RIDATA 8G USB FLASH DRIVE

CDR-King‘s got a great new product out, very good value for your money: the Ridata Flick EZ Drive 8G USB Flash Drive for PhP880. I was in Megamall for the Oct. 17 three-day sale opening, and dropped by store first thing. I was actually looking for a cheap-but-reliable 4G flash drive like the one I bought for TDM recently (he had lost his in Cebu), but was glad to find this much better one!

Mine is matte black, as in the picture. I like the thumb-slide protection of the drive case, as other models have removable caps that can get lost. There’s a hole in the other end so that you can attach it to your keychain. It also comes in white.

Inside there’s a user manual in pdf format, but it’s practically useless for English speakers as it’s written in Chinese. Anyhow, if you use flash drives a lot, you won’t really need it.

The speed is “Lightning Class”, which would be the equivalent of a Class 6 for Transcend. I made a file benchmark test using Flash Memory Toolkit, and it gave me the ff. very good results (click on image to enlarge):

I also have a “stormtrooper white” Ridata Mini Brick EZ Drive 4G flash drive bought earlier this year for PhP700. Also “Lightning Class”, also very good, and very reliable.

The price difference is to definitely to our advantage! If I were you, I’d get this instead of PQI. Once this is out of stock you’ll have to wait to get a new one. Get one soon, world global financial crisis notwithstanding.

(Now waiting for a good price on a 16G…)

SAMSUNG 19″ LCD MONITOR

Would you believe, I’ve never changed my Sampo 17″ CRT monitor ever since I got back from Australia in 2000? Initially I wanted to wait till it actually died before replacing it with an lcd monitor. However, given my green concerns, limited personal living space plus the sudden rise in the cost of living, I just decided to wait until lcd monitors of a certain size became more affordable.

I don’t have a tv in my room. I bought one a long time ago, after which I discovered that the cable guy couldn’t find a tv port or cable connection provision anywhere in my room. (My room has no provision for telephone connection either.) However, my parents’ room and my sister’s room both have them. That tv ended up replacing the old one in my parents’ room. Now every time I want to watch cable I have to make sure my dad’s busy elsewhere (you know daddies and their need to control the remote). I only watch marathon tv on Saturdays and Sundays anyway, for shows like CSI and other series. I end up watching episodes from internet downloads on demand. I got tired of watching a smaller screen (am nearsighted), so I thought, wouldn’t it be great if I had a 17″ lcd monitor! At the time I thought I was setting a budget for that size, until I saw Jay’s 19″ LG monitor. Widescreen! I wanted one.

When I started canvassing (from Trinoma to Greenhills to Megamall), I narrowed down the look and price that I wanted, and both LG and Samsung were at the top of my list. I waited a month or so more till funds came in, until one day I saw that Villman offered the Samsung 920NW at PhP 9,990 0% for 6 months. The LG was more expensive. Actually, the very friendly people at the Complink next door offered the same unit for PhP 9,000 cash or credit straight payment. Next door to that other friendly people offered a similar sized AOC at around PhP 8,500. When I asked TDM, he said, “Get the Samsung. I can tell it’s what you really want. The price is reasonable. Matte black. Besides, they make their own monitors.” Considering I have to live with the monitor daily, I might as well get exactly what I want, at the terms I agreed with.

So after a very yummy lunch yesterday at Kaya Express with TDM, we went over to Villman Megamall and got me my monitor, plus some inexpensive black matte Genius 2.0 speakers (Php 395 at Octagon). I figured since my room was quite small, the speakers would suffice. True enough, they were fine. My bedroom is so small that more expensive speaker systems would turn action movie dvds into a sensurround experience and would wake up the neighbors.

Last night I was able to watch Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica without eyestrain! This made the long wait so, so worth it.

GLOBE P5/15 MINS REVIEW

I really, really appreciate this Globe service offering. As a postpaid subscriber, I was seriously considering having my Nokia 6120c openlined before the one-year warranty was up, just so I could use a Smart sim for the P10/30 minutes internet service. Now I don’t have to. Now I can hold off getting a usb 3G HSDPA modem, because I can always use the money elsewhere.

