Axis M1031-W

No secret that Axis make some of the best IP security products around, and this is no exception. We have this, as well as the normal security system at the office, and it sits in the top right of the reception, with a cat5 and power running to it. As well as being incredibly handy to watch the front door if anyone is coming in through a browser, it’s also got great scheduling and recording functions, with it’s PIR detector (similar to that of an alarm system) it can turn on the lights in the building, and start recording the footage, while sending it straight off site through the internet. Very hand and very useful.

Windows 7 + SSD Workstation

This has to be one of the major ones for me – Windows 7 just creams XP, and not comparable to Vista. It really is a great OS from Microsoft, and I’ve loved using it since the betas in 2009. But what has really made my workstation a delight to work on, is the investment in solid state drives (SSD). Some tech you buy, and months later you’ve forgotten about it. I still think, wow, sometimes when I can boot in a few seconds, and then a few more seconds, have everything open and running. Finally a computer that can keep up with me. I just LOVE It. I have a Corsair 120GB SSD, about 275/250mb read/write.

13″ Macbook Pro

I flogged off the old 15″ Macbook Pro and downsized to the 13″. My main reasons for this was the ability to use it more easily in tight places, like planes etc. The 15″ was just to hard to use on a small plane or if the person in front put their seat back. It also has a 6-7hr battery & LED screen which is so epically handy on long days or when it follows me around from meeting to meeting etc.

El Cheapo Astone Media Player

When I do get time at home to watch movies/tv shows, most are recorded on the iMac at home, and I’d normally hunt around for a VGA lead, and hook a laptop up to the plasma, and then connect back to the iMac etc, then plug everything back how it was, which was a pain. I bought one of these $60 astone media players off ShoppingSquare.com.au which plays every codec under the sun, and connects to SMB shares over the Wifi, so I can turn it on, it just scrapes the folders and plays what is there. It doesn’t try and organise stuff – which always annoys me, it’s just a player, and for me, brilliant! Makes life much easier.

iPhone 4

A few weeks after they came out, I traded in the 3GS for a 4. Some terrific improvements I’ve found. Better reception (I’m with Optus), better battery life (I almost get a day and a half now), screen is great and just so much snappier and faster with all the newer, more intensive apps around. There has been a heap of media lately that the back is more prone to cracking than the last one, well, I’m not science teacher, but, GLASS CRACKS EASIER THAN SOFT PLASTIC, what are you expecting? Put it in a case or don’t drop the thing! Wow, Glass cracks when it hits concrete, who knew?!

iPad

This was the tech fail of the year for me. I pre-ordered my iPad, and it arrived at 8am the morning they were released in Australia which was pretty amazing, so kudos to Apple for that. I played with the iPad for a couple of days, and decided that it had no purpose for it. My reasoning is very similar to that of the guys at ZDNet

13″ Macbook Pro with extra WOAAAH

As if I didn’t love the Macbook Pro enough as it is, but the SSD in this little baby has just tripped it’s power. It is so awesome to use, so snappy and responsive, makes life remote just awesome.

Samsung Galaxy Tab

My most recent purchase, and I do love this thing. It does everything the iPad doesn’t. It’s a bit easier to hold and read from. It has a better battery and outdoor screen. I am really happy with the thing. Being able to write an email and attach a word doc, or even open a file and edit and save it again is great. Android has some little quirks about it, but all pretty minor and things you learn after a while.

Telstra have actually released some very attractive plans for this phone, with fair amounts of data and calls, not as far as optus, but still fairly good. The phone can also be bought outright for around the $700 mark.

I was very interested in getting my hands on one of these phones, to give it a try, and see how the Android OS goes, and how the UI / UX compares to Apple. Also very interested in how Android talks with Google Apps for Contacts, Mail etc.

At the Toowoomba Telstra store, I played with one a number of times and my initial thoughts where;

• Wonderful, sharp screen
• Very snappy web browser (based off Chrome engine I’m guessing)
• Responsive touch screen
• Not too big, nor too small

However, after further investigation, talking to some people who own the Desire I don’t think I can justify the device.

The Android is super customisable, so much so, it can become overwhelming for a novice – but that’s not really an issue for me.

The biggest things that would make me consider switching would be;

• Battery, better
• Does it make my life EASIER

Every other aspect of the iPhone 3GS I am happy with. Sure, it drops out here and there, is that to blame Optus or Apple? Both point the finger to each other. Coverage isn’t wonderful, but that’s an optus issue, not an Apple one. I am happy with my OK amount of coverage, as the compromise is 1GB of mobile data for next to nothing, Vs better coverage, but not having the freedom of big amounts of data, lots of calls, etc.

So based on those two criteria, to make me switch, no. The Desire doesn’t do either.

Battery

From mixed reports I’ve heard the battery life is the same, and or is worse than the iPhone, depending on how much you use the thing, and I for one use my iPhone quite heavily.

Make life EASIER

Now, maybe all iPhone / iPod users have played into Apples hands here, but ever since my first iPod, I’ve switched to iTunes as my media player, and would die if I had to move all my media over to a different system, re create play lists, etc.  And I’m not sure if the android has any good iPod killer apps. Nor, the ability to plug in the device via USB so it both charges, displays music on the screen and allows me to change songs via the steering wheel.

One of the biggest draws my iPhone has, is that it’s both my iPod + my iPhone. I sync / charge one device and it’s always current.

