Delightful Dell Inspiron 14z

My favorite colors are brown and yellow but I got a lot of geeky stuff now in red.

My latest cherry red item is a Dell Inspiron 14z. I like it... a lot. It's a 14-inch laptop that packs all the necessary features I require. Let me enumerate these features: a widescreen HD WVGA display, a DVD+R dual-layer optical drive, a long-lasting battery, a 1.3 megapixel integrated Web camera, dual microphones, HDMI and VGA outputs, 802.11 a/b/g/draft-N wireless LAN and Gigabit Ethernet LAN connections, Bluetooth 2.0, three USB 2.0 ports (although I can sure use more), and a 7-in-1 media card reader.


This Dell replaces my two other notebooks with detachable optical drives. Because I always want my notebook to be light and slim, I went for models without the built-in DVD-R drives. I now realize it's not the most convenient design and the slim-fit proposition erodes when I have to lug the detachable optical drive in my bag anyway. Plus it needs an extra cable to connect to the notebook PC, and I hate cables so much!

The Dell Inspiron 14z solves that problem without being bulky. Sure the optical drive added a bit of weight, but not by much as the entire unit weighs 4.4lbs.

Under its hood is a 1.30 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 processor with a 3GB of memory, 4 GB of DDR3 RAM (supports up to 6 GB), a 320 GB 7200 RPM hard drive, an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X4500HD with 512MB of video RAM, and Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit OS. I'm iffy about the OS so I will likely move it up to Windows 7.

Now for the cons: the cherry red plastic cover is a fingerprint magnet and it also got what some geeks call "crotch speakers". Although stereo, the sound quality suffers somehow when the speakers are hidden that way. The keyboard is nice but I wish its backlit as I do a lot of typing at night under low light conditions.

True the Dell Inspiron 14z doesn't have all the bells and whistles present in more superior and super geek notebook PCs, but its looks and acceptable performance can make me whistle. However at P51,499, I also saw red of a different kind. :)

Rewind No. 2: Palm and Globe Handyphone for mobile e-mail

This print ad came out in February 2000 in a local IDG publication announcing the marriage between a mobile phone service and the hottest gadget back then: the Palm personal digital assistant.

In a bid to make e-mail mobile, Globe partnered with Palm and ran this ad that said:

"E-mail solutions in the palm of your hands! Now you can retrieve e-mail anytime, anywhere using the best value in personal organization: the Palm Handheld Electronic Organizer. Now, you can carry and access all the information you need -- calendar, addresses, to-do lists, memos, expenses, and other applications all at the touch of a button.By simply subscribing to the Globe Handyphone Mobile Office (HMO) and G-Net, and installing the Global Pulse in your Palm Connected Organizer, you can send and receive e-mail anytime, anywhere! Now you've got the Internet right in your pocket!"

Ten years later and we could only smile at this vintage ad that pimped the idea of mobile e-mail using two devices. The two men shown in the ad were made to look very pleased with this tech wizardry from Globe and Palm as one of them accessed his e-mail, calendar and contacts in this format inside the movie house! What a decade could do. Now we only need one mobile device -- a smartphone that not only could access anything on the Web, it could also play movies!

The ad also quoted a promo price for the Palm IIIx and Global Pulse bundle for P17,580; cost of cellular phone not included. Not only has technology improved by leaps and bounds since this ad came out, the price for this kind of connectivity has also gone down. But that's only true as long as we don't fall for the most-hyped smartphone brands around. ;)

Philippines' First Automated Election

Like many Filipinos, I lined up today under the sweltering heat of the sun to cast my vote. It's the Philippines' first automated national elections making it a historical event in more ways than one.

I went to my polling place with my 76-year old mother and my 6-year old nephew. My mom, being a senior citizen, didn't have to queue and she finished voting in no time. I lined up at 11:25 a.m and I thought it was a short line because I was not that far from the class room door of my precinct. Little did I know my line was leading to a "waiting room" where voters like me would have to sit it out until we could be accommodated next door where the actual voting was taking place.

