Ikea Laptop Workstation
We just love the look of this thing the Unclutterer turned us onto. It is available in white or red and is perfect for places like a guest room or a kitchen. Current list price at IKEA is $59.99. Link to Product Page.
After 11 years, the Federal Communications Commission order mandating Cablecards took effect on Sunday, July 1st.
It requires all major cable operators to give up cable boxes that they lease to subscribers at a significant profit and replace them with ones that will accept a CableCard…an decoder that plugs into their box or any other equipment that will accept it. Customers will be able to use the CableCard, which they must provide, into equipment from any company. Cable companies have delayed on this decision because most subscribers have paid the cost of their box many times over.
Currently, the options for hardware are limited. Few televisions include CableCard slots…no computer cards sold commercially do…and the only company that has supported it and promises to support the new generation of cards is Tivo.
Once the technology is more mainstreamed…consumers could purchase cable-ready devices that could do much more than a box from the local cable provider. Features could include the integration of internet data onto the screen with the television signal, boxes that also act as media servers for media stored on computers, etc.
The accusation of companies like Comcast is that the requirement amounts to a tax…as they will not absorb the cost, but pass it along to use as the consumers…Conversely, since this mandate has been delayed so long….cable companies had plenty of time to phase in the technology over time and devote proper resources to it.
Our issue is this…you go out and buy a television. It includes a tuner you can’t use because you have to rent a $10 a month box from the cable company. What is the point of a tuner in the TV anymore?
Dell will be offering systems with Linux, based on a customer demand. Three systems will be offering it to start…the XPS 410N(Starting price $849) and E520N(Starting price $599) desktop machines, and the E1505n(Starting price $599) notebook.
Initially, Dell will offer a subset of the component options they support on the three systems and will continue to work with vendors to improve the stability of the associated Linux drivers in order to offer more options as part of a longer-term goal to increase the number of drivers that work at the kernel level.
They have a video available about Linux from StudioDell entitled Linux 101: What’s all the Fuss?.
Ubuntu Linux is available free of charge for download for your existing systems at the Ubuntu Website. Ubuntu is divided into desktop and server editions released every six months. For those of you interested in switching to Linux for daily use…you might want to give it a try. We use Fedora Linux ourselves…but we are creatures of habit.
U3, as we said…is gone. Sandisk, which owns the product…has decided to discontinue the product. We always had a problem with it. It tended to take too long to load…was much too slow.
We had recommended the menu launcher and accompanying open-source software from www.portableapps.com. The menu takes very little in terms of system resources and it is optional…the programs there can run without it.
Sandisk, however, has announced it will replace U3 with a new software and hardware solution. For this, they have joined forces with Microsoft. The new offering is expected to be commercially available in the second half of 2008. It will include TrustedFlash security technology. TrustedFlash embeds digital rights management software on the card instead of the player. We are not about to embark on another diatribe against the inconvenience of DRM…but having it on the media instead of the player can be an advantage.
GigaOm directed us to another product…MojoPac…which we hadn’t previously noticed. MojoPac allows you to install almost any application to a USB 2.0 compliant storage device, including iPods, USB hard drives, USB flash memory drives, etc. One downside is that the current version requires administrative privileges on the Host PC. U3 did not, nor do the PortableApps menu launcher. MojoPac is working on the issue for future versions though…although most solutions require the cooperation of the administrator.
We’ve been experimenting with bootable USB drives that can either act using the PortableApps series of open source portable applications or boot a complete Linux or Windows based operating system…We’ll have more on this later.
Dell will once again be offering Windows XP on new machines, as well as Windows Vista. On their suggestion website, a plea to restore the option for XP racked up more than 10,700 votes. It will immediately offer XP again as an option for four models of Inspiron notebooks and two models of its Dimension desktops.
Dell has also said it plans to offer Linux as an option…also due to increased demand. It feels the issue is driver support, however. Their goal is to have all open-source drivers, and that means choosing components with such drivers available, or with the understanding the manufacturer will make them available. Currently, Linux device support can be hit or miss. If they sell a system…it must be preconfigured to work with all the hardware.
We have an Inspiron notebook that we loaded with Fedora Core linux…our current preference. It works flawlessly…after a slightly higher learning curve. Each component had to be configured.
You may notice our Smarthome button available on all pages. We have not spent much time talking about them. Smarthome is a computer that specializes in home technology…including surveillance, lighting and appliance control, and so on.
