Dell's Upcoming Smartphones Leaked

After the purported 'lost' Apple iPhone4 development unit saw the light of Gizmodo, news of specifications and images of Dell's up an coming Smartphone line have been leaked. PCworld, FastCompany and Hothardware have all snapped up the news and come out with their own analysis of the Smartphone, pre release.Veritable Engadget has run a story on each of the new units starting with the Dell Lightning, then the Dell Thunder, the Dell Smoke and finally the Dell Flash.

According to the information had by Engadget the Dell Lightning is a Windows Phone 7 device. This will definitely occupy the high-end of the the line, as it has 3G, a 1GHz Snapdragon processor coupled with a 4.1-inch OLED touch screen. It also has a slide out QWERTY thumboard.

Next in the line-ups hierarchy is the Dell Thunder, an Android-based Smartphone with the same 3G capabilities, OLED screen and Snapdragon processor. It does away with the slide out keyboard though, but is as gorgeous (at least in the pics) as the Lightning. Aside from missing the keyboard, it also differentiates itself from the Lightning by bundling up apps for Facebook, Twitter, Hulu and Youtube in it's app arsenal.

The Dell Smoke is a bit of a departure, form-factor wise from the rest of the phones. It's candybar shape and QWERTY keypad reminds me of some earlier Sony-Ericsson Smartphone from years yonder. It has a 2.8 inch TFT screen, 3G and a 5MP camera. It also sets itself apart from the rest by having mutilple account support for Exchange and Active Sync, plus VPN support for secure connections. It has every indication, feature-wise, that is going to be positioned as a business phone.

The Dell Flash is supposed to be the  'mainstream' Smartphone of the line that will bring Smartphone goodness 'to the masses', meaning it will be cheaper than current Smartphones in the market offering the same function or feature set. Also Android-based, it will be powered by a 800MHz Qualcomm processor, come equipped with a 3.5-inch TFT screen, 3G connectivity, WiFi and a 5MP camera. The Flash is also being touted as having a better touchscreen keyboard better than what's currently available in Smartphones today.

With Smartphone news being leaked hear and there, the Smartphone manufacturers are obviously gearing up this year and getting as much press as they can to build excitement. As I have been holding out the last few months, wanting badly to replace my aging Treo 650, news like this makes me want to wait some more. I have been mulling over buying a Nokia E63 or an E72 (if my budget were a little more biggger). Now I realize waiting a few more months will give me more choices and the best bang-for-the-buck if all these exciting phones come to market soon.

Carrying Books Around

Cryptonomicon really is an interesting read. I keep bringing it with me everywhere I go. Although it feels good to be reading a real book for a change, it's a tad bit inconvenient. An ebook reader would definitely be more convenient. I mean the size of ebook readers doesn't make it more convenient. It's actually how many books you can carry around in them.

Just think of it. Right now, I am in the middle of three novels. I have a paperback copy of Cryptonomicon, a paperback copy of Whiteout (Ken Follett) and a PDF copy of Bourne Legacy saved in my Treo 650. What if I had all three in ebook form? I could conveniently switch from one to the other, carrying just one book - I mean ebook reader. 

Take the Amazon Kindle. It can take in around 3,500 books (Kindle DX only, 1,500 for the 6" Kindle). Since  going international, Kindle owners from over a hundred countries can  now connect wirelessly to Amazon buy books, a big plus for people living outside the US. Users can read their existing PDF and TXT format ebooks  and play Audible audio books or MP3's. HTML, DOC, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP files are supported when converted for the Kindle's software. It is limited by its e-ink display, as it can only display in black and white. But that display uses less power than color LCD and can last about a week with the wireless turned on and about 2 weeks with wireless off. That's from a single charge. It definitely beats the amount of time my cell phone can last on a single charge. So it's power-saving, can carry a lot of books, can play music and you can buy books using a 3G connection (books within minutes, they say).

Then there's also the Nook from Barnes & Noble, a great device that one-ups the Amazon Kindle by giving users the ability to share ebooks with each other free of charge. The Nook also comes with WiFi, so you can still download books if 3G in your neck of the woods is spotty. It has a color touch-screen near the bottom instead of buttons to control the interface. It does lend the Nook a better, cleaner look overall. The main reading display is still e-ink though to conserve energy in between charges. It has a smaller capacity when compared to the DX, holding approximately 1,500 books. That's less then half of what the Kindle DX can carry, but plenty enough to give you a few years worth of reading - LOL. If you need more storage though, you can add to it by using a Micro SD card. The Nook supports EPUB, PDB and PDF ebook files. In addition it can also play MP3's and use photos in JPG, GIF, PNG and BMP formats as screensavers (full specs here). Downside is no love for geeks living outside the US. The Nook is US-only for now.

These two are the most viable ebook readers today, since both are tied to each company's bookstore and make buying books really easy. They also allow readers to read (to some extent) their existing ebooks. As with any new-fangled gadget, the contention is still price. Personally, I can't afford them. And until I can, I'll stick to paperbacks and the ebooks on my Treo 650. 

