Rebuild: Part 2 (Video Capture)

Given that the last one got to be a rather long-rambling post, I left off some details along with a few other things. So here goes. There is one very important item that hasn't been acquired for either of the computers that I "finished" last week. Really....are they ever finished?!? And that's vid-capture/TV Tuner cards. Since they generally come all together on one adapter they are pretty much the same thing, but really I just need one for the "workstation" and the other for the HTPC.

The very one remaining capability that I need to put into the workstation is the ability to capture video from older analog sources such as VHS tapes that we (like most folks) have squirreled away in various boxes and closets. That's one of my "honey-does" that I really need to take care of, so some of this stuff can be archived into a digital format. The "Blackbird" workstation rebuild that I described in the last post is more than powerful enough to take care of that kind of thing. In fact, other than digital photography, this is the exact thing that, that computer was built to handle....along with archiving music off of old formats as well. Really, all I need is an older capture only device, but the problem is that since I decided to use Windows 7, 64-Bit OS, for it's access to more RAM and security/stability, most of the older cards don't have driver support for it.

On the other hand, all I need for the HTPC is the ability to tune TV, but today's television is delivered in both the analog and the digital flavors, I'm again left with the need to get a newer card since they're the only ones that have ATSC plus Windows 7 support. So, what to do?

This is in fact one of those cases where simple frugality isn't of much help, since there is no viable solution other than new or relatively new products. On top of that, this is an area where my past experience has taught me that random no-name products can often be difficult to work with and the manufacturers provide little or no technical support.

So, here is a rare occasion that I'm going to go with the de-facto industry leader/standard in Hauppauge. The other plus of using a product from these guys is that they have an entire series of models that all have various features which will allow me to use the appropriate one for the application. In the case of the HTPC, I can simply use there model that has a NTSC (analog)/ATSC (digital) capable tuner that will allow me to use it in a PVR function which has relatively low requirements in vid-capture. However, in the workstation where I'm expecting to pull in lots of analog video and crunch it, I'll probably want to invest in something that does hardware decoding, but little or no need for a tuner since I won't be watching or capturing television. So really that I'm looking for is an older "high-end" capture card that has Windows 7 support. This is going to take some extra research if I want to save money, but it should be worth it.

General Rebuild

I've been talking about this for a while now, but finally pulled the trigger after I did a major renovation of my "work area". Basically my work area layout was/is a computer desk with an old beat-up credenza that I bought from Texas Tech Surplus years ago for $10 as a "return" on the left side. It all work well (after a fashion) since I could keep my main computer on the desk part and do all my various projects on the 66" credenza. However, it was neither efficient nor asthetically pleasing, but since it was 66", and made of solid wood (its old remember), I was never terribly motivated to do much about the situation. About as energetic as I got was to rearrange the furniture in the office (at my wife's prompting) when we repainted the room, at which point I picked up the glass-topped computer desk off of Craig's List for $40.

The next motivating force ended up being the rather innocuous purchase of a 19" LCD TV to replace the little (13") old tube TV that we had mounted to the wall in the office. I bought the thing used at the First Saturday "computer flea market" for $85 a couple of months ago. That left me with 2 problems, plus one opportunity.

• First I knew that the LCD wasn't going to fit on the old-style TV mount that was there.
  
• Secondly I didn't want to go back with another wall mount putting BIG holes in my drywall.
• Thirdly, virtually all "flat-panel" type TVs can be used as computer monitors as well as TVs.

So, what to do? In the end, I decided to take the difficult, but comprehensive route. Follow along as I try to lead you through my convoluted logic:

1. Take down the old mount, patch the hole and repaint, leading to-
2. Build a "hutch" to go on top of my credenza that would have an area to attach the LCD mount, leading to-
3. Taking the credenza out to facilitate the construction, leading to-
4. Refinishing/rebuilding it so that it would better handle the equipment that goes into it (more on this later), leading to-
5. Pulling all the equipment out of it, which included the: UPS, home File Server, Desktop Workstation, and Obsolete media archiving rig (again, more on this later), leading to-
6. Rebuilding the desktop workstation, leading to-
7. Building the Home Theater PC, leading to-
   
8. Rebuilding the Home File Server to handle Windows Home Server OS, which I had traded for some old parts.

So, now that I'm on step 8 of this Propellerhead's Odyssey, I feel like I can discuss what all when into this epic adventure!

Step 1 through 5 were pretty straight-forward, although it did require me to do quite a bit of wood-working. I'll make more sense when I offer up pictures in the future. The hutch, although clearly not a work of art or much of an example of craftsmanship, does it's job. It has a section on one end that allows for the LCD TV to be mounted on an articulated arm, which in turn allows me to push it out of the way or pull it out to use as a monitor or watch TV while I've got something going on the main computer. It's already proven its worth yesterday by allowing me to work on my workstation while I was using it as a monitor for the HTPC build, then for the kids to watch TV on. It also has a 42" long shelf that allows a number of things to be put out of the way and a cork-board that I can use for notes and momentos. The main thing is that there was VERY little cost associated with it since it's made off left-overs from previous projects. Of course I bought the LCD mount, and a few bolts to attach it along with some paint, but that was it!

After all the sawdust making and painting was done, it was moved back to the office and put into place (kudos to my brother-in-law Jim who provided the necessary muscle), it was time to deal with the desktop....well, actually the desktop PLUS the HTPC at the same time. Here's the deal; when I bought the parts for my desktop, I wanted certain parts, but couldn't quite afford the Gigabyte motherboard that I really wanted, so I settled for the lower spec'd version with the processor I wanted (Intel E8400/3.0Ghz Core 2 Duo). Along the way I added things such as 4Gb of faster RAM and a Blu-Ray optical drive. Then last time I was in Lubbock it was talking to my buddy Pat about building a HTPC since he had built a nice one. To my surprise he offered me the case to his along with the parts that were left in it after he scrapped the idea and pulled the HDD. So, of course I did a trade! My old X41 (replaced by the X300) went to my friend Kym for a camera lens and the $100 that went to Pat for the case.

Here's the kicker; when I opened up the HTPC, I found that although it had a low end (E4200) C2D processor, it was riding on the Gigabyte MB that I had originally wanted for my desktop. Soooo, when I went to rebuild my workstation, it involved both computers! I did a the MB swap, and the CPU swap, and the boot drive from my desktop when into the HTPC, while a SSD when into it's place.

So here's the rundown on the Desktop Workstation rebuild:

• Gigabyte GA-EP45-U3 Motherboard running an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 cpu
• Mushkin 60Gb (Sandforce) SSD "boot drive", Seagate 1Tb "storage drive"
• Mushkin 4Gb "Blackline" RAM
• HIS Radeon 4650 Video Card
• DVD Burner, Blu-Ray drive, Magneto-Optical drive
• Windows 7 Home Premium

The HTPC build ended up being:

• Gigabyte GA-EP43-U3 motherboard running an Intel Core 2 Duo E4200 cpu
• Hitachi 500Gb HDD
• Mushkin 2Gb "Silverline" RAM
• nVidia GeForce 8400GS (passive cooled) Video Card
• Blu-Ray/DVD Burner combo drive
• Current XPP (because that was already loaded, but will get the last W7 license I own)

So basically, both build/rebuilds happened together and currently running fine, although I'm not quite finished since the HTPC really needs its W7 load, but that can wait. I'd love to ultimately have an SSD boot drive in it and move the other drive to storage, but that too can wait. The only other things that need to be done to the workstation is some replacement software since I elected to go 64-Bit W7 and most of what I had doesn't run on it and I need to find a cheap video card that's run on it so I can use the LCD TV as a third monitor if I need to.

This does leave item #8 though, meaning I need to pull out the file server which currently has Windows 2000 Server on it, exchange the 40Gb boot drive for a 160Gb one that I have in the parts bin and hope the SATA RAID controller works with the Windows Home Sever load when I put that on in the next few days!

Let's add up the costs besides what we already owned:

• $50 for a 3 license load of Windows 7 Home Premium which works out to something short of $17 per computer (1 on my wife's Z61m, 1 on my Desktop Workstation, 1 on the HTPC).
• $100 for the HTPC parts package from Pat which yielded the motherboard upgrade for the desktop, as well as the rest of the HTPC build-up that will go into my A/V cabinet and handle streaming video plus anything else I can think of for it to do.
• $125 for the Mushkin 60Gb SSD boot drive for the desktop rebuild.
• $25 for the Sony Blu-Ray drive for the desktop rebuild which allowed me to move the Blu-Ray/DVD burner combo drive to the HTPC. That was $50 from Craig's List.
• $0 for the parts trade to get a copy of the Windows Home Server OS to go onto the file server.
  