What use to drive me insane, back in Nokia days, was buying some new music, but not syncing my iPod as it was in the car, and leaving without the new music, or forgetting the iPod at the office.

Whatever the case, the iPhone has eliviated this problem and made my life much easier.

What’s also great, is that my iPhone syncs music from my office PC, and Syncs my Podcasts from the iMac at home. Not sure if it is meant to, but it does, and I couldn’t be happier.

So, nice work HTC, but I think I’m best waiting for the iPhone 4G. If it has a better battery, I’ll be happy.

I’ve been following Mark Pesce’s dedicated HTC desire blog, which has been quite interesting, in both the pros’ and cons’ of the gadget.

Now, after changing my primary email address I have been able to migrate all my data to the Google Apps Pro service, which is something I have referred many people to over the last year or so after google really got moving on Google Apps.

Setting up the Google Apps, it was as simple as installing the Google Apps Sync client on the Win7 PC with Outlook – and that was all up and running with Contact, Calendar and Mail Synchronisation, Installing it on the iPhone was even easier, and with Push support it was even more appealing!

And, for everywhere else, there is the total archive of everything on the Google Apps website. I am really happy with google Apps.

My thoughts without trying this mouse, are that Apple have jumped over that line of Style and Practicality.

They have now eliminated their side button on the mouse, and no scrolling wheel, scrolling is done by just rubbing your finger up the mouse. As a person who works on computers all day, I couldn’t handle the Mighty Mouse as it was too low to the ground, and the scroll ball was to small and annoying when scrolling large websites.

On my iMac at home, I use a 5 year old Dell Logitech Mouse, as it is simple, practical and better user experience.

The Folks at ZDNet seem to agree too..

In the life of a computer tech, I see very often, and try to work out data structures, or the way people save / file things on their computer, and it just beyond me how people come up with naming conventions and saving setups.

Seeing some terrible examples of people saving things here there and everywhere, I try have a uniform system that keeps everything together- this makes life easy when it comes to Backup / Restore time, or just day to day surfing and trying to locate files etc.

Backup is the biggest concern of mine, and should but isn’t a worry to most people. What is your contingency plan, if you were to loose your main computer that you have everything saved on? Or your server where it’s stored? Even to the extent, what would you do if your building burnt down, and your computer, along with it’s backup drive was destroyed? For some people it MAY not be so important, this would just mean their collection of emails with funny cat pictures would be lost (and who really cares about that) but for people who do their business online it is a critical resource.

So far we’ve established, a) We have a lot of data, b) we need to sort it neatly and c) it needs to be backed up.

Now these three points aren’t too complex, if you were to buy an Apple computer, save your files where it recommended, and plug in any external hard drive, and run it’s built in backup manager, “Time Machine” you’d have everything pretty much covered.

If only I was running something THAT simple.

Lets bump up the intensity and say our computers we regularly used were, an iMac at home, a Macbook Pro here and there, a PC at work and an iPhone everywhere else.

Over the last year or so I’ve been constantly tweaking things, and here is what I have for each problem.

Shared Files

MobileMe has iDisk included in it’s package, which allows you to sign in to your MobileMe account on your mac and it will automatically sync your iDisk files to your mac and it will 2-way sync – so everything keeps updated.  This takes care of the iMac and Macbook Pro.

The iPhone has an iDisk App – so now I can fairly quickly browse through my folders and files and even open most file types, word docs, pdfs, images etc.

Getting my shared files / iDisk to work on a PC was a little harder, when you map a network drive to the iDisk service, it becomes very laggy as you’re accessing a live server over the internet – what I got to work well was, setting up a directory in My Docs called “Synced Docs” and running Sync Toy (A Free Microsoft App) that can do a 2-way sync with my mapped iDisk drive and the local file directory in the background so performance isn’t affected.

By using the “Cloud” or Online shared files, my documents are automatically distributed to my Office PC, my Home iMac and my Laptop on the run, along with being saved / backed up on Apple’s server.  This type of system is good for smaller files, ie, Documents, PDF’s and so forth. It is NOT good for saving your iPhoto or iTunes collection onto as it will just jam everything up.

Shared Contacts

When you buy a new mobile phone and you lost your old one, there is that task of “Oh Hey, I lost my phone, can you send my your numbers” as you’ve lost all your contacts. And the same applies to email as well.

My solution to syncing contact out of Outlook was via the MobileMe system, as they have a nice task bar application that does nothing but sync’s contacts and calendars (I’ll talk about Calendars shortly) and so my contacts are now sync’d off my PC to “the Cloud” and back down to my other Macs and iPhone.

When I bought my last 2 iPhones, all I had to do was sign-in to MobileMe and within 5 mins, over 700 contacts where pulled down onto the phone.

Now when I create a new contact on the run, with my iPhone, the new contact will appear on my other computers.

Shared Calendars

This has been the most annoying element of my sync’ing trials over the last couple of years. I started using MobileMe to do this, and it has been nothing but trouble.

I think the biggest problem has been, that my Calendars where all originally Office ones, and Office names it’s calendars differently to iCal on the mac, and over the last 1.5 years, I’ve completely lost my calendar about 3 times.

What I now use, is Google / Gmail to sync my Calendars as Google have developed a small app that sync’s calendars nicely. I hope a Contact one comes too.

Gmail also allows you to then sync with push to your iPhone any new Calendar updates and vise versa.