Exciting Year for Tech in 2010

We’ve got a lot of stuff to look forward to in 2010! Apples iSlate (or iGuide?!), Chrome for Mac, Google Chrome OS, potentially a new iPhone to mention just a few. I shall endeavour to blog about these things as and when they happen.

For now, i must state that my new years resolution will be 1920 x 1080 and that i shall attempt to update this blog a little more frequently!! University has kind of been taking over (as it probably should) for the last few months, and it looks set to continue this way when i get back to Bournemouth on the 10th! I have a presentation to make 9am on the 11th, so its straight back into it!

Amidst all of this, i have become rather hooked on the xbox 360 i bought a couple of months back! Its incredible, before this I was playing games on a 4/5 year old PC. The difference is incomparable… I now have a Wireless N adaptor for the xbox, just need to get me a gold subscription and i’m away!

Right now, i’m off to work on a uni assignment! Attempting to get sequential playback working in C++ using a class that has no feedback method! Fun times!

Samsung N310 after a week…

Well, I’ve had the netbook a little while now so i thought i should go over some of the little things that have been bugging me!

1) The right shift key on the UK keyboard, I’ve said it before but this really is the single most annoying thing about this netbook! Honestly, i thought it would be a matter of getting used to, but i am still pressing the ‘\’ key instead of shift!

2) The battery life could be better! Although Samsung’s battery life extender does an interesting job of attempting to extend the overall life of the battery by giving you the option to only charge to 80% of the full capacity.However, when running the netbook on battery from 100% to the point it enters automatic hibernation, i got a time of 2.35 hours. This was running the display on 50% brightness and surfing web over the WiFi connection.

3) Boot time on Windows 7, it is unfair to blame this on the netbook but is an important point to consider if you are intending to run Windows 7. It takes 1.24 minutes from cold boot to login screen, then another minute to log in. Bear in mind these times are with 2GB of RAM and booting into Windows 7. Stock N310’s running XP with 1GB of RAM probably have a completely different time.

4) If I am being really picky, then the ‘rocker-bar’ style mouse click button feels very cheap, the feel is defiantly not as nice as some of the Asus netbooks (The later ones rather than the earlier ones), but saying this, the trackpad itself is a joy to use, I don’t find it cramped at all.

Okay so that’s the negatives out of the way! So after a week, what are the things I'm really liking about this netbook?

1) It has to be the screen, this is a seriously nice screen for a netbook. The sharpness of the screen literally blows away every other netbook screen I’ve seen. Although on a slight negative, the reflections from the edge to edge glass display can be slightly distracting, but it doesn’t bother me. I am going to try and calibrate the screen using an eye-one device in the near future, i will keep you posted.

2) The keyboard, aside from the right shift key, the rest of it is a dream to type on. After a few days, my typing speed is the same on the netbook as it is on a full sized keyboard. The chicklet style design really helps to avoid wrong key presses!

3) WiFi – This netbook has an incredibly good WiFi connection, it only comes with 802.11 b/g at the moment, I’m guessing 802.11n will be added to a later revision (Possibly the ‘Samsung Go’ in the US). But seriously, this thing can get WiFi reception where other laptops cannot. If there is even a trace of a signal, it seems to pick it up and work with it, where my Mac would not even allow me to connect!

4) Video playback performance. Even though this netbook is equipped with the GMA945 Express Chipset, rather than the more powerful GMA500 Chipset, this netbook managed to playback several 720p HD videos in a row without faltering! (It did have trouble streaming BBC iPlayer HD content though, normal iPlayer content streamed fine!)

5) Temperature / Fan speed. Some netbooks I have used in the past have gotten pretty hot. It may be standard now, as I have not got any other netbooks to compare this too, but the bottom of this netbook stays fairly cool with no audible fan noise! Always a bonus!

Anyway, that concludes my experiences with the N310 after a week or so. Incidentally this is also my first post using Windows Live Writer (From my netbook) so if there are any glitches you know why! As always, any questions? I’m happy to answer!

---

Sam's Blog

My New Samsung N310 running Windows 7...

UPDATE - My Experiences after a week or so with the N310

I'm on the bandwagon and well, my netbook of choice was the Samsung N310. A relatively new netbook by a manufacturer with a history of good, solid netbook designs. The NC10 is a popular samsung netbook, and the N310 is essentially a redesign of this netbook. As you can see from a lot of review sites, the company made a big thing about handing the netbook over to top designer Naoto Fukasawa who came up with this pebble concept (apparently it looks like one!)

