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3
Jul
hand_of_god

What is DNS? A very basic primer

Queue the introduction.

As a 44-year-old nerd, I spent nearly 1/4 of my entire adult life working as a PHP programmer for large Internet registrar.  When things were slow or I was between projects, I also had the dubious honor of doubling as a third-level customer support guy who specialized in trying to resolve e-mail related issues.

Of all the millions of questions I ran across when dealing with the average mom or pop, one of the most common was “What in the heck is DNS?“.

DISCLAIMER OF THE WEEK: I’m not a DNS expert by any means, nor do I play one on TV, but in trying to help the thousands of customers who needed it over the years, I always found the following little analogy to be very helpful in getting the point across

In a sentence form…

“DNS is the wholly-automated Internet version of a telephone phone book.”

While summary statements like that are usually written at the end of an article, I thought it very important to get the idea of the phone book planted in your brain that from the get-go.

It’s the core little secret that high-paid techno-wizards want to complicate so that they can scare you into paying them more money.   Once you understand the analogy of DNS is like a phonebook for the Internet, the rest of this article will hopefully make a lot more sense.

By the way, DNS is just an easy way of saying “Domain Name Service“.

Ok, I’ll bite, how is DNS like a phone book?

Did you know that every time you connect to the Internet, the machine you are using — whether it’s an Apple, PC, iPad, netbook, notebook, or even Sony PS3 — is assigned a unique, one of a kind number to help identify it — and by extension, you?

That number, called an Internet Protocol address, or “IP number” for short. When you are on the internet, you are the only one on the entire planet with that number.

Just as a telephone number identifies your phone, that unique IP address identifies your computer to the world.

The only real differences are:

  1. Unlike a telephone number, your computer’s IP Address might change each time you connect to the Internet,
  2. Unlike a telephone number, you usually don’t even need to know what yours is.
  3. You don’t have to give out your ip number to anyone for them to be able to find you on the web

Just for the record, an IP Address is made up of a series of up to 12 digits, spaced out between three decimal points.

It might look something like this;

192.168.000.001

IP numbers are also usuallly shortened to eliminate the extra zeroes, like 192.168.0.1, but hopefully you get the idea.

What the Domain Name System does — in essence — is match up a domain name (such as ebay.com) to the address of the physical machine which is hosting that web site.  On the Internet, there are literally tens of thousands of Domain Name Servers whose sole function it is to coordinate which machine has which domain names hosted on it.  I won’t get into the nitty gritty of how this is all done, because then we’d be into overtime and someone would have to buy me a donut.

Suffice to say that out of those tens of thousands of servers which are pretty irrelevant to this little confusing rant, there are only a handful of core DNS servers, called Root nameservers at the heart of the Internet.  This handful pretty much handles the entire Internet, which is really impressive if you consider how many computers, sites, people, and things to see that there are out there.

Getting back to the story…

In much the same way that you might call an operator, give her someone’s name and she give you that person’s telephone number in reply, the DNS system interacts with your computer to look up a site’s “number” without having to bother the nice lady.

It’s like this.  Let’s say you were wanting to do a little bit of shopping for your niece’s birthday and heard they had a sale on sweaters at Wal-Mart;

  1. In your browser’s address window, you’d type in walmart.com
  2. Your browser goes out to the root DNS servers on the internet and asks for (then receives) the IP address of the computer which serves (or easier said, “puts”) walmart.com out on the Internet.
  3. Once your browser has that computer’s IP address, it opens up a direct connection to that address (like dialing the phone number) and says “hi, are you walmart.com?“
  4. The server on the other end — if everything’s worked out the way it should — responds, “Why yes, don’t be silly, of course I’m walmart.com.  Here’s the page you’re looking for.”
  5. walmart.com’s Web site is displayed on your screen.

If it’s so simple, what can possibly go wrong?

Hmm. That is an interesting question.  With tens of thousands of DNS servers out there, and redundant systems in place, you can never count out Murphy’s Law.

“Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong” - Murphy’s Law

95% of the time when you type in a site name and it won’t come up, it’s usually just that particular Web site’s server (or connection to the ‘net) is having trouble.

The other 5% could be anything from an idiot with a backhoe (a type of tractor that digs trenches) who cuts Internet cabling, to the server being too busy, to a mis-typed address on the keyboard.  When you consider the millions of Web sites out there which operate 99.999% of the time, you might begin to understand how miraculous it is that any of the Internet ever works at all.

I just wish the Postal Service was this reliable — Emmett Brown (aka “Doc”), “Back to the Future”

More nuts, then the elderly man exits, stage right..

