Blog du Tristank : Aussie

Max Payne 2 on Xbox Originals

tristank — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:01:39 GMT

Awesome, in a word.

Wins my award for most heartbreaking game ever. With some pretty funky action along the way.

I wasn’t as much of a fan of the first one, though if you play them back to back, they run very well together.

(Though the part in MP2 that always troubled me was how the people you’re shooting at don’t get damaged per se; they just take an endless supply of bullets and get tossed around. Breaks suspension of disbelief. Well, that and the whole “Bullet Time” thing, which was done very well in this one.)

Mesh Gush

tristank — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:15:46 GMT

Hi Everybody! I've been laying low for a while, in read-only mode, sorting, filtering, evaluating and generally catching up on stuff!

So, why break radio silence now? Well, I'm popping up to offer a quick endorsement for the Mesh platform, which was recently opened up to Australian testers.

I'm excited. I love it, and it's not even finished.

Right now, you could liken it to Foldershare plus Skydrive plus Remote Desktop, just with the out-of-the-box stuff in the preview.

But there's more to come, and the glimpse you get is absolutely compelling.

I love that I'm a mouse-over and click away from Remote Desktop to any of my machines.

I love that I can synchronize folders between any number of my devices, and have a copy kept online in my Live Desktop.

I love that it's a platform, and having seen some demos of what's possible from a programming perspective, I can't wait to get my SDK on!

At present, there are some To Be Implemented features, the odd glitch and so on (as you'd expect from a CTP), so feel free to ignore me for a while, I'll just say "told you so" later! :)

One tip I'll pass on: Quite a few people requested a versioning feature for files and folders in the Mesh forums (and note that right now, folders you share with other people are writable by them) - Windows Vista has this built in already, in the form of the Previous Versions feature that you can use to recover a document in a given folder - just get the Properties, and then check the Previous Versions tab for the folder (or document).

Go get a Mesh!

My Next Laptop - an XT

tristank — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:24:03 GMT

A new year, another new laptop, incorporating the lessons learned from last time. Interesting choice of nomenclature for the new Dell tablet range.

My first PC (mostly-)compatible was an XT-class machine. I think we got it in 1988, maybe 89. I had no idea that 286 and even 386s were available already! What an exciting time I was in for...

Twin 360K floppy drives, it had, and a green CGA monitor. 640K and an 8088 (Turbo! 10Mhz! Compatible! 4.77Mhz!). DOS 2.0 (or was it 2.11?)

I still remember trying to use good 'ol Commodore 64 BASIC commands (LOAD *,8) before it was explained to me that these EXE or COM things were what you used, and the DIR command showed you what they were.

"So LOAD 'SPACEWAR.EXE',8 ?"

"No, you just type the name before the EXE"

"Ohhh"... so the commands I could type were actually extended by the EXEs present... wow. Cool!

The steel "desktop" case of the thing was quite possibly larger than any case I've owned since then.

Quite randomly, after about a year, I came home from school to a grinning Dad, who couldn't wait for me to turn on the computer (for a change; it was more commonly "go outside and do some exercise!").

I flicked the big red switch, and then noticed the screen wasn't green any more! Awesome! Text mode was full-colour, but I rapidly discovered that four colour CGA was graphics mode (with a choice of two strange palettes! Who knew Ultima V was actually purple, white and cyan?).

And then, just after that had registered, I heard the grinding noise of a new 40MB hard disk spinning up inside the case! What luxury was this!? How many floppy disks could I abandon!? ALL OF THEM! (except those bastard ones with turbo-unfriendly copy-protected-disk schemes).

Then I saw EGA and VGA at a computer store near school. Wow. Six months later, I'd saved up enough to replace the CGA card with an EGA card. I was hooked on upgradeability. Happy sigh. Fun times.

</memory lane>

Quite why Dell would want to invoke memories of the clunking old monster, associated with their svelte new Tablet is beyond me, but it worked, and somewhat more randomly than you might suspect, mine's on order now!

I think I mentioned before that I didn't really care if it was a Tablet per se, just as long as it had a touch screen I could jab with a finger. Re-reading what I wrote last year, I'm quite happy that I'm at least internally consistent.

I found that reviews were quite scarce, so I'll write up my e-pinions as I go, as per usual. Time permitting (did I mention I'm busy until March already?)

Idle speculation: The next version will be the "AT"... (you can laugh when it suits you. No pressure.)