The total ends up being about $300. So, all in all, a lot got done and very little money got spent which is the always the goal! Right in the middle of this, I ended up making another $50 or so, by flipping another one of those Dell Latitude D620 to a buyer.

Oh, can I just say that the desktop workstation (which has been renamed "Blackbird") is VERY FAST!!!

Catchin' Up

Obviously, I've been remiss in keeping this blog up to date, but for those of you who know what's been going on in my life already, I'm sure you understand the impact of making the jump to teaching high school again which includes 2 sections of "Advanced Placement" World History, 1 of Psychology as well as 3 of regular World History. It's not that these things have left me without time to do anything, but it's that these things (as well as a boom in my computer "upgrade" business) has basically maxed out my consciousness. So, does this mean that I've fallen off of the technology treadmill?

Well, actually, I haven't even slowed down; I just haven't had time to WRITE ABOUT IT! So, in the interested of catching up; here goes.

First, I'll have to admit that things have been slow on the photography front. Ever since I decided to sell the D200 and use my backup D70s until such time that I'm ready or in the financial position to upgrade to the D300, there's been no progress. .....well, actually that's not exactly true. I was making good progress till a travel trailer, the right travel trailer came between me and what I had accumulated towards the upgrade. Well anyway, we'll just say that the D70s does an adequate job for right now. I'll do another post on just the photography situation soon.

So, now to what I've been up to.... technologically speaking. There's actually been 3 areas: upgrading my phone, my desktop computer and laptop(s).

The simplest is the phone: after years of refusing to upgrade from my venerable RAZR used in tandom with my IBM WorkPad C505 (a Palm Pilot clone) for organization, I finally gave in and bought a "smartphone" which began a series of events that has changed everything about my communications set up. Let me start by saying that I don't care for that constantly tethered/on demand lifestyle that you see so many living where they are constantly looking at their phones. However, I REALLY wanted to not carry 2 separate devices any longer, so after much research I came to the conclusion that there was no way around paying AT&T for a "digital" package. Actually, the event that started me down the slippery-slope was that I kept receiving texts that I needed to answer and as you can imagine, this wasn't simple to do on a RAZR, plus it was costing me money for every one. This of course led to an unlimited family text plan since Camille already had it tacked on to her part of our plan anyway. You add this to my convergence desire and an increasing need to access my personal email while at work; it all adds up to a very good excuse to pay for a data plan and buy a "smartphone".

The tipping point came with the "smartphone" of choice appeared in "unlocked" form on a Newegg (they are the devil) special. I received an electronic flier listing the Motorola Q9h (2nd generation, global Q) for about $70. So, now here was the phone I wanted, at a decent price and "unlocked" so I didn't have to be beholden to AT&T for the next 2 years! I bit, and now I'm completely up-to-date communications-wise. The added bonus is that I can connect to it via Bluetooth from my ThinkPad and get on the internet via 3G virtually anywhere. Of course, now I'm on the hook to AT&T for that monthly data plan (there's a reason that their corporate symbol is the "Deathstar"), but it's been worth it so far.
Now, on to my latest forays into laptops. Personally, I've done precious little since I finally got my "pieced together" X40 up and running. Well...actually, that's not completely accurate, but I'll get back to that in a minute. Mostly my work into laptops in the last couple of months have been almost exclusively into Gateways, HPs, and Dells, meaning I've done a LOT of work for other people. That's awesome for the pocket money situation, but leaves little time to sleep and working on my own projects. The main plus is that I've found a very viable alternative to refurbishing and selling ThinkPads. The problem is that although, ThinkPads make excellent candidates for this sort of thing, they hold their value so well, that they leave little profit margin after costs.

Therefore, my new favorite for that use have become the Dell Latitude D620/630. They are very nice machines, easy and cheap to upgrade and can be found by the drove for a ridiculously low price since Dell sold tons of them to corporations around the world just 2 or 3 years ago. So now with thousands of them coming "off-lease" or surplused as a result of upgrades, there value is very depressed for there capabilities. They can routinely be picked up for between $200-250, reimaged, updated and sold off for a $50-75 profit while requiring little or no work. They can even run Windows 7 or Vista quite well for a minimum upgrade cost. I've handled 5 of them in the last 2 months and have yet to be disappointed.
As you guys know, I always keep an eye open for interesting machines or potentially under-valued computers to upgrade our household stable or as simple projects. The latest "apple-of-my-eye" have been the unusual Z Series that came and went very quickly in the IBM ThinkPad lineup. I'll give just a very basic description here since you know that the fact that they are relatively rare and a little odd is enough inducement for me!Basically, they were marketed as a full-on multi-media machine built off of the other T/R 60/61 design. Their motherboards were similar if not identical and of course their capabilities are comparable as well. As typical of the ThinkPad range, they can be "spec'd" down to Celeron CPUs with a low resolution WXGA screen (1280 x 800) or up to Core 2 Duo CPUs high res WUXGA screens (1680 x 1200) or just about anything in between. What this mean to me is this: I can get into this machine cheap (if I'm lucky and work hard at it) and put whatever I want in it. The price on them is typically high since they never sold in large numbers like the Rs and Ts, so most were sold to individuals who sped'd them pretty high. Other than the interest of them being different, there are a number of other factors that attracted me and might interest others as well. The chipset and motherboard allows the later Z61 machines to take dual core CPUs which in turn, allows them to run a 64-Bit operating system, besides being just down-right FAST for normal use. Then there's the magic specs for laptop upgrader; it supports both SATA hard drives as well as DDR2 RAM. This is key in that as compared to parallel HDDs and/or DDR RAM, the price of this stuff is so much cheaper, especially if you want large drives (or SSDs) and a lot of RAM (2Gb or more).

In my case, what happened was that I came across somebody on eBay who apparently had several of them that were replaced in their business and was selling them one by one. In addition, they were about as low spec'd as you could get them AND the bidding was coming due at an odd time....the perfect storm of high potential and low price. How low you ask? $138!!! To make this situation even more special, I happened to have a DVD burner for that series machine left from a previous project (no cost), 2 1Gb RAM modules of the correct spec....from a previous project (again, no cost). Oh and I had bought a 3 license copy of Windows 7 a month ago for $50 locally. My original intention was actually to make it a project computer for myself, but this machine came with the low-end, but very bright WXGA screen which has a resolution what's almost perfect for my optically challenged wife. I already owned a 320Gb/7200rpm SATA hard drive that I had previously purchased which went into this machine. And did I mention that I was able to sell her old computer (ThinkPad R52) for a very fair "market value" of $250?

So, with the the upgraded C2D CPU and the yet completed, WiFi "N" upgrade, I will have accomplished her computer upgrade for essentially a zero sum bottom line. Now she's set for the next 2 or 3 years.

Of course, my head is already working on upgrades for Josh and Katie some time in the next year, but that's for another post....along with what's going on for my desktop rig and upcoming home theater computer that sits awaiting attention.

Random Computers

I've preached for a long time now that, in order to stay head technologically, you need to take advantage of "targets of opportunity". And these days, the best way to find those is Craig's List. The corollary to that rule, is that deals can be found on eBay, but it's like panning for gold! So, what does this have to do with random computers?

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, when I was in the process of finding a second laptop for a client who needed 2 for their children, I took a quick scan through CL. There appeared to be a good deal: an HP P4-M era laptop listed for $50. OK, at that price, you have one of two things going on: A. a mistake in the listing, or B. a computer with some problems. I emailed and in this case, it was A. One thing led to another and I ended up in an email conversation with the seller and it turns out that B. was also the case.....in this case. He sounded like a nice kid with money issues, so I told him I'd take a look at his machine and tell him what could/needed to be done to make it work. To, make a long story short, I ended up doing a reload on his HP for him in exchange for his dead Toshiba Satellite M45-S351 (random computer #1).

On the day that I had arranged to pick up the HP, I saw an ad on Craig's List for an iBook G3 for $25!!! So I ran over to Arlington to take a look at this thing. Sure enough it was a actual working iBook G3 running OS X; not well, but running OS X never the less. The guy said that it was in a box of derelict computers that he'd been given and he didn't know anything about Macs. To top it off, not only was it running excruciatingly slowly, but it wasn't charging correctly either, but hey, he threw in a PowerBook G4 battery. It turns out that it was REALLY SLOW because it was running on the original (on-board) 128Mb of RAM! So I put a stick of 256Mb of SD RAM that I had sitting around and it ran a lot better. Also, it wasn't charging right because it had a aftermarket charger with a bad adapter tip, so I ordered another from eBay (random computer #2).

