Well, if you've read earlier, I got myself a new mini desktop, so it took me a while to get all my favourite apps, so here are the list of things I installed:

1. Opera 10 Beta – my browser of choice. Main attraction points are the integrated RSS reader, search creator, bookmark grouping. the start bar, auto synchronization & mouse gestures! And now Turbo Mode is pretty cool, basically it compresses the page for you if you're on slow network on their own server & so you access their fast servers instead.

2. Teracopy – accelerate your file transfers and also to a certain extent, reduce wear & tear in your HDD due to larger buffer being used. Also, it is smart enough to skip files that just won't copy and continue with the rest, or even pause file transfers!

3. Media Player Classic with K-lite Codec Pack, Real Alternative, Quicktime Alternative – plays everything you can throw on it! I used to prefer VLC but it seems that it doesn't take advantage of the dual-core processor like MPC does.

4. Avira AntiVir – free anti-virus with one of the best detection rates out there, but the best thing is that it's very light on resources!

5. 7-zip – the all-in-one archiving/unzipping utility which opens any archive!

6. Foxit PDF Reader – opens PDFs much quicker than the Adobe ones, a real time-saver. Also, you can add notes too!

7. ImgBurn – no-fuss image burner. small in size too!

8. Revo Uninstaller – uninstalls everything including registry entries! Important tool to keep the system running small & efficiently.

9. TightVNC – remote control your other computer and it works on Linux too! Give your home PC a domain name & you can access it from practically anywhere in the world with an internet connection! Alternatively, you can check out LogMeIn too.

10. Truecrypt – on-the-fly desktop encryption, works on a single file, a whole partition, or even a whole USB stick! Perfect for storing sensitive info, Edison Chen should have used this to store his stash =P

11. Launchy – a search engine for your computer. Saves alot of time for sorting out files for me since I just dump everything into 1 document folder, and I can search all the pdfs, xls, doc documents in there! Also it indexes your start menu, so you'll never need to access your start menu again! Furthermore, it functions as a calculator as well!

12. Microsoft Time Zone – track time in multiple countries! A truly indispensable tool for me!

Went around shopping for a netbook as a light entertainment machine mainly for surfing the net & watching movies but I found this little gem in Tesco for RM788 instead! This model, CQ2120L has exactly the same specs as the CQ2035D model (sold for RM988) except that it doesn't come bundled with Windows Vista Home Basic.

The specs were pretty OK for the price:

• Intel® ATOM™ 330 Processor
• 1.60 GHz, 512 KB L2 Cache, 533 MHz
• Foxconn H-I945-ITX Iwith ntel® 945GC Express Chipset
• 1GB DDR2 RAM
• 160GB 7200rpm SATA HDD
• Intel GMA950 Graphics
• DVD+/-R/RW 16X 12X +/-DL LS 12X RAM SuperMulti SATA drive
• Realtek 8102 10/100 BaseT LAN
• Realtek ALC662 onboard High Definition 6-channel audio
• SD, MMC, SDHC, MMC Plus, MS, MS-Pro Card Reader
• Agere Systems PCI-SV92EX Soft Modem

But i guess the reason I went for it is due to its looks & small size (it's as big as a small DVD player) as it doesn't look too bad next to the LCD TV. Also, it's really quiet and it consumes very little power as it only comes with a 65W power supply!

Anyway, I installed Windows XP Professional over it, but it seems that 5 components were not detected & it took me some time to find it:

1. GMA950 graphics card driver – on Intel's site.
2. System & chipset driver – on Foxconn's site.
3. HDA audio driver – on Realtek's site
5. Modem driver – it's not listed on Agere's site, but you can find it on Windows Update.

If you need any more drivers, you might find that the Foxconn 45CSX motherboard is pretty similar and you can check out more drivers over there.

No Room for Expansion =P

Well, if you crack open the case, you'll find that there's not much space for expansion though, with only 1 bank for the RAM i.e. you need to take out the 1GB RAM and install a higher capacity one (but motherboard manufacturer listed 2GB RAM as max), also PCIe slot was already taken by modem which I guess you can take it out and replace it with something else but with a pretty cramped place inside, there might not be room for a graphics card. Also 5.25" bay already taken up by optical drive & 3.5" drive by the HDD. Furthermore, the ATOM processor is soldered onto motherboard giving you no choice to upgrade the processor.

Backplate/Connections:

Unfortunately, it doesn't have much connectivity options, there's a VGA port, 2 PS/2 ports, 2 USB ports in the back, another 2 USB ports in the front, 1 LAN port, 1 modem jack port & 1 audio jack set (line in & out, microphone) on both the back side & front. But if it's just gonna serve as a light entertainment machine for the living room, I doubt you need that many connections.

