Frugal Propellerhead

The Plastic-Fantastic!

2012-02-10T23:22:00.010-06:00

In my last post, I touched on a "back-up" camera to the D300 (Holy Grail) that I bought last year, and have continued to give the idea more serious thought as well as quite a bit more research. I had also come to the conclusion that the best fit for me out of the cast of characters (Nikon D70, D70s, D50, D40), and the D50 had kind of "won out".

In this post, let me elaborate on this choice as well as another thought......a lens......go figure, right!?! Basically without slipping into "review" territory, let me just start with the important attributes about this particular Nikon model that has somehow separated it from the pack. First of all, it's significantly smaller than the D70/D70s bodies. The last post has an image of it right behind a D70 and it's quite marked. Below is a picture from the top which shows how much narrower it is.

I'm not saying that it's "pocketable", but when combined with the right lens (more on that later), this could present quite a bit less mass. So my search for something that's not as intimidating as my full on D300 rig with MB-D10 battery grip and 18-200mm super-zoom, for "street" photography could come to fruition. So, let's see; smaller, lighter, uses the same battery, can focus the same lenses. With the exception of it using the incompatible SD memory cards, this camera could be "IT"! After reading lots of reviews, I became even more convinced that this should probably be my target. One professional photographer/reviewer became so enamored of it, that he dubbed it the "Plastic-Fantastic"! The consensus of all the reviews was that although this camera was made of plastic, it didn't feel "plasticy", unlike the rival small Canons.

So, what has led me in this direction and away from the Olympus E-330 that I had discussed in previous posts? Here's the thing: most ALL advanced photographic systems are all about the glass. Ultimately, the vast majority of photographers who shoot SLRs (of any kind) will have more invested in their lenses then their camera bodies. And with the advent of the modern electronic-centric digital-SLR, this trend is even more pronounced. Quite often you'll even see high-end cameras displaced in the product line in as little as two years! It's simply not possible to constantly replace all of a collection of lenses. So, from a pragmatic standpoint, even if I bought an E-330 at a great price, then assembling enough lenses to make use of it would impede the acquisition of comparable Nikon glass that'd be useable in my main system as well. That just doesn't make good economic sense and I do teach that subject! Now, that doesn't mean I don't love the design of both the Olympus E-330 and Panasonic DMC GF-1 that I talked about in previous posts and won't at some future date try to pick one or both up when their prices have dropped more......but just not now. Yes, I know; it's a sad thing that we can't have everything that we want, but such is life!

So....how exactly does one turn a (relatively) compact DSLR like the D50 into some facsimile of a "street-shooter".....small, light, with some focal length flexibility? ....with the "plastic-fantastic" lens of course! As you can see from the picture above; that's not much of a lens. From it's plastic mount to it's plastic filter ring, it only measures 2.5". It weighs in at just a hair under 7oz. There's no aperture ring, so if you don't have a camera that's capable of electronically controlling the f-stops, then you're out of luck! It's actually a simplified version of the already cheap, 28-80mm/f3.5-5.6 kit lens that Nikon created to match their early low-end AF cameras (6 elements in 6 groups) which included a (then new) Hybrid aspherical element by bonding a polycarbonate (plastic) element with one of the glass ones. At the time, it was considered to be an adequate optical performer, but a pariah to traditional Nikonians for all the cost-cutting measures. However, this didn't deter the legions of consumers who now bought Nikon's inexpensive auto-focus cameras on which this lens was included as part of the "kit". The estimates of units produced vary, but it's most probably in the high- hundreds of thousands or millions, so finding one cheap is not much of a challenge!

The "undropped-shoes" on this is that, with modern, DX sized sensor digital camera, this lens is an amazing performer all out of proportion with it's size and cost (typically under $50)! When combined with the equally nice performing for the price (~ $150) D50, it makes a great inexpensive/compact combo, that would perform not only as a "street-shooter", take anywhere camera, but as a backup to my system as well. I know that the D40 is significantly smaller than the D50, but it doesn't have a screw-drive motor and uses a different battery as well.

As you can see from the above image, it's pretty darned compact and lightweight (26oz total) rig. My D300 with battery, but without lens weighs 32oz, by itself! That lens give a converted angle of view on a 35mm camera of roughly 42-120mm, giving it a nice "normal" to "portrait"-short telephoto range. All for a less than $200 with a little bit of judicious shopping!

Some of you might be wondering how this fits in with my "build quality" philosophy that I often point to? Of course, I still think and will probably always think that it's important, but it's also a relative concept of course. First of all; it's relative to what you can afford! Secondly, and I think, most importantly, the concept should be applied relative to the expected function of the product. More specifically; any "front-line" product that you'd expect to use regularly or in a high-leverage environment must be "top-notch". However, any device or product that's rarely used (like a back-up camera) must simply be functional. A good example is a home mechanic that only occasionally uses his tools: why would he run out and buy tens of thousands of dollars worth of professional grade Snap-On tools? In the case of this camera; it just needs to work at a decent level, be small enough to give me some functionality that the D300 does not.

Plastic-Fantastic indeed!

It's tough to be Frugal

2012-02-01T17:33:00.008-06:00

It’s rough, but it's gotta be done. These days, I’m in a partially self-imposed austerity program. This is of course partially due to a lack of liquid assets, and partially due to just plain having too much stuff! However, that doesn’t mean I’m not on Craig’s List and eBay. In order to “stay in the game”, even when you aren't buying, you can’t afford to let knowledge about the market to slip. The other important factor is that the key of being frugal, is long-range planning! For me, that planning includes the growth in all three of my hobby areas. Today, I’ll discuss my photography “roadmap”.

I have for some time decided that I’d really like to develop in a several areas of photography. The first being in portraiture. To this end, I’d like to add one or more remotely controllable strobes, as well as the adapters, light stands, and modifiers necessary give me project flexibility. Ideally, that would be at least one more Speedlight which would give me a portable and powerful flash that’s compatible with the Nikon CLS system that I use. This would give me great flexibility in being able to set up multiple light sources in virtually any location at any time. In the same vein, I’d really like to have a relatively short zoom that would make a good balanced match on my D300. When shooting portraiture, I rarely if ever need the 18-200mm “do everything” super-zoom, and I just think that a smaller range lens is a better physical fit on my camera, especially when I’m not using it without the battery grip. Another eventual photographic target would be a “super-wide”, which would be something in the 24mm (35mm equivelant) range, that would give me the ability to set up and shoot interiors. I’ve been interested in lighting and shooting architectural interiors for some time. Maybe I might even be able to turn that into a business opportunity with real estate at some point in the future. Which brings up another item that would probably become a “need” down the road. For my own needs, not having a backup isn’t an issue, but when you are being paid by others for a specific job, non-performance due to equipment failure isn’t really acceptable, which means that there’ll probably need to be a “backup” camera at some point in the future.

This time of budgetary frugality where I’m just planning and not buying anything can be critical in helping me get the equipment that I need/want without make costly mistakes. So let’s look at the areas of future need and what I might want to keep tabs on now.

Lenses: Basically, I need something in the medium, norm-short telephoto range for a primary portraiture lens. Of course the most obvious would be to get into something with a nice wide aperture like f2.8, however after looking into it, I found that you can get more than adequate background blur by using f4 which bring the much more common f3.5 maximum aperture lenses into play. This one change alters the cost landscape by dropping the price by $200 or more. Typically the most flattering focal length used for this type of photography runs in the 75-105mm range which for a DX camera like mine comes out to be 50-70mm after the 1.5x conversion factor. In that case, there are a number of nice old Nikon lenses which are generally pretty inexpensive. In this group there is of course the 28-80mm that Nikon began producing in mass almost as soon as they started making auto-focus film cameras. There are of course others such as the 35-70/35-80mm range as well. These are full-on consumer lens, while-functionally and optically adequate, are often lacking somewhat in build quality, typically having lightweight plastic barrels as well as mounts. That being said, they can often be had for a song…down to the sub-$50 range. One factor for me though, is that I find myself increasingly using the wider focal lengths while shooting portraits and those lenses have ranges that translate to having starting points of 42mm and 52mm converted focal length respectively. Which brings us to the 18-70mm Nikon AF-S. This lens converts to a neat 27-105mm focal length that covers what I’d want to do very well. Plus this lens is considered to be optically very good, a mid-line lens with a metal mount AND was made in relatively large numbers since it was a “kit” lens often included with the D70, D70s and some D200s. This brings the typical price to be somewhere in the palatable $135-150 range. So why not theinexpensive and optically decent 18-55mm? Not much cheaper at around $100, plus hate the “cheap” feel of the build and on top of that, the 18-70mm is thought to be significantly superior on the optical front.

Now the "wide" lens. A long-standing buggaboo for DX cameras due to the smaller than 35mm sensor creates a 1.5x conversion factor often turning a very nice and wide optical formula into something "mid-range"! My widest lens goes down to 18mm (27mm converted) which isn't very wide to start with and at that setting comes with a VERY complex "mustache" shaped distortion as well. What I'd really like to be able to have to shoot indoors or covering large groups is something in the old 24mm range as related to 35mm film cameras. This is fairly wide without introducing a lot of distortion. Nikon makes such a lens, however it sells for a hefty $1000 + or -, used! Luckily, this is an area that all the independent manufacturers out there have had a lot of experience designing in and there are lots of choices. After quite a bit of internet research, I've found that all of the "big three" (Sigma, Tamron & Tokina) have well thought of lenses in this category, and the best balance of optical quality, cost and build is generally acknowledged to be the Tokina 12-24mm/f4. They tend to sell in the $325 to 425 range, but sometimes can be had for slightly less.

Most of the lens research is done and all that really needs to happen is for me to monitor it over time so I can detect trends and be able to differentiate any anomalies. Next on the agenda is the flash. Nikon has 4 flashes that are compatible with their Creative Lighting System (CLS): the current SB-900, SB-700 and the older SB-800, SB-600. They are all great and love the SB-600 that I've had for a couple of years now. Although, I have an old SB-26 with the built-in optical trigger, it's not CLS capable and therefore not directly controllable from the master. And although, the SB-600 has been a revelation, it can't be a "master", nor is it as powerful as the 800/900 strobes. Obviously, since the SB-900 is the newest and biggest, it's also the most expensive. Which leave the SB-800. This is one powerful and flexible flash! If you have any doubts; do yourself a favor, go over to YouTube and watch some of the Joe McNally videos on what can be done with these things. I've found that they routinely sell for $300+, so clearly I'm going to need to find a "deal" or save lots of money!

Which brings us to the last item: the back-up camera. As a back-up, there are certain criteria that it needs to meet. The main one that causes a difficult decision is whether or not you want it to be part your "system". I've decided the answer is YES and in my case, that's Nikon, CLS, and possibly "screw-drive" capability so it can function with the older non-AF-S Nikon lenses (of which I have 2). Of course ideally, a "back-up" should be identical or as much like your primary camera as possible. But obviously, I'm not in a position to buy another D300, or even a D200, nor could I see myself being able to rationalize it in my wildest dreams! This leaves the D70s, D70, D50 and D40. You guys that read this blog on a regular basis already know that I've owned both the D70 and D70s and liked them a lot, so those could be considered no brainers, especially given that they can take the same lenses (screw-drive), flashes (CLS), batteries as well as memory cards as the D300. Unfortunately, there's a downside to them......in that they are virtually identical in size to the D300.....although quite a bit lighter. Of all the candidates, the D40, is by far the smallest, lightest, and the newest (read: most advanced). There are downsides though: that small size and light weight comes at a price, which is the missing screw-drive motor and by extension an inability to focus older lenses. It also takes a different battery as well as SD memory cards instead of the CF cards of the D70/D200/D300. Then there's the D50. Essentially, it's a slightly more modern (but de-featured) D70, which is both smaller and ligthter, but as a consequence, uses the SD memory card as well. On the plus side though, it does have the screw-drive focusing motor and will take the EN-EL3e that the D300 uses. My research has shown that it typically sells in a similar range as the D70 so there's not much to give there. This price point seems to run in the $150 to 200 area so it's a good candidate from a budgetary standpoint.

My reality is that, at the moment, I can't spend much money, but I can plan, plot and watch. So when the time comes, I can pounce!

Loooong-Range Planning

2012-01-15T09:06:00.006-06:00

Whether you want to call it extreme long-range planning or extreme procrastination, at long last, the in-ceiling surround speakers are in! 7 years ago this spring, our house went under construction. It became apparent to me, that my cabinet of audio/home theater equipment could really only be placed on one wall, so obviously the surround speakers would pretty much have to go somewhere in the opposite end of the room. After looking at the builder’s model of our house, it was also apparent, that any hidden (read in-wall) wiring HAD to be done before the sheet rock people enclosed the studs. The issue was, that like most recently built homes in this part of the country, the majority of the houses have tall ceilings (something in the 9-10’ range), so if you have an external wall, they tend to “cheat” a little and part of that ceiling line is angled off where the roof comes down since they don’t want to have really deep eves on the house. Soooo, you can imagine that there’s no good way to get to the “top-plate” above the wall where the roof angles since that’s all enclosed by sheet rock!

Well; the upshot is that we saw this and ran several runs of wire down to a triple-ganged box on that wall behind the massive A/V cabinet. Those wire runs include a builder-prepackaged coaxial, networking, and phone, plus speaker wiring that we ran to accommodate anticipated needs as well as possible future expansion. This list includes “runs” as follows:

Right and left rear for surround sound speakers.

Rear “back” (some call it rear center), to accommodate 1 or 2 speakers for that if necessary. Channels 6/7 on most modern A/V systems.

One run to the back patio, through a box to add a volume control if necessary.

One run to the dining room, through a box.

One more run to the garage, through a box as well.

Don’t ask me what I was thinking putting that many runs of speaker wire in an “open-plan” house that’s less than 2000 square feet. But hey; they’re there in case I ever need them! And the point of this post is that, when you have a chance, plan ahead with something that’s not particularly expensive (like speaker wire) instead of regretting it later and have to tear up sheet rock.

I think that most people envision that having speakers built into walls and/or ceilings is something that rich people have. I’m here to tell you that: it is SO NOT! The fallacy stems from the fact that it’s thought to be expensive for one thing, and then what are you going to do if you move?

My answer is that if you dispel the first myth (and it's not expensive), then the second thing is a non-issue. Just leave it in the old house and market it as a "feature", then do it again in the second house! The numbers on in-ceiling/in-wall speakers are that decent ones can be bought in the $50-100 per pair range. The trick is to know which are "decent" and which are junk. I bought my surround pair at a Lowe's clearance one year at the low end of the spectrum....around $60. It was branded as HiFi Works; not exactly B&W or even a Niles which are well known, but upon further inspection, the literature showed that HiFi Works is/was a division of Sonance which is a very well-known and respected company in the custom install market! It was apparent that some of the areas were not as nice such as the use of spring-loaded speaker wire connectors vs. binding posts, which leads me to my next observation.

This at least partially comes from my mom; who always said that, for things that get used a lot, or that you have to depend on, spend the money to buy top-notch products. The corollary of which is, if it's secondary, or not as important: save your money! I wouldn't skimp on my mains or center channel speaker, but rears are "effects" speakers and not meant to be heard directly. In fact, it's my personal philosophy that if you can directly pin-point them; its a bad thing!

When we originally pulled the wire, both 6.1 and 7.1 had been out for some time and were pretty mainstream on the better A/V receivers as well as Pre-Pros, so I decided that that it was worth-while to pull a run for that as well. In this case, we actually pulled a 4 conductor wire that I could use for 2 "back" speakers or a single/dual where you get both channels in one speaker chassis. Although, I had never had a system with even one back/rear-center speaker, I thought it'd be nice to be ready.

You can see in this image that there are two tweeter/mids on this speaker, which are really two completely seperate speakers in one frame so you get a stereo pair in a single assembly. In the end, I bought a receiver that was 6.1 so could only do 1 rear center, so I didn't need the 4 conductors, but it's there! Which leads me to the next issue: now I needed a single back there to match my pair. The probability of finding a single matching HiFi Works speaker was/is slim and none. So, let me refer back to my earlier assertion that we don't need and don't even want to listen directly to rear effects speakers anyway. This means that, it'd be great if all three rears were identical, but not a necessity. My theory was that if you had a speaker that was similar in it's major specifications, it'll be fine. To me, these items are it's general size and type (read same size and type of speaker materials). I my case, 6.5" 2-way speaker with a soft-dome tweeter. After a fair amount of searching on eBay, I came across somebody who had a "New/Old Stock" Phase Linear single speaker that I was able to pick up for a song (about $30 after shipping).

Then came the loooong wait. I wanna say that those poor things sat out in the garage close to 5 years before we got around to putting them in. My buddy Pat (who had originally helped me pull the wiring) was in town this last weekend and he's worked for quite some time as an A/V installer. Other than, never having done it before and being nervous about it (my former co-worker Kurt had stuck his foot through his ceiling doing something similar), I had always told my wife that it would literally take me all day to do something that would take Pat an hour. This turned out to be exactly true. It took him almost exactly an hour with me as his semi-able assistant.

Well, in the end, it turns out that I was right! They sound great! It doesn't matter that they don't match, although you absolutely can't tell by looking! Plus, the wife is very happy that the black surround speakers that used to sit on the end table and shelf in the living room along with the wires that ran to them are gone. The 3 round white speakers in the ceiling are all but unnoticeable. It's not a sexy change, but cheap and VERY worthwhile to do!

Ho! Ho! Ho!

2011-12-17T10:19:00.017-06:00

Since this Christmas has already been spoken for (meaning that our trip to Taiwan and Hong Kong was basically it), I can pretty much let my imagination run wild since there is no requirement that we (OK, me, I suppose) needs to afford any of this! So last night I sat around thinking about what products out there that this Frugal Propellerhead think are just cool and I’d put on my Christmas list if Santa had deep pockets.

We’ll start with computer stuff since that’s what I know the best. We’ll start off with something small, but never-the-less, very cool; the Corsair Survivor flash drive. These things are made of aircraft grade aluminum and sealed to pretty much survive any kind of abuse you want to give it. As often as I tend to lose them, I kind of think that the size and weight might be a bit of an advantage.

Then there’s the darling of the media and probably THE hot tech item this Christmas…. “Tablets”. I like the concept a lot, since the vast majority of what people do on their computers at home would be things that work well in that format. Really, I don’t have a HUGE favorite, since there isn’t much to give between the top contenders. With that being said, I do like the Motorola Xoom though. It just has a nice look and feel, like the iPad without the ridiculous price. The Android 3 OS works well, and build quality is very nice. Bet you thought that I’d say ThinkPad Tablet, didn’t you. Too much money for what it does….right now anyway!

On to the obscure (relatively); the Wacom Cintiq. Most people are at least marginally familiar with digitizer pads, but this is another order above that with a digitizer overlaid on top of a special display so that you can work on your images directly. Unfortunately, very expensive…..like more than a thousand expensive, but very cool though!

While at least peripherally on the topic of photography, I’d love to have a quasi-pocketable camera. The parameters would be that it has a sensor bigger than the typical compact, full manual controls, the ability to take a “real” flash and preferably the ability to change lenses. ……And the winner is??? The Panasonic DMC-GF-1. OK, you are probably saying: what the heck is that? I know, I know; Panasonic struggles with naming products, but trust me, this thing is VERY NICE! If it didn’t cost $800 new and $500 used, I’d already own it! Here’s what it is. It’s a Micro 4/3^rd camera with an interchangeable mount, that’ll not only take the growing list of m4/3^rd lenses, but virtually any other mount lens via adapters courtesy of its phenomenally short “back-spacing”. However, it’s not the ability to mount lots of lens that attracts me since I really only want it to mount one; the 20mm/f 1.7 “pancake lens. It’s fast at f1.7, it’s 23mm depth so extremely slim, making it very pocketable, and very sharp. The build-quality is phenomenal and it’s festooned with traditional dial and button controls that translate well to old fogies like me. This thing is a perfect counterpoint to my beastly D300 DSLR. It’s not hard to figure out why this type of cameras has become so popular in such a short amount of time.

