Helene

I have been wanting a notebook for a long time. A small computer I can just put in my bag and have with me everywhere I go. I have for a long time been reading every rumor that has been available on the iPad, so when it was launched I swallowed everything I could find about it, and then I started comparing it to what I want in a notebook. The iPad fell short quickly because of two main reasons:

• HDMI, there isn’t a way to connect it to a TV using HDMI. When looking at the iPad specs it also haven’t a good enough resolution to support it. I want a a computer that I can easily connect to a tv and watch films with as little hassle as possible. Plug-and-play, baby!
• Portable keyboard. The iPad supports a pluggable FULL-SIZE keyboard. But, I don’t want a full size keyboard. I want something small and easy – a small, portable, foldable Bluetooth keyboard like the Stowaway iGo keyboard.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t exist yet – as in there is no drivers on iphone (iPad just seems to be a large version of iPhone without telephone capabilities) that recognizes it.  I have seen one video where it works with a jailbreaked iphone on an apple bluetooth keyboard, but that keyboard isn’t very foldable – and still full-sized.

My conclusion is therefore that I will not purchase an iPad any time soon. I will instead go for a notebook sometime before I go on vacation. But  what notebook to buy?

I’m never able to drink up my tea before it gets cold, which have resulted in that I either throw the leftovers into the waste bin or out the window (there is no kitchen sink nearby). I have gotten some weird looks from collegues when doing this, but no comments, mind you! So yesterday I purchased an USB Cup Warmer from Teknik Magasinet, in the hopes that I would never drink cold tea again!

The results was depressing.. I’m still drinking cold tea. The plate is a little bit warm, but not enough to keep the tea anything but lukewarm at best.

Has anybody found something better out there?

For about a year now I have not bought myself any gadgets, and because of this I have been suffering from gadget withdrawal for some time now. The result have been that for christmas I bought Nintendo Wii and Wii Fitness Board to myself.

Yesterday I purchased an iPhone and spent hours playing around, downloading apps and playing around.

Today, I fell in love!

When walking to the train station it was incredibly cold, and when the train didn’t arrive I started wondering where the hell it was! I was freezing my butt off. So I took up my iphone, found the train app that told me my train was delayed by 6 minutes and was at Nordstrand. Then I found out that it was -21 degrees outside, no wonder I was freezing.

2 minutes later it was announced over the speakers that the train was delayed – but that’s just plain old news for me

iRex Technologies is the company behind a line of ebook devices/readers like the iliad and the digital reader series.

In a recent blog entry iRex announces that in the fourth quarter of 2009 they will provide support for Adobe PDF and epub. iRex currently supports mobipocket on their devices.

The twist however is that ebook readers today can only support one DRM technology on a device, either Mobipocket or Adobe. So the consumer have to make a decision of what DRM technology to use on their device, and it will affect all book purchases. People usually don’t care who publishes the books they read, or what type of paper is used on a paperback. Choosing what DRM to use is in the same category, a decision most people have no knowledge or interest in taking.

Furthermore, if one already have purchased books in one format and suddenly switch to another format, it will leave the previously purchased books unreadable.

This brings the issue of DRM and ebook formats even closer to the consumers, and how it limits the access one has to purchased goods. It’s a bold move made by iRex, and it certainly is interesting that they try to satisfy “everybody’s needs” by leaving it to the consumers to choose which DRM to use. But, will it be a positive change in the long run?

I don’t think so. Most people don’t want or need to consider what DRM they use on their purchased books. I can only see that this will generate more questions and uncertainty to people (that makes them even more uncertain to purchase an ebook device). On the bright side, DRM will continue to be a hassle for consumers, and may be the publishing houses in the end will learn something from the music industry – DRM don’t work!

I took a little trip to Mimobot to check out their designer usb drives. They have some really cool designs, and they even have Star Wars characters – I love it! I guess I have to add these to my birthday list.

These drives comes with more than just a cool design though. The manufacturer have also added data about the characters on the drive itself: sound files, screensaver etc.

Can I move my birthday to …. like… in late february?

I just found the perfect thing to have in the working place. I wish my workplace had these…

I just bought myself a Synology NAS server. A NAS server can be compared to a machine that performs backup of files, contains a webserver, ftp server, ITunes library, multimedia streaming across the network. I needed to backup my files and be certain that if I experienced a disk failure I wouldn’t loose the data that I have. The NAS server has something called mirroring – that is to have two sets of the same data on different locations, so if a file is updated one place, it will automatically be updated on the other place. So, if suddenly I have a harddisk crash, I will still have the data on another disk, thereby not crying because I lost all my precious vacation photos, music, books and movies.

The first thing that I noticed when I got the package was how small the machine was. Whenever I look at the pictures, it seems big, but the DS-207 was just a litlle bit bigger than the usual Western Digital external USB harddisks. The size of it is: 16 cm X 21,8 cm X 8,8 cm It weights only 1 kilo.