Oh yeah, and Happy New Year, and all!

Office 2007 Ultimate, $AUD75!? Yes, That's Cheaper Than I Can Get It!

tristank — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 10:55:08 GMT

Back in the day, software used to be quite cheap around here for employees.

Then, due to a confluence of unfortunate factors, all involving complicated acronyms (like FBT), Aussie 'softies started paying what could be politely described as unspectacular rates for personal copies of Microsoft software.

This has led to uncomfortable barbequeue moments, like "so can you get me a cheap copy of Windows/Exchange Server/Office/Backoffice/everything you've ever produced?" - "no", and "I want an Xbox", "so do I". All understandable, but also something I've been unable to do anything about. (Except buy a 360 at retail and imply I didn't, for gloating purposes*).

But, and you've probably guessed where I'm going with this, now there's a way to buy Office 2007. Ultimate. And apparently, it's not cheating.

If you're enrolled in a qualifying University or TAFE college (and have a valid email there - see the offer details), you can get a fully-blown legitimate copy of Office 2007 Ultimate, for 75 buckaroos.

No kidding. I'm told it's definitely not surplus copies of Office 97 being unloaded at bargain basement rates - this is the latest and greatest, full packaged product.

OneNote, on its own, would be worth 75 bucks to me. I don't understand how we're doing this! It's crazy! Crazy, I tell you! Throw in Word and Excel and Outlook and Access and PowerPoint and, um, those other things, and it's just insane! They're crazy! Fire them! No, really, as a shareholder (5 stock, he said proudly!) I demand that you fire them!

That's so much cheaper than I can get it. So much. Except when my Uni enrolment comes through!

I'm told this is pretty much common knowledge in the blogosphere - but hey, I naturally filter marketing-looking posts, so I was surprised, and when I told other people, they were surprised, and told me I was *fibbing* (to put it politely). Well, nuh-uh, I showed them. Or you, more specifically.

If you're still reading, please stop, I've got nothing more to give. Just go buy a cheap copy of Office.

kthxbye! Hugs!

* - Look, most of the above is pure fabrication for the purpose of good* storytelling; assume that any quip or comment is completely false, but that the 75 buck offer is actually legit.

Two New Updates for Aussie Windows Vista Media Centre Owners

tristank — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 08:11:00 GMT

The Media Center dev team have been working to address a couple of problems that have particularly affected some Australian Media Centre users, and we now have updates available from Product Support.

While the fixes are available, the KB articles documenting them aren't yet published (at the time of writing), but we're working on getting them out as soon as we can.

In Australia, you can call Support on 13 20 58 (1,4) or use a pre-existing support arrangement (Partner, Premier, etc) to obtain either hotfix directly from Microsoft PSS.

If there's a problem getting them sent to you, you may need to explain that the articles are still in production, but the fixes are ready and available from the hotfix site.

As with all hotfixes, our recommendation is that if you aren't affected by the problem directly, you should wait for a future public update or service pack containing the updates.

Media Center is available in the Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate editions.

First, there's an update that provides a more reliable way of keeping custom Guide data in the registry, without having to adjust windows services (for example, KeepKey), registry scripts, scheduled tasks or registry permissions.

935685 - MCUpdate Crash when disableUpdateDiscSvc is enabled * - KB article being finalized. When published: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/935685

In short: the update allows Guide providers to set the disableUpdateDiscSvc registry value to 1 without crashing the MCUpdate process when it runs, to retain their custom guide data registry key.

I would expect that you'll likely be directed to install the hotfix by your EPG provider, and they will set the registry key with their installation/uninstallation, but check with them!

In case technical details are wanted:

Registry location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\EPG
Value: disableUpdateDiscSvc : DWORD : 1

Removing the value or setting to zero should return to normal behaviour (the discsvc key will be overwritten when MCUpdate runs, returning the guide to its default setting).

This next problem seemed to crop up fairly recently on my installation: when channels retitled themselves (as often happened with Channel 7 during a special event or similar), MCE (or rather VMC as folk are calling it now) would sometimes assume it had found a new replacement channel, and forget about the old channel on the same frequency. This led to a loss of Guide data on an occasional basis (and scheduled recordings would often not work on the new channel), It affects Terrestrial Digital TV stations only, far as I know.

