March 2007 Archives

Even six months ago, it was hard to get many English language reviews of Shanghai restaurants, but thanks to blogging, that's rapidly changing. Here are some sources based on a query of google:"Best Shanghai Restaurants":

"Frommer's:http://www.frommers.com/destinations/shanghai/0717010028.html. Not surprising that this traditional print book has a top listing. Their best bets are some traditional ones including M on the Bund, Three on the Bund. But there are some other good ones like Crystal Jade for Xiao Long Bao 小笼包。 One that is particularly good is Lan Na Thai. It is really in an amazing place that is the grounds of the Ruijin Hotel. A great place to wander. Also the La Villa Rouge is really terrific too.

Travel.yahoo.com Yahoo is really a user review site. Actually it doesn't have that much useful information as there are not that many reviewers, but they are right about a few things.

Bi Feng Tang is Cantonese style and is very crowded. The food is quite good and they have restaurants everywhere. It is very Chinese though so there is no English language memo. The one I've been too played a great Hong Kong movie with plenty of machine gun fire which is great for

Tandoor This is quite an authentic Indian restaurant and the belly dancers are worth the price of admission.

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I've use Kinesis for travel, but what if you have a tripod, where do you put it. A quick note to Richard over there told me that their Tripod Bags are a good choice. And the Tripod Bag summary is pretty good.

A Tripod bag, the T720 is the medium one handles up to 34" long tripods including a big ballhead. You can carry it in your hand, over the shoulder with a shoulder strap called the Y215 or the Y315 is you want a padded one. You can also ge tthe H245 and convert a tripod bag or a long lens case into a back pack. You also probably want the free H130 which stabilizes a long lenses if you carry it on your back and you get the T220 phone insert so it cushions your back.

So specifically, you need the T620 and the H245 Harness and you get a backpack thingy that you put your tripod in. How cool.

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Well, I may be too old for all this, but lately, I've been listening to a lot of Hip Hop. I've been through my rock (the Boss!), alternative rock (Natalie Merchant), chick music (Indigo Girls, Patty Griffin) and country (Dixie Chicks) eras and still love them, but its like a whole new world. Some favorites right now:

Beyonce. Now famous because of Dream Girls, she was the lead on Destiny's Child and then had a huge hit with Dangerously in Love in 2003 and now B'day in 2006 which she did on her 25th (wow I'm old!) birthday.

Rihanna/Rihanna。 Are singers getting younger. Rihanna is from Barbados and was discovered when she was 15! Her latest album is A Girl LIke Me which is awesome.

Paula Deanda. She's actually my personal favorite. (And she's younger than Rihanna yikes). She's Mexican American Her debut album is just amazing with Doing Too Much, Walk Away and When it was Me being amazing!

Sean Paul. A Jamaican reggae artist

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I've been using Mandarin Tools, but lately I've found that MDBG.net works even better. Thats mainly because you can feed it a whole chinese sentence and it shows you the pinyin and english dictionary entries. With Mandarin tools, you have to split up the sentences because it doesn't parse very well. MDBG.net in Advanced Word Dictionary works way better.

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Desktop Pets are a really cute idea. They are little applications that run around on the desktop while you type. I particularly like the "Orange" one that has oranges dancing on your screen.

Blackberry has a few free games on mobile.blackberry.com, but pinstack has a bunch more with Tetris being the coolest.

You can also get free Java games from Mobilerated.com

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Here is what the blackberry can playback according to Pinstack and there is a freeware encoder for video that Pinstack recommends.

Music

The following Audio formats (including extensions) are supported:
- ACC - audio compression formats AAC, AAC+, and EAAC+
- AMR - Adaptive Multi Rate-Narrow Band (AMR-NB) speech coder standard Supported AMR-NB rates are 4.75 KBps, 5.15 KBps, 5.9 KBps, 6.7 KBps, 7.4 KBps, 7.95 KBps, 10.2 KBps, and 12.2 KBp.
- AMR files must conform to the standards specified in Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Request for Comments (RFC) document RFC3267, Section 5, on the the Internet RFC Archive web site.
- MIDI - Polyphonic MIDI (.mid, .midi, or .smf)
- MP3 - encoded using MPEG Part 1 and Part 2 audio layer 3 Supported sample rates are 16Khz, 22.050Khz, 24Khz, 32Khz, 44.1Khz and 48Khz.
- WAV - supports sample rates of 8 kHz, 16 kHz, 22.05 kHz, 32 kHz, 44.1 kHz, and 48 kHz with 8-bit and 16-bit depths in mono or stereo Supports WAV files created using audio codec GSM6.10.

