My Digital Life

A Major Reason I Love Lenovo ThinkPads

I have been using ThinkPads since the late 90's and have always been very happy with the design, durability and IBM service. I feel I am probably in the minority but I love the trackpoint, it works for me not to have to raise my hands while typing to use the mouse functions.

I have not had to use the depot warranty service for several years now. At the beginning of this year the middle latch of my 2 ½ year old X60 tablet fell out and I lost it. The latch pushes up and down through the LCD panel case so you can lock the panel to the keyboard base in either standard clamshell mode or reverse tablet mode where the LCD is exposed.

The reversible latch (at the top of this picture).

I finally planned some time where I was not going to need my X60 tablet; I was going to be away for the weekend and planned on using my VAIO P. I called Lenovo/IBM (IBM currently provides the service in the US) on Tuesday, they shipped a return box which I received on Wednesday. Thursday evening I took my machine to the local UPS store; IBM received the machine on Friday, repaired and shipped it back on Saturday for delivery on Monday morning. This level of service makes the rather dull but business looking ThinkPad a winner and the fact that Lenovo has so far kept IBM's design philosophy and build quality is what keeps me coming back.

My X60 is 2 ½ years old; it has worked very well with Windows Vista and is working even better with Windows 7. At this point I have no need to move to a newer model for the foreseeable future…

The Microsoft vs. Apple ad war continues

As you have might have noticed in the last couple of weeks Microsoft and Apple have escalated their ad war, each by returning salvos on the key points they are trying to make.

Microsoft is attacking price for performance (the Apple tax), while Apple is drilling the virus vulnerability, bloatware (not really Microsoft's fault but their hardware partners), and reliability. Both Microsoft and Apple's point views are really based on perception, I could argue both ways, but when it comes down to the eco system (number of applications) and price point I would buy a Windows machine. As I have said many times my Lenovo X60 with Vista is rock solid. That does not mean I have not been eying a MacBook Air (the design is outstanding), but if I spent the money I would surely run bootcamp to have access to all the Windows applications I use. I just priced a Lenovo X301 on sale for $1389 with 128MB solid state drive and 3GB of DDR3 memory, although it only has 1.40GHZ processor which is slower than a 1.6GHZ 128GB MacBook Air ($2,299), but $800 cheaper. $800 for design and a 12.5% increase in processor speed, I am not sure I am game but others might see the value.

What I find interesting are the views from the Apple blogosphere, some the venom against Microsoft is pretty sad (just look at the comments on any Microsoft reporting), however I do have to commend Apple Insider for trying to take a more balanced approach. Even though they are slanted towards Apple, which I understand, they try to provide a both sides. Today they reported a study today by BrandIndex which found; Microsoft overtaking Apple in value perception when Microsoft started airing their ads. In the end the study does not tell us whether it will translate into sales for Microsoft and its partners, but I laughed when I read the last sentence; "Apple is still expected to ship fewer Macs in spring than it did last year but in line with expectations reflecting the economic reality rather than the effect of an attack by Microsoft". This is classic Apple to downplay expectation and probably a smart move.

Improving Vista performance with ReadyBoost on my Lenovo X60

Have you ever seen your laptop's hard drive light on continuously and the system act as it was frozen? The problem is that Vista caches key operating system and application data to the hard disk. The solution; ReadyBoost, this is a little known feature in Vista which allows you to substantially improve performance by moving the cached data to faster flash memory found on USB 2.0 or card based flash memory. I finally decided to try this feature on my X60, and I can happily report that the performance increase is quite substantial, especially in three areas:

• Program loading and swapping when many applications are running
• Coming out of suspend
• Screen rotation to use the X60 as a tablet

If you have used a flash memory card or USB device, I am sure you have noticed the "Speed up my system" item in the AutoPlay pop up that is displayed when the system recognizes the device.