938927 - Opportunistic Scanning causes loss of EPG/Guide data * - KB article being written. When published: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938927

Once the hotfix is installed, opportunistic scanning can be disabled by setting a specific registry value:

Registry location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\GLID
Value: DisableActualStreamOpportunisticScanning : DWORD : 1

This one you'll need to install and enable yourself (unless the guide provider does the registry key for you - they're generally very nice people, so expect to see a tickbox in their programs in the future).

We've had good results in testing, but you might want to consider rerunning Media Center setup after installing the hotfix to rescan all your channels from scratch - if the channels are already weird when you install and enable, they might stay that way.

Again - neither KB is done yet, but we're working hard on them. In the meantime, contact Support to get the updates directly from us.

See also Mike Hayton's post in the XPMediaCentre.com.au forums.

This post is provided "AS IS" and confers no warranty.

HDMI on (my) LCD TVs sucks (aka The Campaign For Pure Pixels)

tristank — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 11:07:25 GMT

Before I get into the rant: I am thoroughly ignorant of any and all video standards. Do not expect this post to contain much in the way of factual value.

I'm housesitting at my parents' place at the moment. They have a recent-ish 32" Panasonic LCD TV. They have my old XP Media Centre PC driving it.

Until last night, it was plugged in via VGA cable exclusively, but I thought I'd try a DVI to HDMI cable instead, as the VGA quality is terrible but I haven't had time to fiddle with it to date.

To expand on that "terrible" a bit - the screen is 1280 by 768 pixels. The screen doesn't seem to support this resolution through VGA, but instead scales 1360x768 to 1280, making everything a bit grainy and distorted at the individual pixel level. It supports "WXGA" mode for input which helps with the distortion a little, but trades that for colour depth - suddenly everything is banded horribly. So, terrible.

The Panasonic has the same problem as the Sony Bravia I have at home - the list of resolutions supported via HDMI are the "classic" HD resolutions. 576p, 720p, 1080i.

None of these wonderful standard resolutions are the native physical monitor resolution, so in any resolution mode, I'm going to have display pixels that aren't exactly one physical pixel big.

For most video content, this probably isn't the hugest deal - video tends to be fast-moving, enjoyed at a distance, and fuzz is quite tolerable.

For text, though, it's the kiss of death. Icons look a bit odd. Windows and the cursor alias while moving across the screen. And there's worse!

Worse - Cleartype is designed to work at physical-pixel precision, and there's no "blurry monitor mode", which means that the super-large (or just oddly-placed) pixels make the usually-subtly-coloured "rounding" pixels visible on the edges of letters. Which kinda breaks the effect.

With me so far? Well, life gets worse again: Compounding the already-not-insignificant feeling of dread, OVERDRAW!

Whoever figured overdraw was something important to preserve via HDMI - in the HD era - needs to consider whether they're really the best person for the job they're doing.

The resolution I'm actually running now from Windows' perspective, to a screen with 1280 horizontal pixels and 768 vertical, is something like 1180 by 684. Yes, I have to reduce the logical resolution even further to compensate for the sucky consumer HD resolution hardware.

In short: the colour displayed is vastly improved now, but blocky pixels are noticeable up close.

Overall, it's an improvement from the VGA cable, but it's also not quite the same in terms of screen real estate.

Is there a solution? Can I get my pure 1:1 pixel mapping with a non-monitor TV?

Do I just have to suck up the standard HDMI formats as-is? Does your LCD or Plasma TV report itself as supporting a nonstandard 1:1 format via HDMI (like, 1366x768 or 1920x1200 or, heck, 1024x768)? Is that even possible? (if so, recommendations, please!)? Am I the only person that cares about this!?

Bring back DVI, I say. That was when men were real men, women were real women, and pixels were real display pixels.

Just saw Sunshine

tristank — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 17:53:52 GMT

Sunshine on IMDB.

Well. If it had ended about four minutes before it did, it would have been a classic in my book. In fact, when I buy the DVD, I might make a "Tristank's Cut" version that skips the very end. Or maybe mashes it up with Jurassic Park, or something. Yes, dinosaurs were on the spacecraft, and sabotaged it so that it fell into New York, in the form of a ship.

Quick Plot: Sun dying, Earth freezing. Spaceship sent to send big 'ol nuke into heart of sun. Not everything goes to plan.

Er, anyway - I'd thoroughly recommend this movie to anyone that enjoyed Alien, or any good space-thriller. Come to think of it, has there been one since?