In the proverbial nutshell, that’s both what DNS is, and how DNS really works.  The technical mumbo jumbo gets a little more tricky, but this isn’t an article for technoweenies.  It’s hopefully for the average mom and pop out there who get confused when their favorite site, or e-mail doesn’t work.

Below are several other articles written by people hopefully smarter than me if you’re really interested.

Otherwise, if you ARE said technoweenie and you see a mistake I’ve made in trying to explain this stuff, PLEASE let me know by comment below and I’ll make sure to include your comment to try and help the helpless.

Wayne Hunt
segwayne.com

BTW, This article was written over the course of a weekend, in it’s entirety, on my Apple iPad.
I used the Nuance “dictation” app to write most of it by translated voice, then the WordPress App (iPhone version)
to edit and post the article.  It wasn’t fun without a keyboard, but it was one of those things which
I felt NEEDED to be tried, at least once to prove a point.  Sorry for all the grammar and
other mistakes I’m sure.

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26
Jun
apple-iphone-in-hand-thumb

Apple Customer Support ROCKS!

On Monday of this week, I was having to deal with Charter Cable again to see if they could resolve the problem with my cable card installation.

It was in point-of-fact, the SEVENTH time in 23 days that I’d met with them after work, and the 9th total technician walking through my apartment who seemingly didn’t have a single CLUE what a cable card was.  Most of them instantly wanting to blame my TiVo HD for all the problems since they knew even less about TiVos.

So Monday, with Charter’s second set of Larry, Curly, and Moe triplets in my apartment spouting stupid bullshit about TiVo being the problem, I found myself trying very hard not to be confrontational and kick them to the curb.  As a substitute, I found myself absent-mindedly flicking the mute button on my iPhone 3G…

That’s when things went wrong.

After two years of regular use, it seems the little plastic tab on the mute button snapped off and promptly disappeared.  This, leaving the button mechanism apparently able to “freewheel” between ring and mute, pretty much depending on whether it was face up, or face down.  Randomly if I was carrying it in my pocket as usual…

On Tuesday afternoon, I stopped by a local AT&T store which was listed on the Web as having iPhone support.  I was fully prepared to either buy a new one outright, to pay to get mine repaired, or as a last resort, to actually give in and be extorted by AT&T for another 2 years for an iPhone 4 (which, btw, costs as much to upgrade as AT&T’s flat-rate repair policy).

The young lady (for the purposes of trying to be nice) in the AT&T store pretty much acted as though she didn’t care if I dropped dead on the spot, save for the trouble she’d have in clearing my body from her show room floor.  In her words, “there’s nothing we can do to help, sorry.  You might try the Mac & More store down the street“.

No attempts to help.  To sell, or to even lure me into an upgrade at the expense of my soul for two more years.

Ok… Fine…

Tuesday night, I called Apple directly.  Again, with the intent to repair, replace, or upgrade, even at my cost, as long as I didn’t have to suffer through another 2 year extension with AT&T.

The great tech I talked to (John) for over an hour-and-a-half was very helpful, very knowledgeable, and tried everything he could to make things work.  We even got an AT&T rep (Susan) on the phone who said that even though AT&T couldn’t sell me ANY phone without a contract extension, they verbally agreed that AT&T had NO OBJECTIONS to Apple selling me a re-manufactured phone outright as a replacement without a contract extension.

So… John and I start getting it written up.  New replacement phone, $199. Same as the flat-rate repair cost.  Cool.  Well, as cool as it can be for $199 to replace a $5.00 part.  On the bright side, I would have been moving from 3G/16 to 3GS/16, which at least would have gotten me iOS4 multitasking…

Enter the approval phase…

Suddenly, John reports that his supervisor tells him that “Apple can’t sell you a refurbished phone because of our contract with AT&T“..

In the end of the call, as an AT&T customer, AT&T won’t help me, Apple reportedly “can’t” help me because of  AT&T, even with Susan’s direct approval to do so…

No biggie I guess.

I’m certainly not particularly cross at anyone at this point.  They (John and Susan) are doing their jobs, and no one can be hated for that but the effect is that I still hate AT&T, still have their service that I’m paying for, and can’t find anyone to fix my iPhone without being sans-phone for a few weeks during the repair phase.

If I’m going to spend $50 to $100 to get the iPhone 3G repaired anyway, that leads me to start considering a move to Verizon and the Android phones, even though I’m not a fan…

The turning point.

Tuesday night before bed, Apple sends me (via e-mail) the obligatory online survey regarding the call, during which I have one final vent, spelling all of this out.