It supports up to two harddisks, 1 TB each, so internally it can be up to 2 Terrabytes of data. That is more than enough for my data needs for the time being. I bought one Seagate Barracuda 1TB SATA/300 disk (and I will buy one more on my next paycheck). Putting the harddisks in place was a bit of a hassle. To take off the chassis in itself wasn’t easy. And – when installing the harddisk it was easy to install the harddisk on the upper slot, but impossible to put the harddisk in the bottom slot. The reason is that there were too little room for both the harddisk and for the place to attach the harddisk wires to the machine.

So the time came to install the machine. I started the macosx software, and it never found the synology server. The problem was that I had to open up some ports on the firewall to get there, and there was too little information about that. I ended up opening my machine on all ports, just simply because it’s the easiest. Port 9999 would probably have been enough. A list of all the ports Synology uses can be found at the Synology forums.

The Synology Assistant found the machine, formatted the harddisk and started installing software on it. And the installation seemed to freeze for a long long time (we are talking over an hour). In the end I tried to restart my mac, and then the assistant suddenly woke up and had come much further in the software install, and it didn’t take long before it restarted the server and things were working from there.

Working with the Administration UI was a pleasant surprise. It was easy to navigate in and to see what features was available. I haven’t really tried out everything so how functional everything is, I can’t say. The Synology machine showed up in Finder (macosx) , and it was easy to start copying over files, though it did take some time to do. 50 Gb took about 2 hours to transfer, so I had to have some patience when transferring data.

I wanted to migrate my ITunes library to the server, and even though it was easy to copy the files over, making ITunes recognize that fact hasn’t been that easy. I wasn’t really looking for the shared library feature (works like a charm by the way), but actually using the NAS as my library. I’m still hazzling around about it and haven’t made it work effortlessly in ITunes yet. The user documentation for synology only gives information about how to open the shared library feature in synology. Documentation about that feature on Apple  and the web wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, so it has required me to test things out on my own.

The NAS server can act as a download center that downloads files 24/7. There are two management user interfaces, one is the application Download Redirector. The second is the web interface. The web interface allowed for more settings like max and min bandwidth speed, number of peers etc. I am not impressed by the download speed it achieved. Even with my personal computer on only during the day, it would download the files much faster than what the nas was able to do.

Another drawback is that the Data Replicator 3 is only available to Windows and I’m a mac user. So, if I want automatic synchronization of files, I have to either purchase some software for it, or set it up myself with rsync. BAD! There is a blog post about how to set up backup with time machine, but that doesn’t provide synchronization which is important for me since I will be using the Synology machine from my home macosx and work computer (linux).

But my first impression is still very positive (though the noise is getting on my nerves). It might seem like this machine is for the advanced computer person, but it isn’t necessarily so. It requires some knowledge in the field, but if all one need is to take backup – well, then it works easily.

Update:
My boyfriend has already stated its either him or the nas because of the noise. I guess I have to figure out how to replace the fan on it as well

Well, it turned out that replacing the fan was very easy. I bought the fan from netshop and replacing it was a peace of cake. All it required was remove the bolts, replace the fan, and put the bolts back on. Now, the original noise according to the Synology specs is 30 desibel, and the new fan brags to be 16 desibel. I don’t think the noise reduction was by 50%. I’m happier, and hopefully, I have managed to keep my boyfriend. Time will tell.

Update 2:
Well, the noise didn’t get  much better (just a little bit). I added rubber thingies and put them between the fan and the chassis, and it helped a little bit, but the noise inside the chassis is still high. So my next step is to buy some soundproof  plates that can be bought at biltema and glue them to the chassis. I will let you know how it went.

Update 3:
A noise reduction mat didn’t work at all. So – I have done everything I can. It’s down to doing the dirty – disable the fan. The harddisk temperature went upwards from 28 degrees to 42 degrees in 15 minutes when the fan was disabled and the harddisk was idle. When a harddisk reaches 45 degrees and above its more likely to die of failures. Suffice to say, disabling the fan doesn’t work as a solution either. The system temperature went up to 61 degrees.

I followed these instructions:
- set “0″ in the file “/sys/module/ds107+_synobios/parameters/check_fan”
to avoid bip each 2 seconds, but after a reboot you must do this again.

- I create a shell script in “/usr/syno/etc.defaults/rc.d/” that i named “S99zz_fan_check_disable.sh”

- Write “echo 0 > /sys/module/ds107+_synobios/parameters/check_fan”
into this shell and change the permission “chmod +x S99zz_fan_check_disable.sh”

Complete costs:
NAS server: 2300,- NOK
1TB harddisk: 950,- NOK
New fan: 250,- NOK
Rubber thingies: 30,- NOK
Noise reduction mat: 80,- NOK
Total cost: 3610,- NOK

+ Small and lightweight
+ Easy to upgrade the firmware
+ Great many features
+ Administration user interface

- No wireless connectivity
- Installation software froze
- Noisy
- DR not for macosx
- Difficult to install a harddisk in the bottom slot
- It should come with at least one harddisk

Conclusion:

I love the nas, but it’s too noisy. If I had known how noisy it was, I would have continued searching for a more silent option, even if it would added up the cost.