Trance is good but ...

Where has the swing been hiding from me all those years ??? I declare 100% Swing lover ! The Key to opening the swing world is the Sing-Sing-Sing as performed by Billy May Orchestra. Since then, i am digging deeper and deeper in it ! At the point i have swing everywhere ! In car - at home - at fingers (on Sax). It's totally uplifting !

Office 2007 and gCDEmu on linux

Today i managed to install -easily- the Microsoft Office 2007, including the SP2 upgrade on my Linux machine because i had some picture resizing problems in OpenOffice beta. The OpenOffice 3.2 starts significally faster than 3.1 (1/3rd of time).
Also i found an alternative to daemon tools after some searching. It's named gCDEmu and it mounted even a nero image without any problems.
Installation of Office 2007 on linux took me way too less time that it does when i install it on Superior Systems running Windows ! I didn't expect that since linux it's not it's native environment. I used Crossover (a more advanced version of Wine). I also tried mediacoder 64bit but it won't run in my 64bit ubuntu. I'll have to try with mediacoder 32bit which will of course be more combatible since the x64 mc was in beta.

N900 vs I-Phone

Well... i found this interesting comparison between the linux-based Nokia N900 phone versus Tomato's... sorry... Apple's I-Phone 3GS
Have a look at the comparison here
Note that there are very interesting comments on the article by some readers:
"The iPhone is just an iPod Touch with some smart-phone features. Great for girls and dumbs that can’t use a real platform. Now go and play with your Fart App. =)"  I can't angry more with him :)
and some failed attempts by tomato minded people to prove that N900 features are useless: "13. FM tranmitter? PASS. Most cars come with an AUX in jack now, and that is much better." Mercy ! If you had FM-transmitter (that is: transmit MP3's from your mobile phone to an FM station on your car radio) on your junk-phone you would be talking all day long about it !

Distance is not a limit !

Yestarday i repaired a laptop located in Brazil (a migrated client) just like if i was there :)
It's amazing what you can do thru the internet to help people. It was my most distant repair so far.
However, going back to my post title, certainly distance is a limit considering certain things (look @ the picture) :p

From Thunderbird to... Alpha-Bird ! (Shredder)

I just tried it out (still in alpha). It's the successor to Mozilla Thunderbird, the 'alternative' to Microsoft's 'look-out' (outlook). I just fell in love with it in the very first minutes. I am refering to Shredder version 3.1a1pre. Dare to try it ! It's FREE :) I'll put it down to a stress test since i'll be using it as default email client from now on. Just for the record i've been using the Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 so far. And of course, running on linux for boundary-free computing :) If you are using ubuntu, just add this repository to your synaptic: ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa and you'll get the daily build of thunderbird and firefox.

Το αίσχος του Κυπριακού μίζερου ίντερνετ.

Αν είναι ποτε δυνατόν , να είμαι με το laptop μου στο Costa Coffee στην καρδιά της πρωτεύουσας , να κάνω πρόσβαση στο internet μεσω hot spot του ημικρατικού μας οργανισμού (CYTA) που 'ξεσιηλήζει' που 'λίρα' και το download rate να είναι 10kbytes/s !!! Είστε μίζεροι ρε ! Κλείστε το καλύτερα ! Αντί να παρέχουν απλόχειρα για σκοπούς διαφήμισης την πρόσβαση στο διαδύκτιο !
Ο Θεός που μας βοήθησε και αποκτήσαμε την Cablenet σ'αυτή τη μίζερη αγορά του Κυπριακού Internet! Λογικές Ταχύτητες, σταθερές συνδέσεις και τιμές που πλησιάζουν τις ευρωπαικές πιο πολύ απ'τους αλλους 2 αδιφάγους κλέφτες πάροχους του internet.

Σημείωση: Το πρόβλημα της ελεεινής ταχύτητας στο hotspot δίκτυο της Cyta υφίσταται εδω και 5 τουλάχιστον μήνες (με αραιές δοκιμές κατα τη περίοδο αυτή).

Φεύγω να παω σπίτι να κατεβάσω το openoffice 3.2 beta και το Mozilla Thunderbird 3 RC μέσα σε 2 λεπτά και οχι μέσα σε 2 μέρες !

