shows. The real reason is, you never know what listeners would pick up from the conversation, and they would pick up the most insignficant, tangential and off-the-cuff remarks in that rambling dialogue between Dick and Leo which they call the Daily Giz Wiz podcast. A prime example is counting the number of days in each month (Episode 876), which listener Anish commented on in Episode 888 - the Knuckles Calendar. Then another listener Verena Fuchs sent an email to Dick, attaching a pictorial illustration of the Knuckles Calendar (via lifehacker.com). It's all irrational and nonsensical, and that's why we're keep listening.
Samsung NC20
Netbook
Link: Samsung
Turn-The-Tables-Tuesday
These days Leo goes through his netbooks the same way he goes through his netcasts - lots of them. After his Asus Eee PC (Episode 447) and MSI Wind (Episode 762), the latest addition to Leo's line of netbooks is the Samsung NC20, with the following specs:
- VIA Nano ultra low voltage CPU (1.3GHz)
- 12.1-inch, WVGA (1280 x 800) glossy display
- 97% full-size keyboard
- Integrated 1.3MP webcam
- 160GB 5400rpm hard drive
- 1GB DDR2 memory
- Wifi b/g, bluetooth
- 3 USB ports, an SD card slot
- 11.5" x 8.5" x 1.2" and 3.3 lbs
- 6-cell Lithium Ion battery (5900 mAh)
- Windows XP Home
Leo likes the Samsung NC20 (having made quite a number of upgrades), and hulu plays fine on it. For major reviews of the Samsung NC20 on the web, check out the links on TestSeek.
The First Letters Jingle: An Encore
Andrew Rodriguez welcomes Leo home, and wants to remind everyone of the very first Letters Jingle. He is good enough to attach the jingle to his email. Dick and Leo can't remember who was responsible for it.
It's the Finnish Letters Jingle, by Henrich Antonin from Finland. Billed by Dick as the jingle with the "big finish", it was played from Episodes 151 to 160, and superseded by George Wood's Letters Jingle in Episode 166.
Listen to Episode 882
Go to TWiT
The Giz Wiz Home Page
Find DGW Info on GizWizSearch
Logitech VX Nano Mouse (Reprise)
Cordless Laser Mouse for Notebooks
Link: Logitech
Turn-The-Tables-Tuesday
When Leo starts this week's TTTT, he asks Dick if Dick has done this gadget before. Dick doesn't think so, and the chatroom, who have already dozed off at the sound of another TTTT, do not demur. On Leo goes. Leo has had this mouse for some time now, but has been prompted by Steve Gibson' recent recommendation of this mouse in Security Now! Episode 197 to cover it on TTTT. Then Dick finds out that he is already using this very mouse.
Not only that, but Dick did actually cover this gadget, in Episode 523. What's funnier is, Leo himself was half way into his introduction of this mouse in Episode 522, but when he found out that it was going to be one of Dick's gadgets for the week, he swithced to the Tom Bihn Western Flyer instead. It is a neat little mouse, and worth a reprise. Listen to excerpts of the 2 earlier episodes:
What really takes Steve Gibson's fancy, and Leo's, is the Logitech VX Nano's very fast scrolling ability, very useful these days with long web pages and verbose posts, like this blog. "Zero-friction", is how Steve describes it. For the other functions, read Episode 523 again.
Gadget Encores
With the sheer number of gadgets covered in the Daily Giz Wiz, it is a wonder that gadgets have not been repeated more often. The only other gadgets which have been featured twice were the HydraBrush in Episodes 226 and 480 (which Dick was aware of), and a Gadget Warehouse resident, the Motorola add-on MP3 player for cellphones (Episodes 380 and 630).
iTunes Misbehaving
Mike Gigabyte has found that the Daily Giz Wiz, apart from being in the Podcast category, has now gone into the iTunes Music folder, so that it gets shuffled and played at random as well as the rest of his music. Has Leo put the wrong tag on the downloads? Leo doesn't think so, but can't really figure out why this is suddenly happening. It must be because of all the jingles, or iTunes thinks that the Giz Wiz Got Talent.