The following Audio file extensions are also supported:
- .avi containing PCM, MP3, and AAC, AAC+, and eAAC+
- .3gp containing MP3, AMR-NB, AAC, AAC+, and eAAC+
- .mp4 containing MP3, AMR-NB, AAC, AAC+, and eAAC+
- .mov containing MP3, AMR-NB, AAC, AAC+, and eAAC+
- .aac and .m4a containing AAC, AAC+, and eAAC+ Video

The following Video formats are supported:
- MPEG-4 Part 2 - Simple Profile + bvops (including DivX files in this format)
- H.263 Profile 0 and Profile 3

The way to get H.263 and then you select,
1.Select the Output Container= avi
2.Select the output Video codec=H.263
3.Aspect=11:9,4:3 or 1:1
4.Frame/sec= 14.985
5.Bitrate kbps= 64-576

The following Video file extensions are also supported:
- .avi containing MPEG4 Part 2 and H.263
- .mov containing MPEG4 Part 2 and H.263
- .3gp containing MPEG4 Part 2 and H.263
- .mp4 containing MPEG4 Part 2 and H.263
- .m4v containing MPEG4 Part 2 and H.263
- .mpg containing MPEG4 Part 2 and H.263

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Pinstack has an amazingly helpful list of things for the Pearl. The biggest and the incredibly bizarre keyboard shortcuts. They aren't intuitive anymore because the keyboard is so much smaller.

Keyboard Shortcuts
Basic Shortcuts

The following shortcuts can be used in many applications:

- To move the cursor, roll the trackball.
- To exit a screen or to move to a previous page in a browser, press the Escape key.
- To move upwards in a screen, press 3.
- To move downwards in a screen, press 9.
- To move to the top of a screen, press 1.
- To move to the bottom of a screen, press 7.
- To move to the next item, press 6.
- To move to the previous item, press 4.
- To move to a list item or menu item, type the first letter of the item.
- To select or clear a check box, click the trackball.
- To select adjacent items, hold the Shift key and roll the trackball.
- To delete a selected item, press the Delete key.
- To switch applications, hold the Alt key and press the Escape key. Continue holding the Alt key and select an application. Release the Alt
key.
- To return to the Home screen, press the End key.
- To lock the keyboard, from the Home screen, hold the asterisk ( * ) key.- To unlock the keyboard, hold the Send key and press the asterisk ( *) key. Type your password.
- To switch between the Default and Vibrate notification profiles, from the Home screen, hold the pound ( # ) key.
- To turn on a theme or notification profile, select a theme or notification profile, then press the Space key.

Phone Shortcuts
The following shortcuts can be used in the phone application or during a phone call:

- To answer a phone call, press the Send key.
- To place an active phone call on hold and answer a second incoming phone call, press the Send key.
- To view the contact list, hold the Send key.
- To insert a plus sign ( + ) when typing a phone number, hold 0.
- To add an extension to a phone number, press the X key, then type the extension number.
- To assign a speed dial number to a key, from the Home screen or in the Phone application, hold the key you want to assign. Type the phone number.
- To check your voice mail, hold 1.
- To view the last phone number that you dialed, scroll to the top of the Phone screen, then press the Enter key. Press the Send key to dial the number.

Camera Shortcuts
The following shortcuts can be used in the Camera application:

- To take a picture, press the Right Convenience key.
- To zoom the camera in, press the Volume Up key.
- To zoom the camera out, press the Volume Down key.
- To turn flash on/off in camera mode, press the Space key.