Anyway, enough about the design. You can judge that for yourselves at the flickr album page, lets just say that I like it! The idea behind me purchasing this netbook was with the view of upgrading the RAM to a 2GB stick and installing Windows 7, to cut a long story short upgrading the ram was a peice of cake. It literally is a matter of unscrewing one screw, popping open a hatch, swapping the ram stick, and screwing the hatch back on! Nothing like the process needed for say, the Dell Mini 10v.

Anyway, with a 2GB Ram stick installed and working, i plugged in an external DVD drive and set about installing the RC of Windows 7. The install was a breeze, all of the main components worked immediately after installation, which took about 20 minutes to complete. It might be worth noting for anyone who intends to install Windows 7, that amongst several minor things the Fn keys do NOT work straight away, you need to install Easy Desktop Manager for Windows Vista. Click the links (Repeated at end of post) to head to Samsung download page).

A few other drivers are needed for 100% functionality in Windows 7; The Windows Vista Synaptics touch pad driver is needed to enable the scrolling functionality of the touch pad. Some people have also suggested that you install Realtek's sound drivers as Windows 7 drivers sometimes cut out after sleep (This is not something that I have experienced).

So thats functionality dealt with, onto performance. I have as of this moment only had limited experience with the netbook, having had it for all of 3 hours! I will be sure to post again within a few weeks regarding performance and overall stability. However, initial impressions are good! Windows 7 with 2GB of RAM and the Intel Atom 1.6Ghz CPU seems to be a winning combination. The included 720p 'Wildlife' sample video within Windows 7 played back flawlessly in windows media player, this was with Aero enabled which incidentally also runs fantastically well!

Aesthetically the netbook is pleasing, it also feels great to type on. I have always been a fan of 'chicklet' or 'pebble style' (as Samsung likes to call it) keyboards, and personally think its a win win situation for netbooks. I have yet to hit a wrong key on this keyboard, and my hands feel anything but cramped. The only gripe i have is with the small shift key on the UK keyboards, click here for picture. Having seen some of the US/Foreign models reviewed, I prefered the combination of longer shift key and single row enter key, but other than that, the keyboard wins my praise.

The touchpad is very nice, the texture allows your finger to move smoothly (unlike some of the glossy trackpads favoured by other manufacturers) and the rocker button has a distinctive (if somewhat cheap) feel. The real gem of this netbook though is the 10.1" glass to glass covered screen. It is bright, crisp, and very sharp. Text is easily viewable, I will be testing some professional quality photographs a little later, so stay tuned for my verdict on that. The screen has a native resolution of 1024x600 which I prefer to the 1024x576 that Dell and others use in their netbooks. Whilst i appreciate that 1024x576 is in a 16:9 ratio for HD content, i will put up with the black 'post-box' type effect when (if) i choose to watch movies on this machine.

A few other features worth mentioning, the power lead comes with a traditional style laptop 'brick' rather than the wall converter that Dell uses (see picture below). If carried around this adds to the bulk of the netbook significantly. Some have complained about the size of the Samsung logo on the lid, it doesn't bother me that much, infact I think Samsung shows confidence in their netbook by doing this. The status LED's are a very welcome addition to this netbook allowing you to easily see whats enabled (Something which frustrates Dell mini users). The netbook also comes with built in webcam, microphone, bluetooth, and 2.1 style speakers.

Which reminds me, i'll end this initial review on a bizzare note. When the laptop arrived (running XP before I installed Windows 7) the audio was all panned hard left, meaning when I plugged headphones in it would only come out of the left ear! Easily fixed by panning the audio to the center again, but this was just a strange anomaly in what has otherwise been a very smooth, enjoyable, and... well fantastic netbook experience really!

If there are any questions, leave a comment and i'll be only too happy to try and answer them!

More Photos are available on the flickr Page - Here

UPDATE - My Experiences after a week or so with the N310


Pros
- Fantastic form factor
- Screen
- 'Chicklet' style keyboard
- Added extras (Status LED's, Bluetooth, etc)


Cons
- Power Brick
- Small right shift key (UK Keyboard only)

Download Links

- Easy Display Manager for Windows Vista
- Windows Vista Synaptics touch pad driver
- Realtek's sound drivers

Other Useful Links

- Sammy Netbook Forums
- Windows 7 & Samsung NC10 Blog post
- Flickr page of Samsung N310 initial Photos

The Netbook Bandwagon

Netbooks; Where did they start?, Why do they exist?, Why have I jumped on the bandwagon? All questions I intend to answer within this post...

So i finally decided to make the purchase. Mostly for practical purposes, and maybe slightly out of pure curiosity! I want to know just how much of my every day computing can be carried out on these little devices, and possibly how far they can be used in portable recording situations.

