New Gadgets

Some new gadgets at CES this year, but what I love most about this article is the name they give the CES Expo, "Geekopolis". That a great name!

The SBU (self balancing unicycle)

This has nothing to do with anything else on my blog (but it is called random Wes thoughts, so this is the real random part).

I just thought this looked cool, enjoy

Asus eee - 5 months on!

Well its been about 5 months since I got the eee, thought it was about time to give an update on how it has been going, given it now has enough Km's under its belt to really be put to the test.

A good indication of how good a laptop is, is how well it travels. I have had laptops in the past that when they are taken out of the bag after a trip I find screws in the bottom of the bag that have fallen out of the machine! The eee has now been around the world and back in my hand luggage, and spent many other trips being hauled around town. So far, no screws are missing at all! In fact, the machine still feels as solid as when I purchased it.

It passes the travel and being beaten up test very well, what about the rest? WiFi has been used in many, many different places without any issues, works first time every time. Bluetooth not used as much, but it works when I need it. 3G USB stick not used as much as I would have thought, but works first time every time!

Surfing the web, doing anything online is no problem at all, it has been used for Skype and to stream YouTube without missing a beat. The built in SD memory card reader has also been fantastic for transferring video files from the flip cam, directly to YouTube.

The main down side is if you need to do any major time working on it. The smaller screen size and keyboard make business applications such as word and excel a bit difficult to use, if you need to do any real work. A quick update, or to read a document, no problem, just dont try and write a business plan, go back to the desktop for that.

It has been a great machine, that suits my purpose of surfing the web while watching TV, doing twitter, and reading and editing small documents on the road.

Asus Eee netbook - 4 weeks on

I picked up my Asus Eee netbook about a month ago, I thought now might be a good time to give a bit of an update on its use, given I have had a chance to play around with it now.

All in all it is a good machine, and suites the purpose I purchased it for in the first place, to use primarily for web surfing.

Using the built in wifi the machine has no problems, it will stream music of the net, runs skype with video no problems, anything else I need it is able to do. The built in 1.3 camera is surprisingly good, providing reasonable picture quality for skype use.

The "next G" USB modem from Telstra also does a reasonable job (however I think I would struggle to use it for business use).

Battery life is not the 7 hours they promise, but I must admit I am using the machine on full power, wireless on all the time, and even stream a lot of video (to and from), so I can kind of understand that! Still get around 3 hours battery life, so I am happy, that covers most evenings worth of use.

I am still trying not to load any applications onto the machine, I want to see how I go just "working in the cloud". So far it has Skype and tweetdeck as the only app's on the local drive, however working on documents and blogs may be a much more simple process if they are local, so I am also going to try installing google gears and see how that goes.

The only other draw back is also the selling point, the size! I love the small compact and light nature of the machine, its just hard to balance on my lap!

Asus Eee netbook - First look

I picked up the Asus Eee netbook recently along with a Next G wireless modem to complete the "mobile" internet.

First look -

The Eee is a nice small (I got the 10 inch screen so not the smallest) solid unit. It booted up quickly and after going through the normal windows set up it was connected to my wireless LAN without any problems.

Downloading all the required patches, virus scanning, Browser (needed to install firefox), plug in's and an upgrade to the pre installed skype (nice that they pre install skype) did not take that long. Soon the machine was up and running and we were making skype calls to various relatives around the world to test it out.

The built in 1.3 meg camera is surprisingly good, and sound quality is not bad either (some reports of "scratchy" sound from the microphone, but they may have been me moving the machine around).

Its light, quick and I am looking foward to seeing how good the claim is that it has a 7hr battery life!

Next steps are to get the wireless modem up and running to see how that goes for speed also, and then its down to the coffee shop with all the other laptops.

New video camera

So yesterday it struck me, I need a new cheap, easy to use video camera for loading video onto the internet (yeah, I know, I dont "need" one, but anyway).

I had seen the flip cam and thought they looked very good, easy to use, light, etc. But it seems they were hard, if not impossible to source in Australia, so after an hour on the web I located a similar product here.

At $99AUD it was not a very risky investment, so I headed over to the retailer and picked it up in the afternoon.

I have had a play around with it for an hour or so and it is a fun little camera. It is never going to be broadcast quality for that price, but for loading quick videos up onto the net it is actually very good. An example of the quality is below.