Message Shortcuts
The following shortcuts can be used in the Messages application:
- To compose a message from the message list, press the comma ( , ) key.
- To reply to a message, press the exclamation point ( ! ) key.
- To reply to all, press the question mark ( ? ) key.
- To forward a message, press the period ( . ) key.
- To view received messages, hold the Alt key and press 3.
- To view call logs, hold the Alt key and press the period ( . ) key.
- To view voice mail messages, hold the Alt key and press 7.
- To view SMS text messages, hold the Alt key and press the question mark ( ? ) key.
- To view your message list again, press the Escape key.
- To move up a message in the list, press 2.
- To move down a message in the list, press 8.

Typing Shortcuts
The following shortcuts can be used when typing text in an application:
- To type the alternate character on a key, hold the Alt key and press the character key.
- To type an accented or special character, hold the letter key and roll the trackball left or right. Click a selected character.
- To type a symbol, press the Symbol key. To view more symbols, press the Symbol key again. Type the letter that appears below the symbol to enter the corresponding symbol.
- To insert a period, press the Space key twice. The next letter is capitalized.
- To capitalize a letter, hold the letter key until the capitalized letter appears.
- To turn on NUM lock, hold the Shift key and press the Alt key.
- To turn off NUM lock, press the Alt key.
- To insert an at sign ( @ ) or a period ( . ) in an email address field, press the Space key.
- To type a number in a number field, press a number key. You do not need to press the Alt key.
- To type a number in a password field, hold the Alt key and press the number key.
- To type a letter in a number field, hold the Alt key and use the multi-tap input method to enter the letter.
- To switch typing input languages, hold the Alt key and press the Enter key. Select a language, then release the Alt key. Note: To allow this functionality, on the Language screen, verify that the Use Input Method Shortcut field is set to Yes.
- To select a line of text, press the Shift key and roll the trackball.
- To select text character by character, hold the Shift key and roll the trackball left or right.
- To cancel a text selection, press the Escape key.
- To cut selected text, hold the Shift key and press the Delete key.
- To copy selected text, press the Alt key and click the trackball.
- To paste your cut or copied text, press the Shift key and click the trackball.

Search Shortcuts
The following shortcuts can be used when searching in an application:
- To search for a contact in a list of contacts, type the contact name or initials separated by a space.
- To view the criteria of your last search, in your list of searches, press the Menu key. Click Last.

Attachment Shortcuts
The following shortcuts can be used when viewing attachments:
- To search for text in an attachment, press Q.
- To switch between the table of contents and the full content of an attachment, press O.
- To change the size of a column in a spreadsheet, press Z.
- To move to a specific cell in a spreadsheet, press A.
- To view the content of a cell in a spreadsheet, press the Space key.
- To view a slide show presentation, press A.
- To stop a slide show presentation, hold the Escape key.
- To switch presentation views, press Z.

Browser Shortcuts
The following shortcuts can be used in the browser applications:
- To insert a period ( . ) in the Go To dialog box, press the Space key.
- To insert a forward slash ( / ) in the Go To dialog box, hold the Shift key and press the Space key.
- To open the bookmark list from a web page, press 5.
- To add a bookmark from a web page, press the question mark ( ? ) key.
- To view a thumbnail version of a web page, press X. To return to the normal view, press any key.
- To stop loading a web page, press the Escape key.
- To move to a specific web page, press the period ( . ) key.
- To hide the banner on a web page, press the exclamation point ( ) key again.
- To close a browser, hold the Escape key.

Media Shortcuts
The following shortcuts can be used in the Media application:
- To pause a video, press the Mute key. To resume playing the video, press the Mute key again.
- To zoom in to a picture, press 3.
- To zoom out from a picture, press 9.
- To return to the original picture size, press 5.
- To rotate a picture, press the comma ( , ) key.
- To pause a slide show, press the Space key. To resume the slide show, press the Space key again.
- To pause a song, press the Mute key. To resume playing the song, press the Mute key again.

Maps Shortcuts
The following shortcuts can be used in the Maps application:
- To zoom in to a map, press L.
- To zoom out from a map, press O.
- To view the status information at the top of a map, press Q. To hide the status information at the top of a map, press Q again.