On to audio equipment: if I had my druthers, I’d happily replace everything I own with Rotel. I know it’s expensive, but it’s amazingly underpriced for the performance, plus, the stuff is just so nice looking! Probably my favorite is the RSP-1098 (black-face of course, but the black and silver is nice too) Pre-amp/Processor.

Of course, that means I’d have to have a stack of separate amps as well…..woe is me; I guess somebody has to suffer the fate. This thing is so cool it has a front-panel LCD monitor that you can use for menu items or check on whatever video you are queuing up.

While we’re on the topic of hitting up the big guy in the red suit; I’d want to have a separate system for audio only that had speakers driven by rebuilt Dynaco Mk IV tube monoblock amps for the mains.

The front-end would be fed by a Rega Planar 3 turntable and there’d be a pair of Sennheiser HD600/650 headphones when I don’t feel like running speakers.

Then, the last but not least category, is of course automobiles. In my case, that would be the Audi S4 from the late-90s/early 2000s chassis. This was that short period of time after Audi got their quality control issues resolved, but before they got so impressed with themselves that they lost their minds and started building those A**-UGLY models with the huge grills! Those might be better cars, but I just can’t bring myself to drive an ugly car….even in my imagination.

If you ever wondered what make a run-of-the-mill techno-geek a Frugal Propellerhead, you can see the difference above. Yes, many of these things are pricey, and some could even be considered class-leading, but none of them are the most expensive or even considered excessively price in their class. What they all have in common though is that they are all well-designed, well-built and return great “bang-for-the-buck” for the money…..at least IMHO anyway. Now if we were REALLY dreamin'/wishin'.....there's always the $118,000, R8......

I’d love to hear from any readers on what you guys are thinking is cool and would love for Santa to bring you this year.

Tablets

2011-11-27T11:58:00.008-06:00

No; I did not run out on Black Friday and buy a cheap tablet! Will I probably buy one in the next year of so? I'd say that the chances of that are pretty good. I think that they are conceptually interesting, and I think that what my wife does here at home can mostly be accomplished on a tablet vs. her big laptop. However, my budget and the frugal part of me say that, now if not the time. So, why are we talking about it?

I do need to throw this caviat out there, that this is NOT A REVIEW and that if this has sparked interested in one or more of these tablets, you should find full-blown reviews written by professional who are getting paid to do it and are supported by full test labs. That's what I do. So this is just a synopsis of what I've found so far.

First of all, as any long standing reader probably knows; I tend to research extensively. That might be an understatement, but be-that-as-it-may: the research has begun in earnest. Secondly, my buddy Steve asked me to weigh in with my opinion on his possibility of purchasing one or more for himself and mostly importantly for his wife, for Christmas. He and his wife are both educators with 2 children as well, so it goes without saying that they have similar budgetary constraints as our household. His original question to me was are there any "refurbished" deals out there that aren't into the iPad price-range?

It pretty much goes without saying that in this market-space that the original iPad established, that all conversations start with the current version of it as the baseline. Because, as much as I decry the whole "look how cool I am using an Apple product" mentality, the fact is that as a mature/general use tablet, and in terms of feature as well as build quality, there is no equal. However, you pay the price. The current iPad2s start at around $500 new with the price going down as far as $450 at some places during Black Friday. That price goes up from there and keeps going up to somewhere in the $700+ range for the full-boat, 3G and 64Gb version. And that's before throwing another $100-200 worth of folio/cases, and other nebulous accessories at it!

So, let's look at options: there are of course the Android based tablets that run the gamut from less than $150 to very high end versions that are every bit as expensive as the iPads, then there are a few out there that run their own software like the Blackberry. We'll start by throwing out all the uber-cheap, resistive-touch/no-name Chinese knock-offs. They all tend to be somewhat glitchy and generally don't function well due to the poor responsiveness of the screens AND the old hacked up versions of Pre-2.2 Android OS that most of them use. I will give them one thing though: they are cheap! I saw a Big Lots (!!!) Black Friday ad for a Pandigital tablet for $59.99. Big Lots....really?!? My prediction is that there's going to be a bunch of these things at pawn shops after Christmas priced at $75 because Uncle Jim Bob couldn't figure out how to make it work and tech support was non-existent. Enough about these things.

Let's move on to the players in this market space who don't wear a prominent Apple logo. To me, you have to differentiate between the use of them before we go on. There is of course, general home use, which is generally the 10" (give or take) models that take over many of the function that people use laptops for, such as web surfing, social networking, accessing electronic media and light messaging. Then there are the 7" models that folks will tend to carry with them more and use as big smartphones. Most manufactures have both versions in their lines and many have optional sub-models with both 3G/4G and Wi-Fi only. Now, really "Wi-Fi" only isn't as "only" as you might think, since many (if not most) have tethering applets, allowing them to connect to your data-plan equipped smartphone and not have to pay for another plan. But obviously, the ones with wireless data onboard are going to be more expensive than the other.

I'm just going to throw this out there that the most impressive package, in terms of performance to me is the Blackberry Playbook (7"). It's fast, and handles streaming very fast, and relatively inexpensive at around the $350 pricepoint. However, it doesn't run Android; it runs Blackberry's own OS which obviously limits you in software available. But you really should read some of the reviews and look at some of the YouTube videos: It's really quite impressive for more than $100 less than the iPad2. Blackberry does know how to move data!

Then comes the two Taiwanese heavy-weights: Acer and Asus. The Acer Iconia line comes in a variety of flavors ranging all the way from a small inexpensive (again in the $350 range) all the way up to the 10" versions designed to attach to a notebook type dock which are more in the iPad range. The Asus is generally very similar product with almost identical feature sets. Both of these pads run the newest Android 3.0 "Honeycomb" OS and function very nicely.

Which brings us to the Motorola Xoom, which might very well be the most iPad-eque of all the Andoids with it's VERY nice build quality, smooth function and similar $500+ price-point. The Samsung Galaxy is a very much like it at a similar price, but in a 7" form-factor. It seems like many of the reviewers who do a lot of traveling have used this tablets personally for the last 6-8 months, but it's pricey.

I understand there WAY more tablets out there, but I'm going to end on this one. The Lenovo IdealPad A1. Yup; I get that this make it look like a biased opinion by a ThinkPad lover, but the fact is that this tablet is a well-functioning Android OS (albiet 2.3 "Gingerbread", but fully flash capable), 7" model selling at $200! Yup, I put my hands on one at Fry's the other day, that was not on special marked at that price, which was in stock! Yup, it has a capacitance type screen (same as an iPad). Yup, it has a MicroSD slot AND MicroUSB connectivity as well. It's not a surprise that PC World called it a "....$199 Bargain"! It's a bit chunky and heavy for a 7" tablet, but goodness gracious....it's a $199 tablet!

Black Friday 2011

2011-11-26T10:57:00.013-06:00

I'm normally not a participant in the festivities of Black Friday (this where you gasp....what!?!), yes, I know I know: it seems to run contrary to what a "frugal" person would do right? Wouldn't you want to stand in line for hours and freeze to death to save a few dollars in the interest of frugality? Well....really....no; and here's why. Firstly, almost all of my needs are fulfilled on the used market, not the new. Secondly, I advocate buying nice, well built products at a low price, not cheap products at the same price! Cheap is cheap, is when it's bought, will continue to be as the product ages WAY faster than a superior product and end up costing more in the long run when it breaks before the other. Enough about that; lets get on with what I did on Black Friday 2011.

Let me start by saying that I left the house at about 10am, not pm! I had seen a couple of ads from the large outfits that had some peripherals that I wanted. But, being peripherals, I sure wasn't going to stand in line hours before they opened just to get them! Besides, they are so low-priced and common-place that I figured (rightly) that there'd be plenty left.

First of all, I went up to Micro Center (did I ever say that it's my favorite "brick and mortar" retailer?) and found the Cooler Master NotePal U2, Notebook Computer Cooler. It's basically a perforated piece of aluminum with a "hook" on one end that served as the mechanism of elevation (right-side-up), and as a wrap-around device to hold your computer when turned the other way around, thus allowing it to be completely compact and able to travel with your computer without taking up very much space at all.

There are seemingly dozens of devices just like this; what's the big deal about this one? The U2 version (there are U1 and U3 as well), has the exact size of our Z61m workstation's footprint.

I had looked at and coveted them before (but it was a non-starter at $25 MSRP), with their nice heat dissipation due to the aluminum construction and moveable/detachable fans which run on a USB pass-through.These not only allow you to remove them for transport, but to move them around so that they are position where the heat is the worse on your particular notebook.

Then it turns out that the curled over part designed to hold the notebook is the exact depth needed to accommodate the "Zs" as well (ready to do the happy dance now).

....and of course the most important part.....Black Friday priced at $10. Plus I also picked up one of those generic laptop hard drive housings that lets you put in any random drive you have laying around (and I have many) and use it as a USB connected storage for $6. So, after a little bit of a wait at checkout, I'm out the door at around $17 after taxes.

I was so please with how well that went, that I decided to brave the Fry's Black Friday sale, since I had seen another Cooler Master, the X-Lite notebook cooling pad advertised at $10 with a $10 rebate......and Fry's is on the way home. This particular pad wasn't like the other in that it's not really made to be transportation friendly. It's made of molded ABS plastic shaped like a wedge.

Instead of the 2 removeable fans underneath like the other one, this pad has one BIG fan in the middle of the wedge which is definitely not designed to be accessible. Of course, it size allows it to turn at a low rpm making it virtually silent. Very nice for use in the bedroom while the wife is asleep!

Here's a collage of pictures showing all the relevant features.

I haven't even gotten to the best part yet. It's virtually (within mm) of the footprint of my X300 that I commonly use in the bedroom!

So, my Black Friday consisted of $27 spent, of which $10 is coming back and 3 non-essential, but never-the-less, nice to have peripherals bought.

Next post: my other reason for the Black Friday trip. Tablet research....

Grateful Propellerhead

2011-11-24T22:21:00.002-06:00

On this Thanksgiving of 2011, I have a few propellerheaded thoughts. Let's start by saying that it's been a very good year and there's a lot to be thankful for!

The network became something more useful than allowing internet access for all the computers. The actual use of it in a modern sense of backing up or computers and distribution of media has been a revelation.
The file server running Windows Home Server, allowing all our machines to not only be backed up and access to files, but the goals of centralized media distribution has changed everything.
Of course, the thing that makes the home server a really useful was the media PC installed into the main AV system.
Combination of an across the board migration to Windows 7, along with the built in Windows Media Center. This turned into a virtually perfect interface with the my media as well as what's out there on cable and the internet.
Upgraded my wife from her R52 to a Z61m, my son from a T42 to a Z60t, my daughter from an X30 to an X31, plus added a Z61m to my arsenal.
Upgraded my desktop in several important specs, but most importantly a new 22" 1920 x 1200 S-PVA monitor.
And of course, last, but not least, is the camera upgrade to the D300. Although it didn't go without incident, it eventually got done and I couldn't be happier!

Of course, I'm certain that I've left off a few things, but WOW! It's been a good year for a frugal propellerhead and I certainly have a lot to be thankful for!

"Street Shooter" Part 3: Send in the Clones

2011-11-05T11:00:00.009-05:00

This third part of my series on a camera for "Street Shooting" is really less a commentary on that particular camera than it is about how things are in the photographic industry as well as electronics in general.

Most enthusiast are well aware that "cloning" or "badge-engineering" is common in many industries as well as electronics. It's been around for many years in the automotive industry: as in small Ford are pretty much Mazdas, and Escalades are rebadged Suburbans with uglier sheet-metal. In consumer electronics, the practice is often much more blatant, with HP simply putting on a different logo onto the iPods they were selling, although it can be much more sophisticated such as the different electronics and mechanicals used on the Canon laser engines at the heart of most HP LaserJets.

In this case, the device of interest is the Olympus E-330 that I started talking about several weeks ago which I'm interest in acquiring at some point. In the process of researching it, I came across several interesting things. The first tidbit that caught my attention was the fact that the resolution at 7.5 was half a megapixel lower than the 8mp of the E-300 that it replaced. This is something that almost never happens in the digital camera marketplace so I looked into that a little and as it turns out; Olympus changed from using the original supplier (Kodak) to Panasonic for the sensors. This opened a completely separate can of worms onto itself! Besides the obvious that the Panasonic sensor although lower in resolution, had the killer feature that Olympus was after in "LiveView", Panasonic, or more correctly their parent company, Matsushita, is one of the "big dogs" in the electronics world and it's always advantageous to be connect with them. This has a number of ramifications including the fact the there's a far greater number of cameras/sensors involved beside just the Olympus ones, and therefore lowering costs, but another peripheral connection as well. In this case, we are talking one of the truly "Prestige" names in the photographic world which was the venerated Leica!

In the highly complex world of Japanese corporations, these agreements are even more key than most people know. Without getting into an extended history of Japan and explanation of keiretsus, these alliances tend to be archane where often agreements are done without money changing hands and tends to be quasi-secretive in their operations. So, although they are part of the 4/3rds consortium, Kodak isn't part of the the "inner-circle" and ultimately became a casualty. Leica got in on this show, by not only becoming part of the 4/3rds consortium, but as per their licensing and technology sharing agreement vis-a-vis Panasonic. This started out with the optical glass end of things of course, since Matsushita had great electronic expertise, but none in high-end optics. It was a natural fit since Sony of the Mitui keiretsu, had already locked up an agreement with the other prestige German glass maker/designer, Zeiss.

After that little aside, lets get back to the camera. In any case, I've gotten neck deep into research on the E-330 and as it turns out, the info on these "agreements" led me to the fact that within the space of 10 months, 3 companies introduced cameras with the same sensor, lens mount as well as shape and size........hmmm.......suspicious. Hint: look at the number, location, and size of the controls as well as access doors on the different cameras. They can change a lot of things visually, but can't change those without spending LOTS of money.

Olympus E-330 (Jan. 2006), $1100 new MSRP, <$200 used

Panasonic DMC-L1 (Feb. 2006), $2000 new MSRP, $400-500 used

and Leica Digilux III (Sept. 2006), $2500 new MSRP, $1000-1400 used

......verrrry inttteresting!!!

As you can see, the prices on them vary greatly; on the current used market as well as the original "list" (which bear no resemblance to "street") price. As you can see from the "used" prices above, a quick scan of recently completed auctions on eBay indicate that there's quite a disparity on pricing. Granted, both the Panasonic and Leica were originally sold with the highly thought-of Leica D 14-50mm/f2.8-3.5 Vario-Elmarit Aspherical lens, and the Olympus sold with the Zuiko D 14-45mm/f3.5-5.6 lens, but GOOD GRIEF, that $1200 differential is one heck of a lot of money!

One last thought before I go feed the kids (and me) lunch. Lens aside (most people, including me, aren't as good as their lenses are anyway), the basic of the bodies are essentially the same with the exception of the fact that the Olympus has an articulated screen (no small thing with LiveView), but it's a long standing camera company with a history of innovation with electronics as applied to photography. And with digital photography, that end of things is at least half the equation. Soooo, which one of these three would you put your money (pun intended) on to deliver in that area? Yes, I understand that "build quality" is important and I'm a disciple of that, but double, or $1200 worth of it?

Besides; since they all use the same lens mount, you can even run out and spend $500 or so to buy the Leica lens for your Olympus. Personally, I love the looks of the Panasonic (I'm a sucker for flat black and squared-off look), and if I could find one at a great price, I'd have to look long and hard at it, but at the sub-$150 that the E-330 sell for......it's the right camera for a frugal propellerhead.

The "Ark"

2011-11-03T18:12:00.012-05:00

As you guys know, the “Grail” has already been attained (in the form of the Nikon D300), so in the grand tradition of that esteemed (and mythical) archeologist Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones, my current “Frugal Propellerhead” project has been anointed; the “Ark of the Covenant”. Other than the relatively blasphemous/irreverent connotation, it’s appropriate in that the Ark was the box constructed to hold the “tablets of the law” as handed down from God to Moses. Besides, my friend and fellow ThinkPad fanatic has already claimed the use of the “Holy Grail” term for his amazing Z61m.

Anyway; on to my project…… You might ask yourself, why someone who owns a fairly nice desktop workstation, AND a super-cool ThinkPad X300 would need (or even want) another computer! Here it is: now understand that this may or may not bear any actual “good logic”, but just what I think of as a half-decent rationale for me having this really cool thing.

I’m thinking about starting yet another “side-business”. You know that I already have a computer business that supports my technology addictions and sometimes the occasional family outings to Chick-Fil-A. Now, I’m thinking of leveraging my meager photographic skills and growing collection of equipment into a business as well. Yep, I know, there are more, “I own a DSLR camera and know a little bit about taking pictures than you” photographers than you can shake a stick at, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I’m better than most of them, plus I have a better plan!

Most photographers really make the bulk of their money charging you for those pictures in print form and if you want the files, they charge you more, since they, not you, own those. My plan is to charge straight up for my time and expertise (well…OK, mostly time and the use of my expensive camera), and you own the files. “Flash Drive Photography” You bring me a flash drive; I take your pictures, we’ll take a look and see if they’re any good right then on a computer, I put them on the flash drive. You pay me, take them away, print them, email them, use them in whatever manner brings joy to your life. Simple huh?

Yes, the concept is pretty simple. Take something that is already a pretty serious hobby and that I’ve got money sunk into anyway and try to make something out of it. We maintain a yearly family membership to the Dallas Arboretum since that is way less than the cost of paying for professional portraits for the kids anyway. Now for the last piece (not really since there’s always more equipment to be bought, but humor me); I need a computer that’ll allow me to dump the files and review them “on site”….which is where this whole post was going anyway.

I do have that James Bondish/”Q” Branch-cool ThinkPad X300, but it’s not really something that you’d want to use to review photo files on a regular basis. Yes, it whips out from your svelte aluminum briefcase on the London to Paris, EuroStar train dodging bad guys, while you look dashing in your tux, but some random old house, field, railroad tracks that you are shooting at!?! Not so much. Besides, of its weaknesses, probably the most glaring is the screen that isn’t very large at 13.3”, and has particularly poor viewing angles as well. Not something that you’d want your clients to look at while deciding whether or not that you made them look good….or not in their pictures. Plus, it’s primary storage and boot drive is a 64Gb SSD. Fast yes, but obviously, not a lot of storage AND SSDs are not something that you want to constantly execute a bunch of writes and erases on either.

Therefore, my answer is the ThinkPad (what else?), Z61m, that I picked up as a partially completed project from my friend Ed ($75). It came with a bad screen (lower third shows jibberish), small HDD (40Gb), little RAM (1Gb), slow processor (Celeron version of the Core Solo), and bad battery. However, it had the really cool looking titanium cover, webcam, 15.4” screen which can be replaced with up to a UWXGA (1920 x 1200) screen, UltraBay Enhanced modular bay which can take a variety of devices, and the ability to take the “Merom” version of the Core 2 Duo line of processors. Therefore, I could turn it into a VERY powerful computer, the trick would be to be able to do that without breaking the bank! Here’s what I did:

Picked up an Intel T7200 (2ghz Merom) CPU from a recycler for $24. That’s the most bang for the buck since it’s the slowest (therefore the cheapest) of the 4Mb cache “Merom” line, but has double the on-die cache of the previous Core Duo “Yonah” line.

