Yesterday I got the new Transcend SSD Express Card with 32GB that fits nicely with the Macbook Pro express card slot.
Even though the write speed is very low (8MB/s) for any standard express card; but read speed seems to be 18MB/s; so decided opt for this as it can serve as ready boost to my Windows operating system that is running under Vmware Fusion along with storing all my music files. I needed one, so that I can move all virtual machine files to this card; but due to the slow write speed; its hard at this time; and I may need to wait till we get the true SSD performance on Express card.
One funny thing is; Macbook seems to eject the card few hours once automatically; which seems to be odd to me and search does reveal that lot of other people also has the same issue. Not sure if its a bug from Macbook or Transcend.
Anyway, I will wait for the true SSD speed on express cards.
I brought the new iPhone 3G the same day I came back from India as the 1st generation iPhone was handed over to my sister during the India visit.
After installing few new iPhone applications from AppStore; I noticed the phone seems to crash on and off and sometimes the response to keystrokes literally used to take ~10s also. And not to say; some times I can’t even end the call that easily.
Finally I called the iPhone support, and after explaining everything the customer representative told me that the 2.1 software addresses all the issues (which actually released on the same day). So, after updating with 2.1 (one need iTunes 8 inorder to work with 2.1 updated iPhone); everything seems to be positive and works like a charm.
At least I don’t see any issues that I had in the last week; and good thing is; 2.1 also looks like fixed the batter drain issue; lets see how long the batter will stay from now onwards.
Finally I also own an iPhone now. I ordered this on Aug 22nd and has the phone in my hand by 24th morning 10AM with the default free shipping. Good and fast shipping service from Apple. I used to think Dell used to ship the products asap if they are in stock, and looks like apple is also doing in the same way.
I enabled it using iTunes with another 2-year contract with Cingular with extra 20$ for the unlimited data plan. The phone is real surprise to me in terms of features…very good design and break through technology and most importantly its user friendly.
I thought the following could have been a nice to have features in iPhone as I felt lacking of them is becoming hard to keep the iPhone as the replacement to the other phones (I used to have Cingular PDA 8125 and Blackberry 8700C):
Features that I really liked in iPhone:Â
- Light weight and cool UI interface
- Easy navigation to most of the features like stocks, weather, maps
- Safari browser with zoom in and out using two fingers
- Screen scrolling using fingers
- Phone and iTunes together
- Video clarity is too good (especially when playing ipod videos or you-tube)
- builtin Camera photo resolution and its clarity
- Yahoo! mail interface without the need of pop interface
Features that are needed in iPhone for common use:
- Copy and Paste functionalityÂ
- Built in AIM for Yahoo, AOL and MSN
- Improve in the sound quality of the incoming voice, its very hard at times to hear other party and looks like other do not have any problem in hearing
- The home button is not that sensitive in the unit that I got, some times I needed hard press.
- Â I noticed the safari browser often crashes and it immediately goes to home screen and you lost what you visiting. Could have been nice if they had a nice auto recovery of the last visited links
- After I place a call, I never able to go back and end the call, automatically the screen is locked by that time.
- Lack of flash support in the Safari is really a pain as we can not use all websites
- Easy way to configuration to support the keyboard with both numbers and letters in one-dial pad.
- Call Log history should have been with some more basic features like distinguishing incoming and outgoing calls along with the total time spent on each call
- Separate TODO list or gadget
- Safari setting to have the default home page (good that they provided a way to toggle between the Google and Yahoo search engine)
- Speaker volume is pretty much limited, it should have been bit more louder
- Maps feature should had a way to change from default Google to Yahoo and/or Map quest as Google maps often gives wrong routes.
- Lack of remote connectivity tools like a shell or terminal, ssh, putty, VNC viewer and a remote RDP client
- Maps is not fully features (at least should had a way to re-route or finding a alternative way)
- Way to integrate web-based exchange e-mails
- Bulitin RSS reader could have been a great addition
- Could have been nice if ipod had its own Album section instead of going to more and then selecting the albums.
Overall its really a cool toy to play and it mostly suites for day to day software engineers life.
Recently I noticed that my Macbook pro is getting over heated and on the other day I almost felt like it will cause a fire…but the good and old Windows Vista shutdown itself without any notice …I am guessing may be because of the heat or it could have done my Macbook heating sensors.
What is happening is; lately when I goto office, I immediately connect the Macbook Pro to external HP 24″ LCD monitor along with external mouse and keyboard and close the Macbook lid by booting to Windows Vista under direct Bootcamp.
Normally its gets hot and the fan spins like anything under Bootcamp. But otherday it was such that I couldn’t even touch the laptop at all…man ? what kind of air ventilations the laptop has when the lid is closed ? Looks like closing the lid is the actual cause. I only noticed this when my laptop suddenly shutdown itself without any notice (just power-off, not a regular clean shutdown) and powering on back, boots to Windows and then shuts down automatically. After keeping the lid open for 10-15 minutes and then restarting the Macbook seemed to work fine.
So, no more closing of the Macbook LID when connected to external monitor…Â
Today CNet blog posted an entry related to Windows virtual machine performance on the Mac and it is interesting article to read when VMWare(VMW) when to IPO. VMWare Fusion 1.0 seemed to out perform Parallels in all the scenarios except that the Fusion is not able to run Quake 4 where as Parallels was able to. Not sure if it is a legitimate test as Fusion was using more than one core in the tests along with 128MB RAM where as Parallels was restricted to single core(it does not yet support multi-crore) along with 64MB.
Using Bootcamp is the best choice as it runs the Windows natively and lately I only boot to Windows using Bootcamp instead of using any of the virtualization software as I always end up into some sort of problems (like OS and/or office activation and random crashes and white screen of death).
View Venu Anuganti's profile
