Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Us and Them?

Linux and Microsoft - from eWeek Enterprise Wars: Linux vs. Windows

Thursday, November 11, 2004

Less confused

My assumptions about the Intel Celeron M and Intel Celeron processors appear to be right, according to this article about the Compaq Presario 2210us at ExactChoice.com.

Guide to Laptop Processors has even more information.

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Processor confusion

While doing research for a new Notebook, I came across what can only described as processor (or CPU) confusion. I know about some of the differences between Intel and AMD Processors for Desktops, but this was confusion caused by Intel-only Processors:

Mobile Intel Celeron
Mobile Intel Pentium 4-M (or Mobile P4)
Intel Pentium M
Intel Celeron M

The Intel Celeron and Intel Celeron M confused me because of vastly different clockspeeds. A notebook with a 2.6GHz Intel Celeron chip costs about the same as one with a 1.4GHz Intel Celeron M chip while they have similar specifications (like Memory and Hard disk size) Only when I read this article on PCMag.com did it sort of make sense, with the performance of a 1.4 GHz Pentium M being roughly similar to a Mobile Intel Pentium 4 running at 2.4 GHz.

So I assume the same must apply for Intel Celeron M and Intel Celeron processors...

Monday, November 08, 2004

Refurbished PDAs cost more than New

I spotted this:
RefurbDepot.COM - PDA's
SONY CLIE PEG-NX60
Palm OS v. 5.0, Built-in MP3 audio player, High resolution TFT color display, Swivel LCD design, Voice recorder function, Wireless expansion slot,

List Price: $699.00 (interesting - It was $399 to $450 max in May 2003!)
Our Price: $269.95
You Save: $429.05 (61.4%)
RefurbDepot.COM - PDA's

I really must have got a good deal when I bought my Sony Clie NX60 brand new for $299 in May 2003!

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

The winner is

The next Backup Utility I tried was the $20 BackupBuddyVFS Professional from Blue Nomad software. Now I have read a lot of good reviews about this software, but installing it crashed my handheld - Fatal Errors during install, and Fatal Errors while trying to run it. So much for that...

I finally decided on BackupMan. One of its features is that it creates the Backup as a single file, which helps me when I'm searching the Memory Stick for a particular file. The Restore feature works - I know - I've used it several times already.

Monday, November 01, 2004

Next Up: TealBackup

TealPoint Software has a good reputation, and I use two of their other software titles.

TealBackup has a host of features:
Backups though HotSync, manual backups (a feature?), incremental backups, dual-timer scheduled backups, optional encryption and compression, exclusion lists and inclusion lists.
With these features it costs around $17 .

When I tried it with the compression option it was incredibly slow on my Sony NX60. I tried to cancel the backup, but it just ignored me. Over ten minutes later the backup was still running, still on the same file, so I had to soft reset my handheld.

To give it a good test, I also tried it on my other handheld, a Tungsten E, without compression this time.

Like MSBackup, it backs up as individual files, I guess so you can manually restore individual files. The two different Backup Schedules seemed useful (one can be full, and the other incremental), but overall it was slow when populating file lists for inclusions or Exclusions.