This is a short review of a new kid on the block. A bookmarking site and more. It is the myhomepage.com. A name that makes sense and easy to remember isn’t it.

Myhomepage.com is a free site where you can gather all your favourite sites and login in place. Yes, a bookmarking site which you can access from any PC and any browser. Forget about Xmarks plug-ins and such similar sites which offers bookmark synchronization.

Sign-Up

Signing-in is done in seconds. Just key in your email address and choose a password. Agree to the terms and you are done. All site logons are VeriSign certified and you are safe from prying eyes stealing your password.

Features

The below are the 3 main tabs you will see. You can view and cofigure your bookmarks within. Simply search for the site you want to bookmark and add it to myhomepage. Categorise them by creating named folders and you are good to go.

Myhomepage

Myhomepage tab is where you keep all your most accessed sites. This could be your internet emails and other social media sites that you often access.

My Bookmarks

This is where you can keep or bookmark all your sites. You might not access these sites often but you could bookmark and organise them according to folders you create like Music, Video, Technology or even News.

For example, below I have searched for PCMech. A set of results will appear. On the link/result you want choose to Add Bookmark to the Main Folder or create a new folder to add. Consider the folder as categories. I would prefer if they are named Categories or Labels instead of folders.

No worries if you don’t create a folder/category in the beginning, you can always edit later.

Auto Logins

This is nifty feature and I like it. Auto Login allows you to automatically login to sites that require authentication. You might feel skeptical at first as the site will actually store the password for you. I have been assured that together with their patent pending encryption technology, MacAfee and VeriSign technologies our logon information is safe with them.

The trouble some part of this Auto Login is you will need to create a short cut on your browsers bar. Upon clicking on a sites bookmark, you will need to click on the Auto Logon button which will then login for you.

Myhomepage creators have lots of easy to understand videos on Youtube. Below is the demo of myhomepage. View the rest of them here.

Concluding

You have to understand it is beta and the developers are continually improving this site and will be providing new features to enhance our bookmarking choices. Some sites might not auto-logon and other minor issues might pop up.

I find this site to be one of the most useful if not best bookmark site so far. Frankly, I have not really used any other site. I have been using X-marks plug-in to synchronise bookmarks between Firefox/Chrome and Internet Explorer. That is between two of my personal computers only.

With myhomepage.com I can access my bookmarked sites from work or any other PC that is available to me. It will be convenient to access when I am overseas and I suddenly cant remember the site I need to access. Just logon to myhomepage. search your own bookmarks and voila there you have it.

Try it and let me know if it the best online bookmarking website you have used!

If you use your pc often to download and edit loads of stuff, fragmentation could occur. Basically, the hard drive, when written on to, writes data all over the hard disk to make write speed fast. This could cause fragmentation of files. When reading the files later, your hard disk read/write head needs to seek all over the disk to pick up the data.

My Defrag

Defragmenting software’s basically moves data of the same file together making reading of data faster. All Windows version comes with defrag utility. In most cases that would do but MyDefrag, based on the Windows API, does much more.

MyDefrag works based on scripts which you can modify as you wish. It does not have too many options like other defragmenter utilities you find but the scripting makes it powerful.

The basic scripts available are:

• Defragment Only
• Optimize Daily
• Optimize Monthly
• Optimize Weekly

I use only the Optimize Monthly script and schedule it using the Windows Task Scheduler and occasionally use Optimize. If you are more adventurous and would like to tweak the performance go ahead and write your own script. Help is available on their site and their forum is active.

If you are running MyDefrag on Windows 7 don’t forget to disable the Windows Defrag in the Task Scheduler. By default Windows own Defrag utility is scheduled to run Monthly.

Received a review set of the Epson Stylus TX550W. An All In One(AIO) machine which is easy to setup and use. Just does what you want and need out of this AIO. Wi-Fi connectivity is what got me attracted and request a review set.

Features

Lets start with a quick reference to the features which most of us will consider before purchasing any printer

1. 1. 2.5” LCD
2. 2. Multi card reader
3. 3. USB, Wi-Fi and Ethernet connectivity
4. 4. Individual ink tanks. 4 colours

The LCD panel can be used to do minor editing like cropping and zooming before printing. You dont even need it to be connected to a PC

More features and specifications on Epson’s site.

Installation

Installation was a straight forward affair on Windows. Just make sure you have the latest and the correct drivers with you. In my case, I tried it on my Windows 7 x64 and it went through smoothly.

I would suggest installing the driver before plugging in your printer to the PC via USB.