Listen to Episode 847
Go to TWiT
The Giz Wiz Home Page
Not only that, but Dick did actually cover this gadget, in Episode 523. What's funnier is, Leo himself was half way into his introduction of this mouse in Episode 522, but when he found out that it was going to be one of Dick's gadgets for the week, he swithced to the Tom Bihn Western Flyer instead. It is a neat little mouse, and worth a reprise. Listen to excerpts of the 2 earlier episodes:
What really takes Steve Gibson's fancy, and Leo's, is the Logitech VX Nano's very fast scrolling ability, very useful these days with long web pages and verbose posts, like this blog. "Zero-friction", is how Steve describes it. For the other functions, read Episode 523 again.
Gadget Encores
With the sheer number of gadgets covered in the Daily Giz Wiz, it is a wonder that gadgets have not been repeated more often. The only other gadgets which have been featured twice were the HydraBrush in Episodes 226 and 480 (which Dick was aware of), and a Gadget Warehouse resident, the Motorola add-on MP3 player for cellphones (Episodes 380 and 630).
iTunes Misbehaving
Mike Gigabyte has found that the Daily Giz Wiz, apart from being in the Podcast category, has now gone into the iTunes Music folder, so that it gets shuffled and played at random as well as the rest of his music. Has Leo put the wrong tag on the downloads? Leo doesn't think so, but can't really figure out why this is suddenly happening. It must be because of all the jingles, or iTunes thinks that the Giz Wiz Got Talent.
Listen to Episode 847
Go to TWiT
The Giz Wiz Home Page
The MSI Wind
Turn-The-Tables-Tuesday
Leo was going to do this device last week, but didn't have it with him at TWiT Cottage. As promised, today he covers the new MSI Wind, a new netbook from MSI. When Leo saw TWiT Editor Tony Wang flaunting his Dell Mini running Mac OSX, Leo vowed to have his own Hackintosh, went ahead and bought the MSI Wind, which is made by the same OEM.
The Netbook category has come a long way since the Asus Eee PC (Episode 447). The MSI Wind uses an Intel Atom CPU, 1 GB of RAM, a 10" LED-backlit display (1024 x 600), a reasonable size keyboard, XP Home, 10.23" x 7.08" x 1.24" in dimensions and weighing 2.3 pounds (with a 3-cell battery). 2.5" SATA HDD, built-in webcam and microphone, speakers, WiFi (b/g), bluetooth (including stereo support), SD card slot.
Leo put Mac OSX on it too, but in the end installed the new Windows 7 Beta. Jennifer saw it, liked it, and purloined it.
Saving the Economy
Leo has been on a spending spree, buying up notebooks galore. He's planning to save the economy single-handedly.
TWiT Picks
Colleen has written up a review of the MSI Wind on TWiT Picks (or use tinyurl.com/windpick), and you can buy the picks there through the Amazon Associate programme.
The Laser-Engraved Tech Guy
Leo got a package and a typewritten letter through the snail mail. Listener John A Voss heard Leo confess to be a pen junkie many times, and has hand-crafted a "cigar pen" specially for Leo, made of South American Boxwood with the laser-engraved words "The Tech Guy".
Dell XPS Studio 16
HD Laptop
Link: Dell
Turn-The-Tables-Tuesday
For today's TTTT gadget, Leo does a "What's In The Box?", a parcel which has just arrived for him at the TWiT Cottage, with the sticker "Intel Inside". It's a new Dell Laptop, the XPS Studio 16. The standard specs (which are configurable) include an Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 (2.26 GHz, 1066MHz FSB), Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 (64-bit edition), a 16" wide-screen LED glossy display (1366 x 768 pixels, 8ms response time), HD Audio, 4GB of RAM (up to 8GB), 320GB 7200 rpm HDD, ATI Mobility Radeon HD3670 video card with 512MB, wireless-N, and a DVD drive. HDMI port, display port, card reader, firewire-400, USB 2.0 ports, e-SATA port, built-in webcam, microphone, audio jacks, 7-Watt stereo speakers, Express Card slot. You can upgrade to a blu-ray drive, and a Full HD screen (1920 x 1080). Leo has taken both of these options. Nothing but the best for Leo.
Seal Shield, Kung Hei Fat Choy, and the Future of TWiT
Alfred Chan from InsideDGW watched Amber MacArthur on commandN Episode 164, who talked about the Seal Shield dishwasher-safe keyboards from CES, which he thinks Dick and Leo should try. Try they did in yesterday's Episode 756. He also says "Kung Hei Fat Choy" for Chinese New Year. "The Year of the Ox, which is suitable, coz we're full of bull," muses Leo. Alfred has photoshopped the Obama "Future of America" button to make it a "Future of TWiT" button, with the TWiT Cottage in the background. You can see it in the blog post for Episode 747, or currently on Dick's website. There's also a Chinese New Year picture of Dick and Leo, also on Dick's website at the moment. [The Chinese characters on the picture mean something like "Always with a smile on your lips".]
