Saved by a battery

09/28/09

Posted under APC battery pack, Ondoy, UPS

By Alexander Villafania
INQUIRER.NET

I live in Rosario, Pasig City and “Ondoy” literally inundated us.

She started hitting hard at around 6 p.m. on Friday, bringing with her rain and strong winds that would not let up. I went home around 9 p.m. expecting heavy traffic. Instead, the roads from Makati City to Pasig City were nearly free of traffic and it only took me about one hour to get there home. Rains normally make puddles on our roads but I’m used to it.

The next day, Saturday, rain and winds picked up. At 9a.m. water started pouring in from outside. Hours later, the power went out. Water continued to flow into our house, threatening to flood the first floor. The sky was getting darker and dimmed light from outside was our only light source.

When I went outside, our entire street turned into a gushing river.

I was wearing with boots, which became useless when I reached the Rosario Bridge along Ortigas Extention where I saw the extent of the damage; the water was already up to the chest as people pushed drowned vehicles towards higher ground, usually the parking lots of nearby establishments.

Busloads of people were climbing down to just walk towards Rosario Bridge, where the flood control gates can be seen. Just over the bridge towards Cainta, the damage was even worse. Cars disappeared in the water and people were literally swimming towards buildings. A break in the rain did little to help those trapped in the water. I immediately went back to tell my housemates.

All signals from Globe, Smart, and Sun shifted from intermittent to dead. A few text messages went through but replying was nearly impossible. We had no batteries for our radio and we only had a few candles to give us light for the night. My housemates and I had no idea what else was going on outside while continuing to heave water out of the house.

Finally, our cellphones started to get drained. I realized I had an uninterruptible power supply (UPS).

It was a pre-Schneider APC Back-UPS 500 unit built as a surge protector for my TV. I pulled it out, plugged in an octopus extension cord via a plug adapter, and powered up my brother’s laptop and wireless Internet router first. Unfortunately, no signal was going through. The laptop remained plugged in to get charged. Later in the afternoon, I decided to recharge the three mobile phones in the house and the housemates were able to call family and friends about our situation.

I then plugged in a radio, a boombox I was supposed to sell to a friend. It was the first time we heard anything from outside and as we listened as we found out how bad the situation outside. We were right in the middle of the three most flooded areas in Metro Manila (Cainta, Pasig, and Marikina). We were afraid that we may have to bring up our stuff from downstairs to the second floor, which was already being hampered by rain through the windows. Before the light outside went out, we saw the water going lower, which somehow kept our hopes up.

Because the UPS had only 300 watts of power, I was afraid it would not last more than one hour (it can only give 15 minutes of juice to a desktop PC). To my surprise, the unit lasted the entire night with the boombox attached to it. It powered down around 8 a.m. on Monday, a good run for a device that is supposed to run for only 15 minutes.

Its beeping sound became a long beep as it died.

By Alex Villafania
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A hands-on multifunction TV experience

09/22/09

Posted under iiView, multifunction TV

By Alexander Villafania
INQUIRER.net

SINGAPORE – The Philippines – at least to my knowledge – does not yet have a real multifunction TV.

None of the major brands, save for Samsung although limited, have a TV that can connect to the Internet.

Sure there are computers with TV functions, such as Lenovo’s A600, but none of these are TVs built with a computer.

There are also some attempts by local startups to create such a product; the company Inovent has been building a multifunction TV using off-shelf parts of a TV and a computer. So far, Inovent’s Ilumina was demonstrated to a few people with the end product still in the works.

But one company has already released their own multifunction TV and it’s not yet in the Philippines.

Chinese firm iiView [spelled as is] came out with a multimedia TV about a year ago and refreshed it with new parts. So far, there are four models for the iiView TV ranging from 17-inches to 47-inches.

iiView already has a shop in Singapore’s Suntec Mall. I got to test out one of their TVs, which at that time was being installed with some security software.

The person in charge of the shop was a bit cranky but he did explain a bit about the TV. Luckily, I got some photos as well.

The model they have in their shop was 47-inches. The front does not look any different from a widescreen TV, that until you look at the back which is distinctively thicker than most LCD TVs, approximately six inches.

Certainly this is because of the components inside. One side has the USB ports and a multicard reader. The other side has the optical drive and in the case of the 47 inch model, it’s a Blu-ray player.

The 47-inch model runs on an AMD Athlon 5400 X2 2.8 gigahertz dual core processor (the smaller models were said to be using either an Intel Pentium Dual Core or Atom Dual Core processor), four gigabytes of memory and an ATI Radeon HD3200 graphics card. It also has a 500 Gb hard disk and runs on Windows Vista.

