I replaced the Samsung 226BW with a Gateway FPD2275W. The display includes more inputs including svideo, component, composite and DVI along with they typical VGA. Although the display is still based on a TN panel and suffers many of the same attributes of the Samsung, they are not as pronounced and much more livable. The contrast ratio of this display however is a bit less than on the Samsung. Always a trade off somewhere I suppose.
Author: Dustin Rue
My name is Dustin and I am a lot of things to a number of different people. I am a husband, father and a systems engineer that also knows how to write some code. Here I write about technology.
Samsung SyncMaster 226BW
I picked up the above mentioned monitor a couple of days ago. It’s a 22″ flat panel, 1680×1050 native resolution, 2ms response 3000:1 contrast ratio (using dynamic contrast). Sounds great on paper but is actually surprisingly bad in practice. What I’ve learned is that virtually all 22″ monitors use the same type of LCD panel, a TN (twisted nematic). These panels are cheaper than the other types available and have the poorest viewing angles of all available types. For some reason this panel is raved about on the Internet and gets top picks in reviews. Maybe I’m overly picky compared to most people but it really bothers me to see different colors on the screen depending on where I site, and even worse to see contrast so different between the top and the bottom of the display. My laptop’s display suffers from the same issue, but on such a small screen it’s hardly an issue. With a screen this large, it’s not acceptable.
Removed Leopard
I ran into two strange issues with Leopard on my mini. For whatever reason, importing video via firewire would drop frames. I’ve never seen dropped frames while importing video with firewire, I didn’t know it was possible. It’s possible there really is something wrong with the tape or the camcorder but it seems to play back perfectly on the camcorder. The other issue is a drop in frame rate while minimizing windows. This sounds pretty trivial but it was actually pretty annoying. It was nearly as bad as running OS X 10.3 on a 400Mhz G3 iMac.
Anyway, I removed Leopard and reinstalled (erase and install no less) Tiger. It still wants to drop some frames, but not as many.
OS X Leopard and how Apple sells features
I managed to acquire Leopard for my Mac mini and have been putting it to use for almost a week now. Initially I was a bit underwhelmed, probably because of all the hype, but after spending some more time with it I’m really liking some of the changes put into it though I haven’t had a chance to really get to know all of the new features Leopard has to offer.
Right away I was put off by the color scheme. I was really liking the colors used in Tiger for selected menu items and the title bar on windows. The menu bar also being translucent doesn’t excite me and I’ll probably install this utility to disable the transparency, but I’ll give it some more time. The glass shelf dock looks fine to my eyes except for the odd shadow behind the icons. They are shadowed as if light is shining up through the glass shelf, it ends up creating an effect that just looks like a poorly drop shadowed image. It just looks wrong and would be much more pleasing if there was no shadow at all, or a very subtle shadow similar to how all windows in OS X are shadowed.
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ZFS
I gave ZFS a shot yesterday and I am very impressed. Rather than ramble on about why ZFS is so great, do yourself the favor of simply going to the ZFS informational site and having a look. Watch the demos. Give OpenSolaris a try in VMware.
Visit the site at http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/
A few weeks with the Mac mini
I’ve had the Mac mini for a few weeks now so I thought I’d write a bit my thoughts on the mini and OS X in general. There is a lot to like about the mini and OS X but there are also a few items I’ve come to dislike which I’ll discuss below.
The Mac mini is a tiny computer that looks great. I am personally not aware of any sort of PC that is this small, includes the same features AND looks good doing it. That said, aesthetics are in the eye of the beholder and are a matter of opinion. With that in mind I’ll try to steer clear of personal opinion and concentrate more on practicality and usability.
Accessing the Linux command line
Accessing the Linux command line is quite simple. I’ll describe the process as it is on a Ubuntu system but only because Ubuntu has the most market share of the Linux distros today. The concepts here carry over all most if not all other Linux distributions. One other thing I should point out is that the command line is sometimes referred to as the “console” or “terminal” and I may use those terms from time to time.
There are times that you’ll need to use the command line in order to get something done because there won’t be an appropriate GUI tool available or a GUI tool that is available doesn’t have a needed option. In these cases you can access the command line to get the job done.
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The Linux command line
One of the top reasons that I use Linux at all is because of the command line environment. It is far more likely that you’ll see me using my Linux systems via putty from a Windows system than actually sitting at my Linux system itself. Now this isn’t because I’m anti Linux on the desktop or anything, not at all. In fact I do run Linux on my laptop for when I cannot remotely access my server at home such as when we’re traveling yet it’s usually so I can run a terminal.
Read on to learn more about what you can do with the Linux command line.
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Why the iPod+Starbucks deal is significant
One of the more dismissed iPod features announced recently is the one that allows users to instantly find out what song is playing in a Starbucks and then buy the song on the spot if they so choose. At first glance it’s easy to dismiss this as something you’ll never use but I believe this will lead into something bigger.
Although I would tend to agree that teaming with Starbucks is a bit of a yawn you can’t deny that the idea is great. How many times have you been somewhere, heard a song and wished you knew the name of the song or artist? Now imagine if more places teamed up with Apple to make this a reality. The local gym, mall food court or what have you could be setup with similar equipment to what Starbucks is putting in to place. Or, how about a small band playing at a venue making album sales while performing?
Since Starbucks is a place that benefits simply because it is the kind of place a person can order a drink and listen to music, I imagine Apple would need to build in some kind of incentive for other businesses to get involved. Someway for the company to pay for the equipment needed to run the service.
The real benefit, for Apple anyway, is that the chance for an impulse buy goes up substantially because the customer can buy the song right away, they don’t have to try to remember the song and buy it later. This will undoubtedly lead to increased music sales for Apple and even though we’ve always been told iTMS exists to sell more iPods one has to think Apple makes something on music sales. With an increase in sales volume iTMS will become more of a money maker than it is today.
Official shots of the redesigned Mazda6 hit the web early!
Official shots of the newly redesigned Mazda6 hit the internet ahead of its official unveiling. It’s a radically different, far more stylish approach to Mazda’s major midsize player.