Bought a Samsung 128Gb SSD in the 1.8” micro-SATA format complete with 1.8” to 2.5” adapter for $125. Eventually, Two reasons for the 1.8” drive: they are cheap right now (way cheaper than the 2.5” drives of the same capacity), AND I’ll be able to use it to eventually upgrade my X300. By then the bigger SSDs like the 256Gb should be a lot cheaper.

Bought two compatible Atheros A/B/G/N WiFi adapter from Hong Kong for $26 each (one goes into my wife’s Z61m) so the machine can connect to the new/faster “N” home access point at the faster speed.

$40 for a replacement WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050) screen, from an eBay recycler.

$15 for a UltraBay Enhanced, SATA HDD adapter so I can use a 500Gb Samsung SpinPoint drive as storage. The drive was given to me by a friend who needed files copied from it since the USB connector from the external case malfunctioned.

$35 for a 85% 9-cell battery from another ThinkPad Forum member.

Accumulated 4Gb of RAM and A/C adapter from dead machines, no costs.

$340 total spent on a machine worth easily twice that.

Fun of the project and scoring the parts cheap: PRICELESS!

The idea is that this machine not only has a bigger screen, but it’s larger, has far wider view angles as well as higher resolution, so better able to handle the large photo files. Of course, the ability to have a big 500Gb mechanical drive will be advantageous for storage. Now, if I can figure out a way to anodize the titanium lid a really cool satin black, I’ll be one happy camper!

The "Golden Age"

2011-10-09T11:12:00.008-05:00

Maybe it's because I've just experienced the almost perfect sports weekend.. First; all my schools/teams won: Friday night, both North Forney and Forney High, then Saturday, the Ags win at Tech, followed by the Sooners (my brother-in-law's team) beating those jackasses from down in Austin (who are really responsible for the demise of the Big 12), then the Rangers beat the Justin Verlander led Tigers despite a 2+ hour rain delay! .....Oh, and it RAINED, here in drought-strickened North Texas, dropping the temperatures into the 80's in the process!!! Or maybe it's because I just came home from a "once-in-a-lifetime" trip to Taiwan and Hong Kong during which virtually all my acquired technology came into play.....and worked flawlessly. So it feels like that Heineken commercial from last year, "Golden Age" is playing repeatedly in my head.

Anyway, what's my point today? It's that in today's world, the previously unobtainable can be had by us mere mortals with regular jobs and families. Basically, I have 3 main hobbies, and although, they are all different, they can all function together. There's photography/cameras, computers, and audio/video. The ultimate concept would be that the convergence that all of us "of a certain age" (around 50+or-) has been seeking since we first watched The Jetsons not only has occurred, but can be had if planned out and acquired properly.

Let me start by examining how NOT to do it. If you make the fatal mistake of buying at retail and becoming Best Buy's best customer (like many people), here's what would have happened to you to get to where I am today:

"Nice" notebook computer that's light enough to carry around and powerful enough to do some minor photo editing on the move: $1500 or so. Yes, I know you can buy a decent machine around the $1000 price-point, but remember you are trying to replicate my $3000-3500 ThinkPad X300. I ended up paying around $200 for this after selling my previous machines that it replaced. Not to mention getting onto the internet in random places like Hotels in Taiwan and airports in Japan.
High-end desktop computer with 2 large (1 22", and 1 20" hi-res LCD monitors) for around $1200. I built mine for about $800 total, over about a year, to handle the heavy duty photo-editing after the pictures are all dumped.
Nikon D300, $1800, and 18-200 VR lens, $950, MB-D10 vertical battery grip, $250, for obvious reasons. I picked all this up for right around $1200 total.
A/V computer connected to my main system; I'd guess-imate to run around $800 for a machine of similar capabilities. I built mine for around $200 of accumulated parts. Although my main TV at a less then HD resolution is a lot more fun to view the pictures on at 41" in the living room than crowding around my the monitors in the office.
Home server, which replicates my 4Tb+ WHS should run around $600 and it cost me about $300 to build. Of course, this serves up the files and protects them by duplicating the folders.

I'm not even going to get into replicating my main A/V system. So roughly, "Super-Best Buy-man" would have spent $7100+ to purchase all of my various hobby pieces. And I'd say that someone could easily spend at least the $3000 or so to get an A/V system together pushing everything up over $10,000! Holy Smoke, that's a lot of money! I'm not saying that the roughly $2700 that I've spent using "Frugal Propellerhead" methods aren't inconsequential, but a $4400 differential is HUGE. I am confident in saying that it's enough of a difference that in all probability that I wouldn't be able to have/do some of the things I have/do now, or if I did, it would be with far inferior equipment!

It's kind of hard to remember when I'm out on vacation somewhere shooting pictures with the D300 with 18-200mm attached, reviewing and dumping the pictures onto the X300, backed up on to an 80Gb iPod, then bringing them home to edit on my big desktop workstation and storing them on the WHS file server, then pulling them up and displaying them on the big TV in the living room. When I think about all this in retrospect, I'm both grateful for what I have and a little overwhelmed by what can be accomplished today for the costs.

Street Shooter: Part 2

2011-10-02T17:34:00.018-05:00

The last post was all about how I came to the conclusion that I needed another camera (go figure), and what that camera should be..... This time, I'm actually going to talk about that camera, in-depth (more or less). Of course the camera is the E-330, the fourth of Olympus' digital offerings after they decided to get into the interchangeable lens DSLR game. Of course they had already been involved in DSLRs for some time with the very well thought of, E-10 & E-20; however, the marketplace was passing them by in terms of features, convenience and price. High-end/professional DSLRs had been around for some time pioneered by the Nikon D1, but it was when Canon dropped the Digital Rebel XT (350D) bomb in 2003 that the lower end of the market exploded. Then, Nikon answered with the D70 in January of 2004, the full-on interchangeable lens DSLR wars were on....and has raged unabated ever since.

These cameras defined the "entry level" of the digital imaging market. They didn't have the high megapixels, plethora of features or the outrageous magnification capabilities of the "Super-zoom" cameras, but what they did have was outstanding images, combined with an ease of use that had every other soccer mom/dad out there (who in the old days would have never bought an SLR) using them. Sure, corners were cut: porropisms (vs. glass pentaprisms), no anti-shake control, plastic bodies/lens mounts and lower resolution. However, this last difference turn out to be one of the major reasons why they were so successful. When you take the much smaller sensors used in the "point & shoot", as well as "superzoom" cameras, crank up (crowd lots of photosites) megapixel on them, they actually performed worse than the often less expensive DSLRs with a lower resolution! So you had Nikon D40s and Canon Rebel XTs selling for $5-600 at Walmart (with kit lens) out performing $1000 "superzooms"!

Now, everybody wanted to get in on that market segment. Although the profit margin was nowhere near the high end multi-thousand dollar professional and prosumer cameras, they sold a whole bunch more of them! This drove and has continued to drive the market ever since, with Pentax, Minolta/Sony, Panasonic, Samsung and everybody else jumping in. After all, there's only so much money that can be made by selling "point and shoot" cameras in the $50-150 market space!

So Olympus stood at a crossroads in the early part of the 2000s. As nice as the E-20N was at the time of it's introduction in 2001, it was pretty evident that they needed to respond to what was happening in the market. The first order of business was a professional/prosumer model in the E-1 of 2003, but that certainly didn't address the high volume and increasingly lucrative segment of advanced amateur camera that was gaining steam seemingly on a daily basis. Olympus introduced their answer in November of 2004 in the form of the E-300.These two were the first efforts in the use of the "Four-Thirds" standard that Olympus pioneered along with a consortium of other manufacturers such as Kodak (maker of the original 4/3 sensors), lens maker Sigma and eventually Panasonic partnered with Leica. A year after the introduction of the E-300, came the E-330 AND the much more conventional looking E-500 so that Olympus could tap the entry segment of the DSLR market. Ultimately, it was this design direction that ended up killing the E-3xx line making the E-330 the last of it's breed.

OK, now that you've had a quick rundown the Olympus history in the DSLR market, we can talk more about the E-300/330 model. The fact of the matter is that, although they were highly acclaimed by reviewers, they just didn't sell very well. This can be confirmed by a virtual trip to eBay or Craig's List to do a quick search. You'll find WAY fewer E-3xx camera for sale at any given time than their market contemporaries such as Canon Digital Rebels/XT, or the Nikon, D40/50/70. I would suspect that a lot of it has to do with the psychology of the consumer in that market space. These were often first time SLR buyers; film or digital. So, if they were going to spend the extra money it took to upgrade over a point & shoot, they wanted everyone to know what they were using. That certainly wasn't a DSLR that didn't look like one, no matter how it performed!

However, on the flip-side, look at what the E-330 was offering in 2006 in terms of features compared to its market dominating rivals (Canon Digital Rebel XT/350D or Nikon D70S) at the time of it's introduction. The E-330 had a 7.5Mp sensor which was marginally lower than the class-leading Canon's 8Mp, but we all know that in the reality of the DSLR world, small resolution differences aren't really relevant. However, the Olympus offered not only an ultrasonic sensor cleaning function that didn't become an industry standard for several more years, plus it offered their second generation of sensor-shift/anti-shake compensation that virtually no one else had. Then throw in the two features (Live View & Articulated LCD) that nobody else had at all(and wouldn't for several years); you end up with a DSLR that was well ahead of its time. Of course this is not new for Olympus which is a company of engineers, led by engineers. Back in the early 70's, they introduced the OM-1 which was the first of the "compact" SLRs on the market and started that trend. This was followed by the OM-2 which introduced full-blown electronics to that segment of the market as well as through-the-lens flash metering.

From the standpoint of just purely a camera,the E-330 has plenty enough pixels to be effective. Remember, I've been using a Nikon D70S at 6Mp for some time and it's done a creditable job any time that I have. This camera at 7.5Mp is more than enough for a second camera.Although it's size really isn't much smaller than the mid-sized Nikon; the E-330 5.5" x 3.4" x 2.8"/1.4lbs, vs. D70 at 5.5" x 4.4" x 3.1"/1.3lbs, that middle dimension of 1" less by eliminating the pentaprism hump is significant. It's my opinion that this is true both in terms of actual, and perceived bulk, but also what a live subject senses when the camera is aimed at them. When combined with the use of the articulated screen (although it's only on a vertical plane) and Live View, the ability to photograph candidly is greatly enhanced. I don't have anything to prove this hypothesis at this point, but I'm as sure of this as I can be....at least until I get my hands on one and try it.

To complete the concept, you throw on the very small 25mm/f2.8 (Angle of view same as 50mm on 35mm camera) that Olympus introduced in early 2008; you have a light, relatively compact camera with full DSLR capabilities configured to be almost ideal for "street shooting". Sure; I get that I could go out and buy the Olympus EP-L1 in the mirrorless "Micro-Four/Thirds mount for a similar price-point. Although we are talking a significantly smaller (probably pocketable) camera built on the same sized, but higher resolution sensor, That camera is designed as a step-up for folks moving from the P&S and thus has way too much automation for the way I like to shoot. And yes; there are others of the M3/4 cameras that offer what I want in terms of control set, but at this point, we are still talking in the north of $500 range that I can't justify.

So, for now, the E-330 will be the next "target of opportunity" for me. So stay tuned and I'll update when I've actually gotten my mitts on one of these curious beasts!

Street Shooter: Part I

2011-10-02T14:03:00.015-05:00

Not that kind of “street shooter”, I mean with a camera. For some folks, it’s “what they do” as a photographer. The most famous, and often considered to be the “father” of “street photography” or what he called “real life reportage”, was French Photographer Henri Cartier Bresson. He specialized in candid photography shot as he walked around in various places. Now, this isn’t really my specialty per se, since the vast majority of my day-to-day photography is simple family candids chronicling the comings and goings of our little family on a daily basis. I strongly suspect that it’s what most folks do with their photography and videography as well.

However, I recently got a taste of candid street photography on our trip to Taiwan and Hong Kong. These are places so different than what we Americans experience as our norm that I was fascinated by everything I saw around me. I’ll admit, that a lot of it probably has to do with the fact that I’m Chinese and was born in Hong Kong, but having left at an early age; it was really rather interesting to me. So, what does this have to do with budget techno-geekism?

OK; Taiwan and Hong Kong could be considered the epicenter of the modern technology world for everything from design, manufacturing and the consumer products on sale there. But, as crazy as this sounds; I didn’t spend a lot of time in those aspects in either of those places. There was the trip to the “Digital Plaza” in Taipei to find a new MP3 player for my son, but I’ll have to commend myself on a remarkable amount of restraint in looking while at the famous Nathan Street, electronics shopping area of Hong Kong.

What I did spend a lot of time, and effort doing was shooting pictures with my newly acquired Nikon D300 DSLR. To say that, it is an outstanding camera would be an understatement. However, I will have to say that it’s going to take me a long time to learn it would be an understatement as well. I did find out one thing though….and this isn’t a complaint about the D300, as it’s commentary on virtually all cameras of its type. They aren’t for candid street photography. They are large, heavy, professional devices, or at least equipped like mine is with the vertical battery grip; it’s roughly the equivalent of a D3, then add a relatively large “do-everything” lens like the 18-200 Nikkor, you have a pretty intimidating piece of artillery! It’s certainly not something that you could call “unobtrusive”. I’ve now learned why this type of photographer has generally preferred small, light and simple cameras. In Bresson’s day, the camera of choice was the Contax with Zeiss lenses. As a poorly paid photojournalist, all he could afford was the lesser brand of Leica and one lens (a 50mm). Ultimately, he shot with this camera and lens for the rest of this life. This probably had something to do with why he got so good with it!

Once upon a time, I owned a Canon 7S rangefinder which was a nicely made copy of the Leica M2/3. That was many moons ago and it didn’t fit my photographic style or inclination at the time, but I did learn that these cameras were extraordinarily fast and quiet in use. In retrospect though, I can certainly see why a camera like that would be just the thing for what I was trying to do in Hong Kong and Taiwan! Does that mean I’m going to run out and sell my D300!?! HECK NO!!! That camera is “all that and a bag of chips”! It’s the do everything heavy duty SUV of cameras.

So, now you’ve figure out the point of this whole discussion…..I’ve found an excuse to get another camera…… So how does that fit into the Frugal Propellerhead philosophy? Well, I guess I’ll have to find a camera that’s a better fit for quick, unobtrusive candids without spending much money. I guess that pretty much leaves a digital Leica out of the discussion then; which finally brings me to the real subject of this post…..the Olympus E-330 DSLR…..of 2005/6.

I know; that’s really random, right? So, let me explain how all that Frenchman Photojournalist stuff led me to a rather odd, market failure for Olympus. Saying Olympus and odd in the same sentence is almost redundant. They’ve always been a company that’s pushed the envelope and we all know, that’s sometimes begat failures in the marketplace. In this case, the E-330 was a brilliant piece of engineering which gave excellent results for the time (2005/6). It was the follow on of the E-300 as well as the end of that particular design line, and as you can see from the picture below, there’s a reason why.

It isn’t so much ugly, but when you consider that it’s a DSLR, the shape is odd, and I suspect that had a lot to do with why it didn’t sell well. It certainly wasn’t the mechanicals or the capabilities! It was first to market with a number of technologies that none of the “big boys” had at the time. Some of them include: Live View, a CMOS 7.5Mp sensor when everybody else was still using CCD, articulated 2.5” LCD display, and ultra-sonic dust removal for the imager. And despite that shape it was in fact a DSLR but deployed a side-swing mirror system and 2 sensors so that it could have both mirror-up Live View and mirror-down Live View. These are pretty nice specs NOW, much less 6/7 years ago! Unfortunately though, consumers found it too odd and expensive for their taste and Olympus shot itself in the foot with the less expensive and more conventional looking E-4xx/5xx series which live on today.

So, this little bit of oddity is the crux of my essay on Street Shooting? We’ll, no; there is something else. The reason for even having thoughts on a non-Nikon (since that’s what all my lenses are mounted for) is that about 3 years ago, Olympus came out with a 25mm/f2.8 “pancake” lens. I’ve always been a little bit obsessed with these little oddities and think that paired up with a small(ish) digital camera would make the perfect Street Shooter as well as carry anywhere lightweight camera. Then “why not get a Nikkor” you ask, since they are the originators of this concept with the 45mm GN of 1969. The issue is that, this lens is so old that it won’t even meter on the small lightweight Nikon DSLRs like the D40 or D50 and of course they are manual focus, plus it would have to be modified before mounting since its pre-AI/AIS. There is a later 45mm”P” lens that Nikon released which even has the contacts and chip to talk to modern DSLRs, but it’s out of production and astronomical in price (over $400) since the collectors got ahold of it.

Since Nikon was eliminated, I started looking around at other companies that had small/lightweight DSLRs AND a “pancake” or similar lens. This came down to Pentax, Panasonic/Leica, and the various Micro Four-Thirds/Mirrorless DSLRs like the Sony Nex, Samsung, etc. I’d love to be able to buy a Panasonic (Lumix) GF-1 with the Leica 17mm/f1.7 “pancake”, but if I could afford that, I wouldn’t be writing this blog, would I? So, virtually, all of these were eliminated due to the lack of compact normal/mildly wide lens or lack of appropriate camera body to fit it.

It came down to either the Olympus or Pentax. They are both iconic companies who have kind of gone their own way in the industry. Of the two though, I’d say the Olympus has been the more innovative….and that’s coming from someone who used Pentaxes for year! But mostly, Olympus has the product (E-330) that is a pricing anomaly for its capabilities. The bottom line is that for whatever reason, I’ve seen them sell for less than $150 with a kit lens (14-45mm DZ zoom). Combine that with the 25mm/f2.8 pancake lens that can be sometimes be had for less than $200, you get a sub-$350 compact/lightweight DSLR that’s very compact and unobtrusive.

The "Holy Grail" has been attained!!!

2011-09-03T11:34:00.010-05:00

Score one (or maybe even two) for the "Silly English K-Nigets"! After two years of wanting, wishing, planning and plotting.....I finally got a Nikon D300 (aka, The Holy Grail)!

Yup; that's the one. You guys bear with me while I digress and take a trip down memory lane. Going back to the 4th post on this blog, I've spent a fair amount of time talking about my odyssey into the world of digital SLRs. That was back in the summer of 2009; right after we came back from our "10th Anniversary" Alaska trip. At the time, I was describing how I ended up with a Nikon D70. Then a couple of months later; how I was able to convert that camera into a Nikon D200. Obviously I'm not going to repeat that whole story here since anyone who haven't read them can go back and do that.

It went in that particular progression because I had a specific amount of money to used, and no more. Plus I had decided on the strategy of getting the lens that I wanted and spending what was left on however much camera I could buy. This of course turned out to be the Nikon 18-200mm AF-S/VR lens. At the time, I was coveting the D200, but I had $350 left and it was out of my price-range.