Mac users will find installation much easier. Plugin the printer and the Mac will do all the installation by downloading the latest driver automatically. I have tried it and works flawlessly. Again, this is via USB.

WIFI connection

Connecting to my Wireless is simple. Just go the Network Settings Menu and connect to your Wi-Fi. This printer also does Ad-Hoc connection whereby your PC can connect directly to the printer wirelessly instead of through the router. 

Mind you that the best available wireless configuration is WPA-PSK. It is sad that there is no WPA2-PSK. It doesn’t matter to me though. Since I keep my Wi-Fi at WPA in order for my older laptops to be able to connect properly. The Wi-Fi light will turn on when successfully connected

Now to the fun part. Printing and Scanning via Wi-Fi.

Under ‘Networks’ in Windows 7, I could see the printer and scanner detected. But we cant do anything with it yet. Yes, the drivers are not set up yet.

Just click on Add Printer under Devices and printers. Select Network printing and Windows will find the printer and install the correct drivers.

Mac users will not find adding the Wireless printer and scanner that straight forward. You will need to install the Mac OS X printer and scan driver(2 downloads).

After which go to your System preferences and add the printer and select “IP” and key in the IP address. The printer name will be auto recognized and proceed to install.

To get the scanner working. You have to access the Utilities folder under Application and click Epson Scan Settings. Add the wireless printer from there and you can scan stuff with the Epson Scan under the Applications folder.

Print and Scan Quality

I don’t have a set standard procedure for testing like what tech magazines do. This is based on what I as a consumer deem to be of quality.

I printed this very blog article and other documents and find the print speed to be equivalent to other printers. If you have more images it is definitely going to take longer obviously. Printing text only files were super fast.

Print quality was good and no smudging was noticed but I cant say that about printing photos on normal paper. It is not acceptable to my standards. You can make out the image but colour quality is pretty bad. Normal charts and bitmap images like icons and clip arts and ok but not photos.

Photo printing on the other hand was good. Yes while printing on 4R sized photo paper. I will not consider it the best for printing photo albums, but reasonable to print and show off your photos to friends and family.

There is nothing much to say about scanning. The quality is great and the speed is good. I don’t really see much difference from my HP scanner. Colour quality of scanned images and great too. Anyway we have software’s to tweak them, so no worries there.

Conclusion

If you cant put the printer near you PC no worries. Just put it somewhere convenient with a power plug nearby of course. Let the wireless do the magic of transferring data to your printer.

This is a great AIO for home and office printing scanning and basic copying needs. Not so much for great quality photo printing though. I am particular about photo qualities so have never trusted any normal printer to do a great job.

With a price tag of S$368, I am wondering who would splash the cash to buy this machine.

Let me list down here 10 reasons why I love Windows 7:

1. Improved Performance

Boot up time might be debatable as from what I notice it could be same or slower than Windows Vista or Windows XP. On my machine Boot up and Shutdown is fast. Definitely better than Windows XP.

2. Uses less Memory

3. Installation and Drivers

4. Task bar and Task bar preview

I like this feature where by similar open windows docks onto itself. Moving the mouse over the docked application will pop-up a small preview of the app.

Another feature is the Contexual Task Window – Right-Click on an application icon on the taskbar and you will get relevant histories or short-cuts. As far as I know this feature only works with Microsofts own applications and Google Chrome. There might be other new apps available but I have not tried them.

5. Libraries

6. Device Management

Now you have a centralised place for device management. All your connected devices like printers and thumbdrives and others are shown neatly with icon representing them.

7. Side-by-side window auto-resize

A very good feature when typing or comparing documents. I can drag a window to the edge and it will auto snap and adjust to half a screen. Do the same to another window and you have two windows adjusted nicely side by side. Even better, if you drag the window back away from the edge, it goes back to the size it was before.

8. Resource Monitor

9. Fine tune notifications

10. Unified Window Size

1. Heat issues

My Macbook Pro might have a great and smooth design. I even call it sexy. But I have no idea all those heat will go. Just using the Mac to surf web and edit some documents can get it heated up. Imagine using it for video editing and conversion. Definitely not lap friendly unless you want your precious jewels cooked.
I do hear the fan spinning now and then but cant figure out where the hell is the exhaust, if there is one at all.

2. Trashed Items Can’t Be Opened

If you accidently moved item to the trash and want to open it to check the contents first. Mac does not allow that. That is fine by me, but cant it have a prompt asking me if I want to restore to the desktop or move it back to place it was deleted from?
I have to right-click (control+click) to get the context menu and click “Put Back”.