The production is stunning. And by stunning, I mean totally spray-your-ashes-over-a-wide-area stunning. The music intermittently pounds and soothes you, setting the tone perfectly, the sound effects (I particularly loved the lonely bleeps and bloops through solar static) are spot-on, and there are some crazy visual effects. Let the experience wash over you (rather than spending time trying to break the effects down), and you'll have a very enjoyable experience.

Special mention: the lumbering menace of the rotating sections of the ship. Every time one scudded past, I was concerned. A subtle and unexpected payoff from it too.

There's a pretty decent Flash exploration tool providing some backstory not in the movie, and some foreshadowing of events to come at the movie site: http://www.sunshinedna.com/explore/uk/

My rating: Four out of five cold-burning stars.

Xbox 360 Wireless Receiver for Windows: Installation Experience

tristank — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 13:26:19 GMT

"Experience" is a lovely word for a corporate blog. Discuss.

Anyway, my experience was that it didn't work the first time round. That was at 7pm. it's now 9pm, and I've just finished my first laps around Barcelona in RFactor, using the Wireless Racing Wheel and TrackIR.

Awesome? You betcha! Easy? Not quite what I'd hoped for!

So what can you learn from my experience, dear gamer? Read on...

I'd gone out to buy the receiver this evening - so it's available in Australia now! - and ended up getting a receiver-and-controller-in-one pack, as the standalone receivers seemed to have sold out quicksmart (and there was much rejoicing among shareholders).

After the by-now-rather-passe strains and cuts endured while opening the packaging/security enclosure/weaponized clear plastic container, I was eager to just plug stuff in!

Reading the helpful green tag on the plug ("Install software first"), I was tempted to just plug it in and let WindowsUpdate do the rest, but I thought I'd Do The Right Thing and, y'know, install the CD it came with.

That Was My Mistake

That, it appears, was my mistake. If you skip to the "After System Restore" section below, you'll see that the installation can be perfectly painless.

For me, though, it wasn't. The CD was put in, Autorun selected, and it promptly told me I didn't meet the system requirements and should check the website.

This I did, and eventually browsed my way over to the Wireless Receiver download for Windows Vista X64.

Note for first-time readers: I run Windows Vista X64 at home on my gaming machine. I've never been able to justify this decision rationally, except with the flimsiest of excuses: more bits must be better. (and more registers, and fewer k-mode drivers, and...)

Anyway, I installed the proffered software, it found the wireless receiver and installed a nice Xbox-like indicator accessory thingo.

But no matter what I did, whatever combination of resync-button-mashing or battery removal or unplugging or replugging or... well, anything (there are a massive total of three relevant buttons, the Guide button solely being used for power in this scenario, so there's not a vast amount of creativity required), the controller's ring of light would loop, then both the receiver and controller would flash, then the controller would continue all-quadrants-flashing. It was very consistent - sorta the equivalent of "yes, I know you're there, but I don't want to talk to you". Plus, when I was trying to repurpose an existing controller, I'd end up turning the Xbox 360 on all the time.

On the X64 box, I'm running in test-signing mode to get past some semi-signed driver issues, and at the back of my mind, I'm always a little suspicious that something somewhere is working differently because of this. So far, I haven't found anything that was directly attributable to it, but I live in fear (and with Test Mode printed in all eight corners of my screens).

So, I tried it out on Tiny, my P1610, far, far away from the Xbox. I just plugged in the receiver, and 32-bit Vista downloaded the Wireless Receiver software from Windows Update (Tiny doesn't have an optical drive), and the controller synced with the receiver. Took about two minutes all up, including resuming from hibernation.

With this in mind, I tried deleting the drivers for the Receiver using Device Manager, but they seemed to reinstall locally and not from Windows Update; an Update didn't seem to fix it, so I gave up and turned to my old new best friend, System Restore. Back to before I installed the download. This took about five minutes.

After System Restore, I Just Plugged It In

... and this time, it found the drivers directly from Windows Update, installed them in about five seconds flat, and then the controller magically synced itself straight away. The drivers installed for the controller, and whop! It was done!

I haven't yet downloaded the Accessory thingo again (the thing that does the Xbox-style on-screen Ring Of Light) again, but it's on the back burner.

Now, I might have seriously stuffed something up early on. I was going to add "but I don't think so", but it's pretty obvious that I did, barring a faulty download or something.

Yay!

Anyway, moral of the story this time is: Just plug it in and let Windows Update do the work for you, if you're running Windows Vista X64. And x86, for that matter, based on my similarly-good experience with Tiny.