My Blog Tagged Spam - The Saga Endures

Still no update, I still get the same message over and over again: 

" Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (What's a spam blog?) Since you're an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive.

We received your unlock request on April 12, 2010. On behalf of the robots, we apologize for locking your non-spam blog. Please be patient while we take a look at your blog and verify that it is not spam.

Find out more about how Blogger is fighting spam blogs." 

Sorry, doesn't cut it. I've been posting to that blog for close to 9 years. It's been almost two weeks and i can't get nowhere, http://daysleepered.blogspot.com is still dead. I don't even know if i could get it back or how to get in touch with Blogger admins in charge of this whole spam-detection business.  

Dusting Off

This morning, I had a little spare time to clean the computer. I hadn't opened it since I had the motherboard replaced some 2 months back. I was quite surprised by the amount of dust that had collected inside the case. It was probably because I bought an additional high-RPM exhaust fan that increased the airflow inside the case. I bought a Deepcool XFan 5 that mounts in place of a PCI card slot. It barely fits inside the case, a TomMade TC800 micro-ATX case. I installed the XFan5 because I needed to make sure that temperatures inside the case won't go up if the chipset fan on my Intel Atom 330 board failed on me again. If you look around forums for D945GCLF2 and D945GCLF2D, you'll see most complaints are from the fan failing or its whiny noise. That's probably the reason why Intel opted to go fanless with the Intel D510MO  Mount Olive platform

I had my board replaced under warranty, but since the 1 year lapsed this March, I won't be getting any  replacement for the board that I have now. Using the XFan 5 actually lowered the temperature of the processor by about 8 degrees. The hard drive temp also went down by about 2 degrees. That's saying something, because Intel Atom boards have passive cooling on the processor and a tiny little fan on the chipset heatsink. The hard drive on my system is mounted away from any other fan. With the XFan 5 mounted some 2 inches away, the airflow is at least helping cool down the drive.

Running the fan caused dust to accumulate at the mounting brackets nearest the side panel vent holes. Dust was also starting to carpet the lower panel of the case. I busted out the cush-grip Stanley mini-screwdrivers, popped open the side panel and took the computer outside. I took out the mounting bracket and dusted the insides with a clean old paintbrush. I couldn't get to the chipset heatsink though I managed to clean the fan on it. One of those mini-vacuums would have been usefull in those tight places.

I did try to connect the XFan 5 to the extra fan connector on the motherboard. The XFan 5 has both a molex and 3-pin connector. Using the 3-pin connector lets the motherboard control the speed of the fan. Alas, the connector wouldn't go in because a small capacitor was right beside the connector on the board. Talk about being at the wrong place. Oh,well. Maybe full throttle on the XFan 5 isn't so bad. It isn't noisy or anything, after all. After I finished dusting it off, I re-routed some of the cabling and put it back together again.

It'll be at least another month or two before I get cleaning it again. Since there aren't any new upgrades I can squeeze in, I won't have a reason to open the case and discover horrific dust bunnies being born. I'm running out of disk space, though. that's been gnawing at me for a few weeks now. I want to get a 1TB drive, but with the XFan 5 in there there isn't space for a 2nd hard drive. Add to that, the D945GCLF2D only has 2 SATA ports. So it's a hard drive upgrade or a mini-vacuums in the next few months - LOL.

Blogger! Why Was My Blog Tagged as Spam???

What the hell? My oldest blog (http://daysleepered.blogspot.com/) has been tagged as spam! This is outrageous! While tyring to publish i get these system errors from blogger. I've been getting those every now and then, probably once or twice a year, during maintenance. And now I try and login and get an email my blog was tagged as spam!

The only thing I did was use http://draft.blogger.com on one of my other blogs. I was trying it out, for crying out loud. Now I login, see a warning, get a reset for my Blogger account and see that my Google account is mysteriously following all my other blogs! And I can't figure out how to cancel that. I was thinking, I've been hacked! But no, it coincides with spam thing! I don't know what happened! Where I am is at a dead-end. I received a warning through email, its a no-reply address. I did the reset in Blogger, i get a message that practically simmers down to "don't call us, we'll call you" arrangement. I don't know who to email, or IM or where to post to get to the bottom of this. I'm hysterical because I don't know what exactly happened!

Where I am is at a dead-end. I received a warning through email, its a no-reply address. I did the reset in Blogger, i get a message that practically simmers down to "don't call us, we'll call you" arrangement. I don't know who to email, or IM or where to post to get to the bottom of this.

Blogger... I DO NOT WANT TO LOOSE A BLOG I'VE BEEN WRITING TO FOR THE LAST 9 YEARS! Give it back to me.


UPDATE: Seems this has happened before: http://www.bloggerbuster.com/2008/08/has-your-blog-been-flagged-as-spam-here.html