The iiView TV has both a remote control and a wirelesss keyboard and trackball to control the computer functions. It can also toggle the TV function but the regular remote control does most of the toggling for the other connections of the TV (it can connect to external DVD or Blu-ray players through HDMI). It also has a digital tuner for digital TV broadcast.

The transition between TV and PC function is smooth and there is little lag. Windows will still run even if the user toggles the TV function. The TV is already on full 1080p high definition, which fully utilizes the Blu-ray player, though it is not certain which company provided the LCD panel to iiView.

One good thing about this is that it also comes with a WiFi so it doesn’t have to be connected to an Ethernet cable. Too bad it does not have a web camera like what the guys from Inovent put in their Ilumina.

The iiView 47-inch model costs 3,499 Singapore dollars (approximately P119,000). Their smaller models, particularly the 32-inch model, costs 2,000 Singapore dollars or about P70,000. It’s still hefty but perhaps for the convenience of having an all-in one PC, this one should be a catch.

By Alex Villafania
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Big, bad hard disk for the HD era

08/10/09

Posted under Hard Disks, Terabyte drives, Western Digital

By Alexander Villafania
INQUIRER.NET

In the early 1990s hard disks had capacities no bigger than 100 megabytes and these were already called “turbo” back then because these could execute file searches in seconds. Take note “seconds” is in plural form. These things would cost P3,000 to P5,000 that time – a fortune in today’s inflated economy.

Fast forward 10 years later most handheld digital music players would have memory capacities larger than 100 Mb. Even thumb drives worth P200 hold more data than pre-2000 hard disks and they’re faster, too.

Expanding Moore’s Law, technologies double in performance and capacity every18 months. Today’s current commercial hard disks have capacities ranging from 80 gigabytes to 750 Gb. Many users remain happy with just 80 Gb but the era of high definition is pushing the bar in storage space, thus, terabyte drives are becoming the norm. In basic speak, 1 terabyte is equivalent to 1000 gigabytes, or about a quarter million MP3 songs.

High definition videos may perhaps be the single biggest reason for needing terabyte drives. A 5-minute high definition video can use up as much as 100 megabytes of hard disk space. Given the expansion of videos to the Internet, more and more people will be posting HD videos online. This is already being seen on YouTube, which also features submissions in HD.

With hard disk space ever increasing, Western Digital is also pushing forward with hard disks that are still beyond (or at least six months) from actually being needed. One of its more recent products is the 2 Tb Caviar Green hard drive, currently its top-of-the-line, consumer level hard disk.

WD sent one test unit over to INQUIRER.NET. Unfortunately, there are no computers with motherboards that can handle such a size (most boards can accommodate only up to 1.5 Tb). We had to scrounge around for a newer motherboard, along with newer memory modules and a new processor. Good thing the 2Tb WD Caviar Green only needs 6 watts of power so there is no need for a better power supply. The lower power consumption may perhaps be one of the best features of this model, aside from its storage capacity, since current generation hard disks require about 8 watts to run.

The 2Tb WD Caviar Green uses a serial ATA connection so it can immediately run once it is installed without the need for drivers or even the dreaded pins to configure multiple hard drives. Upon start up the device barely made any sound with only a whisper-like whirr to indicate that it is already operating.

Western Digital considers this as a “green” technology due to added power-saving features. The most notable is its GreenPower, which reduces the spin of the hard disk’s spindle. This means reduced power consumption. A secondary benefit of reduced spinning of the hard disk is low heat signature that reduces the heat inside a computer’s chassis. Normally, a hard disk would feel hot to the touch (warning: do not touch any part of an open computer when it is plugged) but this one remained only slightly warm even after six hours of continuous operation. Still, using the term “green” on a device that’s not using recycled parts just as it should be is still too much exploitation of the term.

For most ordinary people revolutions per minute (RPM) does not compute, tech enthusiasts would want a hard disk RPM to be faster. Current standard is 5400 but 7200 RPMs is already catching up. Higher RPMs means faster access time for certain files stored in the hard disk. Technically, the more a hard disk stores, the harder it is for the hard disk to search for files. The speed of the hard disk’s rotation is not always the answer to faster file searches but the WD Caviar Green has proprietary software called IntelliSeek to improve the search capability of the spindle. Users may not notice this at first but those who have lots of stored files, especially big ones, will find this very helpful.

A true test of a full 2 Tb hard disk would be difficult since it’ll be hard to put as many files in it, unless I have 40 Blu-ray movies to convert. In fact, even with everyone going HD, it’ll take some time before anyone could fill up a 1 Tb drive, much less a 2 Tb hard disk. Western Digital is still ahead on this but maybe in about six more months, again using Moore’s Law, a new model with 4 Tb would come out.

