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This is not going to be a technical review on the Mini 12, but more of what works and who is this for. You can get a detailed review here.

What’s Going for it

12” screen with 1280 X 800 resolution and 1.24kg. In essence, this was the deal maker. Portability was my priority, and the Mini 12 fits the bill with it svelte outline and feather weight. Next up is usability, and 8.9” is out of the question, so 10” is up. But at 1024 x 600, I had doubts, so the next best alternative, or I may say the only alternative was the Mini 12.

What was Compromised

User upgradability is going to be an issue with the Mini 12, due to the design of the notebook, and the hard drive in use is not the standard 2.5” drive you will find in the market. However, you must know that the maximum memory supported is 1GB, and you can’t do anything about it because that’s the chipset limit.

Who is it For

At this point in time, I won’t recommend the Mini 12 for “average joe” because of one reason: “VISTA”. I have totally no issue with the Vista OS, but simply put, it was never meant to be operated on a netbook with 1GB of ram.  Unless you’re comfortable with formatting it and re-installing with XP and searching for drivers on the web, you really should stay away from the Mini 12, or at least wait till the official XP version is released. Just for sharing, XP SP3 runs fine, and everything works with drivers found here, but there are still no graphics driver for the Intel chipset available for XP. So be prepared to live with a messed up aspect ratio on the Mini 12 for the time being.

What I Wished Could Be Better

I have a few issues with the Mini 12. Firstly, the centre of gravity of the unit is towards the screen, away from the keyboard and body. This may prove to be a issue if you’re working with the laptop on your lap for prolonged period as the laptop feels like tilting over depending on the angle you adjust your screen.

Next up, there isn’t any HDD activity light, and this really annoys me as I am used to checking this light (don’t ask me why, because I am sure you do so too without realizing)

Finally, there are two issues I have with the keyboard, the “Fn” key placement and the reduced size “<” & “>”. It is noting to shout about though, just that I need to adjust.

Why I am Happy

There are many in the blogosphere who says the Mini 12 is suffering from an identity crisis. Well, I beg to differ. Personally, I think the Mini 12 is THE FORM FACTOR which netbooks should take. I see the market ready for only 2 sizes, the 8.9”, and 12”. 8.9” is really a second notebook for quick updates and such, and the 12” will deliver the user experience necessary for it to be used as a primary netbook, which fulfills the promise of working with office suite and web surfing. Next up is the question of price. In comparing form factors, $999 as compared to the Vaios and Macbook Air is definitely CHEAP, so I don’t see any conflict if you’re really sure of what you want. And then there are people comparing this with cheap notebooks which are available below $999, but when it comes to size and weight, it’s really comparing apple with orange.

The Mini 12 will no doubt be the first of many 12” netbooks to come, and why I wanted no longer was due to the fact that a XP and Linux version are in the pipeline, so I am sure drivers issue will not be a problem. Besides, I have the option to purchase a 6 cell battery and upgrade a mini-pci HSDPA card once it is released. Personally, these are all a netbook will ever need, and I know that the Mini 12 can be equipped with these if I decide to, so I see no point in waiting to see what the competition might come up with. Touchscreen? I don’t need it. GPS? My phone has it.

At the end of the day, I am glad with my Mini 12, and most importantly, I know the lifespan in terms of support of the product will be long as it’s a dell. But in the meantime, I am still waiting for that XP graphic driver……

Update 06/12/08 – XP graphic driver is available, and am running at 1280 x 600! Driver and instructions available here. So to sum it up, the Mini 12 can now run unofficially with WINXP SP3 and everything works.

Update 26/12/08 – Official XP and Linux versions are released! Time to downgrade from Vista and run on XP, get your drivers here .

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Before we start, there are a few things you need to know:

• How much ram does my system currently have
• Can I still upgrade?
• What type of ram to buy
• How to install the ram

Getting Started

To answer the first 3 questions, you need CPU-Z. Head over and download the application. It’s a very light application, and requires no installation.

Once the download finishes, you open up the zip content.

Click on cpuz.exe to run the application, no installation required.

This is the main application tab. Why not take this opportunity to know what powers your system, and just to double check the specification is what you paid for. Especially for D.I.Y PCs.

Moving on to the mainboard tab, this is important if you do not know what is the highest speed of ram your mainboard can support. What you really need to do is just to look at the model and google it to get the specification of your mainboard. If you can’t find the exact model, just google for the chipset, and although the brand and model might be different, the supported memory will be similar. If you really have no idea what I am talking about, it is ok to skip this step.

This tells you your current memory setup and settings.

This is where can find out what type of ram to buy by looking at the “Maximum Bandwidth” specification. In this case, it’s PC2-6400 (400MHZ). Now you can go down to tell the IT guy you want a PC2 6400 ram with pride!