Now, all my Wireless devices are happy to chat to the receiver (reminds me, I haven't tried the headset yet...) and I'm happily playing RFactor with a real wheel!

Yep - works just like the original headset with a wired controller (as a separate audio device in Windows), only it's wireless! Cool!

As they say in Jamaica*, w00t, m0n.

Anyone else have problems, or did it Just Work for y'all?

[Update 3rd March] - the receiver stopped working again on the restart after the more-recent Accessories installation. System Restore-ing back to just the bare drivers worked again; I'm going to try a couple more reboots to see if it's a reboot thing in general, or just an Accessories thing.

Xbox 360 HD DVD Player

tristank — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 18:45:47 GMT

About time! March brings us Aussies the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on.

$249 looks like the magic number - nicely equivalent with the US RRP.

Can't wait to watch MI3 and Superman Returns... And Kotaku said it even ships with King Kong in the box! Awesome!

I needed to type this sentence to make the formatting look balanced. Please ignore this sentence.

Link to Xbox.com | Xbox 360 - Xbox 360 HD DVD Player

Fujitsu Lifebook P1610 - The First Day (and a bit)

tristank — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 15:42:00 GMT

On Wednesday, my care package from Tegatech arrived - a brand new P1610!

I thought there must have been some sort of mistake when the Mail Guy handed me the package, as it was obviously far too light to be a laptop and included bumf. Plus, it was just one box, and it wasn't big enough!

Well blow me into a tissue and call me catarrh, yes, it was! It was just a very small, well put-together box. None of this cardboard brown no-frills stuff, it was a glossy printed black box with a glossy red accessories box dominating the top half of the interior, a healthy padding of styrofoam and a tiny little Tablet PC making up the difference.

Size Isn't Everything

When I said "tiny", I really meant tiny - comparing it to my normal-sized keyboard, its entire width reaches from the left edge of the keys to the outside of the right-hand Windows key - it doesn't reach the left side of the Enter key.

The keyboard is miniaturized, and might be problematic to the Big Fingered, but I find that after a day of pecking at it here and there that I'm adapting to it quickly. My fingers are small-to-medium for a man. Finding that out was a useful exercise in "how not to approach another man about the size of his fingers". My delicate little fingies can be seen in the shots above.

The other small-yet-major item of interest in the package was the power adapter - small and very light, works internationally (untested, natch) with a figure-8 power cord.

I named it "Tiny". But it's still an "it" for now.

First Boot

Switching on, the first thing to happen was a Windows XP Tablet Edition 2005 OOBE.

It looked like a couple of things might have gone wrong towards the very end (lots of DllInit failures when preparing for the first reboot, as if apps were trying to start while Windows shut itself down). If I hadn't noticed the dialogs, I might not have worried - it seemed that everything was pretty well there, and stuff generally Just Worked.

It's probably worth mentioning that I needed to run the Fujitsu screen calibration utility to get touch to track correctly - running the Windows calibration utility alone didn't focus it quite right, but the Fuj utility uses 9 points of calibration rather than 4, and seems to work well when used in conjunction with the Windows one. Without it, the calibration would be noticeably out by different amounts in different quadrants.

The screen packs a whopping 1280x768 into 8.9 widescreen diagonal inches. If you leave it at regular DPI settings, be prepared to sit close to it! It's bright, though if you're looking closely at angles, it has tiny transparent dots in a grid just visible through it - the touch screen digitizer thingy, I'm betting. Two days on, and I don't notice it at all.

Touch sensitivity seems low at first, but you adapt quickly to using a fingernail - I'm just going to have to grow one or two a little longer than "bitten right off to the quick, and some of the quick might be missing too" so I can peck at the screen reliably without using the stylus or a thimble.

While I think of it - the smell of the fresh machine burning itself in was intoxicating. Top marks for "nose".

But TabletPC 2005 was a bit "been there, done that", after my experiment running it on my desktop for a while last year. I wanted the new hotness. I wanted Teh Vistar. I knew there might be a few bumps. Didn't care.

Windows Vista uh huh uh huh

Fuj had thoughtfully partitioned the 80GB hard drive into two partitions, so I simply ran setup across the network and Custom Installed a copy of Windows Vista onto the D drive, keeping the C drive copy of Tablet PC as a fallback.

