WD Elements 2.5" 500 GB external HDD

I do wish harddisk manufacturers would change the names of their products once in a while, so you don't get about 10 versions when you search.

Anyway, I wanted to open mine, thinking maybe I could use it as a SATA-USB adapter. No such luck. THE HARDDISK INSIDE HAS A MICRO USB PORT BUILT-IN. IT CANNOT BE USED AS A SATA DISK, NOR CAN ANOTHER SATA DISK BE USED. The bad news is it's quite hard to open, the good news is it doesn't seem to do any damage (other than scratches, gouges in the plastic etc.)

If you look carefully, you'll see that the micro USB port is on the same logic board as the harddisk. The other pins don't seem to be used.

 These catches are how the cover snaps in.

These rubber stoppers fit into the screw holes on the HDD, and allow it to fit snugly in the case. I love screwless solutions.

This is cute. The LED on the logic board does not line up with the case, so a "waveguide" is used to direct the light.

This is the end of the "waveguide" where the light comes out. It has a yellowish tint, from the LED.

I wonder if there are any easily openable 2.5" external HDDs?

Problems with Razer Naga

Some problems are showing up with my Naga. That's why the longer the time to write a review, the better.

The main problem is in World of Warcraft. The sensitivity will suddenly increase, and the mouse appears to have acceleration as well. This effect remains even after switching apps. I think it might have something to do with other mouse drivers installed on my computer. Thankfully, once it increases, the sensitivity remains at that level until I change the mouse sensitivity, so it's easy to get used to.

Macro recording isn't on-the-fly. In fact, you can't record macros when focused on other applications at all. This makes it quite troublesome to record macros. For example, you have to guess the timings of subsequent actions. Also, macros would be better if they specified where on the screen the mouse was clicked.

Samsung SyncMaster 740N Auto-Adjustment Locked

I wasn't able to adjust many settings on a Samsung SyncMaster 740N monitor. I was only able to adjust brightness and contrast. The image was shifted and scaled, resulting in a non-1:1 ratio between output and actual pixels, causing blurry images. I found the solution at http://www.fixya.com/support/t553848-samsung_syncmaster_740n_17_auto. Surprisingly, all you have to do is hold down the Menu button! I wonder what the lock does, then?

Razer Naga

Many years ago, my friend bought one of the first Razer mice. It was a 1000 DPI Boomslang, with the controversial low profile and long buttons, encouraging people to use the fingertip grip. Back then, optical mice hadn't been invented and this resolution was achieved using the ball, although the sensors inside were optical. I now have the pleasure of owning a Razer Naga, and am reviewing it here for the benefit of everyone.

Features/specifications

• 5600 DPI Razer Precision 3.5G Laser Sensor
• 1000Hz Ultrapolling™ / 1ms response time
• 200 inches per second max tracking speed
• Zero-acoustic Ultraslick™ mouse feet
• 17 MMO-optimized buttons (including 12 button thumb grid)
• Optional MMO-specific software AddOns
• Unlimited character profiles with AddOns
• Approximate size:  116L x 69W x 41.6H (in mm)
• 7 foot lightweight, braided fiber cable
• Scroll wheel with 24 individual click positions
• Anti-slip rubber coating
• Blue logo with pulsating glow
• MMO-optimized multi-button thumb grid
• Gold-plated USB connector

Hardware

My first impression was the mouse is smaller than I thought. Maybe it's the shape, but it's only 17 mm longer than the Orochi, Razer's portable mouse. It still fits the hand very well and is comfortable to hold. The array of buttons on the left do not affect the ergonomics in any way or make the mouse harder to handle or pick up.
The lighting is nice. I especially like the scroll wheel and the pulsating logo, but too bad it doesn't change very smoothly, like the MacBook's sleep light. The Razer logo cuts off abruptly. I realize that LED lights aren't everyone's thing, so it's good that you can disable all the lights in Razer's software.
I'm not sure how many click positions a normal scroll wheel has, but since Razer is advertising this with 24, I'm thinking the average is less than 24. The scroll wheel feels easy to move. I prefer Logitech's inertial scrolling though.
The cable is coated in a braided fiber, instead of the usual PVC. This is a higher-end form of insulation. In my experience, PVC insulation may sometimes melt or become sticky.
One thing that surprised me was that the mouse lacked on-the-fly hardware sensitivity adjustment. An important factor in gaming mice is customization, and being able to bring that anywhere. Although I do not expect this to have Synapse (on-board memory), I thought it would have sensitivity adjustment. The only adjustment the mouse offers is a switch on the bottom that changes the mapping of the number pad, which doesn't really do anything. These problems are fixed with Razer's software though, so it is only a problem if you use the mouse away from your default computer.