Since my previous attempt to find the second laptop for my client, ended up with more work, but no working comjputer; I went back to Craig's List again.....and found......someone selling 2 laptops for $100!!! I was skeptical, but I arranged to meet the seller anyway. It turns out that they both powered up, but had problems and the family was packing up to move and didn't have time or the inclination to fix them. The lady said that the one (Dell Inspiron 1501) was her daughter's that had gotten a lot of virus' and they tried to reload/restore....unsuccessfully. And sure enough, when it powered up the machine tried to finish the OS load, but got stuck, plus the battery was so bad the laptop wasn't recognizing it at all. The other machine (Asus Eee PC 900) was her personal netbook that had virus problems so bad that it wouldn't even get online. She was very frustrated with the machines and just wanted to see them gone, so I bought them. I got the Dell reloaded that night, but the Eee PC took a little longer. The restore utility was working (although the partition was still there), so I did a little research and found that the computer originally shipped with a support DVD. And I called the lady and sure enough she was able to find it and get it to me the next day (random computers #3 & #4).

I've been looking at various newer ThinkPads, planning ahead for the day when I'll need to replace my wife's R52. One of the models that I'd been researching was/is the R60/61 that we use at school. I've been impressed with the rugged build of the machine and since portability has never been one of my wife's laptop needs, the R60s seemed to be a candidate. There are a number of options since there have been a variety of sub-models including wide-screen models which I think she'd like. Soooo, what does this have to do with the "random models" posts? Well, I ran across another ThinkPad Forum member's R60e that he'd been working on as a "project" machine, but had decided to move on. The "e" models were there stripped-down, ultra-low end machine, so low end, that it's a less-than-4-year-old computer without built-in wireless! Well, anyway, it was $80 shipped, so I picked it up as well. In the end, I'll uses it to gain experience working on the R6x machines and will probably end up selling off in a few months (random machine #5).

All total, I've spent $200 and picked up 5 laptops in a space of 2 weeks. I already know that one of the machines will sell for $200 by itself so as you can see, I'll clearly be able to get my money out of this series of deals. Of course, some of it will eventually lead to other things and to profits which will end up being plowed back into fodder to feed the machine.

Oh, I almost forgot: I've also picked up another Dell, a Latitude D610 which I didn't list before because it's specifically bought for a client, but I guess you could call it random computer #6!

Requium for the X300 Series

Just when I thought I'd found THE perfect laptop for me, I hear news that Lenovo is pulling the plug on the X30x Series. Of course, I'm used to this issue already, but it's never-the-less a sad announcement for me. Used to it?

Well, ya see, I'm a little different than most people and therefore, my tastes are generally a little obscure. In this post, I'll just discuss my taste in laptops. It all started with the IBM ThinkPad 701c, the famous (yet technological deadend) dubbed "The Butterfly". It was abnormally small for the size of it's keyboard because an engineer got an idea while watching his children play with a jigsaw puzzle. It ended up being a "one-off" with no follow-up models at all since the market went to progressively toward bigger screens which negated the need to have a folding keyboard. Of course that didn't do away with the amazingly small size of this thing and the fact that even today, people still gasp when they see that keyboard unfold!
Then, on to my next laptop love; the IBM ThinkPad 600(e,x). For it, the screen was just the right size (13.3"), big enough so that you can see get a decent resolution, but small enough to keep the case small and easy to carry. The 600 was probably the last of the "old school" ThinkPads that were expected to sell for close to $5000, meaning that they were amazingly solid and had details that simply aren't seen today in the "normal" laptop computer. There were little doors and tight-fitting rubber plugs on all opennings, an amazing keyboard that many ThinkPad users still consider to be the best ever and a ultra-stiff case that gave it that German car feel that you simply don't find any more. It's successor, the T Series machines, although better in many ways, never recaptured the polish and "bespoke" feel that was part and parcel of the 600 experience. If you've ever gotten into one of the big BMWs or Mercedes; you know exactly what I mean.
So, I moved on and used a combination of T Series (T20, 21, 22, 23, 30, 40, 41, 42, 43) and X Series (X20, 31, 40, 41) over the years but never felt the same way about any of them. The 14.1" screens of even the smaller Ts made the machine a little big and heavy for a constant companion and the 12.1" screens of the Xs was a little too small and only gave XGA resolution at best which as a little less than what I prefer.
Then in 2008, Lenovo announced the X300. I knew immediately that it would the perfect size for me as an all-in-one machine. Less than an 1" thick, 3 pounds, built-in optical drive, and 13.3" high resolution LED backlit screen (1440 x 900).....selling at a heart-stopping $3000! After waiting for 2 years, I buy mine for $700 used (with a year of warranty left), and working on it for around 3 weeks now, I feel like I've finally found the successor to the last of the 600s, the 600X. The keyboard is the best I've worked on since then, and the screen is just right. The machine is FAST with the standard onboard SSD and the weight makes me not think twice about throwing it in a bag and taking it anywhere with me. There was even an magazine article the month that it was introduced (right after the Air) where the title was "Building The Perfect Laptop".
Talk about "Beauty and The Beast"; here it is with it's younger sibling, the ThinkPad W701 "Mobile" Workstation.
Well, I guess I can look forward to one more half-step upgrade down the road in the X301 and then I'll be waiting for another "special" product to come along. It kind of reminds me of the Japanese manufacturers: although they have a firm grasp of the realities of what part of the market they need to operate in to regularly make a profit, periodically they'd feel a need to flex their engineering muscle and demonstrate to the world what they CAN do. Then it's back to business as usual for a while.

Seminal Laptops

Rarely if ever, are products truly seminal, in that they are unique to the degree that they become iconic or that they change the design philosophy of an industry or market segment. What I'm going to attempt to address today is a highly personalized view of laptop computers that in my opinion are "seminal" products.

The mobile computer has been around for a LONG TIME.
...but this Osborne and it's competitors such as the Compaq, etc. can hardly be called "the face that launch a thousand ships", they were called "luggables" for a reason. I used to own an IBM PS2 P75 with a cool red Plasma screen, but the 400Mb HDD weighed than any of our ThinkPads! So, what was the Helen of Troy of laptop computing? Well; I present.....the IBM ThinkPad 700c:
$5000 in 1992 dollars could buy you this, the first machine with the then HUGE 10.4" TFT color screen and cutting edge technology. Although it was a lot of money in those days, companies looking to get ahead began to equip their workers with these things and everybody else was immediately playing catchup. However, the button-down black Bento-Box IBM look wasn't for everybody and as time moved on, Apple demonstrated that portable computing could be "cool" looking. In 1997, they came out with in my opinion the most beautiful machine of any laptop, the G3 PowerBook:

And then in 2001, the iconic G4 "Titanium":

This machine is so cool that it's still the defacto "laptop" on TV. Don't believe me? Just watch for them especially on commercials.

While this was going on, IBM came up with one of the most unique and innovative products ever to be produced, the 701:
With it's folding keyboard, it literally could turn itself into an impossibly small black-box that didn't look like it did anything. Product placement aside, if you want to figure out whether something is really technologically interesting; see if it shows up in a James Bond movie. This one was in "Golden Eye" and one other I believe. You even see Bond typing on and then closing it inside "Q" Branch while he was supposed to be listening to instructions. Of course this amazing technological accomplishment came to naught when the market went toward increasingly larger screens thus eliminating the need for a folding keyboard. Never-the-less, the "Butterfly" was one of the most interesting laptops ever. I have 2 in the closet!

HP also got into the act with the amazing OmniBook line; the really tiny 800 with the retractable mouse and the 500 that was matched with possibly best integrated "dock" of all time.Yes, boys and girls; there was a time when HP did more than just make money well.
If you are of the camp that thinks that Apple is THE design innovator out there, then their hype machine must be working. In 2003, long before the "Air" was a glimmer in Steve Jobs eye, Sony already had the X505 on the market. Sure, it won't do all that the 2008 machines such as the MacBook Air and ThinkPad X300 will do, but just look at it! FIVE years before those other machines!
Yup, sure enough; that's it sitting next to an "Air" making it look fat.