It's mostly great. If I had one wish, it'd be more RAM. If I had two wishes: more RAM, hybrid hard drive. And extended battery!

Networking worked out of the box, and Windows Update found a bunch of Fujitsu drivers for various devices, such as the touch panel.

Yes, for those peering closely, that is the full Aero Glass experience (just with transparency turned off and a custom shade of boring grey). The Intel 945 video card rates a 2.0, but it's enough to get it working if you want. It's not enabled by default, but if you open the display properties window, you can pick it, and it works! In my last unscientific test with a few apps open and high dpi enabled, DWM was chewing 40MB RAM over non-Aero, bringing the total in use to 400MB, so it's off until I can get some more RAM... More on the RAM situation later.

Good time to address it: Not all of the software included with the OEM copy of XP worked under Vista. And a bunch of Vista features either aren't implemented or don't work yet. That said, seeing as the device is "Vista Capable" logoed I'm hopeful of updates in the near future, I'd guess sometime around the Jan 30 general availability date. ( Unless some nice Fujitsu mole wants to send me beta drivers to test, hint hint? :) )

If you were thinking of making the jump early, here's my short list of problems / issues / niggles / drawbacks under Vista:

FJRotate auto-screen-rotation utility seems to have particular trouble (eg, crashes every time it's invoked), but I've defined the Tablet buttons to toggle between the two primary states I use, and that's fine with me for now.
Vista doesn't enable the Touch features that the Help describes, which probably means that the input device isn't considered a touch screen, just a digitizer. Hoping for a Touch-enabled update soon.
Pen flicks don't seem to work either, possibly for the same reason (in reverse).
While talking about input, I'm finding that there's just a little input jitter - sometimes my letters look like they were written by polygraph, and scroll bars jump up and down about two pixels in the same way while dragging. I'll be re-calibrating and re-inking some stuff next time I remember. Update: did that, seems better now, much less jinking, though it seems to come back when the screen is re-oriented.
Can't get SD slot to do ReadyBoost, but can use the same SD card in USB mode (it's one of those Sandisk flippy ones with USB built in).
Microphone didn't work until I reinstalled the XP audio driver, though output worked fine. Mic now works brilliantly.

Anyway, I'm surviving. Well, not just surviving, I'm finding it really good. Vista might cost more in RAM terms, but it makes it back in overall responsiveness on this little puppy, I've found so far. I mainly use OneNote and IE, and it's more than capable at those.

On The Road

The acid test was today (er, Thursday, it's Sunday as I fix this up for posting), a scant 24 hours after receiving it. I'd got Office, Acrobat Reader, Netmon 3 and Ethereal installed, and headed off to a customer site, for what was intended to be a short meeting at 4pm with another colleague.

At 8pm we were leaving the site, and the battery reached the "you should please turn off sometime quite soon" level while scribbling notes on the way back to the office in the taxi - I'd been using it quite a bit while there to review traces and take notes.

Here's why it was fantastic: I was able to do everything I needed to on it without taking the charger with me, and that's on the standard "3 hour" battery. It was light and small enough to be almost as unobtrusive as a paper notebook, but had all the store-and-search capabilities of a real Windows PC.

I'm not using half the Tablet capabilities to their fullest extent yet (with time (and drivers), I promise to do better!), but when I get it together and work out what's what, I expect this will work out to be the most useful and most-used laptop I've had.

Back on that RAM

512MB. The Fuj US site provides a lot of customizable options, but at the moment in Australia, the 512MB model was all I could get my hands on.

I asked Hugo if I could upgrade to a gig, but sticker shock at the $1999 (yes folks, $AUD2000, $USD1,577.90) price tag of a 1GB micro SO-DIMM put me off.

I'm hoping the market prevails and I'll be able to pick up a cheaper set in the future. I figure it has to be getting more common now, at the dawn of the UMPC...

Sunday Verdict

So, it's Sunday as I'm editing the photos into the article, and the answer to the unspoken key question is: yes, I'd buy it again. Very happy with it so far, and I expect my happiness to increase :)

Now, I just need 2 more chargers and an extended battery...

Xbox Live - Free Gold Weekend for Aussies

tristank — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 15:07:00 GMT

If you've got an Xbox and broadband but haven't upgraded from Silver, give it a go! It's free until 10pm Sunday.

I've been playing Gears of War this week, and am *itching* to take it online, but my phone line decided to suddenly choke my ADSL connection on Sunday night, and Telstra didn't get to fixing it this week. So no fun for me with all the cute little cuddly gib-able newbies.