The number pad

This being the key feature of the mouse, deserved its own section. Razer is telling you to give yourself time to get used to the number pad. I guess this is to become fully accustomed and are able to press the keys without looking. They even provide stickers for feeling so you know which key you're on. However, don't be afraid to jump right in and start using the mouse.
If you just plug it into a new computer, the number pad maps either to the 1 to = keys on your keyboard, or the number pad, depending on the switch in the mouse. This allows you to get some degree of use out of the mouse without any software, but it's with the software that the mouse really shines.
As of now, I haven't tested this with any games, so I can't tell how good it is, but I think even if you have to look down to see what button to press, it's still faster than removing your hand from the mouse.

Software
Software is what makes or breaks a gaming mouse. I believe the main problem with cheaper mice is not build quality or features or DPI, but lack of good software. This area is where the Naga really shines.

The software is highly customisable. Macros can be assigned to any button, or even the scroll wheel. Interestingly, OS X supports 5 mouse buttons. I wonder how many Windows supports? The lack of on-the-fly sensitivity adjustment is corrected in the software.

Each of the 12 buttons can be assigned to do anything you want, or nothing at all. I suspect this is a new feature in the software, because some older reviews complained about the lack of this. This is a huge feature and the reason why I wanted a Naga over other Razer mice - if you can program keystrokes/macros to the buttons, the mouse can be used in many other applications, such as Photoshop!

It has standard control over sensitivity and acceleration (OS X doesn't have settings for acceleration). One thing I don't like is there is no control over scrolling speed, which is a bit slow.

Profiles with automatic switching, based on application

I'm a fan of automation. I think many computer tasks can be greatly simplified with macros, but sadly most software is too inaccessible/hard to learn. Interestingly, some software is better for keyboard commands and some for mouse. The Naga's software's macro programming is excellent, and even has a delay setting. It records keyboard presses and mouse clicks.

Lastly, the lighting can be controlled and the firmware is upgradeable!
One last word on the software: many manufacturers add OS X support as an afterthought. Not all Razer mice can be used on OS X. It's good to see that the OS X support here is fully featured, and it's only logical to expect that the Windows version has even more features.

Conclusion
This mouse has good hardware, and excellent software.

Printers

I guess printers are the most popular piece of computer hardware after the essential components, so choosing one is a big affair. Most people know that for printers, the real cost is in the ink. Printer companies sell printers cheap and recover the cost in the ink - so do shaver and games console companies.

To save on the ink, you can buy 3rd party. This is a booming business and there are many options. The important thing when choosing a printer is looking at the cost of the ink, and if you're intending to buy 3rd party, the ease of using it. To make 3rd party inks harder to use (they say it's to maintain quality), printer companies have tried various means. One popular one is to add a computer chip to the ink cartridge so they can't be copied/replaced. Sneaky companies make the chip count the number of pages you've printed - and stop printing after a certain number, regardless of how much ink you have left!

I've always bought Canon printers, partially because most of their ink cartridges do not make use of these sneaky tactics. HP is particularly fond of doing this.

Disposable or reusable print head?
The print head contains the nozzles that spit out the ink. It's sort of like the fountain pen nib. Some printers use disposable print heads, which are replaced with every ink cartridge, and some print heads are meant to last the life of the printer. In particular, Canon printers used to have permanent print heads and HP used disposable, but the new models are blurring this distinction.

Reusable
Reusable print heads have better quality, since more money can be spent on them. However, once they're clogged up, they're harder to replace (not really physically harder, but harder to buy).

Disposable
On the other hand, disposable print heads are lower quality/more expensive, but there are no worries about them clogging. This is a big issue with 3rd party inks. You don't know how good those inks are, and they may well clog your print head. Another problem is that since the heads come with the ink, it's hard to separate the 2, making cartridges harder to refill.

Personally, I prefer disposable print heads since I use 3rd party inks. However, if reusable print heads were easier to buy, I'd prefer them instead. For my next printer I think I'll try a continuous inking system.

The difference between voltage and current

When I first learnt about electricity, I didn't know the difference between these 2. It seems many people still don't. Here's an analogy to help:

Let's say you're buying a car. The salesperson says this car has a top speed of 200 km/h. You say, "I only want a car with a top speed of 70 km/h, otherwise I'd get speeding fines all the time."

Just because the top speed is 200 km/h, it doesn't mean you have to drive at that speed all the time. Current is like that. An adaptor rated at 2 A means its maximum is 2 A, not that it'll provide 2 A all the time.