In the meantime, other Panasonic decided that the market (not just Military, Police and Emergency folks) needed to have the Hummer of laptops; the ToughBook. Yes they didn't invent it (IBM did) nor are they the only ones, but they define it:

Each of these machines did something to change, define or redefine the laptop computer as we know it. As for me, this little essay isn't finished without including my current favorite and everyday user: The ThinkPad X300
Think MacBook Air with an optical drive and it's shirt tucked in.....

"THE RANT": Adendum

Well, I just thought I'd throw this out there since, just as I was finishing up the Dell D600, I got a call from a former colleague that her (you guessed it), Dell Inspiron 8500 wasn't recognizing a year-old hard drive. She just brought it over and sure enough the drive comes right up when attached to my desktop, but acts like it's not there for the Dell. And guess what....it's a 160Gb drive...over the 137Gb HDD limit!

I'm reloading it for her on a 100Gb drive that I happened to have on hand, but WHAT A PAIN IN THE A**!!! Apparently, now that Bill Gates has retired to give away his money, and Michael Dell has returned to his company, he's ascended the throne of "The Devil".

For Pete's Sake; pay somebody in India to write up a new BIOS and fix this already!

My I HATE DELL Rant

I don't really "hate" Dell, but I just don't really like their computers. If they weren't so successful at what they did, I could happily ignore them and live a fulfilled life. However, they are the Wal-Mart of computing, so somewhat inescapable for someone like me who take on all comers (in computer for that is).

So, what do I mean, Wal-Mart of computing? Well, they are everywhere for one, so you can't really get away from them. If you work on people's computers like I do (even in your spare time), you're going to see them. Other than the ones I put out there, Dells are the single most common computer that I see. Just in the last month I've worked on 1 desktop and 3 laptops. OK, one was my fault since I ordered it, but that's a different story. What wrong with them then if people buy them. It's the commoditization of computers and they (along with HP) are the companies that are most responsible. Much like the stuff you get at Wal-Mart, what you get will get the job done, not elegantly, not particularly efficiently and it won't last very long, but it gets it done.....if you don't expect it to last.

Therein lies the issue. Computer companies like Dell and HP design their products to do one thing: MAKE MONEY. It's the Roger Smith (CEO of GM during the late 70's and early 80's) philosophy of business. In an interview, Mr. Smith (an accountant by the way) was being grilled by media on why GMs car designs were so bad compared to the Europeans and Japanese, his response was: "General Motors is not in the business to make cars, it's in the business to make money". There you have it.

If you didn't tear into various brands of computers on a regular basis like I do, you probably wouldn't notice and you'd be like the typical consumer. Go down and buy a laptop, use it for 3 years or so, then throw it away when it starts to run poorly. That's what most people do with cars isn't it? However, I'm in the business of restoring these machines to their original usefulness so I get to rebuild and often upgrade the components.

No, generally, I work on ThinkPads. These are special and I don't mean in a driving a BMW sort of way, but more like how a mechanic feels when he opens the hood up. You come to the realization that these things are designed to last a long time and to be kept up, so some engineer put some thought into what would happen if you had to work on it. This is not how Dells (along with most other brands) are made. They take the more Japanese car maker approach; it'll drive very nicely for a long time, then you get rid of it and get a new car. Witness that there is virtually no used car market in Japan.

Anyway, so what makes me say this about Dell. Well first of all, a Latitude D600 laptop that I had worked on came back to me last week with the second occurrence of a weird problem that's unusual for a relatively new OS load. It had a corrupt NT Boot Loader file, which causes Windows to get stuck on load and never get to the desktop. The data is there, just the Windows won't boot. The typical reason for this issue is a very old load that's too broken to fix itself, or a nasty virus/malware infestation that had broken that file. This machine has/had neither of those.....either time, so it had to be something else. While I was researching another Dell for somebody else, I came across a forum post talking about the 137Gb HDD limit in the BIOS. I thought; no, that couldn't be it since I regularly worked on ThinkPads of the same vintage and chipset that had no trouble with big hard drives. In fact I had used this exact same model of HDD in several machines for different people (WD 250Gb/5400rpm) in various ThinkPads and even an Acer. But I got onto the Dell support forum and ask some questions and sure enough, the answer I got was that; even with the newest BIOS versions, you can't have a boot partition bigger than 137Gb or you'll have issues! HOLY CRAP, what that means is that the limitation isn't in the chipset, but that someone at Dell decided that it wasn't cost effective to have somebody write a new BIOS version that address the issue.

THAT'S SO CLASSIC "BEAN COUNTER" MENTALITY!!!

You wanna bet that'll effect my future decisions on what to buy? Yup; don't care how cool the design is, and they have some great designs (eg. M1330), I'm not buying a machine from them!

Oh, yeah; my other case? I've been tasked with finding a "new" laptop for a friend's daughter who's about a year out of college. So her big clunky Dell Inspiron 1000 was just not cutting it. I won't even get into why that machine is a bad design to start with. What she wanted was something that's smaller than her parent's ThinkPad R52/15" that was going to be easier for her to travel with. So basically, I needed to find something; sub-five-pounds, that had all the drives built-in, but big enough for her to do the regular stuff on. IBM/Lenovo had/has nothing that fits that description other than the very recent X300/301 which didn't fit in her $300-350 budget. After about a week of research and finally deciding that acceptable Sony's didn't fit the budget either, I settled on the Dell 700/710m.

This machine had all the right specs, Pentium M/2.0Ghz processor, up to 1.5Gb of RAM, built-in DVD Burner, 12.1" aspect high-res screen. What's not to like? Given the budget, I had to settle for an older machine which meant that it didn't have DDR2 support or SATA HDD. I can live with that since I had a stick of !Gb DDR/333 sitting around that I could bump the RAM with, and a big 250Gb for it, although, I'd have to get around that 137Gb HDD limit in the BIOS......grrrr.

However, my gripe isn't with that, but with how the thing is constructed. The machine I bought was in decent shape, but had a chipped place on the keyboard bezel. "No big deal", I thought; I'll just buy another one and slap that right on. I've taken KB bezels off of dozens of ThinkPads. HAHA says Michael Dell's accounts (who apparently are in charge of the engineers)! I end up having to remove the screen, disconnecting 2 plugs, pulling the attendant wires out, including the WiFi leads, along with the expected keyboard. On top of that, the touchpad (device of the devil) was in better shape on the old bezel so I figured I'd move it. HAHA says the accounts again; "I shall taunt you again, English k-nigets"!!! The touchpad isn't a module, it's 3 separate pieces, one of which is attached to the bezel itself with melted plastic studs! So I advanced to the rear and the swap was not made.

Hey; otherwise, I love those Dells!

Digtial Detritus

It's clean-up/clean-out time around the Frugal Propellerhead household. One of the downsides of upgrading is that one is often left with misc. devices that don't work anymore....especially if your upgrading takes the form of the rare, but necessary operating system changes.

I guess I'm about waist-deep in a change-over to Windows 7. I dipped a toe in when I picked up the T43p a few months back and it had W7 loaded. So I left it the way it was to see if I'd like it and I definitely did; enough so that it planted a seed that has been growing in my little brain. Windows XPP has been a good friend, it's was a nice upgrade to Windows 2000, but worlds ahead of 98 or ME! But eight years down the road, it's time to say goodbye.

So, when I was looking at the X300s a few weeks ago, I also kept an eye on whether the machine had W7 loaded and the one I was able to snag had W7 Professional 64-Bit on it, along with 4Gb of RAM. However, along with the benefits of a 64-Bit operating system, there are some losses along the way. Some devices simply don't have the necessary drivers and probably never will. The main one so far has been the trusty little Canon LIDE 30, USB powered flatbed scanner. I don't use it much, but it's done a good job when nothing else would've even been along for the ride! At some point, I'll probably end up picking up one of the current versions such as the LIDE 100 as a replacement. Sometimes, there's just NO substitute for a flatbed scanner.

I have had a few surprises though. Amazingly, the converted from Thai, UltraNav compact keyboard I picked up works through a generic PS2 KB/Mouse to USB adapter! And shockingly, I found a Targus USB "Port Replicator" that had sat in the a box in the garage for 12 years took the drivers off of the Targus site and ran with it. This no small thing since the X300 only has the 3 USB and the one ethernet port. So this little small remote-sized device gives me an extra USB port, but PS2 KB/Mouse as well as parallel and serial(!) ports. Now if I can only get the software to recognize the GlobalSat BT-308, Bluetooth GPS receiver, I'd be golden!

For now, back to trying to get rid of stuff I don't/can't use any more.....