November tech news

After a period of idleness we have some progress in tech area: 1GHz mobiles coming out from htc  and youtube switches to 1080p resolution (that is 1920x1080). Glad to see the Full-HD upgrade on youtube. We'll be seeing very clear videos at last (way higher quality of a DVD movie). Full-HD definition is equal to blue-ray quality but i guess youtube will use some kind of compression to save some bandwidth.

The 1GHz CPUs on smartphones (pocket pc's) will be a good upgrade since the 528MHz range of processors. That means snappier response to user's commands. 528MHz is just OK , but 1GHz is double the speed - meaning less wait time for everything you do.

If you came across anything worth mentioning, please let me know :)

TRANZA !!!

I decided that the music with the strongest vibes is the TRANCE ! Vocal Trance to be more precise and there's an on-line station that i love to listen to when i need energy put into me. The link for loading it into your favorite music player is : http://scfire-dtc-aa06.stream.aol.com:80/stream/1065 (i hope you know how to do it properly or google it). The description of the station is : "Vocal Trance - D I G I T A L L Y - I M P O R T E D - a fusion of trance, dance, and chilling vocals".

Use of HIGH quality speakers or earphones is suggested, because trance is about manipulation of frequencies in combination of sub-frequency beats, hence you need a good set to reproduce it, as it was intended to be.

Trance is MUSIC, it's not lyrics... lyrics are said in a musical/synthetic way... and in majority of lengthy trance masterpieces, lyrics are just a few short phrases.

Viva la Trance & grazie to the people producing it by utilizing the full potential of Synths ! Let the music play and feel the energy going into you !

Windows Vista, Windows Seven and ... Linux !

The Microsoft's new operating system will be officialy released in 22th Oct. 09 as i remember reading in a news site. However, the RTM version (Initials for Release to Mass i suppose) is out already. I got my hands on a microsoft's official build in order to upgrade my laptop's vista. It gives me 30 days to use and then i'll have to register/buy or i'll revert to Vista. I expected my system to be very very fast right after the upgrade but ok - might be slightly faster - but not THAT fast. First look reminds me of Vista GUI - but certainly they introduced better layout and more functions. The icons on the first run were huge and my Vista quick launch bar disappeared. I managed to get my settings back (even the quick launch bar) after a few minutes of playing around. Well... Another Microsoft operating system. Simple and easy to use for the ... simple minded people. It was boring after the 10th minute. I am editing this post on my Linux since that's the operating system that suits my likes - actualy - that gives me the advantage of Tweaking it to my likes. Unfortunately still i can't push it towards my end clients because people don't dare to explore / learn. To be honest i was 'in touch' , a very light touch with linux since 1997 or 1998 - when i bought my first linux distribution (suse). Took me 6 hours to get the X graphics server to run (to start the 'windows'). Lovely ages then :)
Oh, and speaking of Operating systems... If you are completely unable to use your mind, don't worry ! There are still Apple MAC's in Market ! They do 'everything' with one mouse button ! Second button is completely unnecessary... people can't use both fingers at the same time anyway :p

NO MORE 7" laptops !

Well... it was about time. They stopped producing 7" laptops (known as NetBooks) as people prefer brands with a slight larger screen size. Most makers are coming out with 10" netbooks which are more convenient to use and with a more proper keyboard and screen size. The Netbooks market was evolutionary, but unfortunate for us - the retailers - was a disaster. Imagine selling a netbook with a profit of ~€15 (believe it or not). I registered some netbooks on my website when their profit was around €60 but when i saw Netbooks being sold at local kiosks (that's not a joke) for €20 on top of the wholesale price, i took them off and desided that i am not into that kind of miserable business. However, this trend happens to shift even to high end systems as shop chains sell "boxes" without any hassle about setting them up, installing additional software and delivery - so they reduce their margin to supermarket levels. I manage to survive in this crewel business as new laptops need to be "serviced" to be fully functionable - meaning that you have to remove all the bogus software which come in the form of adware on each new laptop and to be replaced by proper software. Each laptop/computer goes thru a 2 hour programming sequence before delivered. That's what keeps my old clients away from 'mass sales'. Even with strong competition, due to respect to towards my clients, i figured an extremely low percentage to keep my website prices way lower than chained shops - with all the consequences towards me. As sales price is very close to wholesale price, additional requests for software will not be covered for free as part of sale. I'll be charging something like €80 on top of laptop/computer price for setup+delivery reasons or if not needed, the client will get the laptop boxed for him/her to setup :)
I am just finding ways & motives to keep the quality of service to the desired levels :) Feed me back !