Calendar Shortcuts
The following shortcuts can be used in the Calendar Day view:
Note: To allow shortcuts in Day view, in the Calendar options, set the Enable Quick Entry field to No.
- To schedule an appointment, press the period ( . ) key.
- To move to the next day, press 6.
- To move to the previous day, press 4.
- To move ahead one hour, press 2.
- To move back one hour, press 8.

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What a pain, this shift in Daylight Savings Time has burned more IT cycles for less benefit than anything I can remember. In any case, a Blackberry is completely messed up, so check Blackberry for the patching needed. You have to download something to your PC and then sync it to your blackberry.

And the patch only works under IE. Ugh.

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Only I could go from looking for a simple camcorder for someone to suddenly finding myself on a professional film production site, looking at 4 pound broadcast quality cameras, but heck, that's me. Videomaker has a great list of top products for video types at the high end. A pretty good list of things if you are nerdy enough to want them.

By the way the great resources are Camcorderinfo.com, but also SonyHDVInfo.com where all the Sony geeks live.

• Canon HV10. Mainly because it is very small. Weighs less than a pound. Main drawback is that it doesn't use a hard drive. $1200 list. The Sony HDR-SR1 is tempting as it has a hard drive, but it is quite noisy in taking HD pictures and not as high resolution as current miniDV-based HD camcorders. So as I said before, if you can stand it wait a bit for the true camcorder that is both HD and hard drive based, but if you can't then you have a hard choice, get the HV10 with better picture quality (in fact, very close to the XH A1, its $3,500 brother) or have the convenience of hard disk with the SR1. SonyHDVInfo say that while the SR1 is good, editing the new AVCHD format is a pain. Most packages support the HDV which is HD on a miniDV right now, so if you are editing current stuff and need it right now, the miniDV is right. That's going to change fast, so if you can hold on.
• JVC Everio GZ-MG505 or the Sony DCR-SR300. $1300 list. It is standard definition but it does have a hard disk with 30GB and most importantly it uses a 3-CCD design, so images are much better and these are 16:9 format imagers according to Videomaker, although Camcorderinfo found the SR100 (now the SR300 updated) to have much better picture a quality and it also has optical image stabilization like the older SR100 which they liked quite a bit at Camcorder info.
• Sony HDR-FX7 or the "Canon XH A1:"http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Canon-XH-A1-Camcorder-Review/ComparisonsConclusion.htm $3500. This is a prosumer HD camcorder, it uses three sensors as well and has an HDMI interface. It is still tape based though. Its main competition is the really good XH A1, which is about the same price and Camcorderinfo liked the Canon better because the FX7 didn't do well in low light (because it uses CMOS not CCD sensors) and the XH A1 has more manual controls. As a technical aside, both a 3-sensor systems, but the FX7 isn't native 16:9 so it stretches pixels whereas the Canon is a native 16:9 chip. The tough tradeoff is that the Sony has more sharpness but more noise, while the canon has less sharpness, but has very little noise
• Manfrotto 560B Monopod $210. I really love the Gitzo that I just bought, but there times when a monopod is just lighter. This one actually has a little stand at the bottom so it will standup.
• Steadicam Merlin $849. OK, this is a true geek gadget, this makes the camera gyro stabilized. What a cool idea.
• AKG Perception 100 $200. This is a really high quality microphone for those studio podcasting situations.
• Sony Vegas 7 + DVD Architect, $700. This is what I use, I have to say it is amazingly good.

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Well we are the cusp of a camcorder revolution. In thinking about the next generation to get, the Canon Optura 100MC really did last a long time. It was 480i/60 standard definition that used miniDV tapes. I actually made quite a few videos considering what a pain it was to capture. A fast computer really helped. Last year, I got the Sony SR100 (the new model is the SR200), unlike the tape based, the amount of evolution in hard disk camcorders is just amazing. Sony is doing a new model every year.