My appreciation for John’s attempt to help.  My dismay that they couldn’t help, and my consideration — even though I’m an Apple fanboy — of the comparatively and seemingly disgusting Android alternatives.

I — like almost everyone else who’s ever filled out an online survey — figured that no one would EVER see it, and that it was just a way for me to express my final opinion to the gods of the Internet before seeing it disappear into the vapors of the digital wasteland.

Enter “Joe” the savior.

Yesterday (Friday) about 1pm CST, I get a call from “Joe” at Apple in Texas (512 area code anyway).

After receiving my feedback on that survey (shock!), he wanted to discuss the situation and see if there was anything that might have gone wrong, what Apple could do to fix it, and to recap the situation.

Long story short, Joe and Apple come to the rescue.  “We sincerely want to apologize for any confusion, and you should have a replacement phone on your desk Monday morning“…

THAT is the way you do customer support people.

Apple had ZERO responsibility here.  Zero obligation here to replace a two-year-old iPhone that’s been used like pretty much any device of its kind.

All I hoped for when I called them was that they might help me repair my existing phone, or to help replace it.  Even at my expense.  After all, I’m the idiot who broke it.

That replacement phone really doesn’t cost Apple anything when you get down to it.  After all, it’s a returned phone which has gone through a re-manufacturing process to make it factory new (as opposed to “refurbished” which simply means they put the returned phone in a new box and ship it out).

The fact that Apple went out of their way to help a devoted customer who — now — will remain so indefinitely is PRICELESS, and very much a missing “way things should be done” in today’s world.

In the end, I’m one happy customer, and will stay so.

Wayne Hunt

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28
Mar
300px-Amiga_Logo_1985.svg

Arrrrgh!!! The CSS of it all…!

Have you ever been through an experience that changed your world, but left you broken for the future?

For 15 years, I built, created, then ran a site for the now antiquated Commodore Amiga computer community by the name of Amiga.org..  Since 1995, it really was a focal point in my pathetic little world until I recently sold it to another community member.

Over those 15 years, I built and redesigned the site probably a dozen times, always keeping in mind that development of new browsers hasn’t really moved forward in at least 10 years.  They’re still dealing with HTML 3.0 AT BEST.  Meanwhile, the world around them has moved on to XHTML, CSS, RSS, XML, and about a hundred other technologies that the PC and Mac communities have long ago taken for granted.

Last year, we needed to move the site forward to vBulletin 3.8x, which afforded the community lots of new and nifty features, but at one big cost, and that was the need to embrace Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).  CSS has been around ALMOST as long as Amiga.org, but as I said, 99% of the Amiga browsers out there were never updated to support it.  The 1% that does support CSS, doesn’t run on 99% of the remaining so-called “Classic” Amiga computers.

For the first time in 15 years, even *I* had to step outside my comfort zone to start learning CSS (again) and how to write a site that wasn’t based on HTML 3.2…

All I can say is that in 1995 when I wrote the initial site with a text editor on Windows 95, life for Web developers was a LOT simpler.

Now, I’m trying to both learn how to write a custom theme for WordPress, as well as to adapt it to the Thesis theme framework which almost exclusively uses CSS, Javascript, and a whole host of “newfangled” crap that I’ve long-since forgotten.  Never before have I felt like such an idiot as I do now, when I’m trying to go back and re-learn everything again from scratch.

I’d say “it’s worse than SharePoint” but pfft.  Who would I be kidding?

All of this, btw, with very restricted network access and working from my macbook the rest of the time..

Fun…  If anyone has any pointers, or wants to contribute free “idiots guides to doing stupid web shit that my 12 year old niece can do in her sleep” type books, please let me know..

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6
Mar
We have liftoff!

Finally! A semi-valid argument against the Mac…

Any Apple user can tell you the myriad of arguments and complaints that they hear regularly from PC die-hards.  I don’t call Windows users fanatics, because they really don’t “love” Windows,  they just refuse to buy into the Apple culture.

These same people are usually the same ones who bite off hard on the $7/cup Starbucks “culture”, so I guess it’s just a matter of perspective.

As a fan of Apple products, some of the arguments I deal with are (in no particular order)

  • The uninformed “Macs cost twice as much as PC’s“, aka the “mac penalty” argument (pricing),
  • The “I don’t know anything about the mac, but we use Office at work and I need Windows” (aka. “compatibility is an issue”) argument,
  • The “why would I buy a Mac when I can buy a $2 Gateway/Dell box” argument (a subtly different argument than the “mac penalty” argument) and finally
  • The somewhat lazy “I already know Windows and I’m too old to care about changing” argument.

