Finally bought it !

After quite a bit of research, I finally bought a Lenovo Thinkpad X230. I had earlier written a post about shopping for a laptop, which has never been an easy decision – see “Shopping for a Laptop”

I had to make some compromises, due to couple of reasons: (1) I wanted to buy the laptop online preferably from the original manufacturer directly, which restricted my choices ; and, (2) the configuration that I had earlier decided was not available in the budget I had planned.

Nevertheless, I got a laptop delivered to me which met my major requirements for speed and portability. The configuration that I ordered has the following configuration for X230:

i5 Third-Generation Intel Processor capable of turbo-boost up to 3.30 GHz (instead of i7)
8 MB DDR3 RAM operating at 1600 MHz
500 GB HD spinning at 7200 RPM (instead of 750 GB)
Intel HD 4000 Graphics with 1 GB Memory (instead of nVIDIA Graphics Card with 1 GB Memory)
1600 x 900 14″ HD+ Display (1368 x 720 12.5″ Premium HD Display)
2 x USB 3.0 and 1 x USB 2.0 Ports (instead of 2 x USB 3.0 and 2 x USB 2.0 Ports)
VGA Port (instead of VGA and HDMI Ports)
Fingerprint reader
4-in-1 Card Reader
Back-lit Keyboard
Expanded 9-cell Li-Ion Battery (expected time on battery around 8 to 9 hours)
Windows 8
2-Year Global Warranty

The above configuration worked out at a price slightly less than USD 1,000.

So far, I am OK with the laptop, having used it only for a week or so. The key advantage in the X230 laptop is its weight – less than 4 lbs or less than 2 KGs. I will need to measure the exact weight, but it feels really light.

I will write about Windows 8 and my views on its ease of use (or otherwise) in an upcoming post.

You might ask me why I selected Lenovo over my previous favourite, ASUS, or even HP.

The answer lies in the fact that ASUS was not easily configurable online, even their U.S. website was not user friendly. Their many models available via the AMAZON site were not modifiable to meet my requirements – one has to just order the configurations available as offered at AMAZON.

I thought HP has made some quantum leap in the way they designed their laptops and sell it – yes, I found that they sell online now. However, I again they have to go a long way before they can compete with the likes of DELL.

Lenovo offered an online ordering system not unlike that of DELL and moreover, offered a configuration and model choice more suited to my needs. I did not wish to buy DELL this time around.

So, there we go……..a new laptop finally !

Cheers,

Vijay Srinivasan
15th December 2012
Mumbai

Shopping for a Laptop

Since when shopping for a laptop became a simple affair ?

It never did.

Just think about it. A typical replacement time for a laptop is not more than 3 years, as you tend to notice a significant degradation in performance or develop a sense of jealousy over the other folks carrying more advanced laptops – “ultrabooks” for instance !

Or, your laptop may be weighing around 5.5 lbs and you see guys with laptops weighing less than 4 lbs – sleeker, thinner, easier on the shoulder, and what not…….and I can add, with better screens !

When such a time arrived for me, I started looking up as usual on the web for suitable options and checked with a couple of friends on their choices. I distilled the final choices to Lenovo, HP and Asus (yes, Asus makes probably the best laptops in the industry today).

So, why not decide on the configuration first ?

I did some technical study and decided that the configuration which would be most suitable as at this time – end of 2012 – is as follows:

i7 Third-Generation Intel Processor capable of turbo-boost up to 3.60 GHz
8 MB DDR3 RAM operating at 1600 MHz
750 GB HD spinning at 7200 RPM
nVIDIA Graphics Card with 1 GB Memory
1600 x 900 14″ HD+ Display
2 x USB 3.0 and 2 x USB 2.0 Ports
VGA and HDMI Ports
Back-lit Keyboard
Windows 8

Having decided upon the above configuration, I went about shortlisting the model numbers of the laptops, and to my chagrin, discovered it is not that easy to get the above kind of laptops even in the U.S. market today. I searched Amazon, Lenovo, Asus, HP and BestBuy sites extensively. Once you apply even some of the above conditions, you will notice that the number of choices available to you drastically drops down to single digit options.