Read more about netbook sales at: http://www.internetnews.com/hardware/article.php/3824236

FeedBack !

I had several personal issues for several days and i've been actually kept off from my PCs (at least as i used to use them). I've seen some very interesting tech news that would be worth posting BUT !!! before posting them it came to my mind to ask YOU to take a minute & write anything as a feedback like:  "Roumors say that you can turn computers into speed demons" :p or "I called you a thousand times and i'm still waiting for your reply - since X-MAS!!!" :)
Space is yours, express yourself and let me see if this blog is beeing watched by people since i didn't do anything to spread the word. Posts can be anonymous , but if you write something evil i'll find you - and make your PC slower than a Turtle !!! :p I am kidding - there is no way to trace identity of posters if they wish to remain anonymous :)

PC SPEEDS !

Computers come in lot's of different flavors. Colors, design, features, and... Speeds! Computer speed is determined by several factors as there are several 'types' of speed:

1. CPU speed.
2. Hard Disk Drive (HDD) speed
3. RAM speed.
4. Chipset (motherboard) speed.
5. Graphics Card (chipset) speed.

The sum of the above give us the overall computer performance. BUT !... Not all of the above are IMPORTAND to everybody. I'll analyze the importance of each part so in future you'll understand as buyer what you need most out of your PC.

CPU: CPU prices vary from €50 to €500. For everyday use tasks like using office / internet / music & movies playback you'll notice NO DIFFERENCE in performance between the cheapest and the most expensive CPU! Expensive CPUs have more CORES, more CACHE and work with higher FSB (Front side bus speed) which leads to superior performance in tasks like Encoding/Decoding or Rendering ! Especialy in rendering, the difference in processing time is enormous.

Hard Disk Speed: All data of a PC is stored on it's Hard Disk Drive (HDD). That means that when you load windows (startup) or Programs, the data has to be read from HDD. A slow hard disk would take up to a minute more to load windows in comparison to a fast hard drive and the difference in their price is peanuts ! :) Usualy, higher capacity HDD's are faster than their lower capacity counterparts.

RAM Speed: RAM speed is also important in tasks like encoding/decoding/rendering but usualy there's little performance benefit on using VERY expensive RAMs. For instance DDR800 vs DDR667 will not give more than 2~5% performance benefit in all range of applications. Also, heat sinked RAMs don't do your computer TURBO since usualy it's a sort of eye-candy and nothing more. Note, that a system with super fast 1GB-1333MHz RAM using a modern Operating System, is much slower from a system using 4GB of a slower type of RAM (ex. DDR667). More RAM = faster overall performance :)

Chipset (motherboard chipset) speed: That's maybe the most important part – since the chipset of a system is the one that transfers the data across the different modules. For instance, when transfering data from HDD to CPU, or from CPU to RAM etc. A slow chipset will not be able to take benefit of your super fast HDD, RAM, CPU. It will pull their speed down.

Graphics Card (GPU) Speed (GraphicsProcessingUnit): Graphics Cards are dedicated devices to fulfill the gamers demands on Graphics Processing. Playing a game means RAPID drawing of a thousand graphic elements in a single moment ! Explosions, lights, shades, particles, movement physics – all done in a millionth of a second !!! That's where a decent card makes huge performance difference from a 'stock' card. A decent card is somewhere around €200 and an extreme performance card is somewhere around €350. There are much more expensive cards but there of no use if your screen resolution is lower than 1680x1050 (a typical 22”).