Each of these arguments against the Mac have valid points depending on each individual and their own independent needs, but each argument is usually easily defeated *if* you can actually get the person to actually sit down and play with OS X for 10 minutes.

  • (Mac Penalty Argument) Compare a MacBook Pro to a Dell Adamo or Sony top end comparable and the MacBook is in the same ball park, plus you can do more with the Mac right out of the box..
  • (compatibility argument) Mac OS X has “Office for the Mac” and 99% of PC users will never miss any “compatibility” with the PC.
  • (The “$2 Gateway” argument) True, you can also buy a Ford Ranger pickup without Air Conditioning, but wouldn’t you rather have the Lexus?
  • (The “I’m used to Windows” argument) Change is hard, but some change is worth its weight in gold.
    • (did you ever notice how you almost NEVER hear anyone say they actually LIKE Windows?)

Which brings me to my point…

Friday, I bought my new MacBook Pro into work.  More because I didn’t want to leave it in the car on a freezing day, but still.  As a co-worker came by, we sat and discussed the Mac and  I explained to him my reasons for becoming a Mac user in the first place, when he said something to me that I really couldn’t disagree with at all.

“I just don’t like Macs because of the Elitist attitude that Mac users all seem to have.  It’s like a cult or a virus or something.”

Wow…  “Bazinga!“  Straight to the heart of the matter.

I guess I’d never really thought about it before, being an enthusiastic convert from the PC, but feeling the way I do about Apple products, I can really see that I *do* tend to have somewhat of an elitist (mine is better than yours) attitude about the Mac.  Hmmm.. Come to think of it, so does almost every single Mac user I know…

I know the good Lord said “pride cometh before a fall” and all that.  I believe that’s true to some extent, because pride makes you blind to your surroundings.

That being said however, I can really understand why Mac users (as a whole, but not trying to generalize) tend to feel that their chosen platform is better than any other. (It is, but I digress)…  When my co-worker offered that opinion, I really thought about it and it dawned on me that I haven’t been this enthusiastic about ANY computer since the old Commodore Amiga platform in the 80′s.

  • I picked up the Mac at a true low-point in my computing life when I had truly reached a breaking point with Microsoft products.
  • Since my first iMac 4 years ago, Mac OS X really helps me — as a person — concentrate more on what I want to do than having to constantly worry about “how can I get Windows to do it?”
  • In the first four years of owning my iMac, I never needed to upgrade it.  I never had the constant hardware/software issues of Windows, and — unlike Windows, I didn’t have to literally reload the system from scratch every 6 months due to something breaking.  Matter of fact, I *never* needed to rebuild the iMac in all the time I owned it.
  • My iPhone has been singularly the most incredibly useful device I’ve ever owned
  • My new MacBook Pro, similarly, allows me to “take my world with me” (since I literally cloned my iMac onto it)…

It’s easy to fall into the trap of pride in something when your experience is so “night and day” compared to the constant frustration, updates, and rebuilds of a Windows system, but I wonder whether this mass pride that we (Mac users) all feel isn’t — to some small extent — doing the platform a disservice?

After all, even though you “can lead a stubborn mule (Windows user) to a crystal clear stream, you can’t force him to drink the kool-aid“..  Ok, I’m paraphrasing, but you get the point.. right?

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28
Feb
DSC_1074

iPad’s impact on Macbook sales (??)

Ok, so I’m sitting here typing this on my new MacBook Pro laptop when a thought suddenly crosses my tiny little brain..

I wonder if the announcement for the iPad has had any effect on the sales of the MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops as a whole?

Whyzzat you ask??

Well Lucy, lemme ‘splain..

There’s a group of people out there who were waiting on the new iPad.  We had all heard the rumors of “MacOS X on a tablet” and if a lot of people — like me — decided to wait it out to buy one, then we get into the world where MacBook Pro sales are negatively impacted.

However, that was last month.

I’m sure that some of those same people have now decided they can’t wait (or hate that the iPad doesn’t run a full OS) and have run out and purchased MacBooks.  If that’s the case, the MacBook sales should be positively impacted by the delay between announcement and release of the iPad.

Since the Macbook / MacBook Pro are Apple’s number one sellers on the computer side of the house, I really find myself curious as to how all of this is playing out.  Are there more Mac users waiting in earnest for the iPad, or have more of us turned to going ahead with a MacBook to meet our needs?

One thing’s for sure.  Apple sure are sneaky bastages when it comes to marketing, so anything’s possible.

If you have any ideas about my boggle above, leave me a comment and let’s discuss it.  I would really like to hear people’s opinions.

Wayne Hunt
segwayne.com

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21
Feb
xm-skydock_landscape

XM Skydock: First impressions from an iPhone user

Hesitance.