By Alex Villafania
3 Comments | Permalink | Trackback

The touch and tact of Blackberry Storm

07/14/09

Posted under Blackberry, smartphone, touch-screen

By Alexander Villafania
INQUIRER.NET

Canada’s Research in Motion (RIM) has been trying to jump into the latest trends in mobile phone designs. Not surprisingly, it was RIM’s flagship Blackberry phones that revolutionized tactile QWERTY keyboards that have been followed by other mobile phone manufacturers. The trend has shifted towards multi-function phones that can connect to the Internet. RIM gladly jumped into it by introducing the Curve, later making improvements on the Bold. But the trend keeps changing and this time, thanks to the Apple iPhone, it is touch-screen technology that’s making waves among phone users. So RIM introduced this year the Blackberry Storm, the company’s first touch-screen phone.

Purists of the Blackberry’s keyboard might scoff at the idea of a touch-screen Blackberry, more so when they find out that the Blackberry Storm has totally removed a physical QWERTY keyboard and instead replaced it with a touch-screen version (trademarked by RIM as SurePress). The fully QWERTY keyboard can be used in both landscape and portrait position, which is toggled by simply moving the phone on its side or upright. Users can also opt to use RIM’s SureType keyboard (reminiscent of the Blackberry Pearl and 7100 series) in its upright position.

I myself have been using Blackberry phones for at least six years now and have come to love fiddling my thumbs on the tactile keyboard. A touch-screen phone might not provide the same perceptible click as a keyboard, which would allow a long-time Blackberry user to type away without having to look at the keyboard. Typical users of touch-screen phones – unless they have pinpoint pressing accuracy that takes a while to master – have to look at the screen to know what they’re pressing.

But trust RIM to know how their millions of users would react. Instead of merely following the touch-screen phone bandwagon, RIM added a little feature on the Blackberry Storm that would still give it a full QWERTY feel; the phone will only enter a specific button on the screen when pressed hard enough until there is a perceptible click. The entire screen is actually a huge button. The screen can determine what letter is being pressed based on the proximity of the finger to the nearest button. The letters are widely spaced to give some users higher percentage in pressing the right letter. The downside here is that users who have bigger thumbs could enter the wrong button, which can be quite often.

In a way, the Blackberry Storm’s clickable screen compensates for the loss of a tactile feel of using a touch-screen phone. The feel takes some getting used to and there will many mistakes before a user is comfortable enough to user the on-screen QWERTY with ease. The clickable touch-screen also uses hard glass cover to lessen damage though it is not much of help against scratches.

Of course, the Blackberry Storm shows most of the features from previous Blackberry models, plus a few add-ons. Some of its standard features are a 3.2 megapixel camera for stills and video recording, expandable microSD memory card slot. Being a multimedia device, the Blackberry Storm can play several media types including MP3, AAC, and WMA for audio, and MPEG4, H.264, and WMV for video. Unfortunately, high resolution videos tend to skip. The on-board speaker also suffers from high treble but is nonetheless useful as a speakerphone.

Surprisingly, the Blackberry Storm does not have WiFi, a feature found in the Blackberry Curve and Bold. As such, the user can only connect to the Internet via 3G (in the case of the Storm, it can connect to HSPA networks). Having WiFi would have given users an alternative to connect to the Internet and avoid having to pay for each kilobyte of data.

Battery is also a major concern with the Blackberry Storm as it only lasts approximately two days on a full charge when used for sending and receiving SMS and voice calls. Previous models would last at least three to four days (which is one of the reasons why the Blackberry is a phone of choice among on-the-go executives). I attribute this to the power consumption of the screen. Perhaps that is also a reason why RIM did not include WiFi as it would have consumed power much faster making the Blackberry Storm useless in just one day.

Overall, the Blackberry Storm has a lot of potential with the addition of touch-screen QWERTY. The large screen also makes it appealing for Blackberry users who want a little more fun with their device. But there are still flaws on the Storm that have to be resolved before it becomes loved.

By admin
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More smartphones coming to RP

04/15/09

Posted under HTC, smartphone

WITH a brand known for its high-end corporate smartphones, Taiwanese device manufacturer HTC is setting to introduce cheaper mobile phones for the entry-level consumer market in the Philippines.

While the company did not announce which specific models will be available in the country, HTC Philippines Country Manager Mark Sergio said prices of the newer models will hover somewhere around P15,000.

In comparison, many HTC phones have price tags starting at P30,000 pesos all the way up to P50,000.

The units would also have some watered down features. But Sergio said the consumer phones will still include functionality that are familiar to their high-end brethren, which include touch screen capabilities.

[Read the rest of this entry »]

By Alex Villafania
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