The "Holy Grail"

You guys that read this halfway regularly know that I love technology, but especially computers and cameras. So, I get pretty excited about lots of stuff: iPods, the Android phones, iPads, most anything Sony, pretty much any "small" computer (as long as its not a Netbook). However, every once in a while, something comes along that hits you right square between the eyes!

I remember when the MacBook Air came out, I thought that the concept was as close to perfectly executed as I'd seen in some time. The form-factor was virtually ideal. I've always loved the 13.3" screen size and that footprint married to something that thin was just mouth-watering. However, there were the few little things that bothered me about it: the ONE USB port, and something that sized that didn't have an optical drive was just going to be a deal-breaker! Yes, I understand how thin and cool it was, but I already have something almost as thin, just as light and DIDN'T have an optical drive in my ThinkPad X41.

Then within a month of the "Air's" introduction, Lenovo came out with the ThinkPad X300. THIS WAS IT! Almost as thin as the "Air", on-board optical drive (DVD Multi-Drive), LED backlit screen with the higher 1440 x 900 resolution and a 64Gb SSD! Holy Cow it was just impossibly perfect....with the exception of the out-of-this-world price of $3000+!!! So it might was well have been made of Unobtainium.
Fast-forward 2 years and lets look at how something like this fits into the Frugal Propellerhead's budget. I've been working on 2 different laptop computers; one a ThinkPad T43p mobile workstation which I bought for $250, but was worth about $100 more, the other a ThinkPad X41 complete with UltraBase and 32Gb SSD worth about $350 or so. That comes out to about $700 and amazingly, I came across an X300 on eBay that sold for about $655 3 weeks ago. Right around this same time, I friend called up looking for a machine spec'd like my T43p at the $300 price-point.

The rest is obvious and with a little bit of luck added (that machine that "sold" for $655 didn't go through and I got it for $667 the following week). Sold the T43p for $325 and now I just have to sell the X41 and I will have flipped my 2 older machines into one that still has a year of warranty left to go. If you've never seen and/or held one of these things, you owe it to yourself to go down to Micro Center and just pick it up (the current X301 that is). There's just no way that:

1. It's that thin!
2. It's that light with a 13.3" widescreen on it!
3. Anything that thin and light can feel that solid, open or closed!

As they say in Batman- POW!!!

The Free Kitten

Off topic, but hey, since I'm stuck here at Baylor Medical Center for at least another day or so, I thought I'd post this message about my funny little story.

It started on Father's Day a few weeks ago when my wife decided to get me a cat. So we go off that day out into the country....this is EAST TEXAS you understand so there are dirt roads and trailer houses involved......to pick a kitten from a lady who worked for our school district, but lived out in the country.

Here is where an experienced cat person would have turned and gone the other way, but we being "city folk" who've never owned a cat...... Anyway, the mother was an "outside cat" who NEVER interacted with people (in the country that means "mouser" and probably had any number of physical things wrong with it). So, after observing the kittens for 30 minutes I picked an orange tabby who actually wanted to play with people. So we took him home and I named him Indy (eg. Indiana Cat).

So the typical kitten type things occurred over the next several weeks. We (my wife) spent a great deal of money buying it toys, collars and a fancy litter box (it litter trained in 2 days), everybody got scratches. However, I got the more serious ones since I got to "put the cat up" when the time came (usually after the kids had riled it up). I didn't think a lot about it until I noticed that one scratch wasn't healing like the rest. We went the extra mile and ripped it open, washed it good, poured alcohol on it, slathered it with anti-bacterial cream and bandaged it. And finally early last week (after about a week), it started to get better.

That night I felt like I was coming down with the flu, so I took stuff and went to bed early. That was Wednesday night. Thursday (my day off), I spent in bed. Friday I felt a little better and thought I'd turned the corner on a little bug. Saturday, I woke up worse than before, so went willingly down to the urgent care place and they looked me over, listened to my story and with a straight-face, the Doctor says: "you have Cat Scratch Fever", to which I respond....."I thought that was just a an old Ted Nugent song! Oh I forgot to tell you that my fever was so high (103.2 and rising) that they gave me 800mg of Ibuprophen BEFORE the Dr. ever came in!!! :o

So I go home armed with my 2 prescriptions, and slightly amusing story about my ailment. I took the prescriptions and generally lay around all day, just to make certain I'd be good to go by Sunday night (July 4th) to start our little family mini-vacation. This is were the story gets good.

I wake up Sunday morning feeling pretty good, but my right eye feels a little funny, so I look in the mirror and see that I look like Phantom of the Opera; except that instead of that half-mask he has....the right side of my face diagonally down from my forehead to below my right ear is swollen and red. But hey; since I felt pretty good, I just thought that it was the lymph nodes clearing out the junk and it would go away. My wife looked dubious (I think she was really starting to feel guilty now). Later the doctor's office call to follow up and I mention this condition to which there is awkward silence followed by putting me on hold, then a doctor gets on to tell me she's calling the other doctor and finally telling me that they "strongly ENCOURAGE" (I really love how proper Indian doctors are) me to come in to be checked...immediately!

So I go, and on the afternoon of July 4th, I'm the only person there. She takes one look at me, tells me that she needs me to take MORE anti-biotics and go get a CT of my right eye area. The cute nurse from the day before comes in and ask me to pull my shorts down: that she was giving me 2 shots. One in each hip- 5 minutes apart "BECAUSE THEY ARE SO STRONG YOU ARE GOING TO FEEL LIKE YOU'RE PASSING OUT"!!! So I get my shots, she walks me out looking concerned. I go home, gather up the family in the car already packed to go on vacation and we go to a hospital to get my CT. On the way, we stop 3 times for me to make noise out the door and I almost pass out just inside the emergency room doors. After I'm able to get up and get through admitting, the person who has been waiting for me from CT had to take someone from emergency and we end up waiting another hour.

So, 5 minute CT later, after the tech sent the results to the doctor and tells me that everything looks pretty good and I can leave, we head out to get across Dallas to check into our hotel and go to the ballgame late, but hey, we really want to see the fireworks afterward. On the way, as we're stopped to pick up something we can eat in the car when the doctor calls and says that she want me to go to the downtown Baylor Medical facility emergency room and have blood work done and be started on IV antibiotics!

So that's how I ended up here. Yeah, we got to the ER, waited a minimum of time, but was in a room getting stuff done (4 vials of blood), and 3 bags of IV meds till 12:30am at which time they tell us that they're going "to admit me and keep me a few days". Around 2:30 July 5th, I get to my room, more nurse/hospital stuff for an hour or so, then I sleep till 5:30 at which time somebody comes in to get 2 MORE vials of blood from me.

....and you know what, I don't really feel sick at all; I just have that swollen half-a-face thing going on. There really is no such thing as a "Free Pet"!!!

The other players

OK, now that I've gotten through the whole Nikon line-up as related to getting into the DSLR game, let me address the other players in this field.


First of all, there's the arch-rival; Canon. Canon is basically just like Nikon, in that it is also highly successful in the market place, has a long-standing history in camera making and is large enough to have a wide line-up of models. At this point, it may be somewhat more successful in sales and has a bit of an edge, stemming from a perceived reputation amoung advanced amateurs of higher image quality. Of course, I've already espoused my opinion on the topic that:

1. Actual image quality at the levels that are being discuss isn't enough to measure much less as a deciding factor.
2. In general, the real difference are few and not really worth discussing either.

Which gets us back to which Canon models should be be looked at to fit into our concept of a camera to get started in the hobby. If we use the same criteria as we did before (6 megapixels), then the models will be the Canon EOS Digital Rebel (300D in some markets), EOS 10D, Rebel XT (350D in some markets and has an 8Mp sensor) or maybe the EOS 20D (essentially the same sensor). All 4 of these models fall into the about the same price-point of somewhere between $350 and $450 right now.

The main thing to remember is that in the Canon system, the "Rebel" branding is used in relation to their strictly consumer line and is considered an entry level product. Where this comes to bear is that there are some actual feature which are crippled so that those models can be differentiated from the "x0D" "prosumer" line. From what I can tell, the main issue being that it is much more difficult to over-ride the automation in the Rebels than the number series cameras. Many reviewers who actually shoot with both tend to stick with the Canons for ultimate image quality and the Nikons for speed of "in-the-field" use. To paraphrase one reviewer; I use my Canon when I'm going to have my tripod out and all the time in the world.

