Guy Adams on Technology

So we have come to the end of our short break here at Centre Parcs and I’ve taken hold of a small table in the sports bar. Coffee in hand, I wanted to tell you a little find that’s making my netbook life easier.

I came across this find on a WebWorkerDaily post, whilst Aliza talked about hers and the teams desktop layouts.

Its called Launchy and in simple, it is a program launcher. It indexes the Windows start menu and means that you can type all or part of a program name, press enter and that program is launched.

Where Launchy holds its own is when out and about with  my Asus Eee 1000H, with the slightly reduced screen resolution and the small trackpad, Launchy makes running programs very easy. To open the small launchy window, you simply press ALT+ENTER by default or any other combination of your choice. It has many options which includes the ability to index other areas, select different skins and even add additional plugins.

I have also added a folder to my start menu called shortcuts to which I have added additional links to common places like, network storage and commonly used folders.

I highly recommend it to anyone who has a netbook or who don’t like navigating the start menu.

Link: www.launchy.net

Tags: Launchy

This week I am spending a week at our local Centre Parcs with Anita, Lily and some friends. Its pleasant here and you get a real feel for the countryside and wildlife.

Its amazing really as its only a short drive from our home and practically on the doorstep yet it feels like a world apart from the busy towns.

Things have changed a lot here in recent months, all executive villas now receive WiFi, albeit not at the fastest connections speeds but adequate for firing a blog or two off and reading my many feeds;

Also the speed has been fairly consistent, unlike the speeds the jkontherun guys have experienced at the recent mobilize conference. I would try the mobile data speeds but there isn’t much point as currently my T-Mobile signal only gives GPRS data connectivity.

What has been a real winner here is the newest addition to my gadget bag, my Asus EEE 1000H.

It added very little size or weight to the luggage which was already greatly increased due to all the many additional baby items needed on this sort of trip and has been used more by my wife than it has by me.

What is impressive about the Asus is the power adaptor, I know on my brothers original EEE 701 the power brick is included on the actual plug and even though with this incarnation of the EEE range, the brick is a separate entity on the power cable, its still tiny compared with many laptop power adaptors. Here’s a comparison of my MDA Compact IV, the EEE adaptor and Simon’s normal laptop adaptor;                                               

Another bonus for me is the SD card slot of the EEE, my Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3 takes SDHC cards so getting photos off the card is a very simple cableless operation, which also means less clutter for the gadget bag.

Tags: Asus EEE, holiday, wifi

I posted last week that my current employment situation dictated a need for my own laptop or netbook. I got the short list down to the Asus EEE 1000H and the MSI Wind U100 as the price point and mobility aspect are far greater than that of normal laptop.

Well my final decision was dictated by a couple of factors. Despite Kevin C. Tofel’s observations on the badly positioned right shift key, the deal breaker for me is battery life.

The Asus comes packed with a 6 cell battery giving around 5 to 6 hours of moderate usage, an impressive figure for a £330 unit. The UK version of the MSI Wind has only a 3 cell battery and for me 2 - 3 hours usage is not acceptable.

Before I had chance to order my new companion device, my wife had already pulled the trigger and ordered it for me! It arrived next day kudos to Ebuyer.co.uk for delivery and service.

I have spent a fair amount of time with the device over the weekend and I have to say I am really happy. The speed of the device is more than acceptable and better than I expected for a 1.6Ghz processor and the battery life is excellent. The unit comes packaged with Asus’s Super Hybrid Engine software which has several different power and performance settings to leverage battery life over performance or vice versa. Whilst using the ‘Auto Mode’ setting of the software I am seeing more than 5 hours of moderate to heavy usage and being as I can’t actually feel any less or more performance when using the different modes, currently I leave the power settings to auto.

The right shift key was a learning curve as I usually hit it with my right hand little finger and its miniature size and odd placement means a need for better accuracy but this isn’t too much of a problem for me.

My only really complaint, if I had to make one is the fan noise. Its a low hum but in a quiet room its an audible noise, its not loud by any stretch but it is there.

All in all my initial impressions of the device are very positive and it certainly ticks all the boxes for my requirements. I’ll post more about the device as items come up.

Tags: Asus EEE, Netbook's

Those fathers out there will know and appreciate that many hours can be passed whilst feeding those little ones. In a bid to gain back some of that feeding time I’ve found that I can bottle feed my daughter and flick through the 100+ feeds I like to keep track of.

Whilst usually I would use my new HTC Touch Diamond with Opera Mobile, Google Reader Mobile and simple finger screen flicks, on a laptop this can be slightly more tricky. What with touch pads, mouse clicks and the inability to move very far its a blessing that Google Reader has keyboard shortcuts.

Some of your eagle eyed readers may be wondering a few things;

1) Why is there a red elastic ban on my daughters bottle

2) What was the picture taken with

Well the answer to no.1 is; the elastic band marks this particular bottle as being Lily’s water bottle and more on no.2 coming very soon. 

Tags: Google, HTC, Touch Diamond