Kebablog

….well, it should come back. Eventually after waiting a few months I’ve finally gotten round to sending the thing off for repair. Naturally being the cheapskate I decided to send it to Canon for a fixed price repair (£102) versus Fixation (£200+vat). Hopefully the lady on the other end of the phone quoted me the right price, we’ll see.

Hopefully this will mark a reversal in my current equipment related Fail. Sending it off failing should mean it’ll returned fixed. 5 – 10 days apparently (from Tuesday 9th Feb – currently it’s in the hands of Royal Mail Special delivery).

So stayed tuned for the outcome, it should be one of these:

1) It’s Fixed and Returned
2) They’ve not got the parts in
3) They messed up on the priced
4) Royal Mail have lost/broken it more

Anyway, I’d like it back I feel I’m missing something since it’s been knackered.

………yes another External Hard Disk Drive.

After the woe that was Western Digital and the My Book Studio annoyanceware it’s the turn of Freecom.

Now I’m a fan of Freecom drive, they’re well build, look nice (sort of fit in to an Apple look being Aluminium) and of course have lovely firewire built in. So after an Epic with Amazon it eventually arrived.

First task, Format: works o.k.
Second task, Copy Data from RAID drive: worked fine
Third task, Copy Data from other volumes: Fail

And fail it did, it reintroduced me to the Apple Black Screen of Death. Or Kernel mode death. It managed to induce that state of deathness connected via Firewire and USB.

Shame as I’ve been looking at this device for a while, it also seems to be in very short supply as well so the chances of getting another are fairly slim. One annoyance is the fact that my data has been on it and I cannot delete it securely. Though it’s currently hooked up to the MacBook (via FW400) to zero out the disk. Currently will take 13 Hours.

I feel the need to swear, but I’ll hold back.

As sure as eggs are eggs, Apple release products in January (or announce). This January is no exception. So today’s epic product?

The iPad, no not an Apple designed feminine hygiene product, but a big iPod Touch/Tablet hybrid with 3G capability.

Picture Credit:Apple

Sure it looks, luuuuurvly but I can’t see the point. It’s a big iPod Touch, but with the advantage of having a subsidised data plan on 3G (on AT&T in the us, now doubt it’ll be a crap data plan tied to 02 in the UK). Released in a few different capacity sizes, with an escalating price to match.

16gb $499

32gb $599

64gb $699

Oh, add $130 if you want 3G functionality.

So what does it do? Well pretty much everything the iPod Touch does, but bigger. I’m not being too dismissive about the iPad yet, afterall I couldn’t see the point of the iPod Touch until I tried one.

If they manage to get Magazines on board and offer subscriptions to a eMagazine then I think it could take off. But at present it seems too much for a media player (o.k. it’s got email/web etc – but that’s going to cost $130 + $15-$30 for a data plan to make it mobile).

It’s not available for a few months, so I’ll have to reserve judgement about the products. For my Photography though I think it’s a worthwhile method to showcase images, however it’s utterly pointless as a mobile LightRoom/Photoshop device (as it won’t run).

Steve Jobs is indicating it’ll change the way we Read and Surf. I’m not sure, but Steve Jobs’ company is worth oh around $50 Billion, my media corporation is currently worth around £2000 so I guess he has form on being right.

Chances are I’ll probably get one!

……this time the fail belongs to Western Digital.

I’ve been after an external hdd for while now, my options are limited due to me wanting Firewire 800. So as I should be getting some expenses paid back soon I decided to hit Barclaycard.

The latest fail is the WD My Book Studio (Mac Edition – though it seems the fail isn’t just confined to the Mac version of this drive). So is it a bag of crap?, no the drive is quite a nice neat small drive. Seems to be fairly quiet. But the problem is with the software. WD have installed some software called WD Smartware. It offers a Time Machine type backup (pointless on the Mac as we have erm Time Machine), it also mounts a Virtual CD every time you boot it. The latter is my big issue, I don’t want that virtual crap appearing every time.

I don’t want WD Smartware installed, but I can delete this quite easily. However the Virtual CD keeps coming back every reboot. Apparently it’s the herpes of software, you just can’t get rid of it. Well you can get shot of it quite easily. Tomorrow (once the HDD is formatted – using the 7 Pass secure erase) it’ll be going back to the Apple Store. I have 14 days to return it, which I will do.

One day I will find an IT related purchase* that doesn’t need to be returned.

* excludes the ‘used’ Magic Mouse I got from John Lewis (£45) as is appears to work fine. Anyway it’s a mouse, it does mouse things well, that said it was returned by someone so maybe they found a fault. Though after a few hours the battery life has dipped from 72% to 62%, so maybe that’s another purchase to go back.

/update: Seems the application has knackered Appleshare on my Mac (means I can no longer connect to my MacMini webserver via afp://)

/update2: After tonights apple security update my Mini no longer boots. Not entirely sure who is blame, but it’s coincidental that after using the woe that was WD Smartware things started to go wrong. After all I’m currently using my MacBook which also had the same system update applied, but crucially didn’t have WD Woeware installed.

….well everyone is having a go so why not me.

New Tablet/slate designed to replace Newsprint

So, what’s it gonna be called?

Apple to bring back the iBook name, using iSlate as the TM name for the interface/applications.

It’ll look like a big iPhone. It’ll probably be more expensive than it should be. If it has 3G then please don’t buy it on 02.

So price.
$600 USD
£511.23 UKP

Further prediction: People will moan about it.

/edit only $100+ out for the cheap model then.