Ever since the dawn of the XM and Sirius radio business models, I’ve always asked myself, “why on Earth would anyone want to pay for radio?“.  After all, I had a six-mile commute to work, and you couldn’t take it inside with you and get a signal, so you’re essentially paying X amount per month to listen to the radio about 20 minutes a day.  I mean, what’s the deal?  I’ve already got a FREE radio, not to mention 16 Gigabytes of MP3′s on a USB stick connected to it.  If that gets old, I can even fire up Bluetooth on my iPhone and stream music straight from it so… What’s the big deal… right?

For a 10 minute commute every day, the logic above is fairly flawless.  Lately however, my weekly commute changed to about 3.5 hours each way, twice a week.  During which, I’m constantly searching for local radio stations on the way to and fro.  I’ve heard every song that I own on my USB stick until I’m pretty much ready to throw it away, and I’m bored to death about mile 47 of my 170 mile sojourn.

Enter the XM Skydock..

The XM Skydock is — in essence — an XM receiver that doubles as both an iPhone dock and charger.  As you can see by this picture, it plugs into the cigarette lighter, then the iPhone (or iPod touch) docks at the top of a semi-rigid stalk, allowing the interface software application to be in easy reach while driving.

In the Box..

When you first open the box, what you see is the receiver stalk.  There are also a couple of spacers for differing levels of iPod/iPhone cases, a manual, a quick start sheet, a channel guide for XM radio, an “AUX” cable to provide direct audio to capable players, and the magnetic antenna which is the most difficult part of the “easy” installation.

Installation…

The box describes the installation of this system as “simple and easy”.  For the most part, I agree, with one caveat.

  1. plug in the stalk into a cigarette lighter
  2. download the iphone/ipod app
  3. Activate your service with XM radio
  4. type in the UID/password into the app
  5. set your radio to the correct channel (or plug in the provided AUX cable)
  6. .. and finally, learn all about the magic of how to route the wiring of an externally mounted antenna — which looks like a baby “wall wart” charger — through your door’s weather stripping (without destroying it) then through the dash to hide the wires..

For step 6, most people of average intelligence will probably want to go ahead and hire out your local audio installer geek for help.  Better $20 to him than $200 to replace the weather strip and a mangled antenna.

Special consideration: When I first plugged up the system, I thought it would be a simple task to simply toss the antenna up on the dashboard and drive.  After all, the dash has an unobstructed view of the sky.. Right?  Apparently not..

Seems that — unlike FM radio — satellite radio is very, very “line of sight” between the antenna and the satellite itself.  If, for example, you find yourself driving East and the satellite is “behind you”, the antenna is easily blocked by the roof of your vehicle and you get music that fades in and out randomly as the signal is lost.  Better to go ahead and mount it outside to get a clear view and just be done with it.

The Software…

Downloading the Sirius/XM Skydock application is pretty straight forward, like any other free app store app,  Just make sure you get the Skydock app and not the streaming app, which won’t work with the skydock.  I may provide pictures later, but there are plenty on google.

The interface for the software is seemingly very intuitive although sometimes a bit hard to read at arm’s length.  You can change channels, search, get weather reports, and even “tag” music you hear for later downloads in iTunes (for those of you who do such things).  I have no real complaints about the interface, and it would have been far better than trying to use the built-in interface of my Pioneer DEH-6100BT deck at 70 miles per hour.

In the End

The Good

  • The sound quality is amazing when connected through the AUX cable (as opposed to using the built-in FM tuner)
  • The variety of music and programs seems pretty good
  • It’s a fairly simple system to install, only the antenna may trip you up.
  • You can actually listen to the same program while driving for more than 20 minutes (when normal FM stations start to fade quickly)
  • You can keep up to 12 favorite channels, making it relatively easy to find something to listen to.
  • The software can even prompt you when your favorite programs or tagged artists start playing.

The Bad

  • Installing the antenna is not for the meek.
  • If you have an older car, like I do, the weight of the iPhone sometimes causes the entire interface to “rotate” (or better to say “fall”) out of position when you hit bumps in the road.
  • Bumps in the road shake the iPhone, making it sometimes appear unreadable — depending on how much your highway department sucks that is..
  • For someone with big hands, it’s easy to hit the wrong button sometimes, especially if you’re not concentrating on reaching for the screen.
  • Some iPhone cases, such as my Speck ruggedized will “fit” but it’s very, very tight — even with the dock arms fully opened.  I don’t however want to trade out the life-saving thick rubber case protection for anything that might not survive my unerring tendency to drop the phone on concrete.
  • Sometimes if you don’t dock it “just right”, the screen lock will engage and turn off the screen (which I don’t want).  That however may be case related.