Crowning Glory
Before the show started, Leo showed Dick a gift from Jennifer Laporte. Leo shared with us his moment of crowning glory on TWiTLive.
Listen to Episode 757
Go to TWiT
The Giz Wiz Home Page
Seal Shield, Kung Hei Fat Choy, and the Future of TWiT
Alfred Chan from InsideDGW watched Amber MacArthur on commandN Episode 164, who talked about the Seal Shield dishwasher-safe keyboards from CES, which he thinks Dick and Leo should try. Try they did in yesterday's Episode 756. He also says "Kung Hei Fat Choy" for Chinese New Year. "The Year of the Ox, which is suitable, coz we're full of bull," muses Leo. Alfred has photoshopped the Obama "Future of America" button to make it a "Future of TWiT" button, with the TWiT Cottage in the background. You can see it in the blog post for Episode 747, or currently on Dick's website. There's also a Chinese New Year picture of Dick and Leo, also on Dick's website at the moment. [The Chinese characters on the picture mean something like "Always with a smile on your lips".]
Crowning Glory
Before the show started, Leo showed Dick a gift from Jennifer Laporte. Leo shared with us his moment of crowning glory on TWiTLive.
Listen to Episode 757
Go to TWiT
The Giz Wiz Home Page
Levenger Surf Desk
Laptop Stand
Link: Levenger
Turn-The-Tables-Tuesday
Levenger specialises in tools for readers: furniture, book shelves, wallets, laptop desks, pens and briefcases. The Surf Desk
is a kidney bean shaped surface to be used on the bed, or over the
armchair, for use with your laptop or when you just want a firm and
spacious surface. Made of foam core and fibre glass shell. 3 pounds
in weight.
Leo has been a fan of Levenger's, and he ran into Steve Leveen and his wife Lori (founders of Levenger) for the first time in Egypt of all places.
A TTTT Bonus
Geeks love pens. So does Leo. His favourite at the moment is the Pilot Varsity disposable fountain pen.
Leo has been a fan of Levenger's, and he ran into Steve Leveen and his wife Lori (founders of Levenger) for the first time in Egypt of all places.
A TTTT Bonus
Geeks love pens. So does Leo. His favourite at the moment is the Pilot Varsity disposable fountain pen.
Parasitic Mileage
Regular correspondent and car buff Brian Drake has a story to tell about the Smart Car. A semi tractor trailer truck in Germany ran into a Smart Car on an autobahn. That the driver of the Smart Car survived is not the amazing part of the story. Nor is fact that the driver of the truck failed to see the Smart Car driver waving at him through the sun-roof. The amazing part of the story is that the driver of the truck only stopped after the police pulled him over, miles away from the impact, and told him that he had a car stuck into the front end of the truck.
Leo's wife Jennifer does not find the story reassuring. But just think of the mileage of the Smart Car, muses Dick.
Brian Drake recommends other alternatives for Abby, also tiny and just as distinctive. One is the King Midget:
Another is a French-made cycle-car with motor. You can turn off the motor and just pedal away. Brian can't remember the name of the car. Dick thinks it must be the Pedaluma. It may well be one of the Velocars made by Charles Mochet (later models had small engines), as indeed one of them is at the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville, as Brian says. The MicroCarMuseum has lots of pictures of these small cars.
The Tucker
Brian calls himself a Tucker fan. The Tucker was the car designed by Preston Tucker, the subject of a 1988 Francis Ford Coppola movie called Tucker: The Man And His Dream. Read about it on Wikipedia.
Listen to Episode 677
Go to TWiT
The Giz Wiz Home Page
Regular correspondent and car buff Brian Drake has a story to tell about the Smart Car. A semi tractor trailer truck in Germany ran into a Smart Car on an autobahn. That the driver of the Smart Car survived is not the amazing part of the story. Nor is fact that the driver of the truck failed to see the Smart Car driver waving at him through the sun-roof. The amazing part of the story is that the driver of the truck only stopped after the police pulled him over, miles away from the impact, and told him that he had a car stuck into the front end of the truck.