What the “Slot#” implies is the place where you put in your ram. If you have got an empty slot, you just need to go put in the new ram in that slot, and your total memory is slot#1 + slot#2. If there’s no empty slot, you will need to replace a old one with the new ram

Note: If your mainboard supports up to DDR2 PC 5300 for example, you can still go ahead and buy PC 6400 or higher speed range, provided they are still in the DDR2 category. The high speed ram will merely underclock and run at “reduced performance” at PC5300 instead. Generally speaking, there are three main types of ram, DDR, DDR2, DDR3, and incompatibility is between these 3 types, rather then the speed of the ram. Other rams you might come across is PC100 and PC133 in legacy devices, which are both incompatible.

You can put two pieces of ram of the same type (e.g: DDR2) with different speed together, However, the higher speed will always underclock to run at the speed of the lower spec ram.

The above illustration should answer your 3 question:

• How much ram does my system currently have – 2048mb (You can also right click on “My Computer” to find out this info)
• Can I still upgrade? – Do I have an empty slot? If not I will have to replace one of the old ram
• What type of ram to buy – If my PC can currently run with PC5300, then I should buy this. However, if I want to future proof it, I should check my mainboard model or chipset and determine what is the maximum memory speed it can support.

Get Your Hands Dirty

Now that you have that shiny new ram, how do you fix on the new ram? Well, if a picture says a thousand words, how much is a video and narration worth……

Laptop

Desktop

Congratulations. You have made it!

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Gravatar stands for “Globally Recognized Avatar”, and are the small “squares” of “cool faces” you see in comment section all over the web. If you ever wondered how this is done, basically you head over to Gravatar to register for an account with an email address, and choose to associate a picture with that email, that’s it! Now, whenever you want to post a comment, enter the gravatar registered email address, and if the site supports gravatar, you get your cool avatar.

However, there are several things you should note:

• Register with an email address which you are comfortable to disclose
• You can change your picture anytime, and all the comments you ever made with the gravatar registered email will be updated with your latest picture
• You really should get hold of a “COOL” picture, and it’s often “UNCOOL” to reveal your full face. HAHA

Gravatar support is available in many blog platform, and now is the time for you to make your presence felt!. Don’t be the “Grey Man”, show your personality! If you can afford time to make a comment, go register for a gravatar.

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First, head over to http://www.filehippo.com/updatechecker/ and download the standalone version which requires no installation. Here’s a quick rundown of what the updatechecker does:

The Update Checker will scan your computer for installed software, check the versions and then send this information to FileHippo.com to see if there are any newer releases. These are then neatly displayed in your browser for you to download.

Once download finishes, double click the icon.

You will see this dialogue box, just wait.

It will then open up your default browser, presenting to you a list of programs which is newer than what you’re running on your PC.

Yes, its as simple as that. Clicking on the individual link will download the application and you will have to run through the standard installation process one by one ( I know its tedious, but it beats checking the individual site ).

This solution is definitely not Synaptic ( If you’re got no idea, think WIndows Update that includes all installed applications and drivers on your PC), but it does the basic function well, in a manner which is simple and unobtrusive. Now, even my wife can tell me what needs to be updated.

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16/11/08 - Update: Turns out it has become a series of videos, nevertheless, I found a place to host these clips, so let knowledge be shared!

Oct 20 – On the Economy

Oct 29 – Reaction to Fed Rate Cute and Mr Bernanke

Exact Date Unknown, Week of 10th – 14th Nov – On Energy and Oil

Nov 25 - USD, Gold, and Stupid Fed + Treasury

21/03/2009 - Updates: It seems Marc Faber has been talking quite alot recently, and if you have been following him, you know he speaks the truth, and will strive during the current economic condition whereby conventional wisdom are overturned. Check out http://www.youtube.com/marcfaberchannel for his wisdom.

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What follows after the action of a honest and insignificant individual working for a living, sparks off a vicious cycle of leveraging by the financial SUPERSTARS, motivated by only profits, driven primarily by a most distinctive trait of a human, GREED. We now know the rest of the story, but rest assure this is not the end of the world. Our lives will go on because, it is the human nature to find the next sacred cow to satisfy his thirst, and the seeds are already planted. Remember this term:

CARBON CREDITS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_credit

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/carbon_credit.asp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissions_trading

What I can assure you is the engine of growth for the next few decades is in GREEN, and the Heroes of the World weapon of choice against emerging economies will be Carbon Based. What better excuse than you’re destroying Earth!

Global Terrorism made us go through scanners revealing your privates, Global Warming will make us breathe carbon. Make no mistake, carbon credits is coming to a vending machine near you. Before you exhale, make sure you got enough credit, otherwise the cops are going get you because you’re destroying the ozone and posing a risk to man-kind.