The bleeding edge though is HD or high definition. This is 1080i/24p and the technology is just evolving for consumer camcorders. The picture quality promises to be great, but the use of a new codec, the AVCHD, has got lots of teething problems. The best model looks like the Sony HDR-SR1, but its quality isn't as good as the miniDV-based HD camcorders yet because the codec (H.264) is still maturing compared to MPEG-2. So what's a nerd to do. Well, other than wait for the follow-on to the SR100, its too look at the really heavy professional or prosumer camcorders that cost $2-3K rather than $1.5-1K. You get four pound monsters rather than one pound, stuff into your pocket, but the picture quality is amazing. So here's my advice:

1. Wait for the SR1 follow-on (SR2?). If you can stick it out, wait for the next generation of hard disk drive AVCHD camcorders. Sony and Canon are neck and neck as usual in producing these. The SR100 is just about done and the Canon folks don't have a hard disk based camcorder yet. Too bad.
2. SR1. If you really have to have it right away, you can still get the SR1 for about $1000, but hurry as they seem to be stocking out
3. Canon HV10. If you don't mind the miniDV format and I really do, the HV10 is probably the best of the current ones, even compared to the Sony HC3 that it competes directly with and beats it by a nose because of better color balance. It weighs less than a pound, the miniDV makes it hard for me to recommend it.
4. "Canon XL H1": . Turns out that the color quality is actually about as good as the HV10, so you only need this bigger brother if you want manual controls and you care about low or available light shooting where having 3CCDs makes a difference.
5. Sony HVR-V1U. OK, if you've got $4,000 to splurge and don't need a new car, the Sony 4 pound professional camera has a great review. It is a 3CCD system so has great color accuracy and also low light capability. It shoots 1080i in 24p, and 30p modes. So, its ready for you to make real movies. The biggest drawback is that it still uses the MiniDV format cassette.

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On our machines, the C:\ drive is fast and small and the e:\ drive is the user directory, one thing that is quite hard is to make sure the various user files in c:\documents and settings move to e:\. You can do a simple thing which is to

Right click on the My Documents and then change them from c:\ to e:\, but this doesn't move any of the local settings like Outlook's gigantic directories or the IE cache.

Wes' Puzzling Blog : Moving XP User Profile. This tells you where the magical settings are. You can just copy c:\documents and settings to e:\documents and settings then go through each user directory in in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList. Double-click the ProfileImagePath subkey and replace its contents with e:\documents and settings\jake. Close your registry editor.

What do you do when an MDX gets 12mpg in the city and 14mpg average. Seems like everyone I know is trying to figure this out. A Highlander (OK, but the third seat is way too crowded and it is a bit noisy). For true econo-cars, 2007 Prius and the Option 6 package is kind of amazing. Two years ago you couldn't get leather or anything, but the base package. Now the price goes from $21K to $30k, but you can get leather and everything. When you are trying to buy something like this though, it doesn't seem like there is a good guide anywhere on how to shop for cars online:

1. Scion. If you can, don't buy from the Toyota side of the house. Its too bad the Prius doesn't have an equivalent on the Scion side. Like Saturn, these folks just have a single price. I love it
2. Costco. Last year, Costco didn't have either the Prius or the Camry Hybrid on the list, but if it is, then you get a no haggle contracted price that is $500-1000 above the invoice. Super easy, you just fill it in the form and then someone contacts you on the web.
3. Autoland. If you belong to a credit union, then you can use Autoland.com to connect and do the same kind of buying service.
4. Ebay If you don't mind a used one, eBay often times has good deals. At a minimum a search will tell you what the street price is. For instance, the Option 6 Prius 2007 is available in Arizona for $27K so at least you get some idea of the price
5. "Dealer Cost"
6. Haggling. Well, if you don't have any of these options, then you are left with haggling. First figure out the true dealer cost. Don't get those dealer installed options, if they want you to have it, then by definition you don't need it. Go to Toyota and figure out the true list price of the car. The dealers really like to obscure this and by the way for the car we are looking at it is $29,344 without tax
7. Motor Trend. These guys have the prices, it shows that the base price of $22,175 has an invoice of $20,419 and the Touring version is $23,070 with a base of $21,171, so there is 8% margin built in to these cars. This does not include the destination charge.