Leo's wife Jennifer does not find the story reassuring. But just think of the mileage of the Smart Car, muses Dick.
Brian Drake recommends other alternatives for Abby, also tiny and just as distinctive. One is the King Midget:
Another is a French-made cycle-car with motor. You can turn off the motor and just pedal away. Brian can't remember the name of the car. Dick thinks it must be the Pedaluma. It may well be one of the Velocars made by Charles Mochet (later models had small engines), as indeed one of them is at the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville, as Brian says. The MicroCarMuseum has lots of pictures of these small cars.
The Tucker
Brian calls himself a Tucker fan. The Tucker was the car designed by Preston Tucker, the subject of a 1988 Francis Ford Coppola movie called Tucker: The Man And His Dream. Read about it on Wikipedia.
Listen to Episode 677
Go to TWiT
The Giz Wiz Home Page
HP HDX-18 Premium Series
Notebook
Link: HP Shopping
A new series of notebooks from HP, the HDX-18 Premium series. Intel Core 2 Duo (from 2.26 to 2.8 GHz), 3GB memory, 512 MB nVidia GeForce 9600M GT graphics card, 18.4" LCD screen (1920 x 1080), HDMI out, with built-in webcam and blu ray player with DVD burning capability, 802.11n wifi, 2.1 Altec Lansing speakers (capable of 7.1 sound output), eSATA port. A desktop replacement.
An alternative is the HDX-16 Premium series notebooks, which have 16" screens, 1366 x 768 native resolution.
Chicken or Egg? A Nightmare on D Street
Halloween is big in Petaluma, especially around the turn of the century mansions in D Street, where children scream "Chicken or Egg?". Meanwhile Dick might dig out his Optimus Prime Voice Changer Helmet (Episode 433)and T-qualiser T-Shirt (Episode 439) again for Halloween.
A Question of Education
Runtfish runs every day, and has been doing so for 16 years, even through her Caesarean section days. Gabby wonders what education Dick and Leo have had, as they have never talked about it. Actually they have, although in bits and pieces (e.g. Episode 134 - Leo's Chinese History major; Episodes 326 and 331 - Leo's Yale reunion; Episodes 156 and 289 - Dick's attendance at a business school; and Episode 188 - Dick's speed reading class).
Dick explains a bit more about his education. Although Dick's father put him in a business school, Dick started writing for Mad Magazine when he was still in high school, and later he started working for the NBC show "Concentration". During his time at NBC, he took a evening degree course at Columbia University in New York, in broadcasting.
Coincidentally, Dick and Leo's father (who is a marine paleo-ecologist) are alumni. Leo was born when his father was a graduate student at Columbia University (that's why Leo was born in New York - see Episodes 64 and 342).
Leo, on the other hand, went to Yale, majored in Chinese History, and dropped out.
Both Dick and Leo found what they loved to do early and were too impatient to wait till the end of their education.
Listen to Episode 676
Go to TWiT
The Giz Wiz Home Page
An alternative is the HDX-16 Premium series notebooks, which have 16" screens, 1366 x 768 native resolution.
Chicken or Egg? A Nightmare on D Street
Halloween is big in Petaluma, especially around the turn of the century mansions in D Street, where children scream "Chicken or Egg?". Meanwhile Dick might dig out his Optimus Prime Voice Changer Helmet (Episode 433)and T-qualiser T-Shirt (Episode 439) again for Halloween.
A Question of Education
Runtfish runs every day, and has been doing so for 16 years, even through her Caesarean section days. Gabby wonders what education Dick and Leo have had, as they have never talked about it. Actually they have, although in bits and pieces (e.g. Episode 134 - Leo's Chinese History major; Episodes 326 and 331 - Leo's Yale reunion; Episodes 156 and 289 - Dick's attendance at a business school; and Episode 188 - Dick's speed reading class).
Dick explains a bit more about his education. Although Dick's father put him in a business school, Dick started writing for Mad Magazine when he was still in high school, and later he started working for the NBC show "Concentration". During his time at NBC, he took a evening degree course at Columbia University in New York, in broadcasting.
Coincidentally, Dick and Leo's father (who is a marine paleo-ecologist) are alumni. Leo was born when his father was a graduate student at Columbia University (that's why Leo was born in New York - see Episodes 64 and 342).
Leo, on the other hand, went to Yale, majored in Chinese History, and dropped out.
Both Dick and Leo found what they loved to do early and were too impatient to wait till the end of their education.
Listen to Episode 676
Go to TWiT
The Giz Wiz Home Page
Poqet PC
Portable Computer/Subnotebook
Link: Bryan Mason Wikipedia
Dick's Gadget Warehouse
The Poqet PC dates back to 1989, when it cost $2,000. It was about the size of a paperback, had a monochrome screen, a great keyboard, and even 2 PCMCIA slots, running MS-DOS. The original Poqet PC (also with the epitaph "Classic") had 512KB memory, while a later model the Poqet PC Prime had 640KB SRAM. It ran on 2 AA batteries which could last anything from a couple of weeks to a couple of months. PC Magazine, Byte Magazine and Andrew Seybold all sang their praises of the Poqet. In 2005, PC World also ranked it as one of the top 50 gadgets of the past 50 years.
The company was then acquired by Fujitsu, which released the Poqet PC Plus, that had 2MB RAM and a rechargeable battery. The Poqet PC Plus is available for sale from California Digital.
Dick could not afford the Poqet back in those days, and now can't remember which listener wrote in to him about the Poqet PC. Dick and Leo reckon it was Brian Davis.
Somewhere Out There
OEM Guy, aka Cochrane, works for the company which makes the Battery Tester for Duracell (Episode 526), proving Leo's statement that there's always a listener out there with a connection to anything they talk about. OEM Guy explains that the battery tester works by using thermo-chromic ink.
Listen to Episode 550
Go to TWiT
The Giz Wiz Home Page
Logitech VX Nano Mouse
Cordless Laser Mouse for Notebooks
Link: Logitech
The Logitech VX Nano was the gadget that Leo was going to talk about in yesterday's TTTT.
What's more, it's made symmetrically, so no bias against lefties. It may well find its way into Ned Flanders's Leftorium.
Botanicalls
After the recent episodes on gadgets for watering plants (Rainstick: Episode 500, and Thirsty Light: Episode 503), Bruce Horn writes in to tell Dick that there's a DIY gadget that can send you an alert on Twitter when your plant is thirsty. It's called the Botanicalls Twitter.
Tom Bihn's Western Flyer
Travel Bag For Laptop
Link: Tom Bihn
Turn-The-Tables-Tuesday
Leo was going to do the new Logitech VX Nano Cordless Laser Mouse, but has decided to leave it for Dick to cover. Apart from pens and watches, Leo cannot get enough of laptop bags. Tom Bihn specialises in bags, which are all well made, sophisticated, componentised, customisable cases with optional add-ons and inserts.
Leo has the Western Flyer, but recommends the SuperEgo for Dick, who can take an Ego Strip with it. The SuperEgo can carry Dick's laptop with room to double up as an overnight bag. For the ultimate briefcase, try the Empire Builder.
Extras include the Horizontal Brain Cell (an insert for storing your laptop), the Absolute Shoulder Strap (which tucks away neatly inside the bag but turns your bag into a messenger-style bag), and the Freudian Slip (a briefcase organiser).
Dick has been using a Targus bag for his laptop (probably the Targus Flare Backpack in Episode 394), but is now sorely tempted to get a Tom Bihn bag.
Toasting Don Quixote
Karen Toast Conger, who lives aboard a catamaran and travels around the world with her family (Episode 512), has taken up Leo's invitation and sent him a photo of her boat, the Don Quixote. It's a Lagoon 380 catamaran. You can see Toast's boat on her website, and on Flickr too. She and her two young girls sing along to the Letters Jingle.
Listen to Episode 522
Go to TWiT
Read Dick's Write-Up
Leo has the Western Flyer, but recommends the SuperEgo for Dick, who can take an Ego Strip with it. The SuperEgo can carry Dick's laptop with room to double up as an overnight bag. For the ultimate briefcase, try the Empire Builder.
Toasting Don Quixote
Karen Toast Conger, who lives aboard a catamaran and travels around the world with her family (Episode 512), has taken up Leo's invitation and sent him a photo of her boat, the Don Quixote. It's a Lagoon 380 catamaran. You can see Toast's boat on her website, and on Flickr too. She and her two young girls sing along to the Letters Jingle.
Listen to Episode 522
Go to TWiT
Read Dick's Write-Up