The first netbook is a debate which has been going on for a while within the tech community. Many think the netbook revolution really started with the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) Project, which aimed to bring computing to developing countries in an attempt to bridge the digital divide. The aim with this project was to create a fully functional computer for $100. The end result was a 366Mhz AMD Geode GX2-500 CPU, 128Mb of RAM, and 802.11g Wi-Fi. The significant detail here really has to be the Wi-Fi, it surely has defined how these small computers are intended to be used, and indeed the name itself! Netbook, implies the device should be used for browsing the net!

The OLPC Project is a debate within itself, whether it was a success or not, well, it's not for me to say! But it is safe to say that this very small, light weight, budget laptop was what inspired Asus to believe that there was a market for this sort of laptop within developed countries. Their first attempt at a netbook was esentially a clone of the OLPC Project, with slightly higher grade components, and a less rugged case. And guess what!? It worked!

The Eee PC series was born, with the 700 series being announced in September of 2007. The Price was set at $245 and that got you a 900Mhz CPU, 2GB SSD, and 256MB of Ram. It was released with a linux operating system, but Asus soon performed a swift U-turn and sold subsequent releases of Eee PC's with the option of Windows XP as an operating system.

A trend which has unfortunatly continued. Windows XP remains the default operating system for netbooks, purely because of the speed with which it runs on limited hardware. Windows Vista (XP's big brother) is widely known and criticised for it's lack of speed and compatibility with old hardware. As a side note, I believe this has provoked manufactures to sell higher specification machines at a lower price, so may not be entirely a bad thing. Anyway, i digress... Windows XP remains to this day the default OS of many netbooks, but due to liscencing issues Microsoft is limiting its usage to machines with less than 1GB of RAM. A decision which, in my opinion, is holding back netbooks from reaching their full potential. Some manufacturers have countered this by providing easy access to the RAM within the netbook to allow the users themselves to increase the amount (Something I intend to take advantage of as soon as my netbook arrives).

Windows 7 is the new XP, when it is released on the 22nd October 2009, is set to rock the netbook world. It will be provided to netbook manufactures in a starter package, bascially a 'dummed-down' version of the operating system designed to run on less powerful hardware, Microsoft has made an interesting decision with this OS release, to limit the number of programs that can run [on the starter edition] at any time to 3! (NB: This is rumoured to have been dropped from the final release) Something I feel would again, limit the potential of these netbooks!

When my netbook arrives this week, i intend to fully test the machine with XP. I will then install Windows 7 RC (Which will eventually be Windows 7 Ultimate Edition) and test the machine again. This post will be continued towards the end of next week, where I will reveal exactly which netbook I purchased (Clue: It's only been out about a month in the UK) and there will be plenty of photos to look at!

Portable recording on netbooks...

I just wanted to share this blog post with you guys, its all about turning a netbook into a portable linux based recording system! Click link to visit original post!

"Recording music with Linux on an EEE PC"

While an Asus EEE PC is perhaps not best suited for full-on intensive music production, it does have values which make it an ideal solution for portable recording. This tutorial will show you how to install and setup a linux recording environment...

+224 people dugg this story.

Bad Microsoft Design...

I speak with regards to Windows Live Messenger, a free download is available to all windows users. No doubt every single person who reads this blog will know of this program, and will have probably used it at some point in their life!

Well as some of you may know, I decided to reformat my PC and install Windows 7 RC to see what improvements had been made since vista (there are many!) but more on that in a later blog post. Anyway, as part of my testing / daily computer tasks I will be using WLM. So i downloaded the web installer and set to work, installation went like a dream so no problems there. The problems start when I run WLM for the first time, I was presented with this...

Yes, thats right, out of around 200 of my contacts I can see only 1 person. This is just completely stupid. Fair enough, Microsoft may have a new idea about how we should all organise our contacts, into groups and favourites and whatnot but seriously, the implementation couldn't have been worse. After about 5 minutes of tinkering I was able to make it look like this...

Now I don't know about the rest of you, but this is certainly what I would prefer to see immediatly after instalation. Maybe have a tutorial popup which helps users migrate their contacts to the new group and favourite system? Wouldn't that make more sense? I guess not, afterall what would a 19yr old fresher know about design...

Pro Tools vs Cubase

This is a topic I've been meaning to cover for a long time now. So far I have held back because I felt that I was not experienced enough with Pro Tools to make a fair comparison. This is a short post about the differences between two popular pieces of DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) software; Digidesign's Pro Tools and Steinberg's Cubase. There are many other DAW software for you to choose from, for example Logic Studio (Mac), Audacity (PC + Mac + FREE), Ableton Live (PC + Mac), Garage Band (Mac + Free), and more. All of these systems are good at slightly different things. The reason I have chosen Pro Tools and Cubase is because these are the two most significant systems new music technicians are likely to come across.