And, none of the available options would be less than USD 1,200 in price !

In India, such laptops are not available – I spoke to Lenovo and Asus Indian operations and they confirmed that they don’t have such laptops in India – they have to order from the U.S. ! And, their cost ? On an average, the difference between the U.S. configured laptop and the pricing in India for a similar laptop was in excess of USD 400 ! Even though, the customs duty is only 5%. Further, one has to wait for a long time to get the laptop.

So, I decided to wait for some more time, or buy when I travel. It is ridiculous, but it is a fact that one cannot get the above configuration easily in India, and not that easily in the U.S. as well. May be I got to do more research, but the fact remains that most laptops in Amazon have just 4 GB RAM even for Windows 8 configurations, and most of these have HDs with 5400 RPM which are noisy and slow.

I will report back when I have purchased my laptop with the attendant experience of buying the same. Hope that would be soon !

Cheers,

Vijay Srinivasan
24th November 2012
Mumbai

FORD Vs MICROSOFT

Courtesy: Anu, my IIM-B Classmate

Not a new one, but makes sense to all everytime we read something like this on computers !

For all of us who feel only the deepest love and affection for the way computers have enhanced our lives, read on.

At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, ‘If Ford had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.’

In response to Bill’s comments, Ford issued a Press Release stating:

If Ford had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics (and I just love this part):

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash………Twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.

4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive – but would run on only five percent of the roads.

6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single ‘This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation’ warning light.

I love the next one!!!

7. The airbag system would ask ‘Are you sure?’ before deploying.

8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

10. You’d have to press the ‘Start’ button to turn the engine off.

PS – I’d like to add that when all else fails, you could call ‘customer service’ in some foreign country and be instructed in some foreign language how to fix your car yourself!!!!

Courtesy: Anu, my IIM-B Classmate

Cheers,

Vijay Srinivasan
18th November 2012
Mumbai

Selecting a Web Host

I went through almost a week of analysis and talk (with vendors) before I decided on the web host provider for my company.

Like everything else in life, selection and decision-making always remain complex activities, despite the proliferation of information on the internet. More information, more confusion !

I played around with Google Apps for sometime, impressed by the versatility of the applications and the easy way of moving around the Google system – a hallmark of Google. I signed up for the Google Apps trial and quickly decided it might be the way to go. So, I looked up at the option of doing everything via Google.

While there was no issue in the process of web domain registration and plan subscription, I was surprised to find that Google fell short on two administrative areas (very important for a new site/company):

1. The service price was in Euros or USD, not in Indian Rupees
2. There was no local contact number for help desk, which is an absolute must – I was not going to waste time posting my problems on a forum, and waiting for resolution from other users or from Google

I then went on to examine three other providers: BigRock, GoDaddy and Yahoo.

All of them met #1 and #2 concerns above – they offer all their services in Indian Rupees and they have local helpdesk numbers wherein you can talk to a technical human being ! I tested all the three of them.

During the process of elimination, GoDaddy went out of the shortlist though they were highly recommended by couple of my industry colleagues. One reason was that their plan offering that I wanted gave only one (can you believe this) email account (address), and the other reason is that GoDaddy went down worldwide due to some hacking problem putting millions of websites out of business. That was unfortunate, but it did influence me – not as much as the first reason though.

So, the race narrowed to a tight one between BigRock and Yahoo. Both met all my technical and price expectations. Yahoo’s hot line was more responsive in terms of making a positive comparison with BigRock (I had expected negative marketing) and highlighting Yahoo’s email pedigree advantage over anyone else. There was not much to choose from, but I selected BigRock for two reasons which are not overpowering ones in the decision-making process:

a). The technical persons that I talked to at BigRock were very helpful in terms of going beyond their brief and trying to help out a new webmaster (!) ;

and,

b). The website builder that they offered had a slight edge over Yahoo’s though I was disappointed on the availability of business templates and stock photos at BigRock after I had purchased from BigRock !