Every time I have clicked on the "Speed up my system" item in the past, I have been told that the device does not have the required performance. I performed some brief research on Tom Archer's Vista blog and found you need high speed flash memory. You need a device which supports 2.5MB/sec throughput for 4K random reads and 1.75MB/sec throughput for 512K random writes. The Lenovo X60 has an SD flash card slot, so I decided to use a SanDisk Extreme III card which boasts 20MB/sec read/write speeds. I could never find the basis for the published performance numbers, what block size they used and whether it was based on random or sequential operations. My suggestion is to go for the highest performing flash memory you can find. In the SanDisk product line, that would be the Extreme III. I found inexpensive ones on eBay, a 2GB Extreme III card can be had for less than $15 and 4GB for less $30. You should match the flash memory size to the amount of memory you have installed in your system. I just upgraded my X60 to 4GB of memory, so I purchased a brand new 4GB SanDisk Extreme III card for $26.

The ReadyBoost properties display for my SanDisk Extreme III card. I used the recommended 3780MB reserved space.

This is a simple and inexpensive to improve you Vista performance.

Tom Archer also has posted an FAQ of information he gathered from the Windows Client Performance team.

Office 2007 Word has been quietly updating the blogging feature. This is my first real post with it and it looks like we are at a point where it is really usable.

Ramblings for the week of April 28st in My Digital Life

I decided to annotate the title of this weekly post with the word "ramblings" since it more clearly describes the content I write on Monday mornings.

I received my SanDisk 8GB micro SDHC card for my Tilt from Digital Media Outlet for $56 and it includes a USB adapter. It works well with the AT&T Tilt, I just copied the content of my 2GB card to the 8GB card and was on my way...I will be using it heavily this week transferring the contents of my Sony camcorder so I can email selected content to the Kodak Gallery.

I may have found an issue with my Dell XPS 720 disk configuration which might be causing the blue screen. When I installed the RAID 1 array, I use for data, I installed the drives in two bays next to each other without looking at the controller setup. There are 2 SATA controllers in the system and my RAID configurations was using both. Theoretically it should not matter and would provide a redundancy on the controller front, but you never know how the nVidia RAID drivers are architected. I decided to try placing both disks on the same controller, the system seems more stable (it has been up for over 2 days). The jury is out and I will have to see how things go this week.

As HD content includes more and Dolby Digital audio tracks, it is becoming a real pain to switch the Directv DVR audio output between standard PCM and Dolby Digital. I believe the problem is with my older Yamaha AV reciever. It does not automatically detect and switch modes between signal types. So when we switch to a program with PCM audio and the DVR is in Dolby Digital mode, the receiver is still processing the audio as Dolby Digital (that is what output is tagged as) although the content of the stream is PCM. The audio is so low that you cannot listen to it. This off course is only a theory, however from my forum research it seems to be a fairly common issue with certain receivers. I will have to test with a newer receiver to validate. I will probably try to stick with a Yamaha receiver,  I always found them to be solid good sounding units. The local audio/video chain has a 30 day return policy so I should be in good shape, they also match the big box store pricing...

This week:

• Continue work, my review of SBSH Mobile Software Facade application. This is a smartphone (Windows Mobile Standard) today screen replacement.
• Start a review of Slingplayer Mobile for Windows Mobile.

The week of April 21st in My Digital Life

Two weeks, I had issues with my iGo Juice charger not charging my AT&T Tilt and my X60. It was a bad cable between the charger and the devices. The cable is braided and looks heavy duty but probably one of the connectors went bad. I received a new one for $19.99 and everything is working fine. Along with my Lenovo charger going bad, two power supply in three weeks is very bizarre.

I use Wikipedia as a source of reference for my blog. Encyclopedia Britannica has noticed that a lot of bloggers are doing that and is offering the service free to web publishers. I heard about it from techcrunch via twitter. I signed up but have not heard back, apparently since they got the publicity they have been swamped.

My WebIS Pocket Informant 8 (review) vs Birdsoft's Xtreme Agenda (my review) comparison has been published today on pocketnow.com.