As far as glass is concerned, it's a "pick-em" situation. Each has some lenses that are better than the other and some that are worse. It was a no brainer for me since at the time that I made my decision, Canon didn't off an "Image Stabilization" (VR in Nikon speak), 18-200mm super-zoom so I bought Nikon. Now Canon has that same lens. And of course, Canon changed their mount when they went auto-focus, so you don't have the luxury of simply mounting an old lens. Of course Canon does have the advantage of a shorter flange to film-plane distance so you can just get an adapter that's let you mount even Nikon lenses. You do lose ALL automation, but it can be done.

In a nutshell, there's precious little to give between the two brands and it comes down to which you prefer the handling.

Now, on to short descriptions of other possibilities that are out there that I find to be reasonable alternatives to the "big boys".

First of all, there is Olympus. This was the system that I almost bought into instead of the Nikon. The cameras that are most likely to fit the bill are the "E-xxx" series. In the U.S. they began with the E-410/510/420/520, all with essentially the same 10Mp sensor. Their professional/semi-professional unit E-3 has a similar sensor as well. These (especially the E-4/510) will sometimes fall into that $350-450 range as well, however, they don't sell as many units as Canon/Nikon so there won't be as many that appear on the used market. At the same time, it must be said also that they don't tend to sell as well for various reasons so the price is usually somewhat lower than a similarly spec'd Canon/Nikon model.

There are two very seductive features (at least for me) on these Olympus', the first being that they have sensor self-cleaning system built-in and 2nd being very traditionally Olympus that they are significantly more compact than either the Nikon or Canon. One feature that many people like is the "Sensor Shift" technology which is what Olympus calls their version of IS/VR. The kicker here is that theirs is built into the body of the camera so ALL lenses get the benefit of it. So, what's not to like!?! Actually among the engineering community, it's a little controversial (note that neither Canon or Nikon chose this route). The issue is that it's another electronically controlled, highly sensitive, moving part that central to the actual camera vs. in the lens, so therefore, if it fails, you're "dead", where-as, on a lens-centric system, you switch lenses and continue to shoot (without that lens, but hey...). I think the differences is that both Canon and Nikon have a LARGE population of professionals to think about who can't afford to have their camera fail. From my standpoint, it's really a bigger problem for an amateur since most of us don't have an extra $500-1000 camera body sitting around in case one fails!

And of course, another difference is that Olympus uses the four/thirds sensor size which is physically smaller so their conversion factor in lens focal length is 2x, instead of the ~1.5x of Nikon/Canon. This is a non-issue with the exception that there are less wide-angle options to work with.

I'll address one other manufacturer today and that's Pentax. Much like Olympus, it's an old-line and well-thought-of Japanese company who has a lot of history and although don't sell a lot of units and don't do a lot with professional is considered every bit the equal of Canon or Nikon in the consumer field. Their offering in the range that we've been discussing is the *ist DS" or K100D cameras. Their models are excellent and quite often winning international awards. Their lenses are outstanding and pretty much the equal of Canon, Nikon or Olympus....so what the issue? They are a dickens to find!

Pentax just doesn't sell that many units, in fact, their Korean partner (Samsung) is rapidly catching up to them. A big plus for them is that they can use all of the old (even pre-auto focus) lenses back to the first K-Mounts. I strongly considered them when I switched to digital since I had 12 K-Mount lenses at the time, but I was determined to down-size BECAUSE I didn't want to carry all those lenses around.

So, I've touched on Canon which in my eyes is pretty much a personal taste issue between them and Nikon. And then there were the two "also rans"; so what other factors are there other than they are hard to find? A big one for me is that, since they are small (relatively speaking), many independents (such as Tamron, Sigma, Tokina, etc.) don't make products for them. In my world, this translates to mean that there are less options which translates to mean higher prices.

The Weird and the Wonderous!

So....if I didn't live in Texas, how quickly would I be staring at a police officer, if I just took this thing out in public and started using it!?!


Anyway, I bought a BushHawk (which is what this contraption is) from Craig's List a few weeks ago. Last week, I finally got around to ordering the adapter plate which would allow me to attach my big lens (Tokina 80-400mm) to it. Why? A number of reasons, but at the core of it; is this thing cool looking or what? It's not quite as interesting at this point as my inspiration, which was a camera called the Fotosniper (their word, not mine), which they develop probably some time in the 40's and then after several generations, and Glasnost, etc. began to appear in increasing numbers in the U.S. circa. 1980's. This thing is far more modern, but not quite as cool if you take into account the really interesting case, etc. that they came packaged in.


Pretty interesting little camera huh? Makes mine look positively civilized. I still want one of these things some day, just not right now. Especially since it was a good package day since I came home to find, the aforementioned adapter plate for the BushHawk, but also the new Manfrotto 804RC2 head which will allow me to use the repaired tripod, a package from my buddy Kym containing some of his surplus lenses that I can use and the perfectly timed replacement anniversary present for my wife since today is....TA-DA, our 10th anniversary!

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that this particular BushHawk had supposedly belonged to noted photographer Franz Lanting who shoots for National Geographic, among other publications!

The "Process" of Buying

Where I left off last time was a discussion of the major players in the market and my personal needs as well as quirks (in relation to camera equipment that is). So lets review the specific parameters first:

• At least 6 megapixel sensor
• A system camera meaning one of the "Big Boys" (eg. Canon, Nikon, Sony...maybe Olympus or Pentax)
• Some sort of camera motion compensation
• $1000 budget- "All In"

Every company has produced at least one model with a 6Mp sensor, so that part was really a non-factor, it's just whether I could get that model into my budget would be the issue. At point, I'll dive into the vagaries of product line and differentiation a little bit so you can understand what's out there.

In the DSLR (as in the film SLR before it) world, there are 2 basic types of cameras; Professional and Consumer. Now understand that this doesn't mean that they won't sell you the camera if you don't make a living with it, but a designation of what it's designed to do. In fact, for those of us on a budget, we LOVE those well-heeled consumers who over-buy for their needs, under-utilize the equipment, and ultimately sell of at a ridiculously low price later when they upgrade to the latest and greatest. There is also a quasi-middle-ground that's sometimes called "prosumer" or "semi-professional". And then of course, within each group there is some stratification of products as well. From here, I'll use Nikon as my examples as it's the brand that I own and therefore know the best.

• Professional- In the Nikon line, this equipment is designated by a single digit such as 1, 2 or 3. This number is preceded by a letter designating either F (I guess for "film) or D (for digital). Of course, the D1 was their first completely "in-house" digital camera, followed by the D2 and the current model being the D3. These model numbers can also be modified as interim improvements are made (eg. D3s) or sub-models that do something differently or more, such as the D2hs for the improved and "high speed" D2. These things are "beasts"! They physically are made to the size of the old professional film SLRs with the motor drives attached. They are typically not good candidates for the typical amateur to use (especially beginners). They tend to be extremely intimidating with a ton of buttons, but they also leave out some things like a "pop-up" flash since it's assumed that the user will have a full-blown dedicated lighting rig to use. The big boys have some of these that sport the full-sized (meaning the same size as a 35mm film frame) sensor that Nikon calls FX. Barring getting into a full-blown Hassellblad, these are the biggest sensors that you can buy which are around 24 megapixels! So you'll HAVE to have these huge and expensive 32Gb storage cards just to hold the files. Oh, and you have to have lenses that cover the bigger sensor format as well, which are also more expensive. So again; not recommended for the regular person just wanting to take nice digital pictures!
• Pro-sumer or Semi-Professional- These are the middle-ground of DSLR cameras. In a nutshell, they are really cut down professional cameras, made like professional cameras, but are easier to use like the amateur models....they're even about the same size, but typically somewhat heavier. They tend to be heavier due to the build philosophy, beginning with metal chassis (usually magnesium), environmental sealing, and heavier duty components, since their expected number of shutter actuations is at least 50% if not 100% higher than the typical consumer camera. They also tend to leave out many of the full on amateur feature like "scene" modes that the Japanese manufacturers believe most amateurs need. On the flip side, they give FAR great control over the cameras various functions. These cameras can generally (when outfitted with the correct pieces) make perfectly adequate substitutes for full-on professional models. In fact many of the practicing professional will use these as "back-up" bodies or when they need something lighter and smaller than the beasts that they normally use. In Nikon's line, these models were given a 3 digit model number beginning with 100, so the progression so far has been; D100, D200, D300 (currently the newest being the D300s which has video capture onboard). They've progressed from 6Mp, to 10Mp, to 12Mp which is typical of the most companies.
  
