Took around a full minute for the folder to load, on an Athlon 64 3200+ clocked at 2.4GHz with 2GB of fairly quick memory.

Since when do apps alert in the tray about loading a view? If Outlook didn’t expend resources on a generally-useless tray icon (really, it doesn’t even change when you have new mail waiting), maybe it wouldn’t take so bloody long to do anything.

I’ve got a dual core 4200+ on the way, but really doubt it’ll make any difference when the fault is largely software that sucks. Not saying that it’s just Outlook at fault… I’m inclined to place a fair degree of blame on the well-known-to-be-sucky Windows Desktop Search. But it just integrates best… why does Microsoft have to produce products that suck?!

Speaking of which, my iPaq is working again with a brand new extended battery. Apart from the slow processor, it’s doing great… but I’m going to test-drive a Palm Z72 for a few days and see if it does any better. Basically, I don’t really need the GSM/GPRS functionality on the iPaq because it’s faster for me to connect via my Sony Ericsson via Bluetooth (as there’s no HSDPA on the iPaq). I’ll immediately miss the wireless, but have survived several months without it, and SDiO wifi cards are a possibility for the palm… I doubt they’re particularly common, though. Have been considering a Blackberry, but they’re pretty restricted in a whole heap of ways that PDAs aren’t. For example, ever tried getting an SSH client on a Blackberry? I haven’t. But have my doubts it could be done!

Anyway. Don’t use Outlook 2007 unless you have to.  It has nice multi-calendar/iCal support, but that’s about all it has going for it. Still no inbuilt SMS/MMS support, the renderer is a regression in the truest sense of the term (doesn’t even support background images — IE7 comes out, which is an awesome browser, and they decide it would be a good idea to force Word 2007 to be the renderer. Brilliant.), thoroughly mediocre RSS/feed-reading capabilities, and, to top it all off, it’s crap-slow (compared to earlier versions).

If it offers groupware advantages I don’t know of them (but doubt it could, it’s always been fairly comprehensive on that front), and chances are they won’t be particularly enabled until Server 2008 is released. Am guessing here, but not without some reasoning.

Avoid.

p.s. Yes, I’m probably overdue for a Windows reinstall.  Unfortunately a fairly major project cropped up just as I’d scheduled one, and I still haven’t got around to it. Will probably hunt down the right product key when the new CPU gets here early next week: that’s a large part of the problem, Microsoft apparently expect that home users either buy prebuilt systems with stupid crapware-filled restore disks, or are hardcore tech using pirates/MSDN users (same thing… the users rarely paid for the MSDN subs, mostly its their workplace). I have 5 XP Pro licenses of different varieties (not to mention previous versions of Windows), and of those a bunch are the same product type (upgrade)… which makes license management and compliance a bit of a challenge!

What I’d love MS to do is create a site-licensing product for SOHO users with flexible and transferable licensing at retail OEM pricing (that sounds dumb, but I mean still charging what us mortals pay for OEM licenses, not the volume prices that Dell, Lenovo, et al. get) — it’d be simple, web administered (not requiring a local server), and increasingly relevant in homes which are featuring more and more computers.

Yes, the twist is that they glow. Good times.

Not quite bright enough to provide useful illumination, but enough to be intrinsically interesting & entertaining.

I was concerned about battery life holding out: I should have been concerned about getting larger-capacity balloons in order to achieve the buoyancy required. The balloons we had (all 11″ metallic) all flew initially, when inflated to absolute-max capacity, but most of them were down within 5 hours. 14″ balloons probably would’ve performed a lot better, but we’ll never know.

We also polished off a CL tank (rated for 50 balloons) about two balloons from the end of the lot, so bigger circumference would obviously require a D tank.

Future enhancements: size, obviously; different LED housing for wider light; magnetic/RFID switching on LEDs (we were flicking them on at inflate time); and increased brightness to make them more effective as lighting, not just entertainment.

The direction I’d ultimately like to take it is non-latex/heavy-duty inflatables with permanently installed LEDs + wireless controller. At present it’s a tri-colour LED that automatically cycles between the three sub-diodes (I suppose they’re three real diodes, but whatever) that are RGB. I’d like to separate that out into three 10k MCD diodes (for a peak 30k MCD output at ‘white’) and a rechargeable supply… not quite sure what the best way to do that is. The inflatable would probably be about 15” with the luminaire (ideally) suspended in its centre so it could be used as a non-lighter-than-air device and maintain its effectiveness as a light. Think really big beach balls.