I ordered a SanDisk 8GB micro SDHC card for my Tilt from Digital Media Outlet for $56 and it includes a USB adapter. I will use it during my vacation to copy still pictures from my Sony camcorder's Memory Stick to the micro SDHC card using my Delkin USB Bridge. I will then be able upload the pictures to the Kodak Gallery using my Tilt. We will have to see how well this work since I have not yet figured out how to filter the copying.

I am still having some issues with my Dell XPS 720 blue screening and coming in and out of suspend for no apparent reason. I will have to allocate time to further research these issues and probably call tech support...

This week:

• Start my review of SBSH Mobile Software Facade application. This is a smartphone (Windows Mobile Standard) today screen replacement.

The week of April 14th in My Digital Life

Last week I had issues with my iGo Juice charger not charging my AT&T Tilt and my Lenovo X60 charger going bad. My Tilt charged fine using the HTC charger. I received a new charger for my X60 in less than 24 hours from IBM (tough to beat this level of service), then my iGo charger started not to power my X60. I think it is the output cord and I have ordered a new one, maybe that was the problem charging my Tilt although I was able to charge my iPhone and my Verizon SMT5800. It is very bizarre that I am having all these power supply problems at once. The iGo has been very dependable over the years (I think it is at least 4 years old) but it may be coming to the end of its life.

I have not used twitter very much this week other than watching the incessant although amusing rantings from scobliezer. There seems to be a class of highly read bloggers that pretend not to take themselves seriously, but their continual banter leads me to believe that they do. I am  also following WMExperts, they are trying to reach out in all sorts of ways using the latest blogosphere technologies and it very interesting to watch. But what makes twitter easy to follow is Rod Begbie Vista Gadget, without it I doubt I would be plugged in to twitter as much. On my side of twitter I have not reported much, I find I don't have the time or inclination in generating clutter and probably will just use it to report on events I attend or write random thoughts that don't merit a post.

Vista SP1 has been rock solid on my X60, however I can't say the same with the XPS 720, I have had two lockups this week with no real reasons. I did get a bluescreen dump on one event which supposedly pointed to a disk problem. I ran the disk check utility and it found no issues. I may run HDDregen to perform a surface scan just to be sure.

This week:

• Continue working on a WebIS Pocket Informant 8 (review) vs Birdsoft's Xtreme Agenda (my review) comparison.

The week of April 7th in My Digital Life

I am writing this post as a passenger driving up I95 back to Washington after a long weekend in South Carolina. Verizon Wireless broadband network is getting better and better. There are more areas with EVDO on I95 than last time we took this trip. I did run into a problem with my AT&T Tilt, it won't charge. I am using my iGo charger and had what seems to be a similar problem with my Wing. I had to replace the battery on the Wing and initially use the HTC charger to get it going again . Hopefully this is the same issue. I have been using my iPhone extensively this weekend, I wish I had the 2.0 firmware with Exchange ActiveSync.

My Lenovo X60 with Vista SP1 has been running smoothly. This is the first time since I can remember that I have gone over a week without rebooting. I usually just close the lid on my laptop which is set to suspend. With XP SP2 I use to go a week without issue, however with Vista at about 4 to 5 days I would invariably had a problem which resolved itself after a rebo

I had a User Access Control (UAC) issue with Vista SP1 on my Dell XPS 720. It seems that SQL Server Express which I use with Microsoft Office Accounting does not work well with UAC. Before SP1 I ran with UAC turned off, but when you install SP1 it turns it back on and I had not noticed it until I ran into Office Accounting not working. There is a work around on the SQL Express MSDN blog but turning off UAC was easier. I may go back and apply the work around later since it is a good idea to have UAC turned on.

I have made some subtle changes to my blog layout. The right column now includes my twitter stream which I am trying out. The twitter concept of micro blogging seems to be catching on, Wikipedia's definition is:

Micro-blogging is a form of blogging that allows users to write brief text updates (usually less than 200 characters  and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, MP3 or the web.