They come to our mind today because we called in an electrician to fix the lighting system we’d failed to succeed in installing ourselves. The system uses X1o-based technology.
X10 is a standard that uses signals sent along the power lines. One can also use radio transmissions to trigger the powerline signals. X10 devices include dimmable lamp modules, appliance modules, outlets, and light switches…as well as a variety of control mechanisms.
One of X10’s problems is that is prone to interference from other devices. However, it remains popular despite this. The most common X10 switches are the inexpensive ones sold by X10 Technology, Radio Shack, and even Smarthome itself. These switches are easy to install, but are prone to failure. They are however a good starting point if you just want to experiment.
For reliability, try Leviton or Smarthome constructed X10 switches. They are a bit more expensive, but come at varying levels of quality…all of which are more reliably. Smarthome itself has been promoting its Insteon line of products. Insteon products are backwards compatible with X10, so you don’t have to rip out your existing wiring, should you have it. But they also send radio signals which are repeated by every Insteon device.
However, setting up Insteon is a bit more expensive than their X10 offerings, and their older X10 only lines are being discounted now…so it is a good time to click the link above and buy.
Thus, we come to the reason why we called an electrician. We have no trouble installing single switches, however, three-way and four-way switches(where two or more switches control a single light) continue to elude us. That and the fact that whoever wired our home originally did it in an…as the electrician put it…”unconventional way.” We hope to master the skill someday. Fortunately, with the diagnostic assistance of the electrician, everything is working perfectly.
We take a targeted approach to home automation. It is set for certain lights. The lights on our exterior porch are set on a motion sensor that trigger the inside hall lights. In one room, remote switching is used to avoid installing a second switch in the room. When combined with a security system, we could extend this even more.
Give it a look. Feel free to comment with your home automation stories or questions. We may feature them in future posts.
Last month, the Consumerist asked if the DRM phenomenon drove well-meaning people to piracy. We invite you to review the story of one man who did so despite his best efforts.
We may not be the right people to discuss DRM. We have never purchased music from an online store and we refuse to buy an iPod. But when hearing something like this…
There I sat, a loyal music fan who has shelled out actual money to a business that is supposed to be having financial problems, and the best they can do is tell me to wander the streets of Seattle looking for different internet providers who might allow me to download the music that I have already paid for, music that I have spent the better part of three house trying to listen to, and which is still unusable?
We tend to think we made the right decision. We rip our music from CDs, make plans to, but fail to convert our old cassettes and vinyl to MP3. But we have withdrawn from online music downloads because of the above…it just seems too complicated to us. And iPods…well…we bought a 1GB Sandisk MP3/WMA flash memory player for $19.99 after rebate. We haven’t had any problems with it.
There are people who are willing to deal with the restrictions of music in order to buy through these companies. We salute them. There are also people who find ways around it, and those who pirate. We wish them luck in their endeavors as well.
In good news, the EMI Group will be selling premium DRM free music via Itunes in May, excepting Beatles tunes. Higher-quality music files, which will play on any computer and any digital-audio player, will not replace the copy-protected EMI music currently sold through iTunes. They will still offer the standard 99-cent iTunes downloads. DRM-free will be 30 cents more. Existing customers will be able to upgrade. Full albums will costs the same, DRM or non-DRM.
Tests by EMI indicated the higher-quality, DRM-free songs outsold the DRM ones ten to one. Steve Jobs of Apple has advocated the elimination of DRM in the past, and this seems to indicate that the recording companies are reconsidering the current situation.
How often do you hear that line?
Australian news reported that Federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced on February 20th that standard incandescent bulbs would be phased out within three years. Details of the plan, including costs, will be made available later. It is felt the change could cut greenhouse gases by 800,000 tons a year by 2012.
In Canada, Ontario, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick considered banning the incandescent light bulb, following Australia’s lead. After all, one part of the former British Empire can’t be more progressive than another.
And the United States doesn’t want to think Canada could be more progressive than it…so CBS news reports, California may also ban the light bulbs. Most light bulb manufacturers support the phasing out of the bulbs, but at their pace, feeling that it is unnecessary to ban older bulbs to force the issue.
We ourselves are fond of the bulbs, although we do have a few halogens in certain places for which there are not yet better replacements. We’ve been experimenting with dimmable fluorescents of various brands and the technology there continues to improve.
For those of you following, our new favorite place to buy bulbs is now 1000bulbs.com, which may have had our dimmable bulbs backordered, but provided excellent customer service and reasonable pricing on all our needs.