I first tried it last May 17th, while inside a building within Ortigas Center. I connected the 6120c to my ASUS eee 701 4G unit “Luthien”, using the original Nokia data cable that came with the handset. The latest Nokia PC Suite was installed. For best results I made sure that my internet phone setting was at TIME instead of KB. [Important: To find out what your current setting is, text STATUS to 1111, and if you are not yet on TIME setting, text TIME to 1111 and wait for the confirmation before you avail of the service]. Using a variety of online internet speedtests on a workday afternoon, I got an average download speed of 420kbps. Not bad! On our home wifi network (PLDT Dsl), I get an average of 790-820kbps max around noon and and about 380-440kbps at peak hours when I share the bandwidth. The Mozilla Google homepage loaded in 3 seconds. Now I have no idea what speeds other people get on their connections, but this is plenty fast enough for me to do the things I like doing, whether for work or for enjoyment.

When trying to connect from a coffee shop in Megamall, I decided to test my theory that it makes more economic sense to buy just the coffee you like and connect using Globe, instead of being forced to upsize or buy a P100 card for an hour’s worth of surfing. First of all, I believe in not abusing coffeeshop real estate and utilities because other people need their coffee and seats too. I’m nice that way. But when you consider that one hour’s worth of surfing with Globe costs only P20, and the short latte you really like is P80… would it be absolutely necessary for you to spend the minimum purchase of P150? Of course, you need the 3G phone to begin with, but if you can afford both the laptop and the price of fancy coffee, I’m sure you already have one. Speedtest results at the coffeeshop : 216kbps.

I was in Baguio a couple of weeks ago for a work trip, and was billeted at the Baguio Country Club. I know there is open wifi there, but for some reason, the signal was not very strong where my room was. So I took out the trusty Nokia 6120 and its cable, and got a not-too-bad speed of 140kbps. Again, enough just for emails and YM messaging and smaller file downloads.

I’ll make it a point to save screenshots of my speedtests from now on.

EEE LAPTOP SKIN

I’ve had my ASUS eee “Luthien” (galaxy black 701 4G model with webcam) since February 9 this year. The very first accessory I purchased for it was a P400 screen protector from Silie Nation’s Eilis Tan, one of the original merchants in the Eeeph.com Buy and Sell section. I also want other items from her catalogue — such as the eee 6600 mAh battery (to order) and leather PDAir case (regularly available).

Along the way I bought a 160g WD Passport (ABM Systems, Virra Mall) and a reasonably priced slim external DVD writer (Glenn Santos aka “Shinrai” of Eeeph.com and Tipidpc.com). In the ensuing mania I bought an inexpensive black nylon canvas bag (originally a portable dvd player carrier) from fellow eeePHer Corine to carry my peripherals, as well as a Tokidoki-print Le Sac-alike messenger bag from Divisoria to act as my computer bag.

Still, once out of the bag, my Luthien looked like everybody else’s galaxy black eee. It was only a matter of time before I got myself a laptop “Proudskin” from Manix Genabe to help me give Luthien some identity. At the Eeeph.com Meet & Greet 2 raffle I actually won an anime print, which Ning wanted, so I agreed to swap for her Japanese rising sun print. It still didn’t feel quite right for my personality, so when Mark asked for it, I just gave it to him. Reg bought the Hokusai wave print skin I wanted, so I figured I’d look around for something similar.

One day I saw my copy of Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha and remembered the Zhang Ziyi movie poster. I rushed online to find the biggest file size wallpaper of it, and at the 4th Meet & Greet I asked Chie to help me remove the cinema information fonts on one side (yes, he had Adobe Photoshop CS2 in his eee’s 8g SDHC), and to resize the file to eee requirements. I immediately deposited the payment, emailed proof of deposit, and received my Proudskin a day and a half later. The laptop skin is photo-quality printing on a vinyl sticker, quite easy to install. I did notice a while later that the ASUS logo was under the bridge of Zhang Ziyi’s nose, making her look like Owen Wilson’s sister, but when the Proudskin looks this good, who cares?