I think it is an interesting concept to report during an event, but on a daily basis I am not sure I see a lot of value yet. It would be nice if it had a way to incorporate multimedia content like pictures or audio. I am subscribing to Robert Scobble twitter stream, he is over the top (when does he relax) and sounds like he is aiming for the title described in a NY Times article yesterday: "In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop" (link).

My twitter micro-blog is http://twitter/mydigitallife. and you can follow on the right sidebar of my blog. I am leaning towards turning this feature on and off I probably won't use it on a daily basis.

The twitter Vista gadget  from Rod Begbie is very nice. Here it is undocked from the side bar. You can also see my 9+ day uptime in the sidebar.

The new beta features of TypePad in comments and archives are active on my blog. They provide next and previous markers at the bottom of the page to make navigation easier.

My review of trapster has been posted on pocketnow.com.

This week:

• Start working on a WebIS Pocket Informant 8 (review) vs Birdsoft's Xtreme Agenda (my review) comparison.

The week of March 31st in My Digital Life

My Lenovo X60 with Vista SP1 has been running smoothly since I installed SP1 on Friday. I have no issues to report. I did have a strange problem crop up on my Dell XPS 720 yesterday; Excel and Word 2007 failed to load (invalid program file). I initiated the Office 2007 repair, but that failed as well and blue screened the system. The dump analysis revealed a hard drive problem. I ran a check disk (ran without finding any issues), however the Office 2007 repair still failed. I had to reinstall Office 2007 which prompted me with the fact that an uninstall did not successfully complete, however it looks like the reinstall cleaned everything up. The good thing is that all my settings were saved, especially in Outlook which I customized quite a bit. Bizarre, I may run checkdisk again today to make sure my drive is ok.

This week the CTIA 2008 conference is in Las Vegas. This is the love to hate conference. It is sponsored by all the major cellular carriers (CTIA is their lobbying organization) which try to restrict our use of advanced technology on their networks, yet it is a forum for all that advanced technology. Microsoft will supposedly announce Windows Mobile 6.1, but who knows when we will see it since the carriers control release. This is where the Apple iPhone distribution model shines, when they provide a release date, all users can expect to see it on that date (can't wait until June...). We will have to watch out for any other announcements.

I am in a beta TypePad program to help enhance blog rendering and will be making what looks to be some minor tweaks to this blog. I use advanced templates which means I have to manually insert the new functions provided by TypePad. TypePad is working on mobile device rendering which won't come a day too soon in my book.

This week:

• My trapster.com review should be published on pocketnow.com this week.
• Start working on a WebIS Pocket Informant 8 (review) vs Birdsoft's Xtreme Agenda (my review) comparison.

Windows Vista SP1 Part 8 - X60 Success

I have  been running SP1 on the X60 now for over 12 hours without issues. All of the Lenovo custom on screen displays work. It seems a little zippier but that could just be my imagination. The Windows Experience Index is the same at 3.1 because of the poor graphics performance, this tablet was not built for graphic so it is not an issue.

The Windows Experience Index under computer properties.

The X60 detailed scores reveals that the 7200 RPM hard drive does the job with a score of 5.

The XPS 720 detailed scores are obviously much higher than the X60 with the Nvidia graphics being the star performers. The XPS 720 has been running fine with SP1 for almost a week now and the USB resume issue seems to be cleared up.

Windows Vista SP1 Part 7 - Windows Update offers up SP1

I am glad I did not have to time manually upgrade the X60 to SP1. This morning I brought up Windows Update and checked for updates. SP1 magically appeared.

I will  be applying the update today.

To recap, I had to install the new Intel Graphics driver pack version 1.58 (download link) in zip format (igdkmd32.sys version 7.14.10.1437) and the UPEK fingerprint reader driver pack version 2.9 (tcusb.sys version 1.9.2.111). I installed both drivers manually using update driver feature in the device manager (see my post here).

Thanks to Mark and Kevin for posting the links to the updated drivers.