May 28, 2006

The True Price of Cheap Fuel

Lately I've gotten reports about people trolling car lots looking for a new more fuel efficient vehicle. The excuse given is that they're looking for ways to save money because the price of fuel is so high. Well, hate to burst their bubble, but purchasing a more fuel efficient vehicle doesn't always give the savings people envision. Why? Well, you need to figure in new vehicle costs also. For example, I don't owe anything on my Pathfinder, but it gets 17 MPG. If I bought a Jetta TDI that gets 40 MPG I would probably lose about $240 USD per month! Great way to save money, LOL.

To help people figure out some of these costs I put together a calculator that takes fuel costs into consideration. Check it out here [hazelnutcafe.net].

Posted by Guy at 09:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 25, 2006

New Video Card

I got a new video card [asus.com] the other week and just had a chance to pop it in and take it for a spin. The reason I got it was that while my older card was able to handle the games I play (specifically Guild Wars [guildwars.com]) it lacked speed at higher resolutions. Basically, I wanted to play at a higher resolution so I could fit more game into the screen without the slowdown I've previously encountered.

Let me tell you, definite improvement! Before my last card I was an ATI man, but then I got an nVidia FX 5200 on the cheap and never looked back. I would definitely recommend a 6600 series to anyone looking to upgrade an AGP slot right now.

Posted by Guy at 05:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 11, 2006

Compromised Credit Cards

I recieved a phone call from my bank yesterday telling me that they had recieved notification from VISA that my credit card may have been compromised. Really? Because I hadn't seen any erroneous charges on my account (I can check up to the minute transactions online) and I am greatly aware of my personal security, so how had it been compromised? She told me that she recieved a notification saying that a whole bunch of credit cards had been compromised. I asked if someone had stolen the information ala ChoicePoint, but she just repeated the same things over and over again.

I guess I'm gegtting a new credit card number now, what a pain in the ass!

Posted by Guy at 08:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 23, 2006

More Valentine's Day

After yesterday's post about custom printed M&Ms I thought I would shed some light on additional Valentine's Day stuff. Yes, I know Valentine's Day was invented by Hallmark as something between Easter and Christmas, but that doesn't stop our Significant Others (SO) from buying into it. That being said I thought I would begin a series of posts that elucidate what I've done in the past to help some of the less romantically inclined.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no Casanova, but I've been able to hold my own when it comes to certain things and Valentine's Day is one of them. Last year my SO and I were in the Turks and Caicos for my cousin's wedding so that right there counted for something. No, not much because it didn't circle around my SO, but the nice weather and all-inclusiveness did help. Being that I dropped a lot of cash on the trip I was able to get away with taking her out for a nice dinner and some small gifts.

The gift, however small it is, is kind of important. It can be something you make or buy, this is usually the one time when you can get away with making something. If that's not your style (it's not mine) then you can always pick something small up that let's your SO know that you were thinking of them. Last year it was candles [lunacandle.com] from Lunacandle (no relation to this site). They were small, not very expensive and something out of the ordinary.

That's another tip, try and get something out of the ordinary. Take the candles for example, I could have bought a Yankee Candle, but I found something that I thought she would think was cool. I put some effort into telling her that I loved her. So, in summary:

1. Gift (bought or made)
2. Dinner
3. Out of the ordinary

Posted by Guy at 03:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 22, 2006

V-Day '06 Style

Want to spice up Valentine's Day this year? I just ordered some custom printed M&Ms [mms.com] that will, with any luck, make for a happy V-Day. The only drawback is that you have to order at least 4 8 oz. packages at $9.50 USD each. I think my order (with shipping) came out to $48 USD. Other than that it's an excellent idea for you sweetheart!

Posted by Guy at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 27, 2005

Harmonizing the Home: Part 2

Last time I blogged about my new Logitech Harmony H688 remote I wasn't that thrilled. Well, I'm happy to report that once everything was setup and tweaked it works like a champ! The problem that I was having last night was that the Logitech Harmony members website was under heavy usage and it wasn't reacting to well. I guess that a lot of people got Harmony remotes for Christmas. In fact tonight there were some heavy usage messages also, but at least once I logged in everything was fairly responsive. Really the only complaint I have about the website is that the web application does browser checks for a "compliant" browser and apparently Mozila Firefox is not one of these. So I switched to Internet Explorer and everything was okay.