• Consumer- For the Nikon line, these were originally given 2 digit model numbers beginning with the D70, after which the line split into 2 levels with the advanced amateur cameras going up to the D80, then D90 (current) and the "entry" level cameras going down with the D50, then D40 followed by the D40x. As you can see, they've pretty much run out of numbers here so they've moved on to the 4 digit numbers with the current entry-level camera being the D3000 and the more "full-featured" version with video as the D5000. With that out of the way, here's the meat of what these cameras are and do (IMHO). They are less expensive to produce since they leave out some features as well as build differences such as full on polycarbonate chassis vs. magnesium. Although many will have some sort of metal sub-structure that keeps the critical components such as lens mount, mirror box, pentaprism, and senor in rigid alignment with each other. They will also have a lower level of sensor, but more than enough to do the job. This is by far the fastest growth segment in the digital camera market and as a result THE most competitive. Therefore, the various manufacturers can't be perceived as having an inferior product feature-wise since the typical consumer in this market segment knows a great deal less about the actual intricacies of photography and usually make buying decisions based on features and perceived quality. One other trend that has developed in this segment is the movement toward a smaller, lighter weight and easier to carry camera. The Olympus led consortium got the ball started with the four/thirds sensor standard which allowed both a smaller camera (smaller senor), which also allowed a much shallower lens flange to sensor plane distance. Nikon quickly jumped onto this trend, by switching to the SD memory card and eliminating the focusing motor from their lower-end cameras (beginning with the D50 and then on to the HIGHLY successful D40, D40x, and D60 series) which cost them the ability to use legacy auto-focus lenses from the film-AF days, but allowed a MUCH smaller lighter body. I suspect that their research indicated that the typical purchaser of these cameras were not the old guard that was highly invested in their system from the "old days" and didn't have a bunch of lenses that demanded compatibility. Apparently they were right on the mark since the D40 became so ubiquitous that Wal-Mart and Target sold them....and we all know that those retailers only deal in items of HIGH volume! They set the price as low as they could bear and made up for it by a much higher volume sales and the ongoing purchase of accessories such as lenses, flash, camera bags etc. The same strategy used by inkjet printer manufacturers who all but give you the printer in anticipation of the purchasers having to regularly shell out $40-50 for the cartridges! This segment of the market is populated not only by the big boys, but all the others as well including the Koreans and I suspect some day soon, the Chinese!

I pretty much ferreted out all the above information before I did anything in terms of buying. First I sold the "Super-Zoom" Nikon Coolpix 8800 as quickly as I could so it wouldn't continue to devalue and rapidly did as much market research as possible. Some of my early posts are devoted to this process so I'm not going to repeat it here. My budget dictated that I could run out to Wal-Mart or wherever and buy a Nikon D40 or Canon Rebel XT brand new "off-the-shelf" complete with the "kit lens" which is generally the "normal" zoom (18-55mm which translates to roughly 28-85mm). And my $1000 budget would probably allow me to then buy the other "kit" lens that's sometimes packaged together (55-200mm which translates to be 85-300mm). So, what's not to like? Everything that I wanted and needed in one shot that fit neatly into my budget.

Here's are the problems:

• I wanted it all in 1 lens complete with VR.
• I wanted to be able to eventually use legacy lenses all the way back to manual focus ones.
• Philosophically, I've never liked buying the "bottom-of-the-line" in anything. I'd sooner buy a used car that's built better than a brand new lesser one at the same price. One day, I'll try to motivate myself to write about the economics and the responsibilities aspects of this philosophy. Until then, just chalk it up as one of my quirks!

Here are my solutions:

• According to my research, the Nikon 18-200mm VR lens could be had at around $600, give or take $50 depending on how good/lucky one got on eBay. Since, at this point-in-time, neither Canon or Sony had an equivalent, so the brand decision was made for me. I must come clean though that I was leaning toward Nikon anyway since I just didn't like the way Canons operated or looked, but I would have overcome these personal issues if the lens situation had been the other way around. Because, in photography; it's all about the glass!
• My desire to have the capacity to use legacy lenses only added to my decision. Way back when everyone switched to auto focus in following Minolta's lead Canon made the decision to completely change their lens mount to make manufacturing and future design changes easier. They were in a position to do this since very few professionals used their equipment and this was the group that the manufacturers could least afford to alienate (at that time anyway). How this effects me is that legacy Canon lenses won't mount on the new their DSLRs without an adapter, plus there isn't a vast stock of old weird and wonderful lenses that were designed for them since they weren't the choice of professionals "back in the day". This also led me to want to select not only a Nikon, but one with a focusing motor built-in since that would allow me to use the many older lenses from the early autofocus days that didn't have the built-in focusing motors. Theses are often cheap, because the well-heeled Nikon afficionados turned up their noses at them and the typical consumer either didn't have a camera that was compatible or didn't know that they'd work. The result? Lots of older lenses (particularly from independent manufactures such as Tamron, Sigma and Tokina) that are very inexpensive by comparison. Sure, they are older and tend to focus a little slower, but optically they are quite often comparable to anything produced today and in many cases, built better. I must point out that the advantages tend toward the longer end of the lens spectrum since those lenses were designed during the 35mm days and with the 1.5 (or 1.6 for Canon) multiplication factor, the wide-angle end of the product lines aren't as useful.
  
• On to the last issue as stated above. For obvious reason, this lets out the D40. This meant that for my purposes, in the Nikon line, there were 3 other 6Mp cameras in play. The D100 (which by designation would seem to be a higher level machine, but kinda-not-really), the D70/D70s and the D50. When I looked at my budget, after deducting the price of the lens that I was buying which turned out to be a little under $600, I had about $350 left. My research showed that I could afford any of the 3 cameras above, but certainly NOT the D200 which was just then being replaced by the D300, and was still selling for well over $800 all by itself, meaning I could buy it, but wouldn't have a lens to shoot with! The D70s was eliminated because it cost more and would have forced me to buy a lesser lens than I wanted. I eliminated the D50 since it used the SD card, was the bottom-of-the-line before the D40 and essentially a stripped down D70. So that left me with the D70 or D100. The D100 had more "professional" type feature such as a battery/grip that allowed the use of 2 batteries and added an extra set of controls for vertical shooting. But, despite the fact that this used essentially the same sensor as the D70, it had a much older electronics side as well as the older flash system that's not nearly as sophisticated as the CLS that Nikon still uses on their newest cameras. So, despite the fact that I would have to give up some features and the perceived prestige of using an Dx00 model, I decided on the D70 based on the combination of all the above factors.
  

So there you are. Although you will most probably not have the same needs or quirks that impact the buying decision like I did, how those issues are dealt with should basically apply to most people. The most prominent of my little idiosyncracies that may not affect others is the need or desire to use legacy lenses and I'll probably have to write a whole other post on just why I have this as a criteria. If that's the case, then a much wider spectrum of choices is opened up for a starter DSLR camera...on which I'll write the next post.

Brands, Needs and Quirks

Here's where things get sticky and people tend to argue back and forth quite a lot about the relative merits of who's better. So let me start by restating my stance on this: THERE'S REALLY NO REAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE MAJOR BRANDS!!!

Now that that's out of the way, let's look at the major players and a synopsis of what I believe to be the important characteristics of each company or more to the point; the factors that played a role in my selection.

• Canon- Arguably "the big dog" in today's DSLR world. You'll probably find that somewhat more of today's professionals using this brand than any other (including Nikon). It isn't because it's better! It's because that professionals (like others) then to be herd animals and will use what they see or are around the most. Then once they get invested in the "system" (mostly the literally tens of thousands worth of lenses) then they will not/do not change. This was true back in the film days when virtually ALL professionals used Nikon. I am NOT going to get into how and why this happened in today's post. They make VERY fine equipment all up and down their product line and you really can't go wrong with any one of their models. It's like buying a cheap Mercedes...at the end of the day, it's still a Mercedes!
• Nikon- The "Old School" choice. Still a very high percentage of professional use this brand, but they're not the dominant choice like the old days. They tend to be the camera of choice for photojournalist, sports photographers, etc. and really that's because they tend to favor speed of operation over getting the absolutely highest quality image. Because they were so overwhelmingly dominant in the old film camera/manual focus days, Nikon handicapped itself by making absolutely certain that their old lens would work on their new (even Auto-focus cameras). Remember the tens of thousands invested in glass? Basically they didn't want to alienate their huge clientele by changing the lens mount to "best" accomodate new technology. That's not saying that their system doesn't work well and it's not as advanced (because it is), but lets just say that from a variety of standpoints such as manufacturing and marketing it's hurt them in the long run. If this doesn't make sense, you just have to remember that Nikon was and is still a company of engineers that makes nothing but optical equipment of one kind or another, whereas Canon is a large multi-faceted corporation that makes and sells any number of things.
  