A good PC technician will always try to help you in choosing what's best for your needs. A bad PC technician will make you pay twice more for a system that you will never take benefit of. I refer to technicians and NOT to salespersons since technicians do know the facts between the numbers where most salespersons know the sales percentage and air-talk ;)

...And God gave MAC to 'Users'

And everybody talks about God made MAC's. Price of a MAC is well known to be something like double the price of a
PC with exactly the same specifications. And it's also well known that
MACs can't do games - None of the Gaming companies support MACs. But are MACs worth their money ?
Well, personally i find MACs to be a piece of Junk :p Same goes for their i-phone and i-pod device (i am not sure if they have any other i-devices or... like i-nose-picker or i-vibrat* or *come on - don't you have any better marketting ideas than i-bullsh* ?

They tout that MAC's don't have viruses. Well, Virus is an industry on it's own - a software industry - one of the many - like image manipulators, video editors etc. MAC's have ONE DIGIT market share (that is around 9% including i-phones and i-pod's and i-bull's). That's why nobody cares about creating a virus for MAC's. The idea of Virus is to infect computers worldwide - to do a massive infection. Infecting the 9%, i like infecting all the gays of the world. So, if it was just the viruses they are missing - would be nice for MAC victims. But , what if you are an achitect and you want to use AutoCAD ? Well... Autodesk, makers of AutoCAD refuse to make a version of AutoCAD for MAC's because nobody uses MAC (a way of saying - with that 9% in mind). You love MSN messanger ? Oh well... you have to use a simplistic version of it for your MAC. You love Yahoo messanger ? Same. You want Office ? Oh... you have to use a dated version - something like traveling back in time. And just name me a thing that runs on MAC and does not run on PC ? Photoshop ? Do you believe that Adobe pays attention to 9% of their clients or to the 87% ? There are like a thousand of software to do anything you can imagine on a PC and just a several for MAC's. It took me one whole night to find a good and fast free picture viewer for MAC that would automatically epxand or shrink a picture to the laptop's screen size. I could find an equivalent software for PC in a few minutes. As for their i-pod's. There's nothing more annoying than the fact that i have to use their i-Tunes (oh yes i found one more i-junk-name) software. With a typical non apple device - you would simply connect the device to a PC and just DRAG AND DROP music files etc on the device to transfer them. You can always add any additional files one by one - or a bunch without using any COMLEX interface. And i-phone ? A 2009 phone WITHOUT MMS, WITHOUT VIDEO RECORDING CAPABILITY, WITHOUT BLUETOOTH EXCHANGE (you can only use bluetooth for HandsFree, not for files), WITHOUT COPY/PASTE CAPABILITY and with a price tag of €800 !!! MAC my ASS !!! A Samsung phone priced €100 includes all of the above !
Oh, yes, i-phone has GPS !!! A non working GPS since nobody makes software for it ! Can you get me a navigation map for CYPRUS ??? I Can get you 3 software packages for my Windows Mobile Phone (HTC) that covers almost every inch of Cyprus streets with navigation - even the dirt roads.
Anyway - that's been posted as a reaction to all those 'i'm gay styled' guys i see in CAFE's with a bunch of notes around their MAC, dressed and feeling that they are sons of God, or like film stars - making you think that they work on a massive world-changing povetry-fighting project !!!
Last and not least, it's very worth to read this article : http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=macs_cant

eSATA miracle !

Ok, almost everybody has an external HDD. And most of you tried moving data from external drive to PC and vice versa. Most of you wouldn't care about transfer speed - but some may do. Since 2004 a new interface appeared. Named e-SATA is the acronym for 'external SATA'. It's a relative new interface in industry - but what does it have to offer in addition to USB2 and firewire devices ? Well... Opposed to FireWire and USB/2 devices, eSATA talks STRAIGHT to the system where USB/2 and Firewire use a "bridge" to encode data of HDD to USB or Firewire format. That's introducing latency's and slower transfer speeds. eSATA is twice as fast as Firewire 400 and USB2, and is even faster than Firewire 800 !
So, if you want SPEED and PORTABILITY, you can use this external case in addition with any 2,5" SATA HDD. Use it combined with a large 2,5" HDD and will give you a BLAZING fast pocket sized storage of 500 GB !!!