Actually, once I was logged in and setting things up the hardest part was finding the model numbers for my components. In retrospect I do have one more complaint, the whole use of a website for configuration. It's good in that the device database can be updated and changes propagated in a relatively easy way, but bad in that you need internet access to change settings on your remote. I mean, if you just want to remove a command or update an activity then you shouldn't have to have an internet connection to be able to.

Other than that I just have a "Play Videogame" activity I need to setup and I'm done. Not too bad, but not for the faint of heart either.

TV: Samsung TSL2793HF
PVR: TiVo TCD140060
DVD: Samsung DVD-C631P
Remote: Logitech Harmony H688

Posted by Guy at 10:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 26, 2005

Harmonizing the Home

I got this Logitech Harmony remote [logitech.com] for Christmas and so far all I can do is upgrade the firmware. About halfway through the setup web pages I get an error saying "unable to display content" [64.233.161.104], what the hell does that mean? I hate crappy web pages that have crappy error message... Grrr... More later.

Posted by Guy at 10:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 20, 2005

Dell Laptop Battery Woes (and Oranges)

For work I have a Dell Inspiron 5150 that I've only (!) had to call Dell support on twice. The first time was for the DVD drive, it just wouldn't read my porn application discs. The second problem, a little more recent was my AC adapter, it just sort of crapped out. When it was connected the BIOS power display page showed it as an unknown AC adapter type when normally it should say '130W'. Called Dell, part shipped, no problem.

Then all of a sudden yesterday I got the dreaded Flashing Orange Battery Light™! Some Googling around found a couple of really pissed off people [west-wind.com] that all claimed to have their own fixes. My particular problem was the battery light flashing orange 4 times then green 1 time. The boards and collected wisdom of hardware hackers out there suggested that either (1) get a replacement battery or (2) a fuse has blown within the battery and I could (with my mad skillz) fix it.

I decided to go my own route. First, I drained the battery to about 1% though this is easier said than done. I had to chug Windows XP along until it finally went into hibernation, well when it does this the laptop won't boot by itself under battery power alone. I plugged in the AC adapter to boot into the BIOS then removed the power and let the battery run down as much as possible. Next I removed the battery and AC adapter and left the machine for about 10 minutes. Plug everything back in and no flashing orange! Good job Guy!

Posted by Guy at 08:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

November 26, 2005

Netgear: Refurbed

After a very filling dinner at Famous Dave's we went for a walk around CompUSA [compusa.com] tonight. Besides some of the great post-Tanksgiving sales they had going on I noticed an entire wire rack of refurbished Netgear stuff. Strangley enough it was on the exact opposite side of the store from the normal networking gear. Funny that, huh?

One of the cool things I noticed they were selling were WGT634's [netgear.com], which is a really cool idea for routers. It provides some dual-usage that some average users might find useful, but without the headaches of setting up a server. Refurbished it sold for $49.99 and the cheapest I saw it for on Pricewatch [pricewatch.com] was about $79 shipped, seems like a bargain to me.

Posted by Guy at 09:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 14, 2005

Audi-licous

I was thinking of getting a new car sometime in the next year or so and I was having touble deciding what to get, but I think I know now. Currently I'm pimping a Nissan Pathfinder and with a 35+ mile commute (each way) I'm really feeling the current oil crunch madness. Couple that with the relatively mild climate of Maryland thus negating the need of my 4x4 and I'm looking car. Of course my wife insists on a few features, otherwise she won't even consider driving it. There not stupid (cheap) things either like leather, CD-changer, etc. No, she wants something new, factory-new, with AWD.

Well, I've always liked VW so I figured I would give Passats a go. New 1.8 4Motion Passats weigh in at about $24k - $27k. The new models coming out for '06 start at around $29k - $30k (I think). Umm, that's a lot of money for something that will depreciate as soon as I take it off the lot. Long story short I was able to get my wife to make a concession, the vehicle doesn't need to be factory new.

With this new information in hand I crunched some more numbers. I knew I liked the Passat, but I didn't like the depreciable factory price. It wasn't the price that killed me, but the fact that I could lose so much money on it. I thought to myself, what about a high end Passat, the Audi A4? An A4 a couple of years out actually costs less than a new Passat! Sounds good to me, but the platform isn't without its faults. More on that later.