However; the whole time, the understood "Holy Grail" made of unobtainium was the Nikon D300. It had just been release that winter/spring and it was often selling for well above the $1800 list price. It had ALL the "gee whiz/holy crap I want it" features that were brand new at the time; like the "Live View" display through the LCD, sensor self-cleaning, not to mention the gigantic 3" LCD with 3 times the number of pixels of the D200's, 2.5" version. Obviously there are innumerable other things, but this isn't a review, so I'll leave that to the professionals. Here's a couple of good ones if you are interested:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond300/

http://www.bythom.com/nikond300review.htm

Most readers will probably know that I'm a "build-quality" lover; hence, ThinkPads, Nikons and the like. Though this camera's selling price, at $1800 was closer to the high-consumer ($800-1000) end of DSLRs as opposed to the full-on professional ($4-5000) end of things, but its build quality is obviously closer to the professional models.

You can see here in the first image, is the full-on magnesium shell/chassis (vs. all plastic or magnesium "frame" only). The second image is of a D300 which fell down a canyon at Yellowstone and was retrieved 3 days later....fully functioning. This is why the professional grade DSLRs cost so much! Not in any way a shot at other makers, but Nikon is the company that NASA chose to send up into space since before the moon-shot days! Coincidentally, so are the ThinkPads.

So, on to the actual reason for this Frugal Propellerhead post. This is a case of SERIOUS long-range planning! If you go back and look at post #9, I described how I got into a D200 (complete with MB-D200 battery grip) for about the price that I sold the D70. About a year later, based on what I was seeing in the market place, D200 prices were starting to drop. Several things were going on: the first D300 update came out, the D300S (with video), causing the price of the D300 to drop, thus forcing the price of the D200s to do likewise. So I needed to get rid of that camera before I lost market value. I found that I could sell my D200 and battery grip separately for more than I paid (around $650 total), and I had some other projects going that needed funding. Also, I came across a D70S being sold cheap ($200) because it had an issue: it wouldn't shut off. Not a big deal since I could just pull the battery when I needed to get the memory card out. Around that time, I was given a 18-55mm with a broken mount. I replaced/repair that mount for $9. I've been using that camera for over a year now with no ill effect other than that its old and has a pretty low resolution (6Mp) by today's standards.

Now the stage was set for scene two. Theoretically, I was at a net $440, plus the D70s camera and lens. Of course that money has been spent on other projects since then. So, what's the point then....and where am I going with this? A few months ago, I traded one of my project computers for $100 and an old manual focus Nikon camera lens (20mm/f4). The $100 bought me the computer case, motherboard and CPU which has become our HTPC. The lens sold last week for $250, which leads us to scene three.

In less than two weeks we're going to Taiwan (nephew's wedding) and Hong Kong (because), so I really want a higher resolution camera for what is probably a once-in-a-lifetime trip. Now I have the $250 in hand from that lens, plus I'm fairly certain that I can get right around $250 for the D70s and repaired 18-55 lens giving me $500. I've noticed from my eBay research that on rare occasions a D300 can be had for around $700. So, now I've got a $200 potential deficit. This is one of those rare instances that I need external intervention, meaning that I needed to convince my wife that despite the financially horrific year its been so far (new washer/dryer, Tonsils & adnoids out for Moma and boy, months of 100 degree weather, Taiwan trip), I needed my birthday (Oct) and Christmas presents right now....in a lump-sum.

All this reached the cinematic (on the Frugal Propellerhead channel) climax last week when not only did the lens sell, but got the wife's grudgingly approved AND I scored a D300 with MB-D10 battery grip for the magic $700!!! I'll admit it now: I was lucky. I was randomly surfing a little bit on Saturday while waiting for the kids to get ready to leave and go somewhere. There was a horrifically written one-line ad on eBay with a "stock" picture that nobody was bidding on. It had a $700 starting price; I put in my bid (for $700 only) and that was it! It almost never happens this way! Maybe it was the hurricane and much of the East coast was off-line, but I really couldn't care less.

Not only was it the D300 camera, but it also the battery grip, and for somebody that shoots a LOT of portraits, it's a big deal. These things allow you to shoot vertically much more comfortably giving you another set of controls for that and therefore don't have to wish for another joint on your right arm. That's an accessory that I consider almost mandatory and would have spent the $150 or so to get eventually. Sure, it's a little scuffed up from use and is missing the tray for using a second camera battery, but it had the all-important AA tray that allows me to use my stock of rechargeable Nimh AAs. Also it allows the camera to shoot at 8 frames per second, vs. the mere 6 of the regular battery. Yes, I understand that for somebody like me; 8fps is ridiculous.....but just sayin'.....!!!

Cliche' time. Clearly: you can never plan too far ahead and you have to keep your "eye on the prize". Two years ago, I couldn't dream of owning an $1800 camera with a $1000 lens attached not to mention the grip. But through a series of planned transactions and research (plus some luck), I was able to put myself in the position of taking the camera that I really wanted on a trip of a life-time. Now I just have to get the picture!

So as the great Sean Connery said in "The Untouchables": "Here endith the lesson".

Summer's Over

2011-08-27T09:31:00.003-05:00

I know, that's obvious.......but what that means around here in an educator's household with young children is that the routines change majorly (to say the least)! Of course, we are gone every week day from 7am to somewhere between 5 and 6pm. When you throw in Scouts on Monday night, Gymnastics on Thursday nights, and Football games on Friday nights, it's obvious that any given week are pretty booked up till Saturday and Sunday. I generally grade papers or lesson plan on Sunday afternoon, so that leaves me with the first half of Saturday as "me time".

After successfully convincing the kids that they really wanted to watch cartoons from Momma & Daddy's bed, I now have the living room to myself to reap the benefits from the hard work of this summer. Meaning that I have the HTPC running Windows Media Center, pulling files from the WHS in the office, displaying on the big TV and playing through the main A/V system. I can't even express how satisfying this is to be able to access my growing cache of lossless music this way! I just realized that when I'm on the music part of the software that just hitting the letter key will take you to that part of the alphabet in the album list! Such a great way to peruse my media library. I had no idea that the "Os" were so great! Oleta Adams, followed by Orbital followed by Orchestral Manoeuvres In the Dark! All this while drinking my coffee and blogging! I do believe that convergence is within reach if not completely attained.

I do have a few little things on the frugal purchasing front though. The first is the addition of a couple of "backbone" devices that most people will never see. I picked up an 8-Port Gigabit Switch which will replace the 10/100 version on my desk. The other is a 4-Port Gigabit router which will pretty much allow my network to upgrade to Gigabit. I still need to pick up "N" WiFi cards to move the Z61ms to the faster wireless standard.

I also picked up a set of computer speakers. I know, I know; it sounds pretty pedestrian, but let me explain. Of course you guys know that I HATE spending lots of money, but although I demand nice peripherals, I'm almost psychotic in not spending money in that area! So, I've been struggling along with an old pair of IBM/Infinity computer speakers on my desktop workstation for some time. Lately though, I've been planning out a monitor shelve for my desk, obviously to lift the monitors, but also to give myself some extra space underneath. So I'm planning on moving the speakers to that location. Unfortunately, the rather big and tall (yet uninspiring) speakers won't fit, so........ of course this gave me an excuse to hunt down a replacement pair. The the parameters (other than cheap) were that they be small, sound good, which are contradictory requirements, and therefore left me with the option of satellite/subwoofer style. To make a long story short. I found a pair of Logitech Z-340s on eBay that I paid $16 after shipping. They were dirty and one speaker has a little hole in the grill, but they sound VERY good and cost $16!!!

Re: Digital House Cleaning

2011-08-08T17:51:00.002-05:00

Really, its kind of Part 2 of my last post which discussed the new Microsoft applications that I've learned to really like a lot. However something that even us diehard gearheads have to admit; none of the cool shiny gear does anything without the software end of it. Part 1 was really about the applications themselves, this part I'll delves into the bane of our (at the very least, "my") existence......media files.

Like most people, particularly those close to my age, we've spent the better part of several decades accumulating media. Of course, some of it is in the form of obsolete medium such as vinyl records (or even shellac), cassette tapes and even 8-Tracks. In this post, I don't intend on discussing digitizing/archiving that media, but the other stuff that's been accumulating in our computers the last decade or more. We all have videos, mp3s, and photographs in digital files scattered all over one or more of our computers. I know this, because every time, I work on somebody's computer and have to move their hard drives, I come across files scattered all over the place. Quite often, the owners are even surprised by what I've found and put back in place for them. Furthermore, even if they're all in "My Documents", and in the "My Music"/"My Pictures" subfolders, they are generally just kind of thrown in there; much like our closets. What makes it more complex, is that over time, files of all different types have been thrown in there all together.

All good example are music files. In most cases, people will have some WAV files which are essentially the complete equivalent of what's on a CD, then there are MP3s of varying sizes dependent on the bitrate at which they were ripped (or downloaded), which is often dictated by the device on which they are intended to play. You add to that, the various other issues, like AAC for iTune/iPod users, WMA for Windows device users, OGG for those cool Linux guys or just people who want to be different, you can easily have chaos.

What, I decided to do was to consolidate and combine first, then secondly, move everything to the server. My thought process was as follows:

I really want everything as universally readable as possible.
I want as much in as high quality of format as possible.
Everything as organized as possible.

That's a tall order, so, how do I accomplish all this:

Obviously, I want as much as possible in a "lossless" format as I can. That means, whenever I rip a CD, I want to set the application to save that way. Although, this uses quite a bit more space, than even 256bit, it give me essentially a perfect copy of everything. I plan on eventually ripping (actually reripping) my library that I haven't already done....which is most of it! On the server, I actually have a lossless folder, a standard bit-rate (128 or better), and a low bit-rate folder (for stuff that is horrible, but I don't have another copy of at the moment).
I use Microsoft's included WMP to do this which gives me WMA files. Why that, says the Mac maven?!? It's the most universal. Pretty much anything can play and/or convert WMA, but the converse is not true of AAC.
Organization is pretty standard; mean putting music in the WHS Music share, Photos in the WHS Photo share, etc. with a twist. That means that I use subfolders to help organized each of these categories. Although, Windows Media Center doesn't really care and just pulls everything in, as individual users, we need to find individual files for things like FaceBook, or my long neglected, high school and college favorites CDs project.

As far as a files system is concerned, the music side is pretty easy since I use the default, Artist, Album standard that most software is set up for. The only difference is that I separate the files in terms of resolution (lossless, standard bit, low bit). Its the photographs that are the headache.

What I've developed over time is a system of topic, sub-topic (as far down as is necessary), then date preceeding the lowest level of sub-topic which hold the individual files. These dates are created by last two digits of the year, so they'll stay in Chronological (and not numeric) order, the two digits for the month followed by underscore and the topic (most of which are recurring). The only picture files in the Photo share are the family ones since they're the only ones that need to be generally access by everyone as well as displayed through Windows Media Center for guests. Of course, 95% (or more) of our pictures files are of this one group, so this takes care of the bulk of files. Obviously, nobody else is interested in or needs to have access to the photos I use for items I'm selling or ones that I'm adding to my blogs so they go in my personal server folder. That way, I can grab them regardless of which machine I happen to be on at the time. This will become our standard, whenever my wife starts using the server for storage on a regular basis and the kids grow into that need in the future.

So basically; other than what I use on a "live" project, most of what I do resides on the server in a "replicated" folder (you can never be too safe). Its the same model that most corporations use because its convenient and safe.

Let me just say that it's been hard work....very hard work! I've spent the better part of the last week, where I'd estimate that I put in on average 3+ hours on file organization most days. So many files got moved and deleted that my main workstation running Windows 7, on 4Gb of RAM took 3 hours to completely defrag the 1Tb storage drive! Digital or not; "house cleaning" is no fun, but it needs to be done.

Love M$.....Kind of.......

2011-08-05T10:35:00.007-05:00

I'm about to go into uncharted waters here; meaning I'm going to write about software today! I know, its not very sexy, but even the biggest "gearheads" of us has to depend on it, and have it running properly so that our shiny black boxes actually do something! Even I can only sit and admire them for so long. Now understand; that this is not a review I'll leave that to the far more qualified and lucid who get paid for such things, but really an essay as to how Windows 7, WHS and Windows Media Center has moved me and my "system" into the current century of computing.

I've gotta say, that I haven't been this happy with those Redmond money grubbers since Windows 2000, and I'm including XP here since that's really a prettied up version of W2K. It seems like every other OS release, they lay a rotten egg. Obviously, I'm talking about ME and Vista, where half-baked ideas, unfinished features are pushed on to the public because they needed to release something and make money.

However; as most of you have found, Windows 7 is a completely different animal; not in how it looks, but in how it functions. I've been on some version of W7 for about a year now and have progressively moved our stable of machines over to it during that time, but its really been in the last month that I've learned to really appreciate it. Why now? That would coincide with me bringing both a file server running Windows Home Server, and a HTPC up running Windows 7 Home Premium (which includes the current Windows Media Center). I've spend a good part of this week configuring this product as well as reloading both my main workstation and laptop on W7 Ultimate.....don't ask (thanks Jake)!

This has been a little a little more challenging than you might think (not because of what you might think either), due to the daily threat of "rolling blackouts", along with the 108-111 degree temps. Basically, I have to get everything done before about 1pm and then I shut down the big machines. Not only due to the "rolling blackout" issue, but it just gets too dang hot in the office with 2-3 machines, 2 printers, and 3 or more monitors running! The other issue, is that there was so much lossless music on the server that it took the clients quite a bit of time to index it all through the network (I'm definitely considering moving to gigabit soon). But once that got done.....WOW!!!

This may not be news to some of you, but its just like the magazine articles have been saying; once you've experienced online/connected media, you really wonder why you didn't do it before. At the core of what makes it possible (at least for not software guru, me) is the networking simplicity of W7 with the pretty much seamless integration of WHS combined through the new Windows Media Center! Side-note here is that I'm still going to be working on getting XBMC (X-Box Media Center) up and running, but the fact of the matter is that WMC has been very simple to set up. I've even been able to get it to recognize and use the cheapo NTSC/ATSC-Tuner-capture card in my workstation to work, when all the forums had said that it wouldn't. So at this point, I can have most any of the computers that has WMC set up to record a program, then archive it to the servers public "recorded TV" folder to be watched by any other computer in the house!

What's so cool about it? Other than the DVR function that I wanted, I found that I'm hooked on Internet TV. I knew it was out there; I'd been watch Revision 3 (the old TechTV) on and off through a browser for some time, but this makes that stuff work just like regular TV with a channel guide and everything. Some of the "over-the-air" stations (notably CBS) has some complete shows on it. I've watched a few NCISs so far. Plus there are other channels that I didn't even know existed like Smithsonian Channel which has some very interesting shows on it....at least for me. I found myself in bed last night watch TV wishing I could just surf the stuff other than what the cable provider had available.

So, there has been grunt work involved of course. Hours of uploading files to the server to that our photos, and music is available anywhere. Turning all the pictures so that they show up right when the computers pull them for the screen saver slideshow: YES, W7 does go out over the network and do that! Which lead me to another great W7 thing: you can turn pictures (even big ones) right from Windows Explorer! Then, there's the organizing, tagging, sorting, and selectively editing the music files to get rid of stuff that we don't like and won't listen to, that came from who knows where. Then there'll be the laborious ripping of the rest of my library into WMA Lossless to come. Let me tell ya, watching the software have the tuner search through the seemingly hundreds of channels of both analog as well as digital is mind-numbing as well, since you know that you'll have to go back and get rid of half the digital channels since they are in a foreign language or are for shopping.

There was some hardware involved (that I haven't already talked about). The most important has been the 2 tuners that I bought. I picked up an off-brand tuner on eBay for about $25 mostly for its capture capabilities, but I've watched a surprising amount of TV on it already. Then there's the well thought of Hauppauge one with 2 internal tuners, so it has the capability to record 2 or watch 1 and record another which is in the HTPC. I found that on Craig's List for $50. Then the "unsung" hero; which was the 12' optical cable that I picked up from Monoprice (if you haven't used them, you should at least look), which has allowed me to send the digital stream directly from the HTPC motherboard to the far superior DAC in my home theater system. Those lossless music files streamed from the server SOUND GOOD!!!

So, I've largely reached my home network goal of being able to do what I want from anywhere and watch/listen to the results from anywhere as well. Most of this was accomplished with the use of free (or at least included in the price) Microsoft software. Amazingly, it works as advertised and the costs has been very affordable! This is no small thing! I know that a lot of guys out there have been able to do all this for some time, but I'm kind of software-phobic/lazy, so if its not easy, I won't do it.

As an addendum: I do have a hardware purchase bulletin to report. I found a ThinkPad Z60t listed on Craig's List on Monday night for $40. The add said that the seller needed to sell it immediately and had a August 4th deadline (yesterday). I figured that it was either garbage or he'd already sold it, but I emailed anyway. Low and behold I got a reply back saying that he still had it, but need to meet and get it done quickly which sounded suspicious. Turns out that he's a medical school student down at UT Southwestern, has just graduated and leaving to go back to China this weekend! He had tried to sell it for the last 2 weeks (needed it for school till then), but had a hard time doing so. He had dropped the price twice (I found the other ads), but had trouble selling it, since he didn't clean it up, his kids had pulled off 2 keys (I fixed them in 5 minutes), and the battery was dead.

The lesson here is that, if you intend to be frugal, you pretty much have to do the homework or you miss opportunities like this! This isn't a smoking hot, almost-new computer by any stretch of the imagination, but its worth at least $150-175, cleaned up! Plus I also spied a Salvation Army store across the street from the hospital complex. You think that they might have some interesting stuff that all those future (and present) doctors have donated!?!

Gotta run; the office is heating up!

"Nothing wrong with shooting...as long as the right people get shot"

2011-07-30T10:19:00.004-05:00

Another Dirty Harry quote? Yup....what I'm referring to is buying computers and Macs. I just experience Mac buying firsthand on behalf of a client (more correctly her daughter) who had to have a Mac. I've been accused of being anti-Mac at various times, but that is simply not true. I like them just fine, and I've bought a number of them over time, so let me take a little time and explain the "Frugal Propellerhead" philosophy as related to Macs.

Here are my points to consider:

What do you do with a computer?
What's your budget?
How important are the intangibles (eg. build quality, design, cachet)?

If your main purpose is say Photography (professionally, or serious amateur), Music creation, Graphic Design or any of several tasks that the premier or industry standard software is Mac; by all means....go Mac. If you have a high-end budget (although, I'd be confused as to why you'd be reading this blog), then go ahead, "make my day". Or if you're an equipment snob (I'll admit that I'm kind of one myself), then there's lots to like about them as well.....but....there's always one of those isn't there.

What this post is about, is my recent experience with a machine identical to the above. As I said earlier, I needed to find a MacBook for the daughter of a client who had bought a Dell from me previously. She needed a replacement computer for college and had a budget between $500-700. Normally, in that situation, I'd have recommended a ThinkPad or Dell Latitude in the $250-350 range equipped with an Intel Core2Duo CPU, 14" screen, combo drive and a hard drive in the 100-200Gb range. From a usability standpoint, we'd be talking about the same thing as the "early '09, 13" MacBook that I found for them. This machine was built very well, it was in good shape, and spec'd nicely with a 160Gb HDD, and 4Gb of RAM, plus 6 more months of AppleCare warranty left.

So, what's the problem? $200-300, that's the problem! The Dell D630s that I've been doing lately are spec'd almost identically to that Mac and I've been able to get them into a client's hands for between $225 and $275! They'll be just as functional as that MacBook and last pretty much just as long.

So, if you are OK to double your cost for those intangibles, then that's your call. ".....as long as the right people get shot"

"A Man's Got to Know His Limitations"

2011-07-30T09:19:00.003-05:00

A little nugget of wisdom from that great philosopher, Harry Callahan. Does this mean that I'm about to pump 44 Magnum rounds into somebody!?! No, not really, although the heat and the politicians are getting pretty tiresome.