After I went through the buying process, two people at BigRock said that I could walk out easily since there was a 30-days free evaluation with full refund for any web host deal. But that was not the kind of response I was expecting from a marketing company.

In the meanwhile, Yahoo has been diligently following up with me, trying to change my mind – all for some less than USD 100 business per year !

Well, having set up the email accounts and the website, now I am focused on the business rather than the site. Overall it is proving to be a good decision and hope the service level from BigRock will be better (and hope they won’t acquire customers and say bye bye within couple of days – not a good business sense I guess).

Cheers,

Vijay Srinivasan
23rd September 2012
Mumbai

Selection and Commissioning of New Router

I have been wanting to replace my old (but tried and tested) ADSL2 Wi-Fi router for quite some time. It has been working fine, but there were two shortcomings that my family members kept pointing out to me time and again: one was its slow speed (54 Mbps) and the second was its distance reach (it was not able to broadcast Wi-Fi waves all over the house).

I was not much bothered about the first point, as I continue to use a Windows XP Professional laptop, which does not support the latest Wi-Fi standard and cannot be upgraded. And, I was seated just next to the router, so distance did not bother me. But what I could not withstand is the comment on “the lousy-looking, old-technology, slow-speed” router that has been delivering the goods for a long time.

Well, sometime we have to give up. So, after much rather useless defense, I started looking for a more powerful router.

It is always an interesting exercise – when there is just too much information, your decision process takes that much longer ! With the plethora of data floating around on everything imaginable via a google search, one can imagine the amount of time one has to spend just looking for things out there. The search did take a long time for me – almost a month I should say (albeit intermittently focused on this search in the midst of other work obviously).

The criteria I set were simple: (a) the router speed should be minimum 300 Mbps ; (b) it should be powerful with minimum two antennae, capable of reaching all over my apartment, with minimum two Wi-Fi bars on either the iPAD or the laptop in the remotest room ; (c) should have support for b/g/n standards so that it has latest standard support while at the same time backward compatible (I don’t wish to be left high and dry if my XP laptop cannot function !).

Ofcourse, one other criteria was that the cost should not exceed INR 3,500 (USD 65) which I believe was generous considering the fact that routers were available at half that cost budget (though without the ADSL2 modem support). I found a number of devices in the range of USD 40 to 60, but then I was concerned about meeting the above criteria successfully without any kind of compromise. I also had many options above my budget – some devices were priced at USD 100 and much above (the N600 variety with frequency switch between 2.4 and 5.0 GHz).

Finally, I shortlisted TP-Link and NetGear as the only two providers for my selection of ADSL2 routers. Unfortunately the TP-Link modem router that I shortlisted was not available in India, so I had to forego that, but the NetGear modem routers were available (with good localized support as well that I discovered only after the purchase though).

The device that I finally selected and purchased was the NetGear N300 Wireless ADSL2+Modem Router – Model DGN2200, though it is not absolutely the latest or the fastest. It had good product reviews and met my technical and price criteria. And, I got a discount when I shopped and paid for it online at the Indiatimes online shopping website.

I got this device recently and installed it today – though I faced some trouble, NetGear and MTNL (the phone company) technical support helped me out. I could set different speeds for different devices – my laptop still operates at 54 MBPS, but my daughter’s Windows 7 laptop operates at 145 Mbps (yet to try out the 300 Mbps speed). I am yet to increase the data transfer speed between the router and the iPAD.

Overall, I believe it is a good investment.

Cheers,

Vijay Srinivasan
1st September 2012
Mumbai

Synchronized Notes

I found a cute little software which can keep my notes and thoughts synchronized across my laptop (Windows XP), mobile phone (Android) and tablet device (iOS). There are several options to choose from, but after some investigation I settled on using Evernote.