3. Permission issues

Even though I have not really come across this permission issue, I have heard enough problems to write about it. Mac OS X is built to be robust, secure multiuser operating system. Each user has set of permission which will not allow you to screw up another users files and settings. Great! That’s the good side of permissions.

The problem is that for Macs with only one user, permissions often get in the way of performing common tasks such as updating system components, deleting files, renaming folders, and so on. Since I am the only user and administrator, why do I need to enter my own password again to do some stuff?

4. No cut and paste in Finder

I was thinking this is an issue with iPhone’s previous OS. It has been resolved on version 3 onwards.
No cut and paste. Yes, there is no Cut option in the Finder. You have the Copy option but not Cut. Why?
Yes, I can drag and drop. But if I want to move a file/folder to another folder that is pretty deeply nested, I will want to cut and paste. I can copy but no cut and paste.

5. No Universal Uninstaller

I love that applications in OS X are for the most part self contained. Installation is a breeze by dragging and dropping the application to the Applications folder. Uninstalling for most apps are easy to. Just drag it to the Trash. But for applications like Adobe Photoshop CS3, or Apple’s own Final Cut Studio, they are not self contained and to properly uninstall, one needs to resort to third party apps like AppDelete and AppZapper. Why should I use a third party app to do this when it should be built into the system.

6. Finder Treats FTP Volumes as Read-Only

If you want to be a ftp client why dont it be a full fledged one with write access to the ftp site.
You can connect to a FTP server by clicking Go > Connect to Server. Key in user id and password and you are good to go. Thats what you think until you try to upload or edit some stuff on the remote server. Really sucks!

7. Finder Views Don’t Update Immediately

The Finder used to always update as soon as a change was made to a file, but now that’s not always the case. Maybe it is a minor issue or one time issue with my system. Even after downloading some stuff if I view the item via Finder, it should show the progress ie increase of file size. It doesnt do so on my Mac. It stays static till I refressh it. I have not noticed this behavior in Windows.

8 Delete key

Delete key is just the backspace. WTF. You can get used to it but I just simply wanna delete why do I need to press command+delete.

9. Sleep mode

When you close the lid the mac goes into sleep mode. The latest macs goes to this mode called the deep sleep(mode 3). It will write a copy to the disk as well as the RAM. In case, the battery power is lost, the current state can be restored when you power up the machine the next time.

This is all fine. But I am trying to look for a mode where it does this sleep and goes into hibernation which is write contents of RAM to disk and power off. I have used IBM and Lenovo and Acer notebooks on various Windows OS and it does it right. When the lid is closed it goes to sleep. After maybe 10 to 15 minutes(configurable) it will hibernate. Yes my Macs battery can last for many hours (6hr +) but it would be good if it hibernates and does not drain battery. When I turn it on a couple of days later, I dont want to see that I am unable to power on due to battery discharged.

Now you can sync all your bookmarks between multiple pc.

Sync

I recommend Xmarks(formerly foxmarks for firefox). It is simple to install and condigure.

You will need to sign-up for an account. This is where your bookmarks will be uploaded in order to sync with multiple pc.

I make use of this plug-in and am extremely happy with its performance. Go try it now!

Sony released 3 new DSLRs recently. Read more here.

DPREVIEW has preview available on their site.

Re-installing the OS is one good way, but you will need to painfully reinstall all the drivers and configure the OS to your liking. I definitely don’t like doing that. So what can we do about it?

Clone ‘em

Your best bet is to clone or backup the entire hard drive. Simply restore the drive and you have it back to normal. Recommended applications are Acronis True Image and Norton Ghost, which will cost you. See my blog here on my recommendation. My favourite  application is called Clonezilla. It can be run from a thumb drive with ease. It might look intimidating at first as it looks pretty command line-ish but it is a powerful tool to clone a partition or an entire hard drive.

Some Advise

I would always recommend to have a separate partition for your OS and another for your data files. This way you anything happens to your OS partition you still have your data partition intact.

You might want to read my post on backup.

- TicTechTo: My Backup Plan
- Why my backup plan works
- TicTechTo: Schedule backup
- TicTechTo: Free Backup Utilties

Watch the tutorial below :

I catch up on latest and daily news online. My day starts off with reading news from channelnewsasia.com followed by BBC news. For tech news I use Google Reader to aggregate some tech blogs that I closely follow.

Online Magazines

Why not magazines? If you the type is facing the PC screen whole day why not mix it up with reading magazines with it too?

I get my magazines through a site called Zinio.com. Yes, you have to pay for it as you would if you purchase it from a news stand. Online magazines are generally cheaper with discounts often. You might even say it is a little green since it is paperless. I am afraid you will not find local magazines here but you will get most international magazines. More is being added.

