» Technology - Simon Lau

First Purchase of 2009….The Wii from Shoppers Drug Mart

After much talk about buying an Nintendo Wii, I’ve finally done it. The Wii would be the second console I’ve ever owned, the first being the original Nintendo NES.
I ended up buying the Wii from Shoppers Drug Mart for $269.99, after tax it came out to 305.09. I only actually had to go to two stores to find the Wii unlike some of the horror stories I’ve heard about how hard it is to find one of these things. The best part about buying the Wii today at SDM is the 20x optimum points. I ended up getting 54,000 points with the one purchase.
Immediately after buying the Wii, I went to yet another Shoppers Drug Mart to buy the Wii Fit. It retails for 89.99 but using the points I just gained, I was able to knock $75.00 off the final price, resulting in a bill of less than 30.00! A pretty solid deal if you ask me! I’m sold on how well these optimum points stack up!

Tags: Nintendo, SDM, Wii, Wii Fit

. 03 Jan 09 | Technology, shopping | Comments (3)

Dell XPS m1210 9 Cell Replacement Battery

While on my Europe trip, my laptop’s battery got its biggest workout since I’ve owned it. As a matter of fact, today marks the 1 year anniversary of my laptop.

Nearing the end of my trip, I booted into Ubuntu and it reported that my laptop’s battery only had 34-36% effective life. There was over 60% degradation in one year of very little battery use. I had noticed the battery performance degrade and on maximum charge I was getting just under 2 hours. When I first got the laptop, I was hovering around 3-3.5 hrs, still less than what a 9cell should provide.

I gave Dell a call two days ago to report my issue and after a lengthy discussion with technical support, they offered to ship me a replacement battery. Not bad giving I had 2 days of warranty left at that time.

The new battery arrived this morning and it just finished its first charge.

new battery

new battery

New Battery Label (left) & Comparison of the batteries (right)

The original battery:

batterymond

nbc

With a wear level of 63%, I was only managing 1 hour 50 minutes under idle conditions in windows.

The new battery:

new battery

nbc new

With the new battery the full capacity is almost the same as the design capacity, short by only 200 mWh, unlike my original battery where the difference was around 55000mWh! Under full charge, the battery is slated to last in the range of 4.5 hours. This is under idle conditions, CPU throttling, wifi enabled and BlueTooth disabled. Once I get some new results, I will update with another post.

Tags: battery, dell, Laptop, XPS m1210

. 13 Jun 08 | Technology, XPS m1210 | Comments (0)

OCZ 4GB Rally2 Turbo USB Flash Drive

If you already haven’t done so, please check out my review of the OCZ 4GB Rally2 Turbo. There are only 2 things wrong with this drive, first I didn’t get the 8GB model but more importantly the packaging is really a waste of material. With petroleum at record high prices, I encourage OCZ and all manufacturers to simplify their packaging and get rid of the plastic clamshells!

The performance of the Rally2 Turbo is quite good. I hit a maximum write speed of 29MB/s and a maximum read speed of 32 MB/s. During practical testing, I was average a write speed of around 25 MB/s. Very respectable.

From the concept of the Rally Flash Drive family, OCZ has done everything right: a sleek slender body with fast performance. As the series matured and evolved to the Rally2 Turbo, the drive has had a few cosmetic changes and the performance has kicked into a higher gear. The curved edges with no protruding parts and overall small body makes it an easy fit into pockets while the 25-30MB/s performance guarantees you quick copy from hard drive to flash.

Tags: 4GB, OCZ, Overclockers Online, Rally2 Turbo, Review

. 04 May 08 | Reviews, Technology | Comments (0)

School Out…Trip Time!

I finished my last undergraduate exam on Wednesday and for the past few days I’ve been getting ready for my trip. It was a good feeling to be done, five years of which one was spent working with Petro-Canada as an intern. I’ll be rejoining them July 7th as a Plant Engineering and it’ll be nice to see everyone again. In the meantime, there is a lot more trip planning and packing to do. Expect more blog posts as the days leading up to my departure gets closer and closer. We’ve have nearly finalized all of our accommodations, just waiting for one apartment to confirm. If I don’t hear from them Monday, I will start making phone calls.

I’ll be carrying an old MEC Brio 70 that will house my stuff and Karen’s. I’ll be bringing along my laptop and PDA (GPS) so that will add to the weight as we move around in Italy via train. Regardless it should be a ton of fun.

Here are the cities we’ll be visiting and the order it’ll occur in: London, Venice, Milan, Florence, Pisa, Rome and finally Paris before returning home June 10th.

Tags: Europe 2008, graduation trip, undergraduate

. 02 May 08 | School, Technology | Comments (2)

HIS Radeon HD3650 IceQ Video Card

Nivedh published his review of the HIS Radeon HD3650 IceQ yesterday and when I first read it, I was pleasantly surprised by the overall package. For starters, it comes with an Arctic Cooling Silencer which has been known for its superior cooling powers. At some point, I hope HIS upgrades there cooling technology to the Accelero which appears to be have the option for a much quieter performance.

thumbnail

Overall, the HD3650 IceQ was a great performer. It allowed for moderate overclocking games and for a mid-range performing machine the $90, at time of writing, is not a huge investment.

I wouldn’t recommend any 3650 for high resolution gaming or for playing games of the newest title. If you’re the occasional gamer or multi-media type of guy, this card should suit you nicely.

Throughout the tests, the HIS Radeon HD 3650 performed well. It is not a top-of-the-line card but its performance should be satisfactory for all but the most extreme of gamers. If you don’t care for too much eye candy or extremely high resolutions, this mid-range card should fit the bill in terms of value. For its price, it is a great buy. Also, it supports CrossFireX so you can upgrade later if desired.

Tags: ATI, HIS Digital, Overclockers Online, Radeon 3650, Review

. 26 Apr 08 | Reviews, Technology | Comments (0)

Mitron Duplus DUP-35 HDD Selector

This is a guest post by David Luu of Overclockers Online

Manufacturer: Mitron Interlink Inc.

Mitron Interlink Inc. is a new face on the computer component industry, manufacturing PC modding gear to hard drive enclosures. Based in Taiwan, this company is giving us a first hand look at their HDD Selector (Duplus DUP-35).

This hard drive selector device is aimed towards the crowd which uses two hard drives which have issues with booting and O/S isolation. Although this is not a completely new idea on the market, it is rare to come across these in a PC hardware store.

Package

The unit that was sent to us is a pre-production model, so it did not come in a retail package. However, everything included was shipped.

The selector comes with the switch, power cables, and screws. The selector is designed to fit into a standard 3.5″ bay.

Tags: Hard Drive, Mitron, Overclockers Online, Review

. 15 Apr 08 | Reviews, Technology | Comments (4)

UofT MIE443: RoboPong

This was my final project as a undergraduate student, our team was to design a robot that would push practice golf balls up a ramp and deposit them on to the opponents playing field. They of course will be doing the same thing to us. After two minutes of play, the winner was determined by who had more balls remaining on their side. We unfortunately went 1 for 3 and lost one match by approximately 1/3 of a golf ball. I would say that was a tie given the poor workmanship of the playing field.

I have six pictures before the break, a video followed by another batch of photos. The design is quite ingenious with the rotating sensor arm. The robot is definitely not as fast as some of the other kickers, but it is far more interesting and better designed for the class.