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Our trusty old ASUS M5p that runs the digital photo printing and scanning setup at home has a failing 60GB hard drive. Nice that this SMART feature tells you that and the thing has been hanging. Its a nice notebook with the Dothan processor, so seems a shame to scrap it. It has a 2.5" disk and an ATA connection, so off to find a good replacement drive.

Pricegrabber

Gizmodo mentions that Hitachi was first out the gate with a monster drive, the Hitachi Travelstar 5K160 was announced mid last year and uses the PATA not SATA but is 160GB . Newegg reviews loved it, but, Pricegrabber":http://www.pricegrabber.com/rating_getprodrev.php/masterid=21730756/id_type=masterid
Here are the reviews, it seems like we are at the start of the next generation of 160GB perpendicular drives, but they have reliability problems. It is tempting to get though because it is exactly the same price as the 100GB drive according to Mpire

Storagereview has a two year old review of drives and like the Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 with 100GB capacity, 7200 RPM, 50GB/platter at $110. Mpire shows new at $115 from Newegg. If you are worried about reliability, there is the E7K100 which Silentpcreview likes and which is supposed to have enhanced reliability whatever that means, but it is the same price as the 7K100, but doesn't implement power saving modes for laptops, so you don't want that but apparently some of these features like unloading the heads automatically reduce the life of the system, so get the E7K100 for desktop/server and the 7K100 for notebooks

As an amazing aside, Hitachi announced a Terabyte in a hard drive. Called the 7K1000, it has 5 platters. Wow, how cool...

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It seems like it is swimming Prius's around now. So, does it make sense to buy now or should you wait. Seems like everyone I know is asking. It's not an easy decision because the area is innovating so fast. Net, net, if you can wait, the 2008 Prius looks pretty amazing.

• 2008 Prius. Autoblog reports that the 2008 model will have significant tweaks, so if you can wait, sounds like you might want to. They are going to tune the shape to make it more aerodynamic. Also they are going to go from a 1.5 liter to 1.8 liter engine and with changes to newer batteries they want to get to 80mpg and there might to solar or plug-in options available.

Soultek reports a 30% mileage improvement by moving to Li-ion batteries from NiMH so more power, less weight and that the drive train itself will be half the weight and half the cost

Asahi reports that there mjight be a station wagon or a minivan sometime later, but that early in 2008, you should see this new Prius.

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I've got a set of ER4-Ps, ER4-Ss and ER-6s from Etymotic. They are all really superb in terms of quality, but over time, I've lost the various components. like pouches and bags. Etymotic itself sells the little pouches for $4 each and also has a winder for the cables that is very handy since the cable length is never right. Also, it sells the little plastic tips and filters too. And the shipping is a very reasonable $6 per order.

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MP Registration: U.S. - China Bonus Miles Offer
If you fly from the US to China this spring, you get a bonus 10,000 miles on United. You have to register your MIleage Plus number though.

Tong Family Blog: Mogo Wireless Bluetooth Mouse

Mogo Mouse

is really cool. I finally bit the bullet and ordered one. It fits inside your PCMCIA slot of your notebook and you can use it for presentations as a clicker and more importantly, for me it is way better than the touchpads. Expensive at $70, only from Tigerdirect, but a great gift! Newton Peripherals makes it.

Mpire has ebay auctions where they are as low as $65.

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! I got the really amazing Gitzo 2530 and the Markins Emilie Q3, but I didn't realize that for these high end tripods, they have something called a "camera plate" that adapts the little thingy on the camera to the tripod. It is called a quick release plate and I gather you need one for your camera. In my case from Markins, that is the PG-30U and also for the big lenses, in my case, the Canon 100-400 requires a PL-55 mounting plate. Both are $50 each. So beware.

I actually ordered them from Photoproshop.com which is the guy who runs Nikonians, a great site for us photo buffs.

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I bought a 4GB Sandisk Extreme III card last June when I got my camara, now its pretty clear that a single card is a little scary so time to get a backup.

