Nokia USB Charger

I have no computer, much more a network connection, at the new office I’m deployed to so I’m forced to use my netbook and phone for surfing and downloading. Needless to say, having both WiFi and HSDPA activated is a huge drain on the battery. So I looked around for a USB charger.

The first logical place to go to is of course your friendly neighborhood Nokia service center. They had some but at a staggering P1,200. Next stop, was CDR-King, purveyor of cheap electronica where I endured a somewhat slow queue only to be told that they sell them for P90 but are currently out of stock. I finally found it at Games and Gadget for P220. Not as cheap as CDR-King but it sure beats out-of-stock.

Now I can extend my surfing to as long as my netbook has power and as long as I can stomach the expensive telco charges.

64-Bit

64-bit processor technology has been with us for quite some time. The first 64-bit processor, the MIPS R4000, came out in 1991. Back then they were expensive and relagated to server duty. Intel’s first 64-bit processor, the Itanium, came out in 2001 followed by AMD’s Opteron/AMD64 in 2003 starting the move to mainstream computing.

Now, the technology is practically everywhere, even desktops and laptops, with the Intel and AMD having multiple 64-bit processor families. And yet a lot of people still don’t know this. They have this impression that all desktops are 32-bit and only servers are 64-bit. But that’s not the case anymore.

Oh, and if  you do have a 64-bit machine, do install a 64-bit OS,  so you can harness your machine’s full potential. You wouldn’t want to have 8GB or RAM onboard only to find that your OS can’t use it.

Asus EEE PC 900 Launched!

Finally, the Asus EEE PC 900 has been launched. Yay! It is initially priced at P24,995. Way better than the rumored P33,900 before the launch. Some would say the price is still high especially since some full-featured notebooks are already within that range. But remember that the Asus EEE PC is way smaller and lighter (and cuter!) than these budget notebooks. Besides, you can be sure prices will slide down after a month or two.

HD-DVD Concedes, Blu-Ray Wins, So What?

It’s over. Finally, the long running DVD format war has effectively come to an end. Toshiba declared yesterday that it no longer will develop, make, or market HD-DVD players and recorders. Because Toshiba is the biggest proponent of HD-DVD, their action essentially concedes defeat to Sony’s competing Blu-Ray format. The beginning of the end came about when Warner announced early this year that it will produce content only on Blu-Ray. Warner has a huge amount of content and when they shifted to Blu-Ray, it’s just a matter of time. Less than a month it turns out. So now i guess everyone will be producing Blu-Ray players, recorders, and media hopefully driving down prices. So what? The future of content is online.