The Ugly

  • “Commercial free” is total and utter bullspit.  Music channels aren’t bad, but any of the talk, news, or other channels spend seemingly 40% of the time with the same “buy gold”, “get out of credit card debt” crap that you get on standard radio.  6 minutes of Glenn Beck.  4 minutes of listening to some maxi-zoom-dweebie tell me how to make my penis larger.

The commercials themselves are ALMOST enough to make me want to cancel XM radio.  On the bright side, there’s always a music channel you can swap to during the incessant and neverending commercials.  I would almost be willing to pay another $5.00 a month just to get rid of them.  Almost.

Overall, I’m not sure how I feel about it, but most of my negative emotions are about the overzealous commercials playing every 5 minutes.  Otherwise, I was able to drive that 3.5 hours this weekend and never listen to the same thing twice.

Love “Blue Collar Comedy” radio.  Love the “classics” channel where they replay 30′s and 40′s radio shows.  Love the “80′s on 8″ channel and for the first time, I am able to listen to the entire Glenn Beck show from start to finish.  Whether that’s a good or bad thing, dunno yet. Your mileage may vary.

Hope this review helped.  If you have questions, please feel free to drop us a line below and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Wayne

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20
Feb
The Box.

Macbook Pro 13″ MB (MB991LL/A) — The Unboxing

Over the last month, I’ve been using the Dell Vostro A90 (Mini 9) almost exclusively.  Unfortunately, what I discovered is that while it’s a great little box for checking e-mail and the occasional e-Bay browsing, its little 1.6 Ghz Atom processor (even with 2gb of RAM and a fast SSD) simply isn’t enough to do the type of tasks that I do just to keep sane.

For example, while I can fire up iMovie or Garageband, there simply isn’t enough power behind the Atom processor to actually DO anything beyond what a netbook’s good for.  No podcasting, no Photoshop, no WarCraft, no Call of Duty 4.

So.. That being said, and the histrionic issues caused by the sincerely apathetic speed of the Best Buy trade-in program behind me, I set out today with my $469 gift card, along with $30 in Best Buy member gift cards in hand, with the intent to purchase a new base-model MacBook Pro, 13″ laptop.  Let me just state, out-front that most of you simply cannot imagine the amount of thought that went into the decision.

Should I buy a base laptop?  Should I buy the bigger badder 15″ laptop?  Should I just buy a Mac Mini and a 20″ monitor and make plans to sell it back later?  Should I just tough it out and not get anything at all? (in which case, what would I have done with $500 in gift certificates???)  ARGGhhh.

It was actually the local Best Buy in Huntsville that talked me out of anything but the base setup.

Having decided at least on a laptop — to keep from having to haul a monitor around — I couldn’t decide on either a 13″ or base 15″ model.  Being most unhelpful and disinterested in helping a customer, after much frustration, I discovered the local store DIDN’T EVEN STOCK the model I wanted.

This of course called for the obligatory 200 mile road trip to the nearest Mac-selling Best Buy, which happened to be in Murphreesboro, TN.  It was a beautiful day, I had a moral imperative and I was “on a mission from God” (which for the cretins out there is a big tip of the hat to the Blues Brothers).

To cut a long and presumably boring story short, the people in the alien Best Buy in Murphreesboro were the exact opposite of my local shop.  They were helpful, attentive, and even had an honest-to-god Apple rep on hand to answer questions…

Now I just need to sell the Dell Hackintosh and the new baby will be a fairly inexpensive upgrade.

Here is the unboxing of what I ended up with;

The Box.

The Box..

The box top

The box top

Opening the Box

The box, open but unmolested

Cables and all the goodies

Cables and all the goodies

The Software

The software

The EULA sticker

The EULA sticker

The laptop with keyboard popcorn

The laptop with the protective "shipping popcorn" still covering the keyboard.

We have liftoff!

Houston... We have liftoff! (and a very happy Wayne)

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27
Jan
ipad_hero4_20100127

Apple’s new iPad and why it’s a qualified FAIL..

After literally months of speculation, hopes, and hype, Apple made the eagerly-awaited announcement today of the upcoming “iPad” tablet computer.

Rather than “live blog” the event, I thought I’d let it sink in, look at the device itself (http://www.apple.com/ipad), do a little research and come to a little calmer opinion than a lot of people I’ve read today suffering from knee-jerk reactions.

Why calmer?  Simply and unabashedly stated, I’m an Apple fanboy.