I’m looking at getting a prefab Bluetooth thing with an onboard microcontroller to manage it… would also like to add a microphone in to make it audio-responsive without wireless intervention (because wireless will suck lots more power, amongst other things). Bluetooth would be utilised primarily for fading the fixtures in and out rather than colour control, though obviously once one is in place it’s only a small step to introduce discreet faders for each colour channel.

All that said, I know nothing much about Bluetooth. I’m looking at a Class 1 prefab board with a microcontroller which looks good, but is rather uncharitably priced at 79€ per unit, and the only published unit discount step is a measly 2€ at 10 units. That’d make the cost of these little monsters (controller, LEDs, power, whatever funky kind of container I find for all of the things) at least AU$250/fixture after funding development, which does seem like an awful lot! But if they’re rechargeable and can fly and stuff I think there’s a possibility other people would buy them. On Thursday night a lot of people were pretty fascinated by them, even when they ended up on the floor.

Methinks I’ll try and build a couple for myself before even thinking about selling them, and if that comes close to happening look at other wireless options. I’m picturing something cool like walking around a room with 100 of these things flown on the ceiling (either tethered together or helium filled) holding a Bluetooth-capable PDA, the lights following you position. Processor-intensive signal-strength calculations would be done on the PDA itself, which would arrange the signals in a matrix and detect the nearest neighbour, setting its intensity (and the intensity of the surrounding signals) accordingly. There are other options, perhaps involving W-DMX512, but that’d require a separate microcontroller methinks.

Funnily enough, when looking through the wireless DMX catalogue for this year, it turns out the LD for Cirque du Soleil Delirium did basically the exact same thing (Wireless DMX + colour mixing RGB LEDs + 15” balloon)! Page 20 has an OEM TRX module in a 84x48mm form factor, but it requires an existing DMX interface. There’s an integrated device on page 15 that has a battery enclosed also and supports PoE, but it’s a bit bigger (115x40x70mm) and similarly lacks the onboard microcontroller that the Bluetooth device has.

The W-DMX might be better on power consumption, though, on account of the possibility of receive-only mode that Bluetooth lacks (though, of course, you can disable visibility on Bluetooth devices, which might assist). Both technologies use 2.4GHz spectrum, which is pretty much all fun and unlicensed games.

Possibly more to come on this front if I can track down a suitable container. I can shop for geek gear fairly effectively, but oversized pieces of latex are a bit less my thing.

Comments re: ideas, criticism, etc., all quite welcome!

The magical secret, it seems, is Bluesoleil’s free EDR Bluetooth manager software that allegedly has a 20MB data transfer limitation per session until it’s purchased, but I’ve just downloaded it and done over 50MB of audio data transfers in A2DP streams and it’s not complaining. Plus, Buy/Register under the Help menu are greyed out… so I don’t know quite how serious they are about selling this thing.

At any rate, it’s working great for me, though my crappy Bluetooth dongle slows EVERYTHING about this computer down… must try another one, it’s not A2DP’s fault because whenever I pair my mobile with it to sync the same thing happens — even when nothing’s paired, as soon as you plug the dongle in (USB) everything starts crawling.

All that said, BlueSoleil are great. Works well.

My phone has a presenter mode when paired with a PC (and, yes, it can be used as a mouse as well… but I’d never do that :P) and works at a range of at least five meters (which was kind of as far as I could walk whilst still seeing a screen in this place). You’d pay $90 for that kinda gadget on its own!

The only problem I’ve got with it is the lack of a presenter timer built in — if it had that, it’d be perfect. Guess that’s what you pay the $90 for these days :P

If I ever said anything bad about Bluetooth just being a gimmick, consider it sufficiently retracted.

The solution? Either a printer situated upstairs so the tray output falls down to me (nifty but occasionally irritating) or wireless headphones (and, really, I get enough Bluetooth/mobile/whatever else radiation as it is). Or just buying less comfy headphones so I don’t forget they’re situated on my head. The ones at present keep my ears warm. Yes, even with this much hair my ears get cold. Yes, nearly in summer after heat waves. Yes, my circulation is that bad, etc. Shut up and leave me to strangle myself with a headphone cord.