Voltage, also known as potential, is something like force. Think of it as the height of a hill. The higher a hill, the faster you'll be when you roll down it. It doesn't guarantee how fast you'll be - that depends on how good you are at rolling. That's why it's called potential, it only tells you how useful it COULD be, not how it IS. USB, and most electronic devices are 5 V. Car power is 12 V, and so are most modems and routers.

Current, measured in Amperes (A), is your actual speed after rolling down that hill. Can you see that this depends on your shape? If you're a barrel, you'd be pretty fast. If you're an octopus, it'd have to be a really steep hill. I think we all have a natural intuition about our world that makes Physics very easy to understand if we learn to apply it.

Power, measured in Watts (W), is just the product of voltage × current (for direct current, for alternating current it's a bit more complicated). Think of it as how much potential there was and how much you used.

So what determines your "shape"? How does voltage become current? Resistance. Measured in Ohms (Ω), a lower resistance results in a higher current.

All this background leads to this: let's say you have a 5V 10W adaptor. Can you use it to charge a device that uses a 5V 5W adaptor? Yes. Why? The device only sees 5V. The device doesn't know how many W the power supply can support, unless it exceeds it. If you plug in a lower power device, it'll simply use less power. Having said that, some low quality adaptors' (non-regulated) voltage fluctuates - they only output 5V when a 10W device is connected, otherwise the voltage is higher. Something like the RPM of a car depending not only on your throttle position, but the load.
All this is according to theory, I take no responsibility for what happens as a result of you following this advice.

What kills? Current or voltage?
What kills a car's power or its speed during an accident? Obviously the power doesn't matter. Likewise, voltage alone won't kill (static electricity shocks are several thousand volts). It's when voltage causes a high enough current (which is actually quite low, compared to electrical devices) that it's dangerous.

Canon PG40/CL41 inks

I've always wondered how many pages a cartridge can print, and I recently had the chance to test. Using a new set of PG40/CL41 cartridges (these are standard capacity, not high capacity), I was able to print 141 pages in one go. These aren't the 5% coverage pages that printer companies use to measure cartridge life either. Seriously, who prints pages with 5% coverage? I wonder how many more pages they'll last. The cartridges cost $58, so they should be able to print 290 pages (at 20c per page), or I might as well print somewhere else.

Printed 12 more pages. Total is now 153. How long will I keep counting?
+16=169

+7=176 Some of these pages are really heavy too, like colour copying certificates.

+16=192 This is an underestimate.

+40=232  It currently stands at 25c per page, which is pretty good. This number is getting more and more inaccurate.

268 pages now. This whole process reminds me of MOPy fish, which was quite fun at that time. What a pity I can't get credits for these.

23 Nov 10
342 pages and 15 full colour photos, which probably use more ink than pages. Impressive!

1 Dec 10
354 pages and 15 full colour photos.

7 Dec 10
After 371 pages and 15 photos, the black cartridge gave up the ghost. This works out to 15c a page. More expensive than printing black and white outside, but it'll become cheaper with refills.

How graphics tablets work.

I find it quite amazing graphics tablets can be both cordless and battery-less. If you're wondering how they work, here's how:

1. The tablet sends power to the pen using induction. This is similar to those contactless chargers or bus cards.
2. The pen uses the power to send a signal with data on pressure and button states.
3. The tablet locates this signal to a precision of 1/1024 inch.

It's like a game of Marco Polo, with the tablet going "Marco" and the pen going "Polo", then the tablet finds out where the pen is. The interesting thing is, the pen only has to be near the tablet, it doesn't have to be touching it - that means you can put things on the tablet and trace them. Or put a screen protector on the tablet...
Why don't they make wireless mice like this?

Bamboo's touch going crazy - cause found

I finally found time to investigate this, and testing something I found online, I discovered the cause of this.

If you use the touch with wet hands, the same problems occur. They must be caused by moisture. If you use the pen for a while, some water will condense on the tablet or your hands sweat, and the problems occur.

Bamboo's touch going crazy.

I've found a problem with my Bamboo. After using the pen for a while, the touch goes crazy.

The LED flickers even when I'm not touching it, meaning it's registering touches. When I touch it, I see the equivalent of right and left clicks in Photoshop Elements, meaning it's detecting additional touches in random positions.

I think it's due to excess electrical charge, since I frequently feel "vibrations" from my MBP case. These are commonly thought to be due to current leakage. Also, the touchpad on my other laptop would sometimes be unresponsive, which was fixed by swiping a finger over the whole touchpad surface. The problem with the Bamboo settles down after a while (about 2 minutes). Meanwhile, I just turn touch off.