The moral, to avoid car depreciation get a car a couple of years out and you can also get something better than what you wanted.

Posted by Guy at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 06, 2005

Cheap Laptops: Part 2

After their old ThinkPad (circa 1998) finally dies my parents decided to buy something new to replace it. Obviously it had to be a laptop, but battery life wasn't that much of an issue and neither was intense game playing. This machine was to be used for word processing, light gaming (casino-like games) and internet surfing. I pointed them at my older article on cheap laptops [lunaflare.net] and they thought that the prices sounded about right, but they needed a larger screen.

I pointed them at the model with the larger screen [walmart.com] telling them that it had the same features as the other ones, including a reasonable price, but it had a 15" screen. Of course this model also has a faster processor and double the RAM, but I was going to drop more RAM in it anyways, so that wasn't a real factor. I found some additional reviews of these systems and thought I should link to them here [larwe.com] and here [lostsonsvault.org].

We'll see how many calls I get about this. ;)

Posted by Guy at 11:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 02, 2005

Cable Savings

We've recently observed that we don't use any of the features of our digital cable from Comcast and subsequently decided to downgrade our service. This drops our bill from $62.xx to $50.xx, a savings of $60.00 per year.

Now for the interesting part. When I contacted Comcast to downgrade from Digital to "Full Basic" they offerred to give me a discount of $5 to $7 per month (I can't remember which). Bottom line, if I wanted to keep my current cable service and pay less then all I had to do was indicate I wanted to downgrade and my cable company would basically make a counter-offer.

Posted by Guy at 08:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 28, 2005

Motorola HS820 on a V710

Yesterday I went to Best Buy to pick up a few things for the long Memorial Day weekend car drive from Maryland to Connecticut. There were many things that I wanted, but I settled on two items that I had my eye on for some time, a Motorola HS820 [digitalriver.com] and a Griffin iTrip Mini [griffintechnology.com].

First, the headset. This little guy was really easy to pair with my phone, a Motorola V710 [motorola.com], and works like a charm when I'm not screwing with stuff. The first problem I experienced with it was totally my own fault. I initially paired it and was using the headset then I didn't use it for almost 2 hours and went to answer a call. It wouldn't pick up. Stupid me, I forgot that I temporarily turned the Bluetooth on my phone on which meant that it would eventually go off again, duh! That being said, I did find some quirks that I think have more to do with the phone than the actual earpiece, but I figured I'd throw them out there anyway. Number one, the ringer. When the HS820 is paired with the phone the phone itself doesn't ring, but sends the ring to the earpiece. You wouldn't think this was a problem except you can't hear the ring unless you're wearing the HS820. So, I couldn't take it off and reasonably expect to hear my phone ring, something that's bit me two or three times so far. The second problem I have is that if the phone is displaying anything on it's screen like, for instance 2 missed calls, then you can't access the phone through the earpiece. This can be extremely frustrating when your phone isn't in easy reach, because you need to close the message on the phone before you can make a call. Other than that I haven't had any bad experiences yet. The sound is excellent, the buttons are easy to use and the thing only weighs something like 7.5 oz. (it feels really light on the ear). If anyone has a Bluetooth enabled phone I would strongly recommend this little device.

I'll let you all know more about the iTrip when I get back to Maryland, more data gathering on the ride home.

Posted by Guy at 03:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 16, 2005

Beware the Fine Print: Part 3

Yep, it works. It sucks that the only way to load a 3rd party "SCSI" driver at system install time is through a floppy disk, but whatever. I hope that Longhorn's [microsoft.com] installation procedure is a little more flexible. I guess I don't really understand why XP's install limits this functionality to floppy only. I kept a close eye on what drivers it reported loading and it looked like both UHCI and OHCI (USB) drivers were being loaded. Why can't I load drivers from a USB drive? A serious flaw even when XP was released in 2002 (?).

Either way, I was able to load XP on a single SATA drive hosted by the VIA VT8237 southbridge chipset on a Soltek SL-B7C-FGR.

Posted by Guy at 08:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Beware the Fine Print: Part 2

Looks like I jumped the gun. After installing the VIA VT8237 SATA/RAID drivers under Windows XP I was able to see a drive I had attached and not RAIDed. I saw it under the Drive Manager, but didn't format it or anything. What I'm going to try to do is hook up a floppy drive, run through the WinXP install again but with the "SCSI" driver diskette this time. Maybe I'll be able to natively install WinXP on the SATA...we'll see.