Orange today informed us that they’ve become 3. High-powered marketing blitz to existing customers of Orange has begun, and is expected to continue in force. This line typifies the level of crap I’ve come to expect 3 (and most other 3G telephony — not data, that’s okay — networks) to spew:

So, on our 3G network, you can enjoy the same great value, plus international roaming, Bluetooth™, picture messaging and more.

Okay. Let’s analyse this a bit. My call rates are going up, even though the volume of users on Hutchinson’s 3G network “is now larger than our CDMA network” (cost/volume should go down, but hasn’t). I could get international roaming with Orange, albeit only in places with CDMA: no-one should ever choose CDMA without being aware at least to some degree how the technology works/is applied globally (if that’s something they care about — I don’t, global roaming is still way too expensive + I don’t go overseas often enough). Bluetooth is the pinnacle of crap in this line, having absolutely nothing to do with the network — unless it’s a provider-supplied phone with Bluetooth disabled because they’re scumbags. I don’t need to elaborate on this point, suffice to say I sincerely hope no-one with any technical knowledge copy-proofed this. Picture messaging is arguably the most useless thing that ever happened to telephony.

As for the other crap HT have spun, I especially love this line from their FAQ:

What happens to my Orange contract?

Your Orange contract will remain valid, however, as a special offer we are allowing a full waiver of all remaining handset instalments when you upgrade to 3G.

Marvellous. Not only am I being forced onto more expensive plans + call rates (call rates matter for where I’d like to take my mobile phone usage patterns — at present, I’m price-conscious to the point of making less calls than I otherwise would, and SMS usage is trivial at 11c to any mobile in Australia. With 3 I get some free SMS, but I’m not at all helped on the call rate front), there’s also absolutely no exit option.

Effectively, HT would love to change my contract so I’m on a volume-economics-powered 3G network on which they have higher margins and I see no real benefits. Get this:

Can I keep my current phone when I upgrade to 3G?

Yes. The phone is yours to keep, however we will not be connecting any new services to Orange and this phone will not work on any other network, including our 3G network. We have developed fantastic upgrade offers that include a free handset within the plan. We are in the process of setting up a recycling program to take all old mobiles.

The phone is mine to keep, but there aren’t any CDMA networks left in Australia (WCDMA is actually nothing to do with CDMA and has no interoperability with it). “Fantastic upgrade offers” refer to marginally reduced SMS costs (which, so far as I can gather, is the most profitable part of non-business-account telephony services in Australia: namely, Orange’s core market. They never made a big impact on the business telco scene, and their flagship product — before they ditched it — was a landline-replacement plan) and increased call costs if I were to choose a plan based on my current usage. “Include a free handset” refers to the ability to get a free phone if I agree to be shunted onto a new contract term. Not terribly likely. In fact, I’m going to see this contract term out, then switch to another telco.

Or maybe not, but I’d certainly like to. Anyone have recommendations for a $35–40 plan, preferably with cap? Yes, even Telstra is an option if the cap is good enough. It’d mean we could get rid of our landline, still have a discount on Internet (two or more Telstra services on one bill), and switch to VoIP. Sure, Telstra are still getting our money but they’re shooting themselves in the foot doing it! I just want the family to get past the “learning curve” of VoIP so they’re hooked on the idea and then we can find a more compelling ISP, pick the cheapest possible landline rate with a non-Telstra provider, and then they’re only getting ULL money from us.

Did I ever mention I hate telcos?

The image quality was drool-worthy (3CCD’s do that), with a full colour(!) eyepiece, as well as an enormous flip-out screen (if the camera is the TRV950, then it’s officially 3.5″ — bloody huge, compared to all other handheld camera screens I’ve seen, at any rate) which is touch sensitive and comes complete with stylus!!  It was kind of scary, though — I kept thinking I was going to poke a hole in the screen… was the only un-cool thing about the whole experience.

As for the gimmicks?  Hmm.  Bluetooth.  Need I say more?  No?  Thankyou.  Network streaming over Bluetooth is blatantly ridiculous, especially on what is meant to be a prosumer class camera.  That said, I wouldn’t mind seeing how it worked, just as a once off.  I can’t see it being great quality, seeing the throughput of Bluetooth is apparently less than 750Kbps, as opposed to the enourmous powah of Firewire (or i.Link, as Sony insists on calling it) at 400Mbps, but still… it’d make for a cool tech demo.

Long story short?  I want one…