Wacom Bamboo first impressions.

I got a Bamboo for my birthday! Here are my first impressions:

• It comes with Photoshop Elements for BOTH Windows and OS X! That's right, 2 serial numbers. However, the versions are 7 for Windows and 6 for OS X - the latest versions when the Bamboo was released. These are no longer the latest versions. If you have both Windows and OS X, buying PSE for both is almost as expensive as buying the Bamboo.
• It's thin and light, and comfortable to use on my lap.
• It's pretty well designed - the indicator light has 4 modes, 1 button is mapped to touch on/off by default.

Pen
This is my first tablet, so I'm not sure if these features are standard or not.

• Pen can be set to work in "absolute" or "relative" mode.
• It automatically switches to pen mode when the pen is 7 mm or less from the surface. In my experience, the pen is not detected if I hold it above my hand when using touch. The indicator light turns orange in pen mode, so it's very easy to tell.
• The 2 buttons on the pen can be mapped to modifier keys or even KEY COMBINATIONS.
• There are lots of settings. For example, you can set the pen buttons to work immediately when you press them, or when you hold them and tap the pen.

Orange is in pen mode. As you can see, the pen is detected from pretty far away

Touch

• Only supports 2 fingers, however there are some additional gestures to the MacBook ones: you can highlight/click and drag by moving to the start, placing an additional finger to the left and moving both fingers. You can even reposition your fingers without breaking the drag. You can right click by tapping an additional finger to the right.
• Gestures cannot be remapped.
• The 4 buttons on the left, like those on the pen, can be mapped to modifiers or key combinations.
• Surface seems more rough than my MBP's touchpad. Might be dirt, or because it's plastic.
• Inertial scrolling! But it doesn't scroll much, not like Logitech's.

Software (OS X)
Software is highly impressive. Tons of customisation options.

• Basic settings like speed and acceleration, independently for pen in relative mode and touch.
• Able to use only a portion of the tablet, or map to only a portion of the screen in pen absolute mode - like only the Photoshop window
• Able to disable individual touch gestures, like on the MBP.
• Add a menu of custom keystrokes/programs to the context menu.

Wacom Bamboo

The new tablet from Wacom looks nice. Besides a battery-less, wireless stylus (how does it do that?), it supports multi-touch (up to 2 fingers only though). It's not very expensive, AUD$159 and it comes with Photoshop Elements (does it come with the OS X or Windows version, or both, I wonder?).
I'd buy it if there were a way to map gestures to keyboard key combinations. I still miss Multitouch. Actually, I know the reason I secretly want one is to unleash my inner artist so I can draw my own anime/manga.

My Book Studio observations.

• It's made of plastic. Ick. Cheaper HDD cases are made of aluminium.
• I wanted to put it horizontally at first, then I noticed the vents are only on the top and bottom, so it would have less ventilation when lying horizontally. I don't think it's designed to be put horizontally, so try not to.
• It's got no fans, so it's quiet, but hotter.
• I never thought of HDDs as hot, but you can feel heat rising out of the vents if you put your hand over them. Not sure if this is bad for the HDD.
• Doesn't look easy to open. No visible screws.
• I like the LED lights. Rather than just 1 or 2, there's a whole row of them. When in use, they light up in a running pattern. When falling asleep, they alternate. Makes a good night light, but may wear down your HDD. I didn't install the software to use the capacity gauge.
• There are 2 Firewire 800 ports. Can I connect 2 computers at once?

So far I haven't used it for anything other than Time Machine.

WD My Book Studio Edition

I just got this (1 TB) to backup my stuff. Since I have to backup my girlfriend's MB Air as well, I needed to get one that's bigger than our combined HDD capacities (620 GB). Originally I wanted to get one with gigabit ethernet interface, since that's the fastest interface on my MBP, but I found you need a router to use the My Book World, and other NASes were too expensive (because they supported multiple disks etc.) So I got this, which has Firewire 800, instead.
The Firewire connector is wierd, it doesn't click when you insert it like USB connectors. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. Anyway, I've tested it against USB. To copy about 1.5 GB of files, Firewire 800 took 2:10 while USB took 2:40. It wasn't a very precise test.

Before I got this, I read some reviews online and most of them had comments saying the drive died after 6 months, couldn't get recognised etc. After reading those I didn't want to get a WD drive, but when I read the Seagate reviews, they had similar comments. In the end I got this since I couldn't find any Seagate drives with Firewire 800 in shops. I'm hoping their 5 year warranty and Officeworks' good return policy are enough, and surely those reporting problems are only a fraction of people who bought the drive?