ANDROID by Google

It's a bit frightening but google seems to be EVERYWHERE! Well, apart from every other project that you run accross - soon you'll meet ANDROID ! It's google's project for Mobile OS - something that will compete against Windows Mobile and iPhone OS. However, the 'plus' of Android is that is uses Linux and i bet soon enough they'll find an easy way to compile linux packages for android - so you'll be able to use software like ThunderBird, Firefox, Pidgin etc natively on any android platform (mobile). That's not a fact - it's a guess. I have already tried some ANDROID builds that run on WM6 devices thru emulation but still they are not stable. Dual booting between Android and WM6 would be a dream since several windows mobile applications are not ported to Android platform yet (for instance - GPS navigators). The first native android phone that came out , is G1 from HTC, but since LG , Motorola, Samsung are already members of Android , i expect soon a huge KABOOM of google's OS into mobile market. Sony & Ericsson are rumored to produce Android phones too. I guess Nokia will stick to it's Symbian OS (which was a masterpiece when i was using the Psion 5mx (SE MC218) but not that good nowdays.

MAC AIR clone from MSI - Slimmest PC Notebook

I was amazed by MSI - it's relative new to notebook business but it's impressive that they came up with a MAC air clone at half the price. The specifications of the system are quite impressive as it comes with all new technologies like Draft-N Networking, bluetooth, webcam, big HDD (320GB) and long battery life due to the ATOM processor. It's not a TURBO system when it comes to image processing (photoshop or similar programs) but you shouldn't notice and signifigant performance difference when using it in daily tasks (emails, word documents, web surfing, viewing dvd's etc). It's highly Recomended because of it's portability and looks :)

Have a look at my website: MSI X320 notebook

Evolving Technologies on Batteries

LI-ION is going to be obsolette soon as new battery technologies are rising. This new type batteries (carbon/air) will last 10 times longer than lithium technology batteries ! So, if that's true - i guess we will have laptops running 10 x 2 hours = 20 hours with a single charge :) That's great news
See for yourself by clicking the link below:

New carbon/air battery stores 10x more energy than li-ion

Η Μαλα*beep* πάει σύννεφο ! (ευρωεκλογές)

Έντελως έλεος ! Μόλις είδα στις ΕΙΔΗΣΕΙΣ οτι Υποψήφια ευρωβουλευτής (της Κύπρου) σκόνταψε και έσπασε τη μύτη της... και την πήγαν εσπευσμένα με ασθενοφόρο στο νοσοκομείο. Αμα την ψηφίσω να μου τρυπήσετε την μύτη ! Άκου, να τραβολογάει τα ασθενοφόρα για την μυτόγκα της ! Αμα θέλεις κυρία μου να βγεις στις ειδήσεις για να σε μάθει ο κόσμος επειδή κατέβαλες υποψηφιότητα για ευρωβουλευτής, να επινοήσεις άλλες μεθόδους απ'το να σπας τη μύτη σου και να φωνάζεις τα κανάλια ! ΕΛΕΟΣ ! ΕΙΣΑΙ ΓΙΑ ΓΕΛΙΑ !!!
Μπήκα στην ιστοσελίδα της για να της στείλω email "ελπίζω να'ναι εντάξει η μύτη σας" αλλα δεν το'χει καταχωρημένο. Κρίμα !

We're just seeing the beginning of a new era !

Hello there dear friends, this is my first post in my bloggo thingy and maybe i should post a few things about me but who cares about reading profiles ???
However, i am glad to report/shout that my favorite super-duper OS (operating system), that is Linux, reached and went over (officially) the 1% of global market share. That is translated to: One of 100 PCs surfing the internet (cause that's what they used to collect the data) is running Linux. That's good news and i am really happy to see that, since Linux is a free operating system, and in terms of usability, configurability, bility, iliti, and ttiliti, is much much better than the windowZzz... GO GO LINUX !
Also , note that microzoft's global market share went down to 87,9% (that's the lowest ever in their history!) Can u guess why ?
Anyway, the data is taken from : http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=8#
I just wonder how many out there know about Linux, what u know about it and if you are interested in giving it a shot :)