No, what I'm talking about is my "to do list" of propellerhead things that need to be done. Although, many things have been taken care of and others are "in process", there are some that there's been NO PROGRESS! Which is where Dirty Harry comes into play.

What it comes down to is that there is still some install things that need to be done with my A/V system. Specifically, the 3 rear-channel in-ceiling speakers that need to be go into the living room, plus the connection of the triple-gang jack panel behind the A/V cabinet. The reality is that I could probably do it, but it would take me a ridiculous amount of time by myself. On top of that, I'm not getting any younger and several of hours crawling around in the attic would do me no good. So, I've turned to my friend Pat who actually does this kind of thing professionally, meaning that he'd not only be much faster, but far less likely to make mistakes as well. So, I've arranged to make a manual labor exchange with him. If he'll come down one weekend this fall (after Oct.) and help with this install, I'll go to Lubbock at some point in the future to help him with his house. Yes, I know that it's still manual labor, but hey, its manual labor that I already know how to do!

On another front, the AVPC is finally in! It's up and running, connected to the network where the bulk of my photos and some music has been moved on to the server. That took quite some time in and of itself since I was moving a lot of data. There was all of our family pictures from the digital era beginning around 2002/3 and a growing cache of "lossless" music. I spent some time listening to it the other day and I must say that with a digital connection from the computer to the receiver pulling lossless file, it sounded very nice indeed. There is still lots of "setup" and tuning needs to be done. I'm committed to using XBMC as the "front-end" to access the files, but so far, I haven't been able to get it to see the server. I also need to set up the Hauppauge dual tuner to handle DVR work. It's all in there though and connected to everything that its supposed to. Oh yeah, we found a bonus yesterday when the wife and kids were going to Skype with sister and cousins in Germany. Yep, I set up the webcam on the AVPC and was able to Skype via the big TV in the living room. That's absolutely the way to go on this!

We're getting there, so at some point in the next few months, the A/V system will finally be "finished"!

Home Server Part 2

2011-07-17T12:33:00.004-05:00

You guys probably know that I'm a little bit of a software-phobe. I've always been able to get hardware to work and really quite enjoy the challenge of resolving their issues, but where software is concerned, I don't enjoy it near as much. This is why my projects quite often are technological successes after which it comes to a grinding halt until I get around to resolving the software problems to make it all work.

So far, the home server has been a pretty good example. It's been up and running (and well) for several months. It quietly sits in the corner of the office going about its business without nary a peep. We've enjoyed the ability to put files in there and have access to them from any machine as well as have it unobtrusively back up our stable of computers giving us peace of mind. However (and there's always one of those, right?) it hasn't nearly fulfilled it's potential. One of the main reasons I went with this software was that it would easily "server" media across a home network while keeping it in a safe (backed up) central location. We have a LOT of media, maybe not as much as some folks, but hundreds of CDs, thousands of photographs, and plans to add more once I get my archiving system up and running again. Like any family, there is tons of the stuff just waiting its turn to get digitized. Everything from old family photos that need to be scanned, to old high school choir VHS tapes that need to be captured, and even some vinyl records as well as cassettes to be saved. So the server has its work cut out for it.

So, where to start? For me, that was getting on Half.com and finding a copy of the Windows Home Server Bible book, by Greg Kettell, & Jennifer Ackerman Kettell, published by Wiley. I almost always look on Half.com first, then Amazon, then Half Priced Books for any published material. I found this book and had it shipped for less than a third of it's MSRP. I used this book to set up the server and learn about the more advanced functions of WHS. It's been indispensable!

There are a number of goals I have for this server in terms of sharing content in our home. The first, which as to give us peace of mind has already been achieved, as well as the second of creating a central shared place to store and access files. The next goal was to centralize, and hopefully eliminate duplication of media files so they can be accessed from anywhere, both internal and eventually external to our network.

What has started to drive this has been the completion of the Media Computer in the A/V stack. The concept with that machine is that it wouldn't contain any media files except on a temporary basis, but be able to access content and display it on the "big-screen", and/or play it through the main system. For our family, that's music; we have a lot of it and handling CDs is old, plus it will quite often create a situation where "you" play the same ones over and over again.

The ideal plan is to rip CDs losslessly into the music folder of WHS. The reason for lossless is obvious, but I chose to do this in WMP using WMA file format might not be. As would some of you, I'd say that iTunes is a better product and we are a multi-iPod family, but AAC isn't universal and IMHO, Apple products tend to be a little archane in terms of working with non-apple products. I just think, that iTunes will have no trouble pulling in the WMA files on the server, whereas the reverse isn't going to be true without a lot of hassles and work-arounds. I'm open to differing opinions and suggestions here. In order to get this done, I changed the rip settings in WMP to lossless then pointed the output folder to some folders I created in the W7 Libraries with are in fact residing on the server. The WMP couldn't see the server directly, through the desktop "shared folders" shortcut, but was able to see anything I put in the libraries of the machine. This allowed me to rip directly to the server and not have to move files after the fact.

I've been ripping a bunch of CDs this morning and now need to go test this out on the media computer and my laptop. If it doesn't work, I'm going to come back and commit the computing version of "sepukku".......stand by.......

OK, personal crisis averted; it worked! Now comes the grunt work. Culling through my files located in various computers, then moving the files, followed by the lossless ripping of many CDs! Then it'll be on to the photos followed by working out the kinks in setting up the DVR. Stay-tuned as they used to say: I suspect that it is going to be a long-running series.

OH YEAH! I almost forgot, I'm playing with XBMC (another free product) on the media computer, so of course that's going to be another episode of hardware addict vs. software!

Other "Little Things"

2011-07-16T09:36:00.007-05:00

People often say "it's the little things that count". I don't know whether it's true or not, but I'm going to add my own codicil to this old adage...."it's the little things that tie things together".

What I'm referring to on this is my home theater/audio-video system. The big pieces are there, have been there for a very long time. They work very well and do pretty much everything I want it to do. But the final touches have eluded it. Now, I don't mean that it's "finished"; it'll probably never be "finished", but now it's "function" is very close to being there. Let me start from the beginning.

I'm a child of the 70's, a young adult of the 80's, and a technological gear-head. As such, not only do I love the function of these systems, but love the equipment as well. The 70's was the era of big gear, shiny Japanese electronics with cool meters and big knobs, and BIG American speakers! Then it all came together in the 80's with slick magazines such as "Audio Video Interiors" showcasing huge built-in media systems that covered entire walls! Eventually, on to the 90's when the electronic realities made the interconnection of these pieces possible (and relatively affordable).

So, now that you know where I'm coming from and the A/V nirvana that I'm trying to get to, that sets the stage. I've always particularly loved the systems that had a big video monitor flanked on either side by stacks of component pieces, plus secondary monitors that allow the user to......well, monitor other things. Anyway, I've always had the equipment to one extent or another; sometimes better than the stuff that those installations in the magazines used. They of course always had to deal with high-strung trophy wives and high-dollar interior designers. It's been the tying it all together into a cohesive unit that has eluded me to some extent.

A few years ago when we lived somewhere else, I got a friend of mine to help me put together a modular cabinet that I had been doodling on for several years. Since I figured I'd never own one of those million dollar homes with everything built in, I thought that it'd be better to build something that could be moved, but looked "built-in". I had planned for this thing to hold media, audio, video and computing gear to run not only a home theater system, but a distributed A/V system as well. I designed it to have an "audio" side where the bulk of that reproduction equipment would live, and a video side where those "sources" would go. In between, would be the space to house a decent sized TV/Monitor. The lower sections would have drawers for the media and other storage, and above the stacks would be space for "secondary" monitors.

Which after this loooong lead-in is really the subject of this post. The concept of these monitors was always somewhat amorphous: meaning I wasn't really certain what exactly they would do. There were 2 glassed-in spaces built into the cabinet that have over time fluctuated between storage and holding actual monitors from previous aborted attempts to have an "A/V computer" Well, I finally finish the A/V computer (v.3.0) and really needed to install it. I had made the decision that I didn't want to just connect it to the TV. I wanted to have the ability to just turn it on and be able to work on it via a separate monitor, plus I wanted this monitor to be able access the regular TV channels so I can keep track of something like a baseball game.

Before we get into the monitors, I'd better explain the computer part first though. What the A/V computer is, is my old desktop's guts inside an Ahanix D-Vine HTPC case that I picked up from a buddy. Imagine a black version of the one from the above image. What I'll be able to do is to completely access a centralized library (as soon as I create it) of media (and files) that reside in our Windows Home Server, plus function as a web-surfing PC, as well as DVR. I have an old compact version of IBM's TrackPoint keyboard attached so I can control it without needing a mouse, in addition to a Logitech DiNovo Mini (below)that I can use across the room. I'm going to get more into what-all is in this thing and how I intend to use it in the future, but I'll have to say that its very cool!

As far as seeing what was going on in this computer presented another problem. I didn't want to turn on my big projection TV every time something needed to get done, so I needed an answer. The ideal solution turned out to be an inexpensive 19" wide-screen LCD TV. Here's the reasoning: The LCD TVs are really just LCD computer monitors with a tuner and a cheap little plastic foot for a stand. They not only have the tuner to pick up OTA (over the air) and cable signals, but usually a variety of other inputs as well, but most importantly, a HD15 (otherwise known as VGA or sub-D) computer input. The situation has gotten so that you can go to Wal-mart and pick up one of these things for $130-140 brand new. However, I've found that they show up in various places like pawn shops, Craig's List and eBay with no stands or remotes for as low as $50! Don't know for sure why, but I suspect that they had been mounted somewhere by a business or something, then eventually replaced with something bigger etc. As luck would have it, my spots in the cabinet is sized for that exact type with little room to spare (I actually sized it for the then current 13" CRT monitors with room on the side for a cable tuner), plus I had a computer monitor stand that would fit!

And since it has a bunch of inputs, I've also connected the Sony Mega-Changer to it so I could work with the DVDs in it without firing up the big TV.

On the other side of the stack is the "old man" of the system. Its an Amdek RGB, CRT type monitor. I know, I know....what the......! It's kind of an interesting story. I was in my first few months of working at Tulane at the time and they told me that one of my buildings was slated to be gutted and have a renovation done on it. So, at the end of the summer session, I needed to get into the office and get everything out that I didn't want to go into a dumpster. Along with some mid-century modern furniture that I saved, there were 2 Apple II computers which went into the dumpster, but attached to them were these 2 Amdek color montiors that took a regular composite input. So I kept those.....since 1995!

One of them which looks exactly like the image above is still up in the attic, but the other has on-and-off been used as a secondary monitor for keeping track of games and such back when I had a VCR with dual outputs. The other day, I connected this one to the glassed in cabinet cavity above the "audio stack" to the receivers composite "monitor out". That way, I can read the receiver's and the Griffen iPod docks on-screen menus without turning on the TV.

So now, I have an almost ideal setup. There are 3 monitors; ones from which I can see and control what's going on with the audio side, one from which I can control the computing functions and doubles as a secondary source monitor, and the big display for actually watching things......and most of a day stringing cables to and from everything to make all this work!

The "Little" things

2011-06-20T00:30:00.003-05:00

Let me just throw this out there since it just happened and is fresh on my mind. The prevailing trend for some years now is for folks to switch to laptops vs. desktops. And as much as I'll disagree with them, and say till the end that the desktop has a place in the modern home, I understand the attraction for most people.

There are a number of downsides to using a laptop and I tonight isn't the time to get into them, but there is one that virtually everyone forgets......and that's the battery. It's assumed that when duty calls, like a good soldier, the battery is always ready to go, but much to the chagrin of the typical owner; that's exactly what's happened. It's gone! Granted, its not the bad old days of the Nickle-Cadmium batteries with their "memory effect", but things aren't as perfect with today's Lithium-Ion cells as manufacturers would like us to believe. No, they aren't nearly as prone to "memory effect", but it isn't perfect either.

First of all, batteries wear out; they all do. Why do you think that regardless of how long your laptop is warranted for, the batteries are covered for no more than one year. The expectation is that under a corporate environment, with a battery cycling (I explain in a minute) every day, a battery should last about a year....give or take. That's because a battery is essentially a contained chemical reaction inside of a little case, and those chemicals can only do their thing so many times before there's no "fizz" left. However, this is mostly an issue for the corporate crowd who use their laptops unplugged on a regular basis.

Secondly, you have the opposite issue: people who keep their computers plugged up ALL THE TIME. You know who you are. You do this in the belief that your trusty laptop will always be ready and the battery will always be new since it's NEVER BEEN USED! OK; yes and no. You have indeed kept the cycles down, but this tends to kill batteries over time, even the Lithium-Ion ones. Quite often, these batteries get to a point where they "go bad" and won't even charge any more.

So, what to do!?! I'm aiming this at the average user who has one or two of these things at home. Here's a few things to remember:

Brand new batteries must be "cycled" or they will might never be able to reach full capacity. Mean that you need to charge the thing up and run it all the way down (unplugged of course), a couple of times when the machine (or battery) is new.
A "cycle" is where the battery records a process where it discharges and then recharges. Don't ask me how much does it have to go down before it decides that its a "cycle", I don't know. But it looks like, when I carry my machine from one charger to another, it doesn't seem to discharge enough to count as a cycle.
All batteries need to be cycled periodically. Think of it like giving the battery a little exercise. For my home machines, I tend to do this once every week or two. This is enough to keep the number of cycles down, while keeping the battery from dying.
In the end, ALL BATTERIES must be replaced. No escaping it (like death and taxes), it's going to happen.

So what should you like-minded frugal types do? In case you haven't priced the things, the manufacturers tend to charge over $100 each for these things! I just checked and mine that you see above is $150! OK, here's what I do:

Keep the ones that I have on an exercise routine, so they do die and early death.
Always buy one of more at my leisure, so I'm not caught in an emergency and end up paying the $150 because I'm panicked. More on this later.
Keep a "bad" one in the machine at home when it's plugged up 90% of the time, so if one is going to die, it's the bad one. Anyway, it's at home, so all I really need from it is 5 or 10 minutes anyway. It's like having a built-in UPS.
Every once in a while, rotate in one of the batteries that are in storage so they'll get a little exercise as well. I'm not fanatical and put them in the freezer though.

So what's the story on buying batteries....other than; don't pay $150 from the OEM. I also then to not buy the generic ones that you see all over eBay listed as "for" Brand X, Model Y. No, I've never had a terrible, melting laptop episode, but I'd prefer to minimize the chances of that ever happening as well. What I do do is still go to eBay, but buy batteries that are specifically listed as OEM, or Genuine. If you can get a new one cheap that way, then jump on it. I have on occasion found new ones pretty cheap, but its rare.

I buy used ones. Simple as that. I know, that that's a "crap-shoot", but I've done it a lot and my experience has been that you'll come out ahead on the average. Yes, in fact, I've gotten a few that have come in with some ungodly number of cycles and is all but useless, but most cases, they will be fine. My most recent case is a great example. I wanted another 6-Cell battery for my beloved everyday companion ThinkPad X300. That battery has 300+ cycles on it and the capacity is down to about 2/3s of its original. Although, fine for around the house, not great for traveling. I also didn't want to put the 3-Cell battery into play since they are rare (read hard to find and expensive) and I want to keep it in good shape for those occasions where I need the machine to be super thin and super light. Yes, yes, I know it's "gilding the Lilly", given that it's already at 3lbs and just slightly thicker than the MacBook Air, but hey.... Anyway, after scanning through all the eBay ads for real X300 batteries, I found one that was going for $26 with free shipping. So I jumped on it! It came yesterday!

After it got fully charged up and I checked the battery info, here is what I found. It has 58 cycles on it, and it had 100% of the original capacity. It was $124 less than a new one from Lenovo! At that, I can afford to make a few mistakes and still come out ahead. This isn't even the most spectacular case. I once bought an T4x/R5x battery, that was new with 0 cycles on it. I think, mostly these things come from surplus outfits who just take the machine that get apart and sell of the parts. They have so much stuff, they don't bother to check for condition.

Re: Upgrading.....Frugally

2011-06-17T14:12:00.002-05:00

In the last post, I talked about the Z61m that I picked up to fix up. Today, I'm going to talk about the "nuts and bolts" aspects of how to upgrade, "on the cheap". So, we'll start with the end product: I always ask people what they want to do with the end product. I figure, if you don't know your goal; how do you know what to shoot for?

Here is what I'd LOVE to have on that machine, other than fixing up the things that are not right, like the messed up screen and the shiny keyboard (I hate shiny keyboards). I'd love for the CPU to be one of the Intel "T7xxx" series Core 2 Duo processors that have 4Mb of cache and run at 2ghz or better speed. I'd also love to have one of the Seagate Momentus XT "hybrid" hard drives that have a big platter-based disk, along with 4Gb of SSD, PLUS 32Mb cache. I'd love to have a matched set of 2Gb RAM modules making it have 4Gb total that can run in "dual channel" mode. Let's see: $70 or so for the CPU, $100 for the drive, $50 or so for the RAM, making the total for those parts to run $220....if I'm lucky! And that doesn't include the amount that I'm going to spend to replace the screen (?), and about $25-30 for the keyboard which in all probability, is going to put my total outlay NORTH of $300!

I don't like the sound of that one bit! So, lets look at how we can get out of paying that much without giving up a bunch of capability.

First the CPU. Apparently for the C2Ds that this machine can run, there were the T7xxx and the T5xxx (the second number must be even, and the other two must be zeros). The difference is that the T7s have 4Mb of cache vs. the 2mb of cache for the T5s, at similar clock speeds. So for double the cache, the apparent extra costs is double the price- something like $25-30 vs. $50-70.
Although the price of the "XT" drives have come down by about $25 recently, $100 is still a "chunk of change". Recently, though, Newegg had a special on some Hitachi 320Gb HDDs, that spin at a respectable 5400rpm, one of which I bought 2 weeks ago for a client computer for $35. I think I'll wait for another sale.
RAM, that's a complicated one. Really, the price isn't too bad right now for DDR2, but you guys know how I am on spending money! So here is my plan: get it for free. That's right, get 4Gb of RAM (in 2 modules) for free. How am I going to do that? OK, here is how it works. On a regular basis, I'll have folks ask me to find them a laptop for about $250-300, and for that budget, I can find Dell Latitude D620/630 any day of the week for about $200-225. So I tack on my $50 fee (I do more than just find it) and Voila', I sell a computer. What does this have to do with free RAM? I generally quote a client a D620, with an 80Gb HDD, XP, and 2Gb of RAM. If I'm careful, I can usually find them with 3Gb of RAM on board (surplus companies that sell these things don't care about the difference). So, I pull the 2Gb module out and replace it with a 1Gb module that I typically have on hand and there you go. If I'm patient, I can pick up 2, 2Gb modules for little or no costs.

So, if you add that up, I end up at around $65-70 "all-in" for all the upgrades that I'd like to do. Yes, granted, it's not "top of the line", but from a daily use standpoint, the differences will be difficult to detect. Hopefully, then, if I'm lucky and/or industrious in looking, I should be able to even do the screen and everything for less than $150. And that sounds much more frugal than $300+!