My usual practice earlier has been to jot down random thoughts or points in a piece of paper, sometimes on a 3M note, and then keep collating these whenever I get time, so that I would have a digital copy in a Word file, or insert a specific item in my calendar when an action becomes due, etc., I am sure there were better ways, but people tend to go with whatever practice worked for them in the easiest manner in the past, so it was OK for me.

However, with the proliferation of devices and the availability of the same varying according to occasion, it has become absolutely imperative to create and synchronize notes for action across devices. We don’t wish to miss out on important activities, whether these be in the business or personal spheres. Oftentimes, we do not miss out on business actions, as these are well documented and captured in emails and calendars. We get reminders electronically as well as physically from other colleagues. But the same may not apply to personal space.

I found that the Evernote application works very well and across platforms beautifully. The other day, I had to attend the Parent-Teacher Meeting at my son’s school, and both my wife and myself forgot to take the usual notepad or even a pen. The other parents were all using such traditional means to capture what the teacher was saying, and we were looking at each other. Then I quickly opened the Evernote application on my Android phone and started keying in the main points being stated by the teacher into the application by creating a specific note on that particular meeting. And, once the meeting was finished, I pressed the “sync” button, and voila, my laptop and iPAD at home got the updated version of my electronic notebook.

Evernote has other useful features such as webclipping, but I am not going to expand on its specific features here in this post. I wanted to share a good tool which is very useful when it comes to personal data capture and synchronized management of the data, making it available where and when needed, and avoiding data frustrations.

These days, I capture all the ideas and actions in Evernote almost immediately. It seems a perfect tool for action-oriented personal data management.

Cheers,

Vijay Srinivasan
30th June 2012
Mumbai

The importance of Backing Up

Well, after quite a long time, I am writing a post on Windows PC applications and tools that are required for successful and safe operation when it concerns your personal data.

I could convince no one at home as to the criticality of data. I was not surprised as it took companies many years to start dynamic backups and then start analyzing data for business benefit. At home, setting up a large backup disk operation is considered something that can be avoided for the “time being”. Over the years, I have tried setting up of backups for the MAC and the PC (multiple laptops). I would not say I have had a pleasant or a totally successful operation, when it comes to managing integrated and scheduled backups. Many a time, one is also expected to “straighten” up the data, clean up the junk on the laptp which gets accumulated, clean up the registry errors, partition the disks, format the disks, delete partitions, set up “active” bootable partitions on an external backup disk and carry out data recovery operations. Not an easy task, especially when you are an amateur, trying to learn things on the fly, by trial and error.

After our MAC was killed (yes, killed) by self-suicide of the motherboard, we abandoned the MAC (not Apple though) – I am not touching here the backup procedures for the iPADs, iPODS, and iPHONES, Android Phones – and embraced the Windows PC laptops. I have not completely given up on the Apple MACPro laptops though, and am watching how the priceline behaves vis-a-vis advanced laptops and might change my mind at a future time. For the moment, Windows XP Professional and Windows 7 seem to be doing well at home, though laptop crashes, slow laptop speed and data backup issues are routinely being raised with me by home folks who are not interested to learn how things work in this field (they seem to be more interested in Maths, Biology and Music !).

Having lost my own data several times (!), I am not to be misunderstood as a technical guy who could potentially fix any laptop problems, however. What I do possess, is a serious interest on how to fix things like these for free (I hate service centres) with free software tools. Real hardware problems, once isolated, are quickly informed to the user – please open your wallet and order online for a failing battery via Flipkart.com or Infibeam.com, etc., However, software-related issues can generally be attacked from the confines of the home.