A man next to me grumbled that the system was "pangit" (ugly). I just gave him a weak smile because aside from a jug of cold water I also brought with me a lot of patience. It was 1:00 p.m. when I was finally asked to move to the next classroom to vote.

I have my digital camera with me because I really want to document the process. To be safe, I also brought my press ID but I didn't wear it because it might call some unnecessary attention to me.

After the teacher gave me my ballot and a folder to cover it, I tried to take a chair near the PCOS machine. However, another voter beat me to it so I had to settle to one that's near the door. I still managed to take few pictures though before I finally focused on the task at hand which was to vote.

I didn't even cover my ballot. I didn't care who saw who I voted for. I only voted for a president, vice president, 7 senators, one Party List and a mayor. Then I walked over to the polling clerk manning the PCOS machine. That was when I managed to take this short video where a voter had her ballot fed to the machine with no problem, followed by her getting a drop of indelible ink on her index finger. I wanted to take a close-up picture of the machine, but I was stopped and had to turn off my camera. It's okay because I already have at least one good shot and this video.



All in all, it was a relatively painless experience for me. I was glad my precinct didn't have the technical problems with the PCOS machine unlike in other places around the country. Except for the long wait that makes me wish I'm already a senior citizen just for today, I was glad I didn't skip this election.

When I got back to my car, I turned on the radio for some news and there were a lot of talk about election hotspots. I thought, in this heat, all areas are election "hot spots". No wonder people were fainting and one man even died from heart attack brought about by the debilitating heat.

Automated election fever

I'm quite excited to go to my voting precinct on Monday when we elect our 15th president and other executive, legislative and local officials. It will be our first automated election and I want to get my hands on one of those Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines. It's been a long, long journey for the Philippines to computerize its elections. When I started my IT journalism career in 1990 there was already efforts to junk the manual counting of votes and canvassing of election returns. I still vividly remember one headline we ran: "YORAC SAYS NO TO ARINC SYSTEM". The late Haydee Yorac was then Commissioner of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and ARINC, if I remember it correctly, joined the bidding to automate the election, but it obviously didn't materialize.

In 2003, a consortium called Mega Pacific also made a bid to computerize the elections. But alleged flaws or irregularities in the bidding process led several groups, including those from the IT sector, to ask the Comelec to nullify the P1.2 billion contract it awarded to Mega Pacific.

Now, we have Smartmatic-Total Information Management (TIM) as the technology provider for the country’s first ever nationwide automated elections that will cost the country about P11 billion. A great digital divide will be crossed on Monday, when all Filipinos who will vote -- young and old, rich and poor -- get to use the same technology to make their voices heard. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this first automated election will be relatively successful.

My two cents worth

I started this blog December 2009 and, so far, it's the longest one that I've kept alive! I probably have two other blogs gathering web in the...err..web :)

I like this blog now and for the first time, too, I thought I should also try earning something out of it. I've heard and read a lot about how people earn a good living writing blogs. I don't think it's the route I'll take to very early retirement, yet imagine how tickled I was when my Adsense account got activated and soon enough I earned my first two cents!! Yipee!! Maybe it's a give-away amount from Google, I don't know. But whoever clicked today to give me my milestone two cents, thank you so much!!


Cheers!

My tech bubble

I have had harrowing weeks lately, the kind that I have not experienced in a long time. A project I undertook was wasting MY OWN money and people who shouldn't be involved torpedoed it until I backed down just to get them off my case. At a point when it was so torturesome, I went online and worked quietly on my PC. Instantly, I felt calm. It's just me and my PC and we can go anywhere on the Web like it's an open field where nuisances from the real world can't follow. It's interesting how many times I feel technology is giving me hell, but when I was really having a bad time, it provided solitude and an artificial bubble where I could be left alone even for awhile.