The Beast in a Tux

2011-06-12T13:35:00.007-05:00

As I've already discussed, based on what I think its going to take to get "The Beast" aka Alienware M7700 up and running reliably, I decided to abandon that project and get my money back out of it. Of course, that doesn't mean that I abandoned the concept of having a "mobile workstation", something that is completely unnecessary, and an exercise in excess. Actually this whole thing started some time ago when I became inspired by one of the IBM/Lenovo design deadends (what else); the Z Series ThinkPad, specifically the bigger of the 2 Z-sizes. So let me go back and do a little ThinkPad history while I'm at it:

Back in 2005, the newly minted Lenovo, after having just acquired the PC divisions of IBM, release a new machine; the Z60. It was the first wide-screen ThinkPad AND the first available with anything but a black exterior. You could get it with an optional "Titanium" metal cover over the lid. The concept was to go a different direction, and create a ThinkPad what was almost completely designed to fit in the "multi-media" product category. It turned out that it was maybe too radical for the traditional ThinkPad buyers (who are almost 100% corporate), and never attracted the folks who should have been looking at it (folks who disdain to look upon anything that isn't Mac). There wasn't anything that was the matter with the machinery, as it was really a T43 on the inside. But, after a second commercially unsuccessful version, the concepts were integrated into the rest of the product line, and the "Z" was put to sleep. In fact, today, its difficult to find anything in the ThinkPad line that isn't wide-screen and have some sort of on board card reader! In fact, our school district just issued us ThinkPad L420s to replace the aging R60s and they sure look like an updated Z61!

Back to the "Z". Originally, there were 2 models; the Z60t, 14.1" WXGA screen at around 5lbs, and the Z60m, 15.4" WXGA or WSXGA+ screen at around 6lbs. These were internally, the guts of the updated T43 at this point powered by the Intel "M" series chips. By the second generation and the introduction of the Z61, the internals had become full-on T61 equivalents, with Core Duo, and eventually Core 2 Duo CPUs, running at 667mhz bus! These things were seriously fast. They even added a "p" version with an eye-straining WUXGA screen and 256Mb FireGL video adapter. If you are getting the impression that this was pretty much the precursor to the typical modern "workstation" laptop, then I'd agree with you.

So, here's the thing on them. They are kind of hard to find. IBM/Lenovo didn't sell a lot of them. As you guys know, rarity generally translates to mean expensive.....and that runs contrary to my mantra....right? Well....not always; sometimes, rarity can mean obscurity and that can sometimes mean a bargain! In this case you get both: generally, they are expensive, often ridiculously so, in excess of $400, but every once in a while, you can find them (for whatever reason) at a price FAR below their actual worth as well. A little less than a year ago (when I first became obsessed with them), I found several that came up for sale on eBay for a little over $130. They were in pristine condition, and was exactly what I was looking for: meaning it was a low-end model with a Celeron processor, small hard drive, 512Mb RAM, CD-ROM drive and low-resolution screen. So, a trip to my parts drawer for 3Gb of RAM and a DVDRW drive, plus $70 for a new 320Gb Hitachi hard drive and T5600 Core 2 Duo CPU later......I had a smoking fast new laptop, just right.....for my wife! You see, that low res WSXGA screen was too low for me, but just right for my optically challenged spouse! All-in-all, that $200 total was less than what I sold her old machine for to a client who was looking for another laptop. AND NO....I didn't take him to the cleaners either! That $250 that I sold him the old R52 for with 2Gb of RAM, and a fresh XPP load on a 250Gb hard drive is pretty much what the market price would have been anyway. So, is this a story about my wife's computer?

Heck no its not! A couple of days ago, I came across this Z61m that you see above on the ThinkPad Forum listed by a friend in DC. It had been a project machine of his and he was cleaning out. Apparently, its in decent condition internally, but has a bad screen, so he sold it to me for $75! The interesting part is that it has the hi-res WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050) screen, and the cool titanium cover on the lid:

All the other specs are "dumbed-down" (eg. Celeron 420 CPU, 40Gb HDD.....), but I can handle that. Again, I've got most of the necessary parts to "max it out" already, although I'll need to pick up a C2D CPU, and hard drive, but again, that shouldn't be too bad. The wild-card of course, is if I can pick up an LCD cheap, but therein lies the challenge!

Re: A "To Do List"

2011-06-08T11:40:00.002-05:00

One of my downfalls is the actual completion of the project. Everyone has their strong points and weak points. For me, areas of strength has always be planning, and accumulation of resources, while project coordination comes in behind and lastly would be execution. Often; like many other pack rats, I find myself with an accumulation of a mountain of gear with often sit for long periods doing nothing. This is why I love to help other people so much! I get to plan and acquire, without having to be responsible for the execution!

For some time, I just assumed that I was "lazy", then I realized that I don't really mind the work, since I will readily work all the time...sometimes till the wee hours of the morning. It's the impetus of action that I have trouble with: therefore, in order to resolve this when there's something that truly needs to get done......I make a list. For me, when "the list" gets created; it's like Moses and The Tablets! I start working through it and don't quit till it's done. My wife found this to be a very useful tool for her when we both worked at Texas Tech. I just gave her permission on my Outlook via the Exchange server, and she could just put items on my "Tasks List" and keep track of the progress (or lack thereof). It worked out great! Things got done, and she didn't have to nag me. As long as it was still there on that tasks list and not crossed-off, I felt compelled to do it.

So; what does a Frugal Propellerhead put on a tasks list for himself over a summer? Firstly, you have to look at it in terms of the philosophy that I'm espousing as "the Frugal Propellerhead", meaning that if I can do it myself and save money, then that's the best course of action. Therefore, I'm VERY rarely if ever going to hire out to get something done, even if I've never done it before. After all, isn't that what the Internet is for? I just did one of those elevated flower beds by building a retaining wall using those "landscape blocks", by watching some YouTube videos. Anyway on to the list:

The Audio/Video System

Install the "in-ceiling" speakers for the rear 3 channels of my home theater rig in the living room. The speakers are there, the wiring is run and sitting up in the ceiling; I just have to get those speakers in. Not as easy as it sounds since the ceilings are 10+ feet there and I'll have to crawl through the attic to get to where they need to go!
Install the porch speakers. The wiring is run, but the kicker is that I also have to install a volume control "in-line" that I roughed in when the house was built.
Connect the 3-gang A/V panel on the wall behind the huge A/V cabinet so that the above 2 items can be connected.
Finish the A/V computer that's pretty much finished with the exception of the video capture card that will allow it to work as a DVR, as well as connect to the network and allow it to access content stored on the server.
At that point; my intention is to go ahead and hook up the "secondary monitors" in the system. One is an old Amdek RGB monitor from an Apple II that'll allow me to see the on screen items displayed by the receiver. The other will be a to-be-purchased, LCD TV which will function as a monitor for the A/V computer as well as a secondary TV in the system. It looks like a 19" wide-screen will work in here just fine which works out very well since that's the smallest generally available commercially. So a used one should be easy to find most anywhere from swap meets, to pawn shops.
Oh yeah, almost forgot, that I need to get my $8 Goodwill find, the Onkyo cassette deck installed in the system as well.

Computers

Complete the last few items so that Josh can migrate to his new gaming computer! I'm really kind of irritated that this isn't done yet, but all I've got to say is that....it's been a rough month!
Finish the last couple of items on my main computing system. Meaning, I need to build the little shelf to elevate my monitors, which should be a quick little project. I also need to either fix or replace the integrated amp that was the hub of the "archiving" part of my system.
The last bit of "setting up" to get everything working well with on the home network and the Windows Home Server.

Other Stuff

The rest of my son's "loft" conversion: build the reading/lounging/storage bench, build the train/lego table, build the book/storage case and finish the details of the bed like the little shelf to go on top of the posts so he will have somewhere to put his light, clock and other little boy stuff. Yup, I know, there's a lot of "builds" in there, but hey....at least the bed part is done.
The rest (especially the other front) of the flower beds, at least one of which will require the landscape stone build-up.
Fix up random stuff on our travel trailer.

Sounds pretty ambitious doesn't it? But there it is, it's all stuff that has to be done (preferably before we go back to school)!

New Stuff......Kind of......

2011-06-02T22:18:00.006-05:00

Well; it is computer stuff, but computer stuff I haven't talked about before.....monitors! What's so exciting about monitors, you say? Here's the thing: most monitors suck! You just won't have any idea how bad they are till you sit in front of one that doesn't suck.

Without getting into the details, I'll just do a quick whirlwind tour of the basic types. Basically there are three on the market today. The TN type which is the typical LCD's that we see everywhere. They probably comprise 75% or better of the marketplace because they are cheap to make, and cheap to buy, but they have MUCH narrower view angles (both horizontally and vertically), and their depth of color isn't very good making them look washed out when compared to the other types. The best and the most expensive is IPS, they are rarely seen in the marketplace because they are expensive, making them a niche market product that is typically special ordered by demanding users such as graphic artists and photographers. More toward the IPS end of the market in performance, is the S-PVA which is similar, but somewhat less expensive.

To give you an idea, you'll find random LCD displays from various manufactures (big and small) that will be amazingly inexpensive. For something like $125-150 you can often get a brand new monitor 20-22" in size. This is pretty amazing, and the American consumer who is a huge believer in "bigger is better", has those factories in China cranking them out 24/7. And you know what? Compared to their old tube monitor that took up a lot of space, but had very small screen sizes, these things look pretty good. Then, what's the problem? The problem is that, it could be SO MUCH BETTER!

If you've ever worked on an IPS or S-PVA screen, you'd know what I'm talking about. They aren't just typically brighter (although that's the first thing you notice), because they usually are, but they also seem brighter too, because there is very little if any drop-off regardless of your angle all the way down to some VERY severe off-axis viewing. On top of that, its not just the brightness, but the color saturation make the images just pop. It's one of those things that next to impossible to describe; you just have to see it.

OK, let's assume that you are convinced...what does that mean to the frugal amongst us? We are living in the golden age of used computer monitors....that's what! Years ago, when I was working in IT and wanted to try out some of those "new-fangled" LCD flat panels, my boss didn't say "NO". What he said, was: " show me why its a good idea and I'll let you give them a try", so off I went to do research. This was 1999, so there just wasn't that much info out there and they were way expensive to buy. What I did find wast a research project done by the Los Angeles Water and Power Board that showed that not only did LCDs drawn something like a quarter of the energy of a CRT monitor, but that they had a life-expectancy of 2 to 3 times as well.

Which brings me to my previous assertion about it being the golden age of used monitors. You see, large corporations and such have IT departments who use a concept called "replacement cycle" to determine their schedules for upgrading. Typically, for computers, that comes to 2-3, at the most 4 years. And this is just fine for computers, given the changes in software, hard drive and power supply failures being what they are, plus given Moore's Law meaning that computing power has at least doubled and doubled again in that amount of time. However, monitors no longer fit this model with the advent of the LCD screens, soooooo you have a bunch of these things hitting the used market at half or less of their product life expended! AND on the used market, all products are pretty much equal. Those resalers couldn't care less whether that particular LCD is a TN (which they almost all are), IPS, S-PVA, or ET technology. So largely they sell for the same price which is completely based on screen size, cosmetic condition and whether or not it powers on.

So, at long last I get to the specifics of the topic! I have lusted after a big high-end monitor for a long time. I had previously delved into the used market to pick up my Acer AL2032w (1680 x 1050 resolution) which at the time was considered big. It was a very nice monitor, not sold in the United States since Acer sold it as the Acer/Ferrari F20 (red paint instead of silver) here for a lot more money. But recently I've been lusting for a replacement....really ever since I lucked into a 20" IBM L200p for $21 on the local Craig's List and have been using it as my "side" monitor. It has an IPS screen and has 1600 x 1200 resolution although it's not wide-screen. This may sound weird, but having your secondary monitor have a higher vertical resolution than your primary monitor was very annoying to me since I move things back and forth all the time. And for those of you who know me, you're probably aware that I'm a high resolution junkie. The higher the better: I love all those tiny packed in pixels!

Of course I started researching used monitors on eBay. I found that IPS/S-PVA displays are hard to identify, BUT can be incredible deals when you do spot them. The trick is to figure out which ones had the nice panels, and of course, there's no manufacturer who's easier to find out things about than IBM/Lenovo since they make all their specs readily available online. I also learned that although a 24" screen sure sounds sexy, that even the high-end ones only had 1920 x 1200 resolution and that if you look carefully, there are 22" models with the exact same resolution, BUT they are harder to find. You see; they weren't very popular with most people since the density was so high it made fonts look small and most people didn't like that very much. However, it's awesome for me since I don't have a lot of space and if I can get the same real estate in a smaller physical size, all the better.

Which brings me to the current love of my life, the Lenovo ThinkVision L220x: 22", Samsung S-PVA panel, 1920 x 1200 res., 4 USB ports, vertically and horizontally adjustable stand, landscape/portrait rotatable, $550 MSRP (pre-Obama $s), eBay $70 shipped! Of course its used, and has some scratches, but the screen has no defects and its the brightest thing I've ever used. In fact I have the brightness setting down to 65%! Now I just have to stave off L2440x lust.....you know those do have LED back-lighting......

"Finishing" The System

2011-05-15T09:45:00.006-05:00

I know, I know, there's really no such thing as finishing the system for somebody like me (and most likely you as well). But this is probably as close as I'm going to get to that particular mythical goal as I'm ever going to be. So, I'm here to talk about the process this fine Sunday morning.

As any of you who read on a fairly regular basis are aware, I've been plugging along slowly toward my eventual stereophonic Nirvana of getting all the parts of my originally planned system working. When I say "originally planned", I mean that they were parts of our plans for the house back when it was built. Enough so that I pulled wiring from where the system sits to the ceiling where the rear speakers are supposed to be located AND to the back porch where the outside speakers are supposed to be, 6 years ago, when the house was built!

As part of that plan I also accumulated several important items:

A pair of "in-ceiling" speakers (plus a later third one) to serve the rear 3 channels of my surround system- HiFi Works HFW6R, 6.5" 2-Way speakers.
Several Paradigm VC150, that would allow local control of volume for any zones I added in the future.

Of course, this being the "Frugal Propellerhead", I'd be remiss if I didn't explain what I did in purchasing these items. The VC150s, I bought from the home theater store that I had worked at for the "saleman accommodation" half price which came to something like $28 each at that time. The speakers came from an off-chance visit to the Lowes store in Midland where they were on clearance for less than $50. I bought the 3rd in-ceiling speaker off of eBay as "new old stock" for something ridiculous like less than $15 since nobody wanted a single. I think I remember paying more to ship it than the price of the item.

Sadly due to my laziness and the fact that I'd never installed anything "in-ceiling" before, all this stuff has sat for the last 6 years awaiting action. As you guys know, I've been kind of on a kick to do work my system, so this item once again reared it's ugly head. So, I found a pair of in-expensive indoor/outdoor speakers on eBay (Dual LU53p) for $49 after shipping

So, what needs to be done to get all this going? Well....first of all, it'll require crawling around in the attic without falling through the ceiling, finding the wires that are now under the blown-in insulation, then finding the correct spot to cut the holes for the 3 speakers. Then cutting those holes correctly, hooking up the speakers and getting out of there without falling through the ceiling. Then installing the speaker wire connector panels in the triple-gang box behind my massive entertainment center (with the correct wires). Installing the new speakers outside on the porch, connect the VC150 in the box for that with the correct wiring (there are 4 pairs in there, 2 in, 2 out) then the other end at the connection panel behind the entertainment center as well!

I think you can see why I've put all this off for so long! But now the time has come and I have even gotten a committment from a former electrician friend to help with the install....so stay tuned. Unfortunately he's not available for a couple of weeks AND we still have kids birthdays (including a building project of a loft for my son) to deal with.

Sunday Morning Blog

2011-05-01T10:06:00.005-05:00

Weekend mornings without other responsibilities are perfect! Kids in the other room watching a movie, sick wife sleeping, hour or so of warm-up relaxation music on the iPod, pot of coffee brewed from just-ground beans.....Steely Dan: Goucho spinning on the turntable.....what could be better! So, here's how the audio/home theater system was put together: The Frugal Propellerhead way.

As I related in previous posts, I had sold off my old system before we moved away from Lubbock, partially to keep from having to move it, and partially to generate some cash for the move. Let me start by giving a general description of that system.
It was built around Yamaha's flagship DSP-A1, which (unusual for me) I bought new. It had everything I needed and sounded great. Attached to it was the Yamaha PF-800 turntable with a Grado Gold cartridge (which I still use) mounted.

Of course, there was the usual other inputs, such as cassette deck, compact disc, DVD, as well as some unusual ones such as minidisc deck, and SVHS video cassette deck (which replaced Super Beta). But the main component was a pair of a/d/s/ L1290 full-range speakers which were bought in bad cosmetic condition, but I managed to refinish with black Aniline dye.

This was the big three and the components that I sold before the big move, along with some others, but I kept most of the source pieces. The reason? Big-time, "flag-ship" pieces tend to sell well, for a good price, even when they are older as long as they are in nice shape. Run-of-the-mill source pieces however won't return much if anything and therefore not worthwhile to sell and re-buy. Don't believe me? Get online and see how much cd players and plain-Jane cassette decks sell for, even nice ones. At the time, even minidisc desks were down, price-wise (but has rebounded significantly since the supply has dried up).

So for 3-4 years my system limped along with a cobbled together assortment of pieces.....that is until a couple of years ago when the time was right to piece my system back together.

Let's be clear here; I'd have been more than happy to do it with "higher-end" pieces, such as Rotel separates, but again, father-of-two-school-teacher-husband-of-no-nonsense-wife pretty much dictated otherwise! So what to do when trying to put together the heart of a nice sounding system? So here are the parameters, other than "cheap as possible":

Needed to be able to do bother home theater as well as audio.
Needed to have a "Phono Stage" since I still had my records and fully intended to make vinyl the center-piece of this system.
Enough expansion flexibility to handle external zones in the future.
Enough "oomph" to drive good full-range speakers.
Enough inputs to handle all my various source components, both on-hand as well as planned.

So; if I can't afford, "affordable" separates like Rotel, where to turn? I was definitely not going to do the typical consumer level (read Best Buy) type components powered by chip-amps like Sony or Pioneer. Of course, several of the above criteria pretty much leads to some specific conclusions:

My budget dictated that I'd have to go with a receiver, vs. separates.
I needed a "high-end" or at least a higher-end component. The inclusion of a "Phono-stage" virtually guaranteed this.
The desire to own a nicer piece built to a higher standard pretty much left me with Sony ES, Pioneer Elite, or Integra (by Onkyo). I'll tell you a secret: I never cared for the sound of Denon pieces anyway.

Of course, since I had sold Integra and it was something I routinely recommended in those days to buyers on a budget, I began looking for the model fo receiver that I felt to be the best deal, back then; the DTR6.3. Let's look at why that is:

The easily observable basics is that it has a "Phono stage", plus plenty enough other inputs even for me.
It had plenty enough power at 100wpc (real ones vs. the phantom ones you get from the amp-on-chip ones) x 6 channels that would not only do home theater, but enough head-room to handle full-range speakers run at high volume.
Most importantly, it's well-built, enough so that Onkyo Corp. felt secure in backing it at a warrantee period twice as long as there regular line of components.

Is it the most powerful and detailed piece ever......no, but it does have a very important characteristic. Its errors are errors of omission, vs. adding artifacts to the music that aren't there. Plus I was able to pick it up on eBay (missing the remote and manual) for well below $200!