You can create an account with Zinio and no cost is involved. You browse through magazine titles and decide which one to purchase. You can even purchase past issues easily. To purchase the magazine you will need a credit or debit card of course.

You will receive an email notice whenever your magazine is available for your reading pleasure.

Online or Offline

1. Online

You read online by logging on to zinio.com and launching the magazine. You will need to be connected to the internet all the time.

2. Offline

Basically you have to download and install Zinio software which will download your magazine to the pc regularly. Once completed downloading you can read it anywhere. You don’t need an internet connection.

Reading

The way the material is presented mimics a real magazine in your hands. Clicking the corners flips the page. In addition you can zoom in to read those fine prints. Full spread sheets are presented beautifully without the centre folding you may see in real magazines.

You can print it if you want but that defeats the purpose of an online magazine.

Conclusion

It beats having a book or magazine in my hand and reading it where ever I go definitely. But for the money you save and the convenience of getting it where ever you have a pc with internet connection is just great.

I use this service to subscribe magazines such as Macworld, Pop Photo and Popular Science

Have you used this service and what do you think? Do you have any other service to recommend? Please post it in the comments.

Lets take a look and review this beauty.

Specifications

Intel C2D 2.26GHz
4GB RAM DDR3(after upgrading)
160GB HDD
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M
13.3 inch LED Display
8x slot loading Superdrive
Magsafe power port
1x Ethernet port
1x FireWire 800 port
1x mini Displayport
2x USB port
SD Card Slot
Audio line-in and line-out
Built in AirPort (wireless 802.11n, b/g)
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
Built in iSight Camera
Built–in 7hr Battery Life
Weight at 2.04Kg

Accesories

1x Magsafe power adaptor
2 CD for recovery (MAC OS X and iLife)
User Guide
Screen Cleaning Cloth

First Look

When I went to the Mac display at the Challenger store, I was amazed and awed by the beautiful design of the Mac. Clean and seamless lines and solidly build. Even the bottom is clean and and smooth. The beauty of the aluminium unibody design.

Pretty much light-weight at 2.04Kg and long battery life of 7hrs.

First time powering up the device itself gives you a touch of excitement. It gives a  ‘bing’ sound and the apple logo shows up. Obvious it is the boot-up process that is running. Mac OSX Snow Leopard loads within 30 secs. The setup process which is mostly keying in your details and time & date settings takes about 10 minutes or lesser.

Performance

I did not purchase the fastest CPU but a 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo based processor. With 4GB of DDR3 RAM onboard it is damn fast. I feel it is good enough for blogging. surfing, photo management and photo editing. I am yet to do photoshopping or video editing and I cant comment on the performance yet.

Opening windows and applications were snappy and fast. Much faster than my XP based system and quite comparable to Windows 7, though Windows 7 lags when certain apps are open. Mac OS X just proves that it is made for speed and stability here.

Keyboard and Trackpad

The Keyboard is full QWERTY with spaces great for a big fingers like I have. Typing is soft with good feedback. The keys have a little rubbery feel to it which is just fantastic. To top it up, the keys are backlit which varies according to the darkness of the room or place you are in. You can manually increase the light brightness or turn it off completely.

Trackpad is one of a kind. Huge clickable trackpad with multi touch capability itself just wins me over. You can tweak the settings in the System Preferences to enable right-click (two-finger taps).

MAC OS X 10.5.7 – Snow Leopard

This one of the best looking OS ever. Ok I actually like Windows 7 UI too. Both have their advantages and makes using the OS a lot easier and friendlier.

The bottom of the screen is called the Dock and this is where you can place your most used applications. All other applications are in the Applications folder.

Any HDD or thumb drive will be automatically displayed on the Desktop with the relevant name. Just to let you guys know, Mac does not use drive letters for its internal or external drives. Just names. Ah how easy to remember those names.

I have heard people say the Mac OS is not as tweakable as Windows. Not true. The way I see it is very tweakable from the System Preferences. Third Party applications can also be installed to further tweak the settings and performance. I am yet to delve into that and will ensure you are kept posted.

Application Installation

Most apps comes in the .dmg format. Upon opening the dmg file just drag the application to the Application folder in your system.

There are some application which gives you automatic installation or guide you on what to do. For eg. Firefox, you will see the instruction just to drag the app to the Application folder. How simple can it get?

Networking

As the specification states there is wi-fi available. Apple call this the AirPort. Ethernet is still available for those needing to connect via LAN cable.

Connecting to the wifi is very simple, click on the AirPort icon and select the wifi device, enter the password and you are connected.

I was more interested