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Updates 15-11-2008

The download now is version 1.10 with the following major improvements:

1. Auto Thumbnail generation
2. Fancy Zoom for thumbnail links in content area
3. Tested on WP 2.6.3, IE 6, 7, FF3, Chrome, and Opera

Setup

1. Activate all plugins in the package.
2. To setup twitter, go to http://twitter.com/badges/html, copy the javascript to footer.php, replacing line 57 – 58.
3. For the Featured Post to work, follow this article. Basically you need to edit gallery.php, and change line 14 ’showposts=5&cat=X’ to to your featured cat id. You need at least 2 post in the category before the post will show.
4. Create a “gallery_image” key custom field for the Featured Content image thumbnail.
5. Create a “Image” key custom field for the post thumbnail. If none is defined, then the first image in the post will be used as thumbnail. If none of the above mention is available, then a default thumbnail image will be shown. You need to define the full image path on line 10 of index.php and line 14 of search.php. For more on the thumbnail generation, check here.
6. For the login box to appear in the top sliding panel, you need to go to Admin > Settings > Membership > and check the “Anyone can register“.
7. To display the “About” on the sidebar, your admin email will need to be associated with gravatar, and fill up the “Biographical Info” in the Admin > Users.
8. Finally, setup flickrRSS to link to your flickr account. Set to display 10 square images from flick. For the 11th image, it is a custom setup which you can edit in footer.php on line 16.

I hope I didn’t miss out anything, but should you need any help, feel free to drop in the comments. Otherwise you can check out this and this.

Hope this will prove useful for you. A link back or acknowledgment will be must appreciated. If you have tweaked it or made any improvements to the theme, I will love to hear about it.

Just a word of caution, there are customization to some of the plugins. Upgrade at your own risk.

Update – 10/11/08: Digital Statement is now the official Version 2.0 of the Statement Theme, and this has given me the motivation to implement the improvements to the theme, namely IE6 fix, auto thumbnail generation, and just to confirm it works in WP 2.6.3, before the impending WP 2.7 release. Hope to get it done soon, and it will be uploaded for sharing in due course.

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Getting from Point A to Point B around Singapore is easy with http:/./www.gothere.sg. Besides the basic routing function, it shines for user of public transportation, giving you options for Buses, or Buses + MRT, showing you the location of the bus stops, transfers needed and the total cost of the journey along with the time taken. For drivers, you can chose to avoid ERP or highways.

Enough said, just head over and try it out, it’s really THAT GOOD! Now you can reach any places on public transportation in Singapore. No more excuses to buy a car. Here’s some screenshots if you’re not convinced…..

For the poor people taking public transport……

Rich people driving…….

You can also print out a turn by turn direction……

Conclusion

Besides the above mentioned, you can also choose to embed the map on your site via iframe. It is indeed heartening to see such a robust “Web 2.0” applications produced by Singaporeans, and I think they got a “Winner”. However Google Transit might prove to be their biggest nemesis, but with their built up of “places” and comprehensive bus routes and pricing information, they might still stand a chance with the head start they have, or better yet, be bought by Google. Now, where is the link to the mobile version……

Note: If you know of any other interesting Web 2.0 sites produced by Singaporeans, do share with me.

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StarHub today announced that with immediate effect, StarHub’s residential voice service, Digital Voice Home (DV Home), is made available to its StarHub TV customers for free.

DV Home has been offered as a free value-added service to customers of MaxOnline Express, MaxOnline Premium or MaxOnline Ultimate service since 2005. It is now being extended to all StarHub TV customers as well.

Switching from their current residential fixed-line telephone service to StarHub’s DV Home will give these customers a savings of more than $100 per year. This is because DV Home also comes with free unlimited outgoing calls to any local telephone number at any time of the day, which provides further savings for the DV Home household.

“StarHub’s DV Home provides tremendous value and freedom from costs for our customers. More than 100,000 households have signed up for our DV Home service as we provide free monthly subscription, unlimited free incoming and outgoing calls to local numbers and significantly attractive IDD rates. With number portability, they can even keep their current home telephone number,” said Mr Anil Nihalani, StarHub’s Head of Mobile & Communications.

Besides these savings, customers who make frequent international calls to any of the following eight destinations - Australia (fixed), China, Malaysia, New Zealand (fixed), Thailand, Taiwan (fixed), UK (fixed) and USA - can enjoy unbeatable IDD rates at only $0.08 per minute. For overseas calls placed via StarHub IDD 018 service to other popular IDD destinations, DV Home users continue to enjoy Hubber rates which are up to a whopping 71% cheaper than published IDD rates.

“As the people in Singapore get increasingly concerned by rising costs, this enhancement is further testament to our commitment to provide value and savings to our customers,” added Mr Nihalani.

To take up DV Home, StarHub TV or MaxOnline subscribers can either call StarHub’s Subscription Sales Hotline at 1630, sign up electronically at www.starhub.com/freehomeline or visit any StarHub Shop. They can port in their current home phone number or get a brand new DV Home number. In addition, when customers take up the DV Home line, they can keep their phone number for life regardless of how many times they relocate within Singapore.

Further information on DV Home
All the customer needs is a voice-enabled cable modem (VeCM) or an Integrated Access Device (IAD) that works with StarHub’s HubStation. Connected to the cable point found in homes throughout Singapore, the VeCM or HubStation with IAD allows a normal analogue phone to be plugged into the device and transmits voice signals.

The VeCM or IAD comes free for those who port in their existing telephone number from another network. This promotion is valid till 31 December 2008. Alternatively, the customer can purchase a VeCM or an IAD for a special price of $89.88 from any StarHub Shop.

Customers interested to find out more about DV Home can log on to StarHub’s website at www.starhub.com/freehomeline

Source

What now Singtel……

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