Posts by Steve

eSATA: A doomed stopgap?

This article is flame bait

Honestly, this is an idiotic article. It's not about the theoretical throughput of the bus.

eSATA supports Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI), Native Command Queueing (reordering requests to minimize latency), is much less CPU intensive, support RAID, and don't have to compete with other devices on the same (often underpowered) bus.

Firewire is DRM-friendly (I think it has HDCP support?) It's not going away.

USB is great for thumb drives, mice, and For Dummies(tm) who don't know any better than to plug a hard drive into it.

On an aside, OKGear enclosures for 2.5" and 3.5" drives sell for ~$25, and have a switch for eSATA and USB. Silicon Image has a cheap ExpressCard 2-port eSATA adaptor, with Windows and Linux drivers. They work great.

Asus lights up 1TB SSD Lamborghini laptop

Screen resolution

Wow, that is gaudy. I'd much prefer the Asus N80 or N50 as a desktop replacement (except for the eSATA port on the front - wtf?!), but their low screen res paired with pathetic viewing angles are a dealbreaker. Waiting for them to bring back a 14" with 1440x900 or a 15.4" with 1680x1050.

Sony revamps e-book Reader with reading lamp

Native format support?

I'd love to use it to read tech books, many of which are in PDF format. Anyone know how usable their PDF reader is?

Also, according to Sony's site, you have to convert html, Word, and RTF to a native format, from your computer (not the reader). So you can't just dump a bunch of documents to a memory card without doing some work upfront. They need to do some work here!

Also would like to see native chm (not hard once you have html) and something like Plucker for the PalmOS. It lets you (from your computer) sync multiple websites or RSS feeds that you define to a data file, then vomits it to your geektoy where a reader picks it up. That'd be a tolerable compromise to not having a net connection (which I agree with. Hell, it's a book reader, let's TRY to keep it cheap).

Palm launches £399 Treo Pro

@Mad Hacker

> I still miss some aspects of the Palm OS

> (copy and paste and syncing memos and todos.)

Chapura's KeyTasks syncs outlook tasks to an iPhone.

An iPhone with a keyboard?

Does the iPhone support...

folding bluetooth keyboards? I don't mind the stylus (palm) or thumbboard (treo) for most things, but love a full keyboard if I know I'm going to answer several emails, take notes for a meeting, write a document, etc. I also use it to control my HTPC.

Oh... right... Steve Jobs has to give permission for a vendor to publish drivers for the iPhone. That's fine. I'm still waiting for more 3rd party apps and PROPER outlook sync (I don't use an exchange server - can I still sync my tasks, notes, calendar, and emails please? To multiple computers? Works great on a Treo with keysuite).

WebLogic man goes full circle with SpringSource

@Wow

Guh? I come here for the biased sarcastic reporting.

Christian Bale signs for Terminator trilogy

Stahl out?

Bale is a great actor, but am I the only one that's going to miss Nick Stahl as John Connor? From his IMDB page, it looks like he would have been pretty easy to get...

Ruby project yields to Microsoft

@Motto

"Watch and learn as "Microsoft's effort" vanishes from the open source domain over time (assuming it's even there to begin with), leaving that company in charge of yet another proprietary, lock-in product."

You mean like how Microsoft killed Java with J++/J#? Actually, if it weren't for the good OSS frameworks that sprung up to save it, Sun would have managed to kill Java all on its own.

GMail shakes IMAP out of coma

Exchange

Actually, we use IMAP at my company, and love it. Except, what do people in a small workgroup who aren't blessed (cursed) with an Exchange server do for Calendar sharing? The few tools I've looked at seem to create new separate-but-equal calendar form/apps within Outlook, which would render PDA sync useless.

Harry Potter transcript claim doesn't convince

RE: another potter manuscript?

Yah, it's definitely not genuine, but I'm halfway through reading it anyway. It's on the usenet in the one of the ebooks groups. Great story, but silly character development and filler. I've read all of the HP books on a Palm. No, not a Treo - a T3 using WordSmith and a Times Roman font is as easy to read as a book, and far easier than lugging those encyclopedia-sized JKR books on the train coming to work. Far less embarrassing, too : >