shahine.com/omar/

I broke down and got the Sony Vaio TX. I should have it in about a week. I got the VGN-TX630P/B but before doing so I looked long and hard at the Fujitsu P7120 which is a revision to the P7000 and has many more changes than you might expect. It was a tough call, and here are some of the facts:

• Both laptops have LED backlight displays, the first of their kind. This means they use much less power, can have thinner cases, and are brighter.
• The Sony’s Screen is 11.1 inch 1366 x 768 while the Fujitsu’s is 10.6 inch 1280 x 768.
• I believe the Sony’s keyboard is a tad larger (90% of a full size keyboard).
• Both laptops employ the same 1.2 GHZ Intel ULV processor and use DDR2 memory
• Both laptops have 1.8 inch 4200 rpm 60GB drives
• The Sony has EDGE support (at > $40 a month I doubt I will ever use it, pluse EDGE is slow compared to EVDO).
• The Sony claims 7h standard battery life, the Fujitsu needs the extended battery to get close to this.
• The Sony is thinner and lighter (2.7 lbs vs 3.2 lbs)
• The Fujitsu will obviously have less crapware installed by default, with is the big bummer about the Sony. I know I will need to flatten it first thing.
• The Fujitsu has NO FAN, and is completley passivley cooled.
• The Fujitsu has a modular drive bay allowing for another battery.
• The Fujitsu has an array microphone

Both were about the same price, but in the end the Sony edged out the Fujitsu due to the larger screen, higher resolution and better battery life and EDGE support that I may use. However I was VERY tempted by the fact that the Fujitsu has no Fan, making it totally silent… tempting.

Anyway, I’m looking forward for my new gadget.

Ever since I built my new Silverstone pc, I’ve been struggling with a really bad problem. My Pentium D 820 is HOT, and I mean HOT. The poor Intel Heatsink is noisy and constantly revving from idle to 2000–3000 RPMs. Since it has a small itty bitty fan on it, this can get quite loud and annoying.

Over the past few months I have tried 4 different cpu heatsinks. Each was a disaster. Some were too loud (louder than the stock Intel) and others were ineffective allowing my CPU to overhead and the motherboard to shut down the machine.

The problem I have is that my case is rather small and will not allow for some of the monster heatsinks out there that operate at very low dBA (under 20 dBA). A few months ago I was researching a new Power Supply as my brand new el cheapo started clanking, and came upon a new CPU Heatsink from Coolermaster, the Hyper L3. This is a “low profile” heatsink meaning it’s big, but not huge. Also many heatsinks out there require you to even remove your motherboard and mount a supporting plate underneath. Since the Intel Pentium D uses the LGA775 mount (a clip in) this is an extra pain. So the good news was that this new Coolermaster used the existing LGA775 clip system (no motherboard removal) and was short enough to fit in my case. On top of that it uses the Intel 4 PIN power connector allowing the motherboard to control the RPMs.

Anyway, this new heatsink is the bomb. It’s so quiet I can barely hear it. The only other fan in my PC is the one in the Power Supply, and that’s ultra quiet running at 16 dBAs. The Coolermaster Hyper L3 runs at 18 dBA making my PC really silent. Just for fun I ran maxcpu to stress both processors and while the fan kicked in, it’s much larger than the Intel fan (80mm fan vs 60mm) so it produces much less noise and it kept the temp under 70 degrees C. I bet I could get a fanless CPU but the one I got pushes hot air off my cpu fan so that helps cool the PC, which is a good thing for me.

Here are my updated specs:

• Silverstone SG01 $188.00 
• RADEON 550 256M $79.00 
• DVD+/-RW 16X Sony DRU800A $84.99 
• Intel Pentium D 820 (2.8 GHZ) $245.99 
• Intel 945G D945GTPLKR $126.00 
• Nexus NX-4090 400 watt PSU $94.95
• Coolermaster Hyper L3 $34.95
• DDR2 1 GB Kit (two 512 Dimms) $173.43 

As always, every few years the technology tax must be paid. This past weekend I picked up a Shuttle ST20G5 from Fry’s along with a proc and 2 GB of memory. I spent a bunch o time making a bootable XP SP2 CD with the SATA driver and my Promise RAID ATA driver slipstreamed (no floppy). Thanks to nLite this was a breeze. If you ever need to make a bootable Windows CD with your drivers, custom tweaks etc this is the app to get.

Anyway, I got everything, I mean everything working. And then the fun began. I had to make S3 standby work. I correctly configured S3 in the bios, but then realized that there was a special BIOS setting to allow USB devices to wake the machine from sleep, and it was off by default. Well, I turned it on and no dice. So I went back in the bios, and saw that there was a setting to allow a PS/2 Keyboard to wake it from sleep. So I turned it on and that worked (thanks to the fact that my MS Keyboard has both USB and PS/2). Then I was like, I wonder if this is fixed in the latest bios. So I installed that. Then my Monitor would blank out every 10 or so seconds. So I went back to the original ATI drivers that came with the motherboard. Problem fixed. But, my S3 problem was still there with USB (not PS/2). I should have just called it a day. Then really weird stuff started to happen, like weird video problems and windows telling my that my user profile was busted (could not load the registry).

Argggghhhh!!!! So then I go and re-install Windows. Easy enough since I have a bootable CD with all the goods. While that’s going on, I read up on some forums and find out that the bios I am using is completely unstable, and everyone in the forums is using the original version that shipped with the PC. So I figure, I’ll be safe and roll back. Well after Windows is installed, I do just that and Windows blue screens during the update process. Now my Shuttle is a big fat paper weight and I’m never getting back those hours I just wasted.

So I took everything apart, took the RAM/CPU out (and that dammed thermal grease). Now back to Fry’s to exchange this for a new one so I can back to where I was on Saturday (where I had S3 wake working using PS/2). I like the size and quietness of this thing to much to use anything else at this point. Sigh.

I know I'm being punished.

OMG OMG OMG!

Treo 670

Wow, this is FANTASTIC (if it’s actually going to ship).

“The Moto Q is expected to be available in Q1 of 2006.  For more information on pricing and product availability in your region, please check with your local Motorola representative.”

Translation. We may or may not be able to ship this device. It could end up like the MPX, which we announced a full year before we decided we couldn’t make it viable and kill it.

Fool me once, shame on you…

If this device does ship it has a lot of potential though. But I'll pretend I don't know about it .