The other main piece in my system is the turntable. Its a Dual 510 belt-drive model from the late 70's. Again, I'd so rather of had a Rega Planar 2 (maybe 3), or the Rotel clone, but...... What the Dual (almost any Dual) gives you is "bang-for-the-buck". Although, they are generally associated with their "idler"-"rim-drive", record changers (which are very good, I own one), Dual made some excellent belt-drive turntables as well. They even had some well-thought-of "direct-drive" models too. The trick is to do enough research to find the models that perform very well, but are not well known (and thus more sought after). For me, I wanted belt-drive (I'm not going to get into the belt vs. direct debate here), one of their later arm suspension systems (of which they had several), on a decent plinth (base) that wasn't one of the cheap plastic ones. If it had markings and light for speed adjustment/tuning, that would be a bonus. However, the single most important part is that its in good working condition. To cut to the chase; I bought mine for less than $50 after shipping and then spent a few more dollars for a new belt. One of the reasons for the low price was that there were major cracks on the dust cover, but that wasn't relevant to me, and it didn't have cartridge which also wasn't relevant since I still had my Grado Gold from the PF-800.

The rest was easy. I checked Newegg when I was looking at a Blu-ray player and found the $250 Sony to be a $128 special! Picked up an Integra CDC3.4, 6 Disc CD Changer (missing remote), AND Integra DVD player locally from Craig's List for less than $50 total. Remember what I said about source components being cheap? Of course the remote codes for those components are built into both my CHAD remote and the Integra receiver remote that I found later on eBay (found the remote for the CDC3.4 as well).

Oh yeah, I got my KEF IQ7s on eBay as well. I ended up getting them for cheap (less than $300) since the guy specified "local Pickup only" and they were in Arlington (Texas, not Virginia). Good for me! Later found a matching IQ center channel on eBay for $90 or so in B.C.

So, life is pretty good. No, I don't have the Uber-System built on Rotel separates driving B&W speakers that I always dreamed about, but what I have works pretty darned well. AND, I'm "all-in" at well less than $1000 (not including the TV and sub of course). I'm able to sit here blogging about it on a Sunday morning, listening to Steely Dan: Aja with pretty much a clear conscience.

Relaxation

2011-04-24T13:38:00.011-05:00

I've alluded to it before, but let me go ahead and use this post to discuss one of my "other" hobbies; which is home audio/home theater. I've been involved with it for a very long time mostly due to my dad's interests. As I was growing up, my dad had a nice German console system made by Telefunken. It was similar to this:

....but not exactly. Anyway, I spent a lot of hours listening to it and learned to love not only the music, but the equipment as well, especially after I got old enough for dad to let me operate it! By the time I reached junior high/high school age, that old tube system had died the death of "no longer available" tubes and we had moved on to the 70's world of Japanese components.

At that point, I was working in my mom's restaurant part time and started buying my own components with my own money. Of course, I was around a bunch of geek Chinese grad students (as well as my own super-geek college-aged brother), so my taste ran a little more sophisticated than my classmates at school. The first piece I bought was a Radio Shack (Kenwood contracted) receiver that was not only a very cool black (rare in those days when only professional gear came in black), but had a remote control! It looked something like this:

Of course, over time, equipment has come and gone. This was especially true of my late 20's and 30's when I was working professionally, but not yet married much less with children! It was such a part of my life and I so regularly "hung out" at a local stereo store that one of the salemen was in my wedding and is still one of my best friends! Eventually, I'd even have a part time job there while I was working IT at Texas Tech.

During that time, I learned the principals behind buying and selling technology without "loosing your shirt" since although I was young, single and working.....I was a teacher and didn't have the disposable income of a lawyer or doctor. Even handicapped, I learn when and where to buy well enough to get myself into nice separates, esoteric components as well as what sounds good, what doesn't, how components work together to make good sound and that it often didn't have a lot to do with amount of money spent or brand! I also learned when to get out of technologies before the price dropped so much that my stuff became worthless. A good example was my collection Laserdiscs that I sold for around $5 each before we left Chicago. Within a year after that, they were worth less than half that!

With all the "horse trading" over those years, I did luck out in that I never sold off my (and my dad's) collection of vinyl records. In fact, with modern equipment, those old records never sounded better. Plus there is a great relaxation as well with all the rituals associate with their use.

Currently, my vintage Dual 510 belt-drive turntable equipped with a Grado "Gold" cartridge is the center-piece of the serious sources in my system.

In fact, I'm sitting here listening to it "as we speak", so to speak. It along with an Integra CD Changer, Yamaha Minidisc deck, Griffin iPod dock, Sony Blu-ray player, and self-built A/V PC, comprise the bulk of my system. The iPod gets the majority of use since it holds our entire library of music, the Minidisc is for when I'm feeling like a rebel and want to be completely different than anyone else and of course the other pieces are obvious. But when I'm serious about relaxing, its the turntable plays "pure stereo" only through the Integra DTR6.3 reciever, KEF IQ7 speakers and B&W ASW675 sub.

Those are the biggies as far as amazing sound production for the money is concerned. I'll get into the tedious details of their acquisition some other time, but surfice to say that none of it was bought at anywhere near retail. There are other parts of course; such as the Blu-ray that handles the video end of the theater experience, and the HUGE Sony 200 Disc DVD changer that holds all the kids' movies so they don't have to handle them. One of the nice things about this is that the remote that came with that changer also controls the TV as well, so that's their remotes so they only need to learn and deal with it.

Our course these days, there's the inevitable game system (Wii for us), but a more interesting part of this system that will be subject to future posts is the "2nd Zone" built into the receiver so that it can distribute sound and sources to a remote zone. I've been accumulating parts for this over the years and it's about ready to be put together as we.

Right now, I'm just sitting here with the computer in my lap blogging about relaxation on a nice Easter Sunday afternoon with an old Fleetwood Mac Rumours record spinning on the turntable.

Remotes Galore!

2011-04-24T10:12:00.013-05:00

I should be obvious by now that I have a few obsessions! Computers in general, ThinkPads in particular, digital storage ranging from little portable HDDs/iPods to home servers and the like. Of course, these are all computer oriented, but there's also the age old love for audio, both equipment as well as the music. However, given our current state of limited space and of course disposable income due to being teachers and having children, creates a set of circumstances that make remotes an almost ideal target.

REMOTES, you say!?! What the......!!! Well, they are small, electronic, can be pretty darned sophisticated, and best of all they fit in my budget! They are awesome! For anyone with a decent number of electronic devices (particularly home audio/video), we all have remotes coming out our ears and we end up having to use multiple ones of them every time we try to do things no more complex than watch a movie.

Thus enters the Wal-Mart (or Philips) "universal" remote for somewhere between $15 and $25. However, these things are rarely if ever as customizable as we'd like and there's always some key component that aren't part of their "universe", so we go back to using the multiple remotes and looking longingly at the Logitech Harmony line that starts at close to $100 and moves up to $400. Ouch! and if you are like me, you'd probably wouldn't buy it even if you could afford it. So, what to do?

Unbeknownst to most people, we are living in the "Golden Age" of used sophisticated remotes. Most folks are unaware that the super-remotes began appearing around 8-10 years ago. The boom was so big that Micro$oft got into the act by partnering with Harmon International to create the TC1000.

This device was designed to go head-to-head with the "Pronto" created by the remote jugernaught, Philips. Although they were both pricey at the $300+ price-point, they were FAR and-away cheaper than what touchscreen/universal/learning remotes had been before (think north of $1000)! To make a long story short, Philips won out; they and others have gone on to produce increasingly sophisticated remotes with even more memory, although not really any greater functionality.

So, how did I get involved with these ridiculously expense devices? Back in those days, I had a part time gig with an Audio/Home Theater store in Lubbock and we sold them. Of course it was love at first sight of the blue-green touchscreen (what geek wouldn't)! However, since I had that extra job so we could pay for our first house/first baby, a $300-400 remote was out of the question, even at the "salesman accommodation" of half off. But, what the job gave me was access to all manner of obsessive AND well-healed folks who bought things simply because they were new and interesting. And quite often, they would be happy to trade their old stuff for things as long as they it was different. So; as a result of some long-forgotten convoluted trade, I came to own a TC1000! It turned out that I didn't like its function very much and the interactive programming software was buggy (imagine first generation MS software being buggy), so it was traded or sold off. Around that time-frame we were looking to move away from Lubbock and find teaching jobs close to Dallas, so I was in the process of selling equipment and not acquiring it. Over the course of the next few years, that was the case since, first we were in a small rent house, then came the second child, along with having a new home built.

A couple of years ago, finally the time came to rebuild my audio/home theater system. As always, I did my due diligence and found some good deals on equipment through eBay and the local Craig's List. Of course, I mostly stuck with what I knew and bought a nice Integra (Onkyo's "Lexus" line) receiver that had a Phono input, BUT was missing its remote. So there it is; we finally get to the part were I give myself license to get into the world of remotes!

First, let me start by saying that (not just in my opinion, but reviewers and other sales folks as well) that Onkyo/Integra remotes are routinely considered some of the very best designed on the market, but they tend to sell for somewhere north of $60-75, even on eBay! So it was like mana from heaven when I came across a "CHAD" on eBay that I managed to snag for around $45 complete with charging stand. In case you didn't know, the CHAD is the Onkyo version of the Philips Pronto that I'd always coveted! Awesome, BUT (there's always a "but"), I found that the "Holy Grail" wasn't all that its cracked up to be (at least for me). Apparently I don't enjoy using a touch-screen as much as I thought I would. Its great for when I'm using multiple things in the system, but for a quick zap-zap, they're kind of a pain to use. Plus, I haven't yet gotten into the full customization of the unit yet through the computer software.

Along the way to nirvana, there've been some "deadends" and "not-quites" as well. First there was the Sony RM-AV3000 (above left), then recently the Denon RC-770 "Unimote". They are both of the hybrid "hard-buttons"+LCD. I found both to be limiting and not any easier to use than the fully LCD CHAD. However, we found that my wife really likes the Sony so it lives by her chair. Its a huge plus if you (like me) have lots of Sony equipment (virtually all my video components are Sony).

What to do? I had a bunch of partially programmed remotes that kind of did the job, but was still using multiple units when I was doing something serious like watching DVD or Blu-ray home theater. Part of the problem was that since I didn't have the original remotes for the receiver or the Integra 6-Disc CD changer, they both had functions that weren't in the "universal" code sets of even the CHAD. So it was very difficult to put function buttons from different remotes on to one screen to alleviate the need to jump back and forth between device screens. My other issue is that last year, I finally pieced together a system for our master bedroom which also needed some sort of integrated remote to cut down the clutter on my nightstand. The answer came in a pair of original Onkyo/Integra remotes. The correct remote is very hard to find since there's a tremendous variety of them, plus you have to find it after you find the right model number! First I was able to find an Onkyo RC484m (Left) cheap on eBay, but it turned out to be for the integrated DVD/Receiver unit and didn't have all the buttons needed to run my main system. Then I found the ONE, an Integra RC514m (right), for $24 on eBay! Although it was originally intended to run the next model up than my receiver, it worked find for mine as well. Since they are both programmable, as well as having the original Onkyo/Integra codes, I've been able to get all my devices into them. And, both are "hard-button" remotes, so they are easy to just grab and use; even for guests!

I've programmed the RC484 for the bedroom and have it set up to run the Onkyo receiver, Integra DVD player and the Olevia TV. The RC514 is set up for the main system in the living room that runs 6 components (for now)!

Here's the Frugal part: I've found that these sophisticated universal/programmable remotes can often be found around $20 (plus or minus a few $s) on eBay! If you're interested in playing with a programmable touch-screen, look for an older version of the Philips Pronto which are often well below $50. Hybrid LCD-hard button remotes like the Sonys can be had for even less (often sub-$20). A great example is the Sony RM-AV2100b (above) that I picked up on eBay for less than $15 shipped. Its an older version of the Sony AV3000 that my wife uses that has basically the same functions. The bonus is that the Sony TV code-set that it comes preprogrammed with is the same that my Westinghouse LCD TV uses in the office. It was sold without any instructions etc., so you might have to do some research since these are often sold off after having sat around for a number of years.

iPods

2011-04-21T22:12:00.006-05:00

I know this is a little "off-beat" for me, but I've been feeling a little "off" anyway, so why not! I've actually been involved with iPods for a while.... just as soon as they stopped being status symbols and became viable daily use items for us normal people.

Yup, I know; compared to most of my stuff (eg. Vinyl, CD, and even MiniDisc), it doesn't sound very good, but NOTHING compares with the storage capacity and flexibility. A few years ago, my wife was giving me "the signal" that she'd like to have one and even new at $250, it wasn't too bad, so she got it for Christmas.....which led to me spending the rest of my break loading our entire library of CDs on it! However, I must say that nothing is quite as convenient when leaving on a trip than just grabbing that thing and heading out the door....with our entire library of music. Not too long after, she wanted to have another one to put all her school stuff on so it'd be separate and easy to find.

That's when I got into the used iPod end of things. You know; the things don't break very often, so there's a bunch of them out there and if its not a current model they'll sometimes fall all the way down to something like $100 or so. I got her a white one (since her other one was black) for about $125 and everything was great. These were both the 5.5 Generation iPod "video" versions.

Then about a year later, we were getting ready to go to Alaska and of course, I needed to take a laptop to dump my digital photos, but I also wanted to make absolutely certain that those photos were backed-up as well. Thus entered my iPod; a black (of course) Generation 6 "Classic" with 80Gb capacity that I picked up locally on Craig's List for around $175.

Things have gone along pretty well for our stable of iPods, but recently, I was asked to take it to the "next level". My sister-in-law was coming in from Germany and along with her came 2 older iPods (1 Gen. 3, 1 Gen. 4) in need of repairs sent by my "lover of all things Apple", brother-in-law. Both had problems and I was to see if I could fix them economically, but if not, then they didn't need to go back.

Of course, they obviously needed to have their batteries replaced AND the 3G one needed a new hard drive as well since the one in there was "clicking". I've never been down this road before, so it was a little tense when I got the battery I ordered off of eBay and started to take the 4G apart. First time through, was a no go. Like the novice I was, I put the plug on backwards and it wouldn't charge. The second time though worked like a charm! So for 20 minutes of time and $5.35 expended; apparently, I'm in the iPod repair business!

Now...when the box of broken 3G parts that I bought on eBay for $10 show up next week, we'll see if I've really got any skills! Its not really worth fixing, but I love a challenge...especially if its something new I haven't tried before.

The "Equation"

2011-04-08T10:01:00.003-05:00

OK: there's no real equation that I use to determine what projects to do and what not to do. In most cases, its easy since there's no good way to mess up buying a know quantity like a Dell laptop for $150 and selling it for $250. Or finding a machine at a certain price-point that already has a buyer who wants it at price-point + $25-50. But for a Frugal Propellerhead's own projects, you really have to constantly evaluate since its a sliding scale and often something done "on-the-fly". This is really a good "case study" for what many people run into when dealing with a hobby and having something turn into a "money pit" and a cause of frustration and friction. So, let me walk you guys through this case:

Found an Alienware Area-51 M7700 (largely complete with the exception of battery, hard drive(s), a/c adapter) for $171 on Goodwill Auctions.

Made a mistake (kind of), since this particular Goodwill seller put in "shipping to be calculated after auction". On the surface, this didn't look like much of an issue since Goodwill is typically pretty reasonable on this and when this appears it usually means that the seller is going to calculate based on actual charges to the buyer's location. Little did I know that these knuckleheads would calculate shipping from South Carolina to Texas to be about $50! This puts the project at $221, although not too bad for what it was, this takes away room for error making it not nearly as good of a deal than if the costs would have been something more typical such as $25 or so.

Bought, a/c adapter, and a battery on eBay for around $40 total putting me at a totaling pushing $275 now and still needing a HDD caddy and adapter cable, which should cost me another $35-45, meaning that my total will end up in the $325 range.

This is were analysis comes into play. If you'll do a little research by checking eBay "sold" prices, you'll find that the $325+ range is into the fully-working versions of that model, AND I'd be there w/o having it completely "up and running".

The next concept to analyze is how to move forward from here. I can find the other parts and finish, find parts through the acquisition of a "parts" machine, get the project working and sell off the remaining parts to recoup the costs. In relation to this, I found another M7700 with similar issue here locally for $150. The outlay at this point would be around $475! This is not only in the fully working range, but into the fully working next NEWER MODEL range. Let's just say that this isn't a place you want to be with a "fun" project since I'll categorize this as being NOT FUN due to fiscal irresponsibility.

AND this isn't even discussing the possibility that I wouldn't be able to resolve the issues (eg. inconsistent POSTing) without spending more money!

So.....WWYD? As for me, I'm leaning toward gettting out of this situation while I can and will most likely be able to get back what I've put into it already. I'd probably be able to get out for about a $50 penalty. Let's just say that it's "lesson learned"!

What It's Like to be Single

2011-04-04T18:31:00.003-05:00

I thought it'd be amusing to do this from Starbucks with my cup of coffee (just coffee), imagining that this is what a Monday evening might be like if I was still single or at the very least w/o children! But actually, I'm indulging because I just dropped Josh of at Cub Scouts and have about 30 minutes to "gather wool" till I have to go and get him. Going to Starbucks with a computer and blogging is really only interesting if you don't have the ability to do it regularly. If I could do it every day, I probably wouldn't do it since it wouldn't be of any value at all. ....by the way; the X300 is virtually the perfect companion for an outing like this. As far as progress with my projects are concerned; there's nothing to report. I haven't done anything to the Bondo stage of "Dig Dug" yet. Maybe I'll add another layer later. I did get the locking bar for the keyboard ribbon cable for the Alienware and it didn't help. In fact, it now won't boot at all....just a "black screen", so that's pretty depressing which hasn't help my unusually pensive mood.

In the Beginning.....

2011-04-02T13:29:00.005-05:00

There was plastic with paint on it and it wasn't too good. So, after the disassembly which took a while, my procrastination, which too longer, here is the beginning of the work on "Dig Dug". Yup; I named his machine after the age old video game from the 80's. Inspiration from my friend Eric, but I'll get into "why" some other time.

That is the graphic that I'm going to order for it to replace that horrid strip of aluminum and round "Notebook" badge on the lid. Here you can see the pictures of what it looks like when I started doing a little sanding to see how thick the paint is, and what sanding that areas where the badge was is going to be like.

Here are the two bezels (KB & Screen). As you can see, I've already gotten down to the light grey color of the plastic at the front of the KB bezel. Pretty ugly huh!?!

Here's the lid which you can see where the ugly aluminum strip and round badge was afixed. Below is a close up of the area that I intend to Bondo and make disappear; on top of which will go the Dig Dug decal after application of the color-shifting Green/Blue paint.

Stay tuned.....

Beauty and the Beast...

2011-03-31T22:56:00.006-05:00

In a land not very far away, there came to live A BEAST! Yup, the Alienware Area-51 M7700 arrived today. All 12+ pounds of it, and that's not including the 2+ pound power adapter that showed up last week. If I thought Josh's Clevo D47v was big, this thing is what it turned into all grown up, and JUICED!!!

And yeah; its goin' to be a project. In the words of the immortal Shrek to Donkey; it's like an onion, there's layers. In this case, I believe there'll be layers of problems.

First off, it powers up, but not always, and it wouldn't go into BIOS even when it did POST. Turns out that the little white bar that holds the keyboard ribbon cable in the socket is missing. That would probably explain why that it only POST sometimes AND even when it does, it doesn't necessarily respond to the KB! Secondly, although I new that there was no hard drive(s), I found out immediately that the caddy, and the cable/connector thingy is also missing....DRAT. When it does POST, it seeks the RAID driver and then the OS as well as tries to boot to the optical drive which is all very good. Also on the positive side, it has 1.5Gb of RAM populating 3 of its 4 sockets, so all I need is one more stick of 512Mb DDR2/PC4200 to max that out (read cheap...as in already have).