As such, like all of us fanboys out there waiting on the “miracle tablet” to save us from our droll existence, I proudly proclaimed that I’ve already been in line for day one of its release months before it was even acknowledged.

Now that the announcement has been made, I’m not quite so sure, and here’s why:

What it is:

  • Essentially, it’s a 10″ iPod Touch, replete with the iPhone OS and access to the App store.
  • 1 ghz Apple “A4″ low power processor
  • Will be available in 6 models.  16, 32, and 64 Gigabyte Flash Drive models, and 3 matching models which add the ability to do 3G connections through an AT&T “pay as you go” plan.

What it isn’t.

  • It is neither a laptop, nor an iPhone, nor even a netbook.  Whether Steve Job’s “something entirely different” (his words) is actually “better” is yet to be seen.
  • It isn’t a laptop replacement in the true sense of the word, because you can’t load real software (like MS Office) on it to work from the road.

Why I’m on the fence…

As I said, I expected the iPad to be a game changer.  Instead what it looks like we got is a new iPod Touch on steroids.

Maybe THAT’s why they chose the “iPad” moniker which is easily confused with its baby brother, the “iPod” over other more appropriate names like “iSlate” or even “iTab”, but I digress.

Unlike the loads of pre-announcement speculation, it doesn’t run Mac OS X (or even a lite version), so you can’t use it for things like programming or anything that really requires real work level abilities.

That being said, I *love* my iPhone.  As such, I think I would actually get a bit of use out of a 10″ version of the same type features and apps (especially games).  In the end however, what keeps it from being a slam dunk game changing home run for me is the fact that it doesn’t have even a hint of a CAMERA on it.

Steve.. WTF were you thinking??!!!???

Whether or not you like Apple, or their products, the simple addition of a web cam / camera on the new tablet could have changed the world.  Imagine for a moment that they DID include one (*and just to be clear, they did not*).

To get an idea of why the lack of a camera on the iPad pisses me off SO much, simply imagine the following scenarios;

  1. sitting in Starbucks on a Saturday morning, iPad in hand, videoconferencing via skype over the 3G network to your beloved family member in another state.
  2. sitting on a park bench recording a video podcast segment on your iPad, then saving it to the Flash drive, then uploading it to the web via the public wifi hotspot.
  3. an insurance adjuster able to use the camera to send pictures of crash damage to a custom app which automatically sends it to the insurance company for on-the-spot processing…
  4. a medical specialist doctor using the camera to help fellow doctors in another part of the world without the need for thousands of dollars in video conferencing equipment.
  5. being able to sit in the local Starbucks and participate in multi-user group meetings, even if you’re out of town on travel.

Before you say it, yes.  you’re absolutely right.  Each of these things could be easily accomplished by any of the MacBooks (though MacBooks don’t have access to the App store) already, so why not just buy a Macbook, shut up, and be happy?

Because.. Dammit…  For the first time, there will be a tablet computer on the market that could have made the difference, and it damned sure LOOKED like one of those “Star Trek tablets” we’ve been promised for 50 years now (thanks Gene Roddenberry!).

Instead, what we get is a device that might be interesting for what amounts to a 10″ iPod Touch.  It might not be.

It might be “yet another e-reader” with the App store built in, but sadly, due to the one, single stupid oversight in leaving out a camera, it will NEVER reach its full potential.

In the end..

As a self proclaimed fanboy, I find myself disappointed and will probably wait for “iPad 2G”.

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4
Dec

Dell Mini 9 / Vostro A90 memory cleared up

Dell’s Web site specifies the Dell Mini 9 and the Vostro A90 as having a 533 mhz bus.  The build sheet however specifies that they include 1 Gigabyte of 800 mhz RAM (200-pin DDR2 DIMM).  When ordering a new 2 Gigabyte stick for my newly acquired A90 netbook, I couldn’t find, or get a clear answer on what speed memory I needed.  Here’s what I found out..

200-pinddr2The bus on both machines is, indeed, 533 mhz.  The RAM that comes with your Dell is (usually) an 800 mhz chip.  When you look at either Kingston, or Crucial for memory, they each offer three versions.  533, 667, and 800 mhz.  Giddy with excitement as I unwrapped my new Dell from it’s cardboard prison, I ordered one stick of 667 mhz memory before I even realized that the discrepancy between 533 and 800 existed.

THEN, I spent about a week upset because I KNEW I should have bought the faster 800 mhz chip.

As of this afternoon and a LONG delay in receiving said RAM, I’m very happy to report that if you buy a Dell Vostro A90 or it’s more colorful counterpart, the Dell Mini 9, rest assured that both the original 800 megahertz and the new 667 megahertz RAM chips are both seen and supported the same as if they were 533 mhz parts.