I now have a set of tools for hard disk partitioning and data backup, that I believe are a good configuration to have on your laptop at any time. There are many “paid” software available which do have some better features, but I tried to list out the most commonly used features that would be needed in my kind of “fixing data”, and arrived at the following set of software, which can be freely downloaded:

1. MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition 7.1

2. EaseUS Partition Master 9.1.1 Home Edition

3. AOMEI Partition Assistant Home Edition 5.0

4. EaseUS Todo Backup Free 4.5

5. Advanced SystemCare 5

6. SlimCleaner / CCleaner

7. SugarSync

8. DoubleTwist

Some more tools are under evaluation, given the proliferation of mobile devices.

You can consider using #1, 2 or 3 in the list above for partitioning your external hard disk (I use a 1 TB iomega HD). All are good tools, but sometimes, creating a partition could be easier in one of the tools as compared to the rest. Play around with all the three and an empty disk partition, and you will see how easy it is to create a partition, format it, resize it, relabel it, etc.,

For backing up data, I have not discovered a software better than #4, though there are many software available. I originally used EaseUS, then changed over to some other tools, but finally came back to EaseUS – it is really a very good free software for backing up data.

For data cleaning, nothing works as good as #5, or #6 (#6 has two different software tools). If you wish to go with one, please try with #5. It is excellent. I keep playing around with others as well, but don’t if you wish to maintain your disk in pristine condition .

#7 and #8 are new tools I am experimenting with for extracting my photos, videos and music from my Android phone to a cloud and to my laptop. Both appear to be working out well. However, since my experimentation on the Android has just started, I would wait for some time before giving a final verdict. For the moment, I am happy my phone data is safely on the laptop and on my cloud !

Well, that has been a long writeup, I would now close saying that there are many more things to be explained in a data backup operation, and I would get around to doing the same soon !

Cheers,

Vijay Srinivasan

Mumbai

23rd June 2012

 

Dell’s Service

I am writing to record my appreciation of excellent service by Dell.

I ran into serious technical problems on my home Dell Studio laptop (model 1558). It took 4 days to completely solve the problem. Yes, I was not happy with the time it took, as it has serious impact on family productivity as several folks use the same laptop and they complain about the loss of time.

Fortunately, we have another laptop (Acer Aspire 5580), which though old, continues to deliver decent performance for jobs and folks who do not scream at it. So, we were OK, but we did lose time and sometimes, patience with Dell.

There are a couple of points I wish to make, notwithstanding the loss of time:

1. The Dell technical support people were of high quality and handled me / my daughter quite well with prompt responses and resolution and they were totally committed to fixing the problems ;

2. They were reasonable when it finally came to the point when no further technical fixes could solve the problem for the long-term use of the laptop, and concurred with the need to replace the motherboard and the in-built stereo speakers. Usually, computer companies are stingy when it comes to parts replacement, though the laptop is under full warranty. Even in the case of Dell, they took a fairly long time in reaching the conclusion to replace expensive parts. But, they were nice about it and not picking holes in our arguments. It helps when the laptop is in its first year of what is a 3-year full comprehensive coverage !

However, Dell was not able to give satisfactory response why the battery performed in a sub-optimal way for just 60 minutes when it should have provided power to the laptop for atleast 2 to 2.5 hours. And the battery is rather new, with just 9 months of use on a new laptop ! The laptop has rarely been removed from mains AC power. So, why is the degradation of battery happening ? Dell refused to replace the battery though. I did not agree with them as I believe a laptop, being mobile in nature, should have a battery which atleast meets its specs as advertised. There is some drop in effectiveness of the battery as it goes through multiple charge/discharge cycles, but not to the extent of some 60% in just 9 months.

Nevertheless, I should say that Dell delivered an excellent technical service to me, and I am happy I chose Dell over other makes last year when I was shopping for a new laptop for my daughter.

Cheers,

Vijay Srinivasan
17th July 2011
Mumbai

Online Security

With the rapid proliferation of mobile internet devices such as advanced smartphones and tablets, it is now not uncommon to see people browsing the web using these devices in public places. Earlier it was just the laptop-toting executives accessing their emails and the internet using high-speed data cards. While those folks still abound in airport lounges, even amongst them there is a distinct movement towards mobile devices. Probably the move is happening faster in India and other emerging countries, which are not having an economic growth problem currently.