So, now comes decision time. I've located a local person who has an identical one for sale that has video problems, but is complete....down to the Alienware "Respawn" restore disks. I've got him to agree to $150 for the whole thing, so the quandry would be:

Go cheap- get a cable/connector/caddy costing somewhere in the $50 range and try to rebuild with a direct Windows XP load, OR.....
Go big- buy the guy's machine knowing that every part I do AND MIGHT need will be there, plus the restore disks from the manufacturer and spend 3x that much....but knowing that I could probably get the difference back by selling all the parts that I don't need

I DON"T KNOW!!!

In the mean time, I've loaded up a few pictures of my X300 (Beauty) as compared to its Alienware stablemate (the Beast).

This & That

2011-02-22T23:35:00.002-06:00

This is an update on where Josh's new computer is at and that is something else entirely. I'll start with "this" since it's pretty short. So far, I've gotten Windows completely loaded and updated on the "beast" after some standing on my head and crossing fingers, toes, and everything else. The color has been chosen: Rustoleum's "Gamma Green" Color Shift paint that does that iridescent color changing stuff. Now, I'm in the annoying process of trying to find a bargain on obsolete RAM. If I can successfully pull this off, I'll be well on my way to being canonized!

Now, on to "that".....well.....that is kind of a long and sordid story. Way back when, don't remember exactly, I fell for the siren charms of the "Portable Computer". No!!! not that kind of portable. Laptops (more correctly called notebooks anyway) are so last decade. No, I mean, desktop components, crammed into a semi-transportable-sewing machine-lookin'-28lb-weighin' "mutha" of a computer! The type goes way back, and oddly enough in this day of the tiny laptops, they still make them. There are some arcane computer (really networking) rituals that apparently can only be performed well on these things, so they still sell a few of them per year and the other 10 or 20,000 go to the military. Who knows what kind of experimentation those guys do to them!

Anyway.....I found couple on eBay, need to get one, will rip its guts out, and rebuild it, don't have any idea what I'm going to do with it, end of story....

Not really, but not too far from the truth either. If I manage to get this thing, it'll be the next project after "Boy Wonder's" computer is done.

Battling the Beast!

2011-02-20T14:51:00.002-06:00

If you haven't struggled with a machine that's not from a "major" manufacturer; let's just say that its a "different" experience. I understood this going in, which is why, whenever I'm advising someone or doing a machine for a client, I almost universally use something from a major player, and not only that, but a machine from their corporate line that they sold in the tens if not hundreds of thousand units. The reasoning is very simple. The vast majority of these computers are sold to corporate clients who not only demand a high level of reliability, but support as well. What this means is that the drivers and software utilities are typically available 24/7 from the internet with little fuss and muss.

However, when dealing with smaller outfits (like the Clevos) of the computing world, this is quite often not the case. Relatively speaking they don't sell a lot of units and therefore, can't really rationalize the infrastructure it takes to provide top-notch support. This is further complicated by the fact that some of them (again, like Clevo) don't sell very much to the end user, but more to boutique OEMs such as VooDoo, Hypersonic, and Alienware which further muddies the waters. All that being said; lets just say that finding the correct hardware drivers for my son's potentially "new" computer was challenging.

To start with, Windows XPP left about 6 devices without drivers. Clevo's Europe site where I located the drivers was a little "bare-bones" to say the least, but never-the-less, I was able to grab enough drivers to clear up all but 2 of the infamous (!) marks, leaving only the webcam, and most frustratingly, the video adapter. There were 3 different zip files for video adapters, with no indication which to use, so I grabbed the latest (2005!)......3 different times at 25+ minutes each time! Repeatedly the zip expansion said that the file was "invalid", so I finally gave in and the tried each of the other files....multiple times....with the same results.

Today I finally decided to stop banging my head against that particular wall, and try different routes. A BitTorrent all-encompassing package ended up being a dead end. Then it was onto the ATI, the maker of the Radeon 9600 GPU, and their Catalyst driver package....no joy. Finally, it was on to the world of "Googled" driver results. As most of you are aware, this is a shadow world of the internet with all manner of "blind alleys", gimmicks and Malware, so I was understandably a little nervous. Ultimately, after quite a bit of searching I came across a site with a different version of the ATI Catalyst driver that looked promising.

So I started this load, and BOOM.....not what you think, it didn't crash or anything...it gave an error message referring to a MS Dotnet utility that wasn't loaded. This I'd seen before, in the ThinkPads which will not load their automated software updater without it. So, after a little rummaging around in my software archives in the desktop, I found it, put in on a flash drive, and loaded it up on the Beast; after which I reran the ATI loader, rebooted, and like magic, the screen came back as the high resolution (relatively speaking) 1440 x 900 that the correct video adapter driver would support on the screen!

After that, I corrected another issue that it had had when SP2 was loaded (unsuccessfully), which cleared up the IE problem which was making it not be able to download anything from M$. Then we moved on to catch up on Updates that wouldn't load previously and Security Essentials.

So, here we are, despite sketchy support, weird/non-working drivers, odd chipset (SiS!), it's got the basic load that it needs to move on and seems to be stable.....which leads to the dismantling and painting of the machine. I've spent a ridiculous number of hours on YouTube watching videos on painting (although its somethings I've done already, but hey, you can always learn) and spray paints by Rustoleum and Dupli-color. Next step now is to take Josh down to the auto parts store and have him look at colors to get his thoughts. Personally, I'm really leaning toward the Green/Blue "color shift" paint that you can get from Rustoleum, but its up to him to see what he likes, then it'll be on to dozens of screws and taking the Beast down!

Misc Ramblings on an Icy Day....

2011-02-09T12:41:00.004-06:00

OK, I'll admit it; I'm avoiding grading the stack of essays for my Advanced Placement World History class. Even though, nation-building and the Capitol One barbarians are interesting; 40 papers about the Middle Ages is mind-numbing!

So, is HP the current evil empire or What? Almost as bad as the Wankees or anything new york for that matter. They've even invaded one of my favorite TV channels (HGTV) with that insipid "Selling New York" show; I change that channel almost as fast as I do when the "UFO/Aliens taught us everything", I've got bad "Babylon 5" hair guy on History Channel comes on. They're everywhere (HP that is, not the Aliens, but who knows); the stuff is over-priced and just superficially looks good. If I were in the market for a new computer, I'd sooner buy a Dell or Acer, but really, Asus. Is the G73 "Stealth" gaming laptop not the coolest thing you ever saw other than any overpriced Apple product? And they sell for around a $1000!
If I wasn't morally opposed to buying new computers (and rich), I'd run out and buy this thing right now. OK, I wouldn't run anywhere since I'd buy it online, but you guys know what I mean. I understand some folks probably aren't as impressed with the looks as I am since it basically looks like what a gaming ThinkPad would be, right down to the rubberized finish from the high end TPs like my X300.
And these guys are on a roll; don't believe me? Read some reviews about the G73, then go down to Best Buy (don't buy anything from them, but go down there) and look at it. Better yet, feel it. I must say that I hate the "chiclet" style keys (basically, not as bad as new york, maybe l.a.), but I could live with it.

Overall though, I'm doing very well living here on the "trailing edge" of technology. My literally blazing fast desktop is running on a Core 2 Duo processor with 2 5 year old LCD monitors. I've got a 2+ year old laptop that's just amazing and my kids on on 5-8 year old computers. I have a very nice old (D70s) Nikon DSLR that does everything I need it to do (except turn off) which costs less than $250, plus a Nikon Coolpix 995 that was $15 on Craig's List. I'm about to replace my son's 5/6 year old computer with something even older, but does what he wants it for even better.

I love technology, but have decided that paying retail price for the honor of owning "new" is crazy and just plain expensive!

Pizza Delivery!

2011-02-08T22:46:00.005-06:00

WHAT THE....!!! As my brother-in-law would say, but that's what this thing reminds me of; other than the fact its widescreen format vs. the traditional 4:3, or it would have looked like a really cool pizza box!
Good thing I cleared my work space of other machines, because this thing is a beast! I've worked on other 17" machines before, and they are all big, but this is different. The last 17" notebook I worked on was an HP DV9700 (don't ask- nVidia GPU, lawsuit, yada yada yada), but it was swoopy, thin and maybe a pound, pound and a half lighter. This thing is SQUARE....OK rectangular, but let me emphasize the "ANGULAR" aspect of it. Clevo has gone to very little trouble to disguise it for what it is.... What it is, is that 6' 6", 235lb girl who's going to play college basketball on scholarship. She doesn't NEED make-up. Make-up isn't going to help. It is what it is.

So, what is it? I was right, almost to the "T", however the former owner didn't do quite as much research and missed a few things. He/She/They put PC2700 DDR in it, making the bus run on 333 vs. the 400mhz that its designed to. Apparently the hard drive was bad, hence the "no disk found" error; a different PATA disk recognized without issue. It came without an optical drive, but that's a non-issue as well since it takes the standard (for that time) ATAPI interface, 12.7mm drive. Not being the IBM, Dell, or the HPs of the computing world, Clevo didn't need that drive bay to do anything but hold an optical drive, so no "special" (read hard to find and expensive) caddy or adapter cable. So I just grabbed a random junk CD-ROM drive that I had squirreled away and slid it in; recognized just like the hard drive. The screen lights up with no decernable issues. Got into the BIOS just fine and everything seems to be working on the machine. I threw in a Windows XPP disk and it spun up and started to load.......which is when the universal adapter I was using crapped out. It's rated to give 70w output. I was having it boot a machine that's rated to draw 150! So, not surprisingly the protection circuit kicked in and it "passed out". Oh; and it's UGLY..... remember the 6' 6" college bound basketball player? She's also got acne....
Hard to tell from this picture, but, trust me; she needs a make-over.

So, what needs to be done and how much is it going to cost? Here's the rundown so far:

1 "As Is" Clevo D47v "laptop" $77 after shipping off of eBay
1 Sony DVD Burner off of eBay $20 (just assume the prices I give you includes shipping unless otherwise noted)
1 20volt/7.5amp (150watt) power adapter $42...eBay of course
2 sticks of 1Gb DDR400 RAM, will probably run between $35-45, but should have been $26 if I hadn't of fallen asleep right before the end of an auction!
1 250Gb Western Digital PATA Hard Drive, Free- out of the drawer I put it in after taking it out of my wife's old computer.
1 can of Krylon Fusion (for plastic) spray paint, $4
Masking tape from the garage, Free
Disassembly instructions, Free from some random place on the Internet.

So, the total should run around $175 to 185. Less if I get lucky with the RAM or the A/C adapter. All in all, I don't think that'll be half bad, particularly if I can recoup some or all of the cost by selling his old machine...but that's a different story.
Yes, I'm completely aware that I'm probably not going to be able to replicate this for him, but for $175 vs. $3500; I can live with that! As for the performance, I think we'll be able to get by with a speedy P4/3.2Ghz machine for a few more years (after all, he'll only be 8), or at least until daddy gets itchy to build another computer!

What's next? The nitty-gritty, of searching out and buying cheap on eBay, then....THE TEAR-DOWN!!!

OH YEAH: any suggestions on asthetics, colors, what to do with that weird-shaped piece in the middle of the lid? I'm open, although, given that it's for my son; the colors will start and end with some version of green (kind of like Katie's computer is lavender).

Performance is Only Skin Deep

2011-02-05T10:57:00.008-06:00

I don't know if any of you guys follow the Byzantine relationships of the computer manufacturing world, but I've been "neck deep" into it for a few weeks....whereas before I was only knee deep. Anyway, as more and more people are aware, even the big boys out there (Dell, HP) really don't build their own computers; especially laptop computers. Largely, these are sourced out of Taiwan , or at least designed in Taiwan and manufactured in China from companies that you may or may not of hear of such as: Arima, Asus, Clevo, Quanta, etc. And of course, they all have differing levels of quality and areas of expertise. As a standard, the HPs of world put out a spec, and these guys send out bids and design proposals which lead down the path eventually to their websites or Best Buy. Typically, with the true heavy hitters such as HP & Dell, those designs are pretty much theirs and you aren't going to find an almost identical product from Acer, or whoever, although there mights be a very similar product from a "captured" brand (eg. Compaq, now owned by HP).In any case, this is not true of second tier OEMs, "Original Equipment Manufacturer", who don't manufacture anything. But this is especially the case with "Boutique" OEMs such as Hypersonic, VooDoo and that darling of all gamers....Alienware. In fact, right up until Dell bought them out, Alienware (and virtually everybody else in that market area) bought from one Taiwanese ODM; Clevo. Where Clevo has made its name was the far outer reaches of performance in a "portable" machine. They typically use full-on desktop CPUs such as Intel P4 (vs. P4-M or P M), or AMD X2 (vs. Turion), plus really powerful (relatively speaking) video processors. The latest generation of them even have the capability of installing multiple video cards in an SLI configuration using a newly standardized mobile video card interface. Many have bays for multiple optical as well as hard drives. When you throw in 17" LCD displays, the multiple fans it takes to keep things moderately cool, some times 4 speakers with an onboard sub, then you have some really big and heavy machines! Oh and we can't forget the amount of draw that all this places on the power "brick", which often exceed 150 watts, which causes even that item is monstrous. All in all, you can easily end up with an "all in" weight in excess of 12 pounds!

So your question might be (particularly if you know me well), what does that have to do with me? I don't game, and if indeed, if I were to end up having to sit at a desk to use a computer (and trust me, these computers NEED to be used on a desk), I'd want a full on tower with at least 2 monitors attached! Well....the thing is, is this; my son loves to play games on his computer and uses an IBM ThinkPad T42/15". I although I love the T4x series, and believe that the 15" SXGA+ resolution, ATI chipped T42 was a great design; its not really designed for an immersive gaming experience for a 7 year old. So, as a Frugal Propellerhead, but conscientious Dad, what do you do?
Find a Clevo on eBay sold for "parts", not fully working of course and see what can be done to:
a. Get it working
b. Make it look as cool as possible since I can't convince myself to buy an actual Alienware Area-51 notebook computer.
For you guys who are pretty good a projecting, I'm certain you can see how this could turn (yes, I know it could turn ugly, I don't mean that) into a series of posts on this subject.

So, at least let me start by giving you the particulars of what I know about it (its not here yet), and the parameters of what I'm working with:

Its a Clevo D47V/EV- P4/3.2Ghz CPU, 512Mb RAM, 40Gb HDD, Combo Optical Drive, 17" LCD
Boots to BIOS, but then, "No OS Found" error
No, A/C adapter

What I think I know (piece together) so far:

Socket 478 "Prescott" processor
2 200 pin DDR RAM sockets taking PC400 modules
IDE HDD interface for PATA drives
20v, 6amp power spec., yielding a 120 watt draw requirement

What I really want to know ASAP, so I can make plans and gather parts:

Is there a 130Gb HDD partition limitation in the BIOS
Does it have the "deep" lower chassis of the Alienware M7700 that has multiple optical and hard disk drive bays, or the earlier shallower casing
Is the resolution the underwhelming WSXGA 1440 x 900 LCD, or high res. version
Will it take some/any of the Alienware case parts (would love to install the cool Alienware LCD lid), if so, which model

Roughly, my plans are, to get it up and running, then take it apart, and depending on whether it'll take the Alienware case parts or not, I'll either install those, or work on a really cool paint scheme for it. Make my 7 year old son a happy camper.

File Server Build-Up

2011-01-05T19:49:00.003-06:00

While I'm waiting for the arrival of parts and funds to buy parts (specifically a capture card), I decided to go on to stage 3 of my Winter Computer Rebuild Extravaganza!!! .....well really, it's just an operating system changeover to MS Windows Home Server from Windows Server 2000.
I had accumulated parts to build a file server for home use by mostly trading parts for an old Tyan Tomcat P4 motherboard with a "Northwood" Core Celeron processor which has 2 onboard Ethernet adapters. So, what's the mumbo-jumbo about "Northwood" blah, blah, blah!?! Here's the deal:

It was cheap (free) since it was acquired in a trade for parts on hand.
Its a motherboard with onboard graphics (so no extra vid-card), plus it used older DDR RAM that I already had on hand (read free).
Plus this board has the almost ubiquitous socket 478 allowing me to choose from a WIDE variety of CPUs. Given that this thing is a file server, there would be VERY little processing being done. This allowed me to choose a very low-draw/cool-running "Northwood-128" Series CPU.

As most of you will know the "Celerons" were less expensive products that allowed Intel to be competitive in the lower end of the CPU market since at that time, AMD was "breathing down their proverbial necks" in the lower price points. They were cheaper by typically lowering the size of the onboard cache as well as a few other tricks. When they moved from the "P6" generation of Celerons to the "Netburst" series, they became known as the Celeron-4 and VERY powerful in their own right. The first of them were the "Williamette" Cores and much like the true P4s of the same core, ran pretty hot.

However, when the "Northwood" core was introduced, the 130nm process majorly shrank the die size and they were able to bring the voltage down from 1.7v to 1.52v making these the "hot ticket" because they ran much cooler! Anyway, when combined with 2 Ethernet connections on the motherboard and the fact that I traded for the whole she-bang, I was pretty stoked!

So, here it is, several months down the road, and after picking up 2 2Tb hard drives for storage and a SATA RAID adapter so I can connect them in the $35 Cooler Master case that I bought on special from buy.com, I've finally gotten this thing the way I want it.

And this came courtesy of a Window Home Server load that I was able to trade some other computer parts for locally. I had done some research and decided that this adaptation of the MS Server 2003 would work very well for our growing home network, but I just didn't want to pay the $100 to buy it! So again, a trade was perfect for my situation.

I stayed up late last night and loaded it (couldn't sleep after the basketball game anyway), got the SATA/RAID adapter recognized today and the big-boy hard drives formatted as well. Then a few client loads later, plus a little time setting up "Users", I have 4+ terabytes of, always on, "headless" file storage that I can tuck away in a literal corner! Now, we finally have that automated storage solution that's no-muss/no-fuss, AND I haven't even tapped into its media server capabilities yet. The best part? Built for less than $400 of which $300 was in hard drives alone.

Rebuild: Part 2 (Video Capture)

2010-12-28T10:01:00.003-06:00

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

2010-12-25T09:45:00.003-06:00

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:

Take down the old mount, patch the hole and repaint, leading to-
Build a "hutch" to go on top of my credenza that would have an area to attach the LCD mount, leading to-
Taking the credenza out to facilitate the construction, leading to-
Refinishing/rebuilding it so that it would better handle the equipment that goes into it (more on this later), leading to-
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-
Rebuilding the desktop workstation, leading to-
Building the Home Theater PC, leading to-
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

2010-12-05T09:49:00.003-06:00

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

2010-08-10T20:40:00.002-05:00

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

2010-07-15T08:59:00.009-05:00

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

2010-07-14T11:09:00.019-05:00

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

2010-07-13T14:17:00.003-05:00

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

2010-07-13T09:58:00.002-05:00

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

2010-07-10T12:23:00.002-05:00

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"

2010-07-09T00:00:00.004-05:00

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:

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

As they say in Batman- POW!!!

The Free Kitten

2010-07-05T19:07:00.000-05:00

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

2010-06-23T14:40:00.002-05:00

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:

Actual image quality at the levels that are being discuss isn't enough to measure much less as a deciding factor.
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!

2010-06-18T00:15:00.007-05:00

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

2010-06-13T10:59:00.003-05:00

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.