In short, don’t worry.  It’s all good no matter which speed you choose.  Until someone figures out a way to overclock this little beasty, the $5.00 difference between 533 and 800 megahertz chips doesn’t seem to make a bit of difference.

Wayne Hunt
segwayne.com
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3
Dec

Dell Vostro A90 — The best OS X netbook money can’t buy

Installing Snow LeopardSeveral months ago, I took a shot at building a Hackintosh out of a Dell Mini 9 netbook.

One of the biggest problems I ran into was the choice of the wrong SSD card (Crucial) and an excessive boot time, which lead to the whole thing being rather slow and IMHO, unusable for anything except the occasional browsing and/or e-mail on the run.

While these are the very things you’d think about using a netbook for, when I had the opportunity, I picked up a second-hand Macbook Pro and found the Mini 9 a good home with a good friend.

About a month ago now with the help of another good friend, I ran across a great opportunity to pick up the “business” version of the Mini 9 in refurbed form, the “Dell Vostro A90“.  The A90 is identical to the Mini 9, save that it’s all black, and seems to feel a little more sturdily built.  The model I got came with a gigabyte of RAM and an 8 Gigabyte STEC Solid State Disk (SSD) card.

UPDATE: As of the time of this writing, it looks like Dell might have actually discontinued the A90, as it’s not on their web site, but you can still pick them up in their Outlet store at http://delloutlet.com.  I can’t confirm whether or not they’re discontinued, but if not, they sure do make them hard to find on the Dell web site.

What I quickly found out however is that an 8 gigabyte SSD card isn’t big enough to install Snow Leopard on, even if you strip out every option that is available on the install routine.

Vostro A90 tiny keyboardTo that end, I picked up a 32 gigabyte RunCore SSD card (80mb read/40mb write as opposed to 70/15 for the old Crucial card) off of eBay and just finished with installing my legitimate copies of Snow Leopard and iLife.   All I can say is “what a difference 9 months and the right SSD card makes..”

Way back in March, I used Gizmodo’s multiple CD-Rom method of installing Leopard (10.5) on the Cherry Red Dell Mini 9.  This time, I used MechDrew’s single USB stick method, which meant that I didn’t have to deal with boot commands, or learning to hack the command line for all sorts of little tricks and boot options.

Total install time from start (creating the USB stick) to finish (final update to 10.6.1) was approximately two hours.

So far, this little beasty boots within a minute or so (no slower than my 27″ iMac), and seems to be — for all intents and purposes — about as peppy as the original Intel Core2Single processor mac Mini.  Even with 1 gigabyte of RAM, programs seem to launch without any problem and so far, I haven’t found ANYTHING that doesn’t work exactly the way a Mac Mini or iMac would.

Even the camera in Photobooth works!

All in all, unless things change, this should remain to be a suitable carry box for exactly what a netbook does best.

Comparison shot. Dell Vostro A90 versus American 20 dollar bill

Comparison shot. Dell Vostro A90 versus American 20 dollar bill

Now let me get to the bad.

  • Legally, it’s a bad thing.  There’s no room for debate here, and the only reason I’ve gone this route (again) is out of financial and physical necessity.  When Apple comes out with a netbook of their own, I guarantee that I’ll be in line to buy one on day one, unless it’s $800.
  • The keyboard on the Vostro A90 is identical to the Mini 9, hence still too small.  You should be about to peck out an e-mail, but unless you’ve got tiny hands, you’ll never pound out your next “War and Peace” novel.
  • It’s still NOT a Macintosh.  While I don’t have to sit here and deal with the frustration of Windows or the tinkering with Ubuntu that drives people mad, the “Apple experience” just isn’t the same.  It works.  It works well (thank you Apple!) but personally I *do* look forward to either an Apple tablet or similar branded netbook should they decide to get their head out of the sand and build one.
  • Keep the USB stick you created for the install.  You may need it at a moment’s notice, as Apple has intentionally disabled support for the Atom processor in version 10.6.2 of the OS.  This means no more upgrades.
  • Being the “Apple’s Bitch” that I am, I still feel like I should fall to the floor and beg forgiveness for my sins, but then I realize exactly how much money I already have tied up in branded Apple hardware and software and that lets me sleep a little easier at night.

In the end, I find myself completely with mixed emotions here.  I am still unabashedly Apple’s bitch.  I have an iPod, an iPhone, an iMac, and now this.  In the end, I’d prefer Apple hardware because I trust it more.  At this time however, I’m just a slave to my own needs and requirements.

Wayne Hunt
segwayne.com

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