Enjoy Dialup, they used to say on BCP. I don't.

Update: Well, the Telstra tech failed to show up today at the promised time, didn't call, didn't leave a message. Nice way to spend one day's annual leave. They say Wednesday now.

But was the weekend good, kids?

Searching For A Better Notebook

tristank — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 13:49:00 GMT

Back from Fiji. The resort and the people were lovely, the snorkeling amazing, and I'm told the diving was pretty good too.

Right back to business: I need some serious retail therapy. I went away with a powerful laptop I barely used (I actually set a personal record for "least PC use in a given week", which is amazing for one of my holidays), and decided what I was really looking for was something... smaller. Yet more generally useful.

I've mentioned wanting a UMPC before, but I always get hung up on the lack of an inbuilt keyboard, at least in the v1 series - apart from doodling, I'd want to be programming, and for that, a keyboard is useful.

Out of the blue, I stumbled across what could be the answer to the "umpc with a little more power" dilemma: ladies and gentlemen, it's the Fujitsu Lifebook p1610.

The size - 232mm (W) x 167mm (D) x 34.5 ~ 37.5mm (H) - seems close to perfect (I mean, obviously 100 times lighter and wafer-thin wouldn't hurt, but we're not yet living in the future. How do I know? In the future, there will be robots). There's a keyboard, it's convertible, and best of all - a touch screen. No reaching for the stylus, just peck at the screen with a fingernail. That works for me. That improves the convenience factor up to near-paper-notebook levels, and retains the functionality benefits of a real PC. Combine that with the small size and ~4 hour battery life, and you have something small enough that it's not constantly in the way.

Hugo Ortega (yes, the Hugo from UberTablet blog and Tegatech) suggested they'd be around Real Soon Now in Australia. I think I'm sold. I think I must have one for the couch. And the office.

I'll let you know how it goes. And if it doesn't pan out, there's always the Asus R2H, with GPS! (I've been trying to work out whether GPS is useful to me - I think it probably is, so I can tell whether I'm on the couch or the toilet without having to look up).

Fingers crossed...

August 31, 2006 (Australian Time)

tristank — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 15:44:00 GMT

Today:

1. Saints Row should become available locally for the Xbox 360. Liked the demo. On the subject, did anyone try out the Just Cause demo from Marketplace? That was really over-the-top latin american fun! I wonder if it'll have Live capabilities, so I can scream things like "Miguel! You keeeled my braaathaaaar!" at my Argentinian friend*.

2. XNA Studio (that's the one where you get a game development kit for C# that lets you sign up to test the game on the 360 as well) should become available. See http://www.microsoft.com/xna/ .

3. Always make three points, so, um... there was another game coming out at the same time, but I've forgotten what it was, or it's been pushed back, or something. Dead Rising is due on the 14th. Muted cheer.

* former friend

whose name is not Miguel

and who didn't (to my knowledge) keel my braaathaa.

Aussies: Mothers' Day is this Sunday!

tristank — Tue, 09 May 2006 18:10:00 GMT

Quick reminder that it's The Day Of The Mother for Australians this Sunday the 14th May.

If you haven't bought a gift yet, well, lunchtime is good, right?

I got mine a Logitech Harmony 880 remote (kinda a both parents present really) and spent 4.5 hours fighting their Panasonic TV on the weekend getting it set up.

Number of remotes it replaces for them? 5.

Number of remotes I use for my MCE? The single MCE remote covers the lot (plus the Telly one when I need to switch to Xbox input, which is rarely). Woo!

Unfortunately, Media Centre doesn't look like an option for them - they have interests spanning Foxtel Digital and Free To Air Digital (so 2 different sets of tuners), and that's an unwinnable combination at the moment (right? I'd be happy to be corrected!).

Anyway, happy Mothers' Day to all the mums that read my blog (including that one super special one that doesn't!)

This public service announcement brought to you by the phrase "Lock the Taskbar", sung to the tune of "Rock the Casbah".

Origami - Neutron Star Edition

tristank — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 07:04:00 GMT

I was really keen on getting a Samsung Q1 Ultramobile (Origami) until I learned a little more about the specs from Samsung's UK site:

Damn. I was kinda hoping for an ultra mobile PC I didn't need to use a semi-trailer to haul around! :)

(from here, close to the very bottom). No word on Aussie availability yet...