But now, the general population, especially the well-to-do teenagers are making a huge impact on the mobile internet space in India. Huge number of people are going for these devices, and the Apple iPAD has taken off like a rocket as the price is not much different from an advanced smartphone.

With the proliferation of these devices, everyone seems to be giving a miss towards paying attention to online security. There has been a series of cyber attacks on government institutions around the world, and the hackers seem to be thriving. Cyber attacks seem able to bring down the operations of a government agency or a company or a bank quite easily, as the defences are not perfect and always fall behind the advances made by hackers. More software implementations by the organization to defend themselves seem to excite the hacking community as they probably laugh at the weak efforts !

Given such a situation, it is best not to use public Wi-Fi Hotspots for accessing one’s personal information. I strictly limit myself to accessing public information such as news media online using hotspots, but I have stopped even that as I find that unscrupulous elements might gain access to my device or laptop by means unknown to me (I will never know as that is not my specialty anyway). I dread to imagine what would happen if we all shift to online payments from a mobile device which is slowly but surely becoming a reality in India with the support of the banking regulator.

While I am not against the mobile device becoming an “alternative” to the wallet or for ensuring that one stays constantly on his/her social network, I believe that we should use common sense wherever there is a reasonable chance of account penetration. Most Wi-Fi hotspots are not secure, as the owners such as coffee shops can hardly bother to spend more money securing their “public” free-use networks. May be airport networks are secure. But not all networks. I have secured my home network from day 1, and now I have added more security so that the nearby teenage hackers (I seriously doubt if there is any one around my place) would have to do hard work to even figure out what I have done. While I cannot challenge the global hackers for sure, it is critical to invest in protecting one’s own online activities. A little money will go a long way, though it cannot fully eliminate the threat. While even the U.S. government appears to be struggling and battling the online threats, how can any other person do it on his/her own ?

So, my conclusion at this point in time is to avoid doing online what you wouldn’t do in public off-line anyway. Think ! Let the systems develop more and let the guinea pigs try out the safety for the next couple of years ! Then we will see !! In the meanwhile, the home laptop with the secured access to the internet is the best way to conduct online activities in the personal space.

Cheers,

Vijay Srinivasan
2nd July 2011
Mumbai

XP better than Windows 7

I managed to resurrect a 4-year old laptop (Acer Aspire 5580) to full-bodied life by doing couple of things recently:

1. It had a RAM of 1 GB. I purchased 2 GB additional, but had to throw out an existing 512 MB RAM module, because there were only two memory slots. So, I finally could have only 2.5 GB, but wow, that made a huge difference to the performance of this old laptop, running on Intel Core2 CPU T 5300 @ 1.73 GHZ, which is an ancient processor compared to intel i5 or i7 ;

2. Secondly, I had the Windows Vista on this laptop, which kept bothering me to update every time I booted up, and was giving other system troubles. So I managed to kick the Vista out and replace it with Windows XP Professional ;

and,

3. Thirdly, while using the combination of enhanced RAM on Windows XP, which was just doing fine, I got an intimation from the omnipresent Windows Update to download and install the Professional SP3 pack on Windows XP, which I promptly did.

Well, with the above 3 steps, I almost have a new laptop ! The speed is very good, Windows XP starts up fairly quickly, the applications work well, and it appears to me that this combination is even better than the Windows 7 on our latest laptop that we purchased late last year. I am publishing this blog post using this resurrected laptop, and it feels just fine.

So, you do not really need to buy a new laptop. Find more memory and use either Windows 7 or Windows XP Professional SP3 ! It is as simple as that. May be increase the RAM to 4 GB on the old laptop if you can, that would be the best option.

Cheers,

Vijay Srinivasan
25th June 2011
Mumbai