• The Others Players- What I mean by this is the other companies that made DSLRs of the type that we're focusing on (to be explained later). First there's Konica/Minolta, these guys are currently disguised as Sony who bought out their technology after this venerable company shut down their camera division a few years ago. So yes, they have some models that could be considered both in the KM as well as the Sony guise. Pentax, another old-line Japanese camera/optics company that's still "in the game". The main issue here which is the same as some of the others, is that they are small and therefore don't offer a complete range of equipment, so unless you have a bunch of Pentax K-Mount lenses, I wouldn't worry about them or their later-day Korean partner Samsung. Although I must say that this electronics giant could very well develop into the 800 pound gorilla in the future.
  
• Then theirs Olympus- The company that defies being placed in any niche! As a matter of fact they operate much like the big boys, but just at MUCH lower numbers. AND they don't use the same size sensors as everybody else (more on that later). They have full-blown professional cameras such as the E-1 and E-3, as well as their consumer line the E-4*0, E-5*0, and E-6*0. They use a four/thirds sized senor (read smaller than the APS-C/DX size that most others use), that they along with a consortium of others developed several years ago. There are pluses and minus to this sensor type (again-more on that later).
  

Now that that that's out of the way, let me get to the factors that led me to the models that I targeted:

1. Of course, with ANY regular person (meaning married adult) with a regular job, you have a budget that's reasonable and I'll construe that to mean around $1000 total. Why would the "Frugal Propellerhead" set this amount when you can run right out and buy the basic Canon or Nikon for $500-700, spend another $100 or so on accessories and call it good after spending $600-800? Remember one of my most important rules of Frugality is that you have to plan head AND some times spend a little more in the beginning to be frugal in-the-long-run. In this case, the most basic model is rarely a good investment over time! Yes, it will take wonderful pictures for a relatively long time and the AVERAGE consumer will be quite happy with it over it's life-span, but THIS BLOG IS NOT FOR THE AVERAGE CONSUMER....IT'S FOR THE TECHNO-GEEK ON A BUDGET!!! Therefore, I'm going to assume that I'm writing this for someone like me and will probably get somewhat immersed in the hobby; if not, read somebody elses' blog.
2. I've already stated that the minimum sensor resolution that I was able to come up with that worked for me was 6 mega-pixel, so I won't get into that again other than to say- if you have a bigger budget, then ramp this number up. So I'll use this as the reference point when I begin to talk about specific models later.
3. Primary use/function was the main reason that led me to decide I had to get a DSLR to start with, so let me elaborate. I'd say that 75-85% of the time, I shoot people and most of that being my children, ages 4 and 7. For anyone who's had to try to shoot their own family pictures with more than one small child, to say that your windows of opportunity are small is simply an understatement. You factor in that my 4-year old is rarely if ever still, then let's just say that our 2-3 trips a year to document our little family's progress through life can be a chore with the best of equipment. So it became obvious to me that the Nikon Coolpix 8800 wasn't going to cut it. I needed something that was affordable (meaning about the same cost), but MUCH faster in operation. This leads to a couple of other factors that integrated into the decision making process; a rather sophisticated flash system so I can control constantly changing lighting conditions and a all-in-one lens so I wouldn't miss opportunities while changing lenses. This also has the benefit of limiting the amount of exposure to dust, etc. to my sensor as well. This also leads to the necessity of shooting virtually all my photo "hand-held" which leads to the need for Vibration Reduction (Nikon), Image Stabilization (Canon) or whatever the company calls this amazing piece of technology. When I get time, I'll probably write an entire post on how this has effected my photography alone. In the meantime, let just say that it's give you a FAR greater percentage of usable images when shooting pictures hand-held.
   

So it came down to this: I needed a lens that coverage a huge range with built-in VR/IS (if Nikon or Canon), I needed a camera that had at least 6Mp resolution that had better than low-end features and build-quality, in a system that I could live with for a long time. Now to my own personal quirks that factored into the decision-making process:

• I'm a collector as well as a user (history teacher, remember?). Therefore, a camera with the ability to get me into an established system with a lot of "stuff" out there is a plus. On the down-side, this also tends to drive the prices of these brands up somewhat.
• I'm as much of a computer nerd as photo nerd, so I don't need the camera to do a lot in terms of processing abilities.
  
• I had a several compact flash cards on hand so if I could get a camera that used those (as opposed to XD or SD memory) that would be a plus. This is not insignificant as this seems since these things can run $100 or more for a couple right off the bat.
• I like cameras to be a little on the "beefy" side, especially when using a bigger lens (like the 18-200mm that I planned on buying). I always felt that they balanced a little better, and I have a personal quirk that stemmed from my left-eye dominance. Let me explain. Back in the old days when you had a film winding lever on 35mm cameras virtually all of them had that lever on the right side (Asian cultures tend to be VERY right-handed), meaning that if I had my left eye to the viewfinder, the wind-lever would pretty much be against my right eye. Further more, the during the late 60's and early 70's cameras develop the internal meter feature which was turned on and off by having that wind-lever stand off from the back a little as a switch, this was further exacerbated by me being a glasses wearer, so you can imagine the problem. So, whenever possible, I used cameras that had a motor drive or electronic film winder option. This kept the lever from poking me in the right eye, gave the camera more heft and better balance when using large lenses as well as often having a grip to make holding the camera more comfortable over long periods (this is now pretty much become standard on all modern SLRs giving the large battery a place to live. So, in summary; I got used to using bigger cameras.

That's all I've got in me this morning, so I'll wrap it up.

"What to look for" Part 2

The other day, I started talking about what to look for when getting into the digital SLR game and had fairly quickly winnowed things down to 2 brands and 1 tier of mega-pixels. You guys must of thought; Wow another Ken Rockwell, cock-sure and dogmatic!

So let me slow down, back up and explain how and why I got to this place so quickly. And working backwards, it comes down to basic economics. I never said that the other brands like Sony, Pentax, Olympus and Samsung weren't any good. What I said was that they didn't hold anywhere near the market-share so they sold less, A LOT LESS of their product......and that means that there's a lot fewer of those models sitting around out there looking to be sold back into the market. Although the Olympus E Series cameras are excellent, and the Sony A Series or heck; the Konica/Minolta Maxxum 7D and 5D were excellent cameras, there is simply a lot less of them out there looking to be sold. Typically this means higher prices. I could draw you some nice charts explaining this, or take a long time to explain, but just trust me on this. When you combine this with the fact that ALL the independent lens manufacturers make their product in the Canon and the Nikon mounts, then the same is true of buying lenses for your new DSLR baby.

So, what's the story with 6 megapixels? Simply put, that's the lowest sensor resolution you can get away with and still get "equivilent to film" results on prints of up to anything reasonable....oh say 11 x 14 or even 13 x 19 inches.

OK, so lets assume that I've convinced you and you're going to focus on getting something in the 6Mp range made by either Canon or Nikon...now what? Well, you then determine what your budget is going to be and devote 2/3 of that to 1 lens; yes, I did say 1 lens. I'll use myself as an example. I had about $1000 to work with and wanted to pick up a DSLR with a good lens to the specs as I described above. In my case, I wanted a lens with what Nikon calls VR (Vibration Reduction) and Canon calls IS (Image Stabilization). I also wanted to rarely/if ever have to change lenses. So, for a 6Mp camera which would dictate an APS-C/DX sized sensor, that means a 35mm film equiv. of about 28mm on the wide end to somewhere around 200-300mm on the long end. Why those numbers?

On a 35mm camera, a 50mm lens is considered to have the angle of coverage which gives a perspective most closely resembling what we see from our eyes. In the typical progression, the most common focal lengths would be 35mm, 28mm, 24mm, 20mm, etc. on the wide end and 85mm, 135mm, 200mm, 300mm, 400mm etc. on the long end. Most photographers would consider 28mm as where "wide" starts and 135mm where "long or telephoto" starts. In order to get the kind of coverage that goes from wide to telephoto you'd need something like a 28-300mm zoom. In the digital world the majority of cameras sold are APS-C/DX sensor size, so using the 1.5x conversion, you'd need an 18-200mm lens.

Therefore in my case, I needed the Nikon 18-200mm f3.5-5.6 VR lens since canon didn't make one in that range which neatly costs around $650 used making it 2/3s of my $1000 budget. Which left me with $350 to buy the camera and the rest as you've hear...."is history".

Next time, I'll get into the finer details of camera/brand selection.