Tong Family Blog: Fast Compact Flash Cards

Rob Galbraith did actual in camera testing with the Digital Rebel XT to see what were the fastest cards. For most of these, the RAW write speed wwas the most affect with the Sandisk Extreme III 1GB and 2GB having identical performance at 4.888MBps write JPEG and 6.26MBps RAW.

Rob Glabraith has continued to update his databases, so here is the latest but its a bit old. Bob Atkins has a great piece on this. He says essentially that for Canon digital Rebel and 10D, they were limitefd to 1.4MBps writing no matter what, but any Canon later than the 20D can wirte at card speed, so the 20D writes at 5MBps with the so called 60x cards and the 1Ds mark ii is at 7MBps. The Digital Rebel XT should be similarly fast, so getting a fast card matters. The Sandisk Extreme III remains very fast and it is cheap and writes at a healthy 20MBps, although most cameras can only write at 5-6MBps at most, so getting the Extreme III is probably the value leader card right now. You want these cards, because they handle extreme temperature ranges.

The highest capacity cardes are the Transcend 120× 8GB card which at $91 is a great bargain, but I'm not sure it will work that well for a camera at temperature extremes. Also the incredible 45MBps speed is mainly important for CF card to PC since the controllers in current cameras are limited to 4-7MBps. Means the Extreme III at 20MBps is a good match for today's cameras and they are 1/3 cheaper than the Extreme IV at 1/2 the speed.

In terms speed, Sandisk just released their 40MBps Extreme IV series and in February 2007, Lexar introduced their professional UDMA cards with a 300x speed raing for 45MBps

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Well, our kids are ready for their own laptops now. So the standard one is:

Lenovo T60. Although the review is for the year old T60 1951 that had the older Core Duo, the latest ones on Lenovo's site use the newer Core 2 Duo. It is a bit heavy at 5.4lbs but should be reliable.

The other good choices are well documents on notebookreview.com, they are the:

Sony VAIO SZ. While a little heavier than the TX series I've used at 4lbs, the bigger screen is really great. It also has the Core 2 Duo and uses the Xbrite and now had a built-in webcam and microphone. The SZ430N/B is $2100 at Newegg and has 2GB Ram, 2Ghz processor and 160GB hard disk. It also has a fingerprint reader to make loggin on easy. The main drawback is that its battery life is more like three hours with everything turned on. It uses an LED backlight which is very light and great quality.

MacBook Pro. This is the dream uhit for many of us although it is the most expensive at $2500 and it is heavy at 6lbs.

For those of you still crave ultrasmall, the Sony TX remains the leader there. It is slow, but it has amazing battery life and a wonderful screen for watching DVDs. I use it all the time since it is less than 3lbs. In system tests, it is about half the speed of the T60. YOu can easily get 5 hours of life.

Well, its time to look at photo printers again, PC Mag has some good reviews:

* Canon Pixma iP4300. It is only $90-100 and is a good choice for a standard printer.

In terms 13×19" photos, I've used the Canon i9900 for years, so what's the updates to printers:

* Canon PIXMA Pro9000 and Pro9500 and the 10-color PIXM Pro9500. The 9000 uses pigment based while the slightly lwer end Pro9000 users dye-based. The Pro9000 quality rivals film and the 8-color previous generatin i9900 was similarly high quality.They are also adding an 8×10" size (finally). It adds LEDs for each separate ink cartridge which is pretty cool. It nw uses smething called ChrmaLife100 which is said t last 100 years. The Pro9000 is good enough for every thing but monochromatic gallery reproductions, so good for most uses. One nice thing is that it can print on paper up to 1.2mm thick. It streets for about $430
* Stylus Photo R1800. It can print up to 13×44" and is 8-color. Its ink reportedly lasts 200 years and 300 years on Premium Glossy Phot Paper when kept in photo albums. It also allows you to print in CDs and DVDs. It also has a street price of about $480. Most of the cost is of course in the cartridges. Because Epson is pigment-based, it isn't as vivid as the Canon Pro9000 and is best for printing on glssy and matte rather than on Fine Art media.

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