Posted by Guy at 07:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 14, 2005

Beware the Fine Print

Bad news in Mini-ITX-Land. The hard drive that I had running on my Mini-ITX is being donated to a computer that I'm building for my parents. Unfortunately I bought a Serial ATA drive [newegg.com] and a Barebones system supporting SATA [newegg.com]. Problem is that the system sports a Soltek SL-B7C-FGR [soltek.com.tw] mainboard which does support SATA, but only when RAIDed. So, I needed two hard drives or a new system. I just dropped in my PIDE drive and called it a day. I'm still trying to get the controller to work in non-RAID mode but it's not going so hot. Oh well.

Posted by Guy at 06:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 08, 2005

Linare Sub $500 Laptop

I read this article [osnews.com] today and I've come to the conclusion that it sucks to be this guy. I think that after 2 weeks I would have cancelled the order and disputed the charge on with my credit company. It looks like the laptop in question is this one [linare.com] and is available from Walmart (couldn't find it online), Amazon and directly from Linare.

On the surface it looks like a great deal. Although I can't tell who the manufacturer is and this directly correlates to the quality of the laptop. Now, this guy bought the laptop directly from Linare which I think was his first mistake. In general I have better luck in buying from large businesses than smaller ones. So, I would have tried to find a similar product from one of the bigger suppliers before resorting to purchasing direct. See the large retailers can put tremendous pressure on the supplier and generally get their stocks filled before the supplier even thinks of sending out their consumer direct stock.

I guess it's like he said:

To all who think a sub-$500 notebook is too good to be true, you are right. In hindsight I should have got a Mac Mini.

I think I might have to get a Mac Mini to play around with. Maybe after some larger purchases...

Posted by Guy at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 30, 2005

Next Killer Cellphone App?

When clicking around I found this blurb [linuxdevices.com] about TV as the next killer app to cellphones. I can't think that this is even remotely true or a possibility in the near future. At least the researchers realize that there will be significant problems, specifically:

• People won't watch video on the go
• The screen is too small
• No one wants to watch a half-hour program on a cell phone
• The cell phone battery will run down too quickly
• Implementing mobile TV is too expensive and doesn't offer a business case for operators.

Probably the most significant of these are the second and fourth. I mean come on, I don't even want to watch TV on a 5-inch LCD, some 7-inchers look OK, but a 2-inch cellphone screen? I don't care what the resolution is, it's just too small. Also, I can go 2-3 days before I recharge my phone, if I want to watch a 1/2 hour show on the metro every morning I would have to charge my phone every night. Call me lazy, but I don't want to recharge every night.

These problems could be addressed, but I don't see their solutions arriving anytime soon. The first problem (screen size) might be addressed by some personal-space technologies like a personal screen. I've seen some really dumb implementations of this, such as a device that you have to hold up to your face and peer into. It reminded me of the red binocular-like things that provided minutes of excite when clicking the pictures forward. Another device I tested was a pair of glasses that had a virtual VGA (640x480) screen. It was a little difficult to focus, but it had potential. The other problem, power, might be addressed by alternative power sources that could be easily replaced by a trip to the 7-11 or *gasp* more power efficient electronics components like OLEDs. What do you think?

Posted by Guy at 10:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 18, 2005

Cheap Laptops

I know that I'm supposed to start with a here's who I am, here's what I'm blogging about, but I'm just going to jump in and procrastinate the initial entry until later.

Lot's of people ask me "What kind of computer/laptop should I buy?". Well, I just saw a blob on Newsforge about Walmart's Linspired Laptop. I haven't read the article yet, but I jumped over to Walmart.com and searched for their laptop listings. I was amazed that they offered so many! Of interest were the Balance (VIA) and the Balance (Athlon) models. I think that the Athlon version has it all over the VIA. It's got a bigger hard drive, a DVD drive and a faster processor (albeit not much faster) for only $50 more.

Of course, the memory is lacking in both, only 128MB. But a quick upgrade could pump this up to 640MB. Memory prices being what they are today it's probably best to just upgrade it to that. Other than that it looks pretty good. I can't really vouch for the stability, but I haven't hear of any outstanding problems or a large number of returns. So, outwardly it looks like a good deal for about $500 to $550.

Posted by Guy at 08:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)