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Entries in Hardware (81)

Friday
Sep282007

iPhone Bricking. Who's to Blame?

Still, it's not official if the latest update is bricking the iPhone. Reports are mixed on the several Apple related sites. This might mean that even less people than you might think had converted their iPhone. One would think that if thousands of people had removed the simlock, that the reports are pooring in. But they don't (so far). Another possibility is that everyone is waiting to see what really happens. Apple could have avoided this be making sure that everyone who buys an iPhone also gets a carrier subscription before they leave the store. But somehow this wasn't the case. It was possible to buy the iPhone, take it home, and choose the subscription when you activate it. This leaves lot's of room to find way around the AT&T carrier service. And this is what's happening. Apple (and AT&T) wouldn't mind as much if every unlocked phone had an AT&T carrier subscription with it. Hell, they will get their (monthly) money anyway. No matter what SIM is inserted. So, I can't blame the users for unlocking their phones. And I can understand the measures Apple is taking, cause they might be loosing money on those unlocked phones. But they somehow let it happen by releasing unactivated phones into the wild. Knowing the nature of the average resident of the United "I will see you in court" States this hasn't ended yet :-) B.t.w., here in the Netherlands, it's quite normal to sign a contract before you get the 'sponsored' phone. After that they don't care what you do with the phone. The carrier gets his money for the next (couple of) years no matter what.

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Thursday
Sep062007

Choices, and Even More Choices

Yesterday, Apple Launch a complete new line of music players. Every player is renewed. The biggest changes are:

As I might have mentioned my 'old' iPod Photo 20GB is acting up, so I was kinda going to buy me a new one, but which one do I want? The iPhone touch is just gorgeous, but the iPod Classic holds ton's of music and video's...... *sigh*. Guess I have to let fate decide....

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Sunday
Sep022007

Dying PC

Now it's time for apple to start shipping 'Leopard' as soon as possible. I don't want to buy a iMac now, and buy Leopard next month (even if it is with a discount). Today my Windows PC started to show major hick-ups. The drives are making 'clacking' noises together with high pitched sounds :cry: . Also the system freezes up every ten minutes or so. So, you can imagine that I'm starting to backup my stuff with the hope that it makes it to the external drive. Every time the system crashes (during the copying) I see my digital life flash in before me.... Hope I can make it before the flames come out..... UPDATE: OK, I finally got my data of the PC, so that's one worry less. In the mean time, I've ordered a new hard drive. If that doesn't solve the problem, I guess I have to upgrade prematurely to an iMac..... The current components are all quite old, so I have to replace everything if it's not just the drive. I might sell the GPU (NVIDIA(Asus) 7900GTX/512MB/PCI-e). So if you're interessted

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Saturday
Aug252007

Wireless Standards???

First there were wireless networks, then there was WEP. WEP was the protective layer for wireless, so that your data was (kinda) secure when it traveled through the air. This layer was compromised rather quick, so alternatives were needed. The initial alternative was WPA. This new layer of protection was a lot stronger (there still isn't a way of hacking this quickly). Downside was that it took a while to become a standard, so every vendor was free to use it as they saw fit. This could result into incompatibility issues when you used different vendors in your wireless environment. The final WPA standard became WPA2, and was to overcome the incompatibility issues with the earlier WPA.... NOT!!! Most consumer wireless products in my vicinity just won't connect properly using WPA2 (with either AES or TKIP). The only thing that keeps working is WPA. When connecting to a wireless network which is protected with WPA2, everything seems to go fine, but when you want to transfer data, nothing happens. Also, the wireless base station doesn't show any association with the client. What is wrong with this picture? Does this mean that there are also different implementations of WPA2 among vendors? A quick WPA2 configuration with a 32 character (or 16 character) WPA2-PSK key just won't work, while the client devices all support at least WPA2-PSK with TKIP.

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Sunday
Aug122007

Tripods for Sale

My old tripod were a pain in the @ss. The slightest wind made the camera rock like it was on a boat in heavy weather. The need for something a little more stable was there. The original idea was to get a tripod which weighed about half a kilo. Could hold a weight of 10 kilos, and had the most comfortable ball bearing head available. And (not to forget) wouldn't cost more than 100 euros..... Well, that wasn't about to happen :-( . So I bought a Manfrotto 718B tripod (99 euros). It's small, weighs about 1.5 kilos and can hold about 2.5 kilos of gear (which is about the combined weight of my Nikon D200 and Sigma 80-400 OS lens). So my old tripods [1,2] are for sale as of this moment. You may start your bidding. If you're interested, you should ignore the first paragraph ;-) . There's absolutely nothing wrong with the tripods..... UPDATE: The tripods have been sold (sort of), so please stop bothering me :-)

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Tuesday
Jul032007

Apple iPhone

Apple released the iPhone last Friday in the US. I didn't report on this, because a) I can't get my hands on it atm, b) there was a lot of media coverage this weekend, c) I had better things to do. They sold over half a million phones this weekend. That's great, BUT.... There are some elementary things missing on the phone. Things I couldn't live with. Most of them are mentioned here. As you might have noticed, I have a Nokia E61i at this moment. This phone was meant to be kinda temporary, since the iPhone won't be available in Europe just yet. But if Apple won't resolve most of those 'issues' there won't be an iPhone for me. How lame is it that you can't use Bluetooth the way it's meant for transferring files, 'abusing' it for a modem, so you can hook it up to your laptop and surf the Internet. At this moment, every other (Windows Mobile or Symbian based) phone on the market with has more functionality than the current iPhone. The only drawback on the current phones is that they're not made by Apple. So I'll stick to my Nokia until they fixed those elementary functions.

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Wednesday
Jun062007

Nokia E61 Dialup Networking

Tried to use my new Nokia E61i for surfing the Internet with my laptop (Windows XP), but this just wouldn't work. Errors were plenty, but no bit made it to the Internet for some reason. Strange, because my older 6230 (or whatever model it was) worked perfectly. After cursing a couple of times, I needed to make sure that this wasn't a defect in the phone, so I tried it with my Mac Book Pro (which is for sale by the way ;-) ). Obviously, this worked straight away. Just used the same settings / profile from my older phone.... Windows never keeps to amaze me (in a negative way that is).

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Wednesday
Jun062007

New Mac Book Pro's

Apple started shipping new Mac Book Pro's. These new little gems are based on the new Intel Santa Rosa chipset. This means, more power, and less power consumption. They also refitted the laptops with LED backlit screens to reduce power consumption. Other features include;

  • 2GB RAM (4GB max instead of 3GB)
  • 802.11n WiFi
  • Larger and faster hard disks (>120GB)
Boy, this makes me wanna upgrade.. Anyone fancy a first generation Mac Book Pro for a couple of bucks?

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Wednesday
May302007

New iTunes and Updated Apple TV

A new version of iTunes has been made available (7.2) to the public. The new iTunes support the new iTunes Music Store with DRM free music files. Some sites found out that the DRM-free music does contain your iTunes account info (username and full name). Probably to make sure that you won't share you purchased music on P2P networks... More good news from Apple is the upcoming update on the Apple TV. The Apple TV will be made available with a bigger hard drive (160GB instead of 40GB). And a upcoming software updates allows the user to watch YouTube videos om the Apple TV. Now we only need native DivX/XviD support on the Apple TV.....

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Thursday
May102007

Apple Files Future Touchscreen iPod Patent

AppleInsider found a filed patent by Apple that reveiles a possible future new iPod design. And again, I can't wait

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