Cubase is used quite a lot in the education system, this is because it provides a fairly advanced set of features and will run 'fairly' well on a relatively cheap PC (for smaller recording tasks!). Pro Tools is regarded as the industry standard and is used in most professional studios. A few days ago I discussed the differences between Mac and PC for music technology, well both of these systems can be run on either Mac or PC, however Pro Tools tends to be run mainly on Mac, whilst Cubase tends to be run on a PC.

The interfaces look very similar (Even more so since the Pro Tools 8 Upgrade), as you can see below...

Pro Tools 8 running on a Mac

Cubase 4 running on a PC

In fact the differences can really be summarised in one sentence. Think of Pro Tools as audio recording software with MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) built in, and Cubase as a MIDI sequencer with audio recording functions built in. Whilst this may be changing considerably in the near future with the release of Cubase 5, for now Pro Tools certainly is a more comprehensive piece of software for audio recording purposes.

Cubase makes it really easy to plug in a MIDI device, and route it through a VSTI (Virtual Studio Technology Instrument) of your choice to create a MIDI track. It comes pre-installed with many different VSTI's as well as other VST plugins, like reverberation, noise gates, compressors, and more. Pro Tools also comes installed with a multitude of VST plugins however these are almost all focused on manipulating audio files, rather than MIDI input. It is worth noting that there are literally hundreds of VST plugins available from third party companies, ranging from thousands of pounds, to free. An interesting point here is that there tend to be less free plugins for Mac users running Pro Tools, as these plugins tend to be geared towards the professional market and are often of a much higher quality than some of their PC counterparts.

Then comes the issue of cost, and inevitably licensing issues. Cubase requires an external USB dongle to act as a registration key before the software will open. In a similar way Pro Tools will only run when connected to certain sound cards. You can buy sound cards by Digidesign (The company behind Pro Tools) or you can buy a special version of Pro Tools to run on certain M-Audio sound cards. I find Pro Tools is more advanced in this respect because (depending on which sound card you have) it actually uses the sound card to process some of the VST plugins, rather than depending totally on the CPU in the computer.

If you buy a sound card from Digidesign, you get a copy of Pro Tools LE for free. This is all that most home users and students will require. I personally recommend the Digidesign Mbox 2 Mini as it can be brought for around £200 . Cubase comes with its own protection dongle and will run on almost any sound card, a single licence for Steinberg Cubase 4 Essential will cost around £125, but it is worth noting that this is not the most recent edition. You will pay around £320 for Cubase 5, the latest edition of the software. It is up to you to decide whether you really need the latest and greatest features.

Essentially, both these systems perform the same tasks. If you are looking to get into the recording industry, then i suggest you get familiar with Pro Tools. If you are just looking to record a bit of stuff at home and play around with MIDI, then cubase is the way forward.

Spotify the future...

In my last post I talked about the differences between Mac's and PC's on a music technology basis. Now I'd like to talk about a revolutionary new way to distribute music, available for both Mac and PC.

Introducing Spotify, a free Ad based music system. The idea is simple: don't buy music but don't steal it either. Spotify is a totally legal way of listening to any music you want on your computer for free. Spotify has an iTunes like interface as you can see below.

Spotify's main interface

The creators of Spotify have signed deals with all the major record labels, which means pretty much all mainstream music is available. In addition to this, searches for some very obscure music have also been successful. Spotify is available for free, or with several paid options. The only difference is that the free version is Ad supported, and you will get a 10 second advert played for every 6 tracks you play on average. This is how Spotify generates income to pay the royalties and costs to the record labels.

The reason I'm blogging about this, is because as a future music technician my job will rely on the music industry, and at the moment the industry is being torn apart by music piracy. Spotify is the perfect example of where i think music distribution should be going. The industry needs to realise that whilst profits are important, there are modern ways of distributing the content to end users, and these should be used more!

Spotify is similar to last.fm but has the advantage of being a standalone program, so you do not need a browser window open to listen to the music and with Spotify you are able to create playlists of specific tracks, rather than simply based on a certain genre.

An obvious limitation of Spotify is that you must be online to listen to the music, and that you cannot download the tracks to put on your iPod or other portable media player. There are rumours that a Spotify iPhone app is in the works which will allow users to stream music from Spotify on their phone, but as with the recently released Skype iPhone app, it is likely that this will not be allowed to utilise the 3G network.

Spotify started as an invite only service, but now anyone from the United Kingdom can sign up for a free Spotify account. I strongly urge everyone to use this service, because the more people that listen to the adverts, the more money the music industry will get, and as a result maybe they will look at other ways of distributing music, that are cheaper for us as the final consumer.