Where’s my teacher?

The 2 day class I’m taking was supposed to start 30 minutes ago, and the instructor is missing in action. I think it’s going to be a long day.

Free Broadband on the road

Most, if not all, Drury Hotels provide free high speed Internet access in each hotel room. I’m spending the next 2 days at a Drury Inn in St. Louis, so I’m obviously thankful for this feature. I just plugged the provided Cat 5 cable into my new Dell Inspiron laptop, and Bob’s your uncle, I’m on the web. Hopefully, more hotels will follow Drury’s lead. I know I’ll always try to find a Drury when I travel in the future.

Dead Pixels Not OK

My new Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop arrived last week. I’m thrilled with it, but there is one small problem – a dead pixel on the 15 inch lcd screen. Ok, I know industry standards allow a certain number of dead pixels, and I only have one, but it still annoys me. It’s right in the center of the darned screen. I think I may have talked them into replacing the lcd. If not, I will return the laptop under Dell’s 30-day policy and buy another one somewhere else.

For kids on the go

Chirs (9) and Elizabeth (8) saw a TV commercial for the VideoNow video player on Nickelodeon today, and they want it. This gadget has a small low-res black and white display, and uses small proprietary 30 minute disks to play mostly Nickelodeon content. For under $50, it’s pretty darned cool. The disks cost around $15 for a set of 3 or $9 for a single 30 minute disk. And Sponge Bob episodes are available, which my daughter loves. We might have to buy one.

New palmOne PDA Available at Target

At Target this afternoon, I saw a row of palmOne Zire 21 PDAs hanging next to the original Zire and the Zire 71. I didn’t think the Zire 21 was supposed to be out yet, but there it was. The package said 8 megs of RAM and OS 5.2.1, with a black and white 160 x 160 screen. No price stickers, and I was in too big of a hurry to ask. It looks almost exactly like the low-end Zire, including the controversial missing application buttons.

UPDATE (9/21/03): I went back to Target to price the Zire 21. They have it priced at $99, with the original Zire marked down to $79. It looks like the Zire 21 gives you a lot of PDA for the price.

Bionicle Movie

My son Christopher likes lego Bionicle toys, so today we went out and picked up the new tie-in movie, Bionicle: Mask of Light. The computer generated animation is just amazing, and the story is very good. Even if you don’t have a kid in the house, this is a good movie to watch. It should have been theatrically released so we could watch it on the big screen. You can view the trailer here.

PDAs in Prime Time

I’m watching the new ABC show, Threat Matrix. Seems interesting so far, but the really cool thing is the Sony PDAs and other high-tech gadgets the show features. The way they are used isn’t always believable, but nothing so far is too outrageous. Threat Matrix might be the show to watch for gadget geeks like us.

Napster MP3 Player

Good news for my Roxio stock.

That’s what I like to see

Co mpuServe has been an online service since the early eighties. I was a member in the early nineties for awhile (also trying out Prodigy and AOL in those pre-web days), and again in the late nineties. They are now offering unlimited dial-up access for a reasnonable $9.95 a month. If you are sticking with dial-up, this sounds like a good option. I believe CompuServe still uses a proprietary client to connect to the Internet, so it isn’t the best choice if you need access to the Web over a home network, though. CompuServe is owned by AOL.

Better MoBo Blues

A few months ago, I put together a pc from spare parts laying around the house. I ended up with a 400 mhz Celeron on a very flaky old motherboard with missing drivers for USB and sound. The mobo was probably made by PC Chips, and I tried a LOT of different drivers in an attempt to get it to work right. No go. The motherboard didn’t have much life left in it, anyways, so I decided it was time for an upgrade.

On Tiger Direct, I found a motherboard/CPU combo for $59, including a heatsink/fan, which would normally cost another $15 – $20. This is definitely not a cutting edge setup, but it will do for my purposes – a 3rd pc, mainly for the kids to use for homework and educational games.

The processor is a VIA 1GigaPro. Contrary to the name, the actual clock speed is 650 mhz (or maybe 735Mhz – reliable information is spotty on this CPU). Via claims it runs like an Intel 1Ghz chip. We’ll see, but it doesn’t really matter. The cool thing about this chip is that it only uses about 5 or 6 watts under normal load, maxing out at just over 10 watts. Most modern CPUs draw 2 – 3 times as many watts, or even more. In other words, it runs cool. Apparently, these chips are even being passively cooled in some applications (no fan, just a heat sink).

I’ll let you know how it works once it arrives and I get everything up and working. As of now, I also have a 30 gig hard drive and 256 megs of ram earmarked for this pc.

If anyone has any experience with this chip and/or mobo, I’d appreciate the feedback.

Here’s the Tiger Direct link