Performance:

This is the hard part since I'm too lazy to go do the benchmarks and all, and afterall, this is a very low powered machine. But still the ATOM 330 should be 2x as fast as the ATOM N270 which is fitted onto netbooks 'cos it's just 2x of it. Anyway, I tried playing Halo on it with the max settings and it's kinda jerky but playable, probably making like 17fps. Movies play great and multi-tasking with browsers and Office apps (MS Office 2003 tested) were a breeze.

But if you wanna read some kinda performance review which is similar, you can probably check out this link on Neoseeker.

Conclusion:

Certainly a value-for-money buy suitable for the living room if you're not an avid gamer. I think the offer in Tesco ends on 17th June, so go get it now otherwise, you have to pay an extra RM100 for it in other stores.

This is what I call a truly Malaysian design! A hook for your teh/nescafe ais/soya bean/etc…

That's available in the new Proton Exora, seems to be a practical car for big families!

dosh = money in brit speak. doshbank = moneybank

so in the current times of financial difficulty, what better than an aggregator for the best deals online?

Currently, the site aggregates the latest deals from hotUKdeals.com and moneysavingexpert.com (MSE) and discount codes from retailmenot.com

If you have any more sites you think should be included, feel free to contact me about it.

My Chinese is nearly non-existent but one of my friends recently had troubles showing Wordpress in his blog. The main issue is that for most systems when you create a database, the collation is set at "latin1_swedish_ci" as default. You'll need to change that to "utf8_unicode_ci" for all the tables where you plan to include Chinese characters in.

Googling for it doesn't seem to help either, but in the end we found a workaround, which is kinda lengthy but pretty easy.

Here's a step-by-step run-down:

1. Login to cPanel, run phpmyadmin:

2. Select the Wordpress database you're using on the left side panel:

3. You'll see something like this, might defer from yours as some plugins will add their own tables:

4. Anyway, on this screen, under the "collation" column, if you see latin1_swedish_ci, you'll need to change that to utf8_unicode_ci!!! Click on the button 2nd from left on the column that says "Action" shown below:

5. You'll reach a page that says Structure as shown below, check everything that says latin1_swedish_ci, then click on the edit button which looks like a pencil:

6. You'll reach another page like the one below, change everything to utf8_unicode_ci, then click Save:

7. Then, when you finished saving, goto the tab that says "Operations":

8. Change again setting to utf8_unicode_ci, then press "Go":

9. Repeat steps for all that are not "utf8_unicode_ci". You should be able to write in Chinese characters now.

Never really liked iTunes but thought Genius playlists would be worth trying out again since Pandora started shutting out the rest of the world.

So, what's the verdict on Genius? Not quite on the same level as Pandora, seems to pick songs based on Genre it is listed in rather than the "DNA" of the song like Pandora. But I guess that would change in future, when millions of ppl upload their preferences.

But the surprise for me are the visualizations! It's very nice especially when playing on the 32" LCD TV in the room!

Wasn't really too interested to install Safari until I saw the above where Apple claims Opera loads HTML even slower than IE & Firefox!!! How could the fastest browser in the world be that slow? Are the results doctored or is the benchmarking software inaccurate? So I installed it and then tried loading Apple's Start Page:

If you see the pic above, you would have noticed that Opera loaded 1st, and Safari only managed to load the navigation bars. Note that Safari had the head start first with its default start page, then I went on to Opera to enter the address!!!

Also while checking for memory consumption, it seems that Opera while running more functions consumes less memory than Safari! Not to mention I'm running Mail + Feeds + several UserJS scripts in Opera!

So if you wanna test it yourself, try here – Opera 9.21 & Safari.

It was a tough choice but I finally got me self a camera, the Lumix FX07:

Forte: Wide-angle lenses, amazing macro mode, lotsa settings to tinker around, optical image stabilization, small, wide range of ISO settings: 100 –> 3200!

Achilles' heel: "Watercolor effect" when blown up to 7 Megapixels (esp. on higher ISO settings) – overcompensation by image processor I guess, but not so visible if you print it out. Night pics w/o tripod impossible with ISO > 200!

Anyway, some sample pics for those interested:

I never really caught on to the Pandora bandwagon till recent news that they have shut down access to countries outside the US due to copyright issues, but man, THIS is the future of radio or probably portable players (Creative – you should try to integrate this into your mp3 players)!

Basically in Pandora, you get to choose what you wanna listen to and Pandora intelligently seeks out the "genes" of the music you like and picks a random song which you may like. You can further finetune your music selection list by giving a thumbs up or down for the music it plays, and boy, I've been discovering like new songs and artists almost everyday!

If only we can do this in Malaysia, that would be so great!

Saw an article on how to disable snap.com previews permanently, but in firefox.

Here's how to do it in Opera 9:

-Tools -> "Advanced" tab.
-Click on "Content" on the left.
-Click "Blocked Content" button.
-Add http://spa.snap.com/*

Done. Snap Preview begone!

No restarts required.