Tech Tok

Now if you’re using Tek Savvy, and use their unlimited package, you don’t quite get 100% in that last column, but you get a damned site more than you do with Rogers or Bell and their hellish bandwidth caps.

They say you get what you pay for. With Bell & Rogers you get a whole lot less than you do with other providers..

It’s plain to see that HD and Blu-ray are neck-and-neck, with Blu-ray changing price the most dramatically. It may be that Blu-ray will take the price/GB lead from hard drives by summer.

1. Xmarks - saving my bookmarks on a server so they’re the same everywhere
2. Download Helper - save those YouTube videos in high-quality mp4

The first is on its way. I’ve been using the “Windows” version of the Xmarks Chrome plugin, and it faithfully downloaded all my bookmarks from the server, however, it seems unable to update with any new bookmarks. Also, Chrome seems to hand indefinitely if it is left enabled. So, no Xmarks quite yet.

I can’t find *anything* for Chrome that replaces Download Helper for Firefox. Oh well. I’ll just boot up Firefox when it’s really needed.

Despite these two rather major shortcomings, I am using Chrome as my main browser day-to-day. Its speed and beauty are hard to ignore.

CPU: Intel Core i7 920
    $310 (NewEgg.ca)/ $310 (CanadaComputers.com)
Motherboard: ASUS P6TD Deluxe
    $320 / $315
Memory: OCZ Platinum 12GB (6 x 2GB) DDR3 1333 MHz OCZ3P1333LV12GS
    $264.50 / $320
Disk: 1.5TB Western Digital Caviar Green WD15EADS
    $115 / $115
Optical drive: Pioneer BDR-205BKS 12x Blu-Ray Burner
    $233.50 / $240 (203BKS)
OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit - OEM
    $155 / $160

Total cost, before taxes etc

NewEgg.ca: $1,398
Canada Computers: $1,460

Iain points out I haven’t looked at a video card yet. I replied that with the speed at which prices of video cards change, I will wait until the last minute and get two mid-level cards to run in SLI, preferably DirectX 11 cards. If I had to get them now, they might be MSI GeForce GTX 260s. Iain prefers the much higher-end Radeon HD 5870 1GB, of which there aren’t any right now it seems. :-)

# in your dev directory..
mkdir grub; cd grub

mkdir objconv; cd objconv
# "objconv" is required by the grub build. Its home page is http://www.agner.org/optimize
wget http://www.agner.org/optimize/objconv.zip
unzip objconv.zip
unzip source.zip
g++ -o objconv -O2 *.cpp
sudo cp objconv /usr/local/bin

# rehash if you are running csh
cd ..

# you may want to pick a more recent release; release_1_97 was the latest as of this writing
# http://svn.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/tags/?root=grub&sortby=date#dirlist
svn co svn://svn.sv.gnu.org/grub/tags/release_1_97
cd release_1_97
./autogen.sh
./configure --with-platform=efi --target=x86_64

# edit kern/misc.c and add after line 53:
# void *memcpy (void *dest, const void *src, grub_size_t n);
# void *memmove (void *dest, const void *src, grub_size_t n);

# edit symlist.c and add after line 19:
# #include <string .h>
make -j `hwprefs cpu_count`
sudo make install

# This all results in:
# /usr/local/bin/x86_64-grub-editenv
# /usr/local/bin/x86_64-grub-fstest
# /usr/local/bin/x86_64-grub-mkelfimage
# /usr/local/bin/x86_64-grub-mkfont
# /usr/local/bin/x86_64-grub-mkimage

Someone did point out in the comments about a TechCrunch article that Google’s stuff needs an internet connection:

Not so fast. This has yet to work. My mobile (Android, iPhone) has a tough time keeping a connection when driving. All on-line navigation systems that I know have failed so far.

Cool features but high risk of unhappy users due to mobile data availability and roaming issues.

Google said that when you plan your route, it precaches map data for that route to help alleviate this problem.

Wow, that would be awesome if it is true.

Personally, I am very happy that the TomTom car kit for the iPhone is available in Canada now. I would hope that the enhanced GPS antenna would be of benefit to *any* GPS-using app and not just TomTom’s app.

iPhone users are currently paying $30 for voice + $40 for data = $70/month, so for two smartphone users sharing one Rogers bill, this could save $50.

This doesn’t includes all the service charges, 911 fees, and postage and handling that Rogers charges, which probably whittles the real savings down to 52¢ or something. :-/

It shows up at the top of the search results for “family data plan”, but Rogers isn’t very rigorous about links into their site, so YMMV.

On top of all this, it is expected that Rogers will announce a new high-capacity data plan for phones/mobile that will top out at 15 GB/month for $150. Yikes!

HTC Android phone - click for larger

Rogers has announced [1] [2] availability of the HTC Dream and HTC Magic phones, both running Google’s Android OS, which is not dissimilar to the iPhone’s OS.

The major concern with the previous Android phone, the G1, was the battery life. It would last an hour. Apparently this is no longer such an issue. According to ZDNet Asia:

Inevitably the connected nature of many of the HTC Magic’s applications means that you’ll push the battery pretty hard. The quoted life is up to 7.5 hours of talk and 420 hours on standby. We found we needed to charge the battery every day at first, but after the initial burst of heavy use this settled down to a couple of days between charges.

The phones cost the same - $150 - and Rogers offers a $45/month, 500 MB data plan. Quite a bit less data than the 6 GB plan early iPhone users are currently enjoying.

Another phone on the horizon is the Nokia N97.