Posted on Thursday, 21st February 2008 by Auw Jimmy

I just received my new toy, a ASUS Xonar U1. Haven’t tried it completely yet, just a short listening test with my Grado SR-80. My first impression is not bad. It’s surely better compared with my onboard Realtek. It’s a little bit sharp, center focussed imaging, stiff sound, adequate midrange, and tight low. Will post the final review after it passes its break-in period. For now, enjoy some of my snapshots first

Some notes:

Xonar U1 has volume button on top. So all of its top body is the volume control.  You can press it and it will mute the sound. Press it again to unmute. It will light red on mute mode, and a soft blinking blue on unmute mode.

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Posted on Thursday, 21st February 2008 by Auw Jimmy

Still want to live with an old Alkaline? Then you have to try this one. Panasonic has just released their new Alkaline, named EVOLTA. It claims 1.3-2 times more power than the best Alkaline on the market (with a little bit higher price). Will be available around next month or two.

I just wonder why we should use this “Alkaline” one-time-use battery? I love my Sanyo Eneloop NiMh rechargeable battery. I can recharge it almost anytime with almost no memory effect like common NiMH battery.

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Posted on Monday, 18th February 2008 by Auw Jimmy

By default, Asus Eee PC will run at 630 MHz only. Although it’s equipped with Celeron 900 MHz (see the screenshot below).

For most people, 630 MHz should run all applications quite smoothly. But for some other people, they expect more performance. Why I don’t get 900 from my 900 MHz processor? Check this tool.

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Posted on Friday, 15th February 2008 by Auw Jimmy

I just installed my new 2 GB of RAM yesterday morning. At the afternoon, as usual, I put my notebook into hibernate mode. I didn’t see the Power LED of my notebook. I just put it on my bag and drove home.

When arrived and opened my bag, I sensed a hot air from my bag. My notebook was still on!!!

I suddenly took it out from my bag and put an extra fan to cool it down. After everything seemed ok, I started to check the problem. I tried to hibernate again and it failed with message “Insufficient System Resources Exist to Complete the API.” What the hell…? I restarted my notebook, disabled hibernate, enabled it again, then tried to hibernate again. It worked. But after I played for few hours and tried to hibernate again. It failed again with same error message.

I checked around and found this. Below is the copy-pasted from Microsoft.com

The computer occasionally does not hibernate and you receive an “Insufficient System Resources Exist to Complete the API” error message in Windows XP with Service Pack 2, in Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005, or in Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005

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Posted on Sunday, 10th February 2008 by Auw Jimmy

I have some free time today. So it’s the time to do some of my hobby: audio.

Today I have a Grado SR80 headphone and my old FireWire sound card, Terratec Aureon FireWire 7.1. This is a nice old sound card. It has Phono/MM stage and also can act as D/A without the necessary of a PC. I fire it up and get somehow dirty sound from my Grado. I clean up the headphone connectors with my favorite contact cleaner called Brasso. Problem solved.

Next, I download the latest driver from Terratec website. After installing it, somehow my Aureon’s Master LED blinking after 3-5 minutes playing sound and starts producing cracking noise. I don’t know why. I open up the Aureon and check for any failure inside but can’t find any. Everything seems ok!

Then I suspect the problem is on the driver. I search for my optical cable, the I hook up the Aureon to my onboard Realtek ALC660 via optical cable. Voila, everything runs perfectly over 30 minutes with no cracking or error sound. So now I’m sure that my Aureon (physically/hardware) is ok. (more…)

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Posted on Wednesday, 6th February 2008 by Auw Jimmy

I read information from here about Asus M930. Is it a Nokia Communicator? No, it’s the latest PDA Phone from Asus, called M930.

If Nokia and Communicator are related to Symbian, this Asus M930 is related with Microsoft. It has dual display (QVGA 320×240 pixels on the front and 400×240 pixels inside – quite low and odd resolution for the inner display). Don’t forget a full QWERTY keyboard, 256 MB storage, 64 MB RAM, and 2 MP autofocus camera. Expansion is provided by microSD. Off course you will have Bluetooth and WiFi.

According to the news around, it will be equipped with Windows Mobile 6. Some rumors say that it will not have touchscreen feature. OMG! A Windows Mobile without touchscreen? Frustrating! Hope the rumors are wrong…

I always dream to use Communicator platform but with Windows Mobile OS. I know, Windows is not a good OS anyway (slowww!), but I’m just too familiar with the applications. So, forgive me

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Posted on Wednesday, 6th February 2008 by Auw Jimmy

This is just a short information about the different between Solid State Disk and Mechanical Hard Disk/Drive.

I will explain with picture. Picture below is a Solid State Disk (SSD) from SanDisk. As you can see from the picture below, SSD has no mechanical/moving parts. It simply contains memory/flash chip. Imagine a bigger USB Flash Disk, yes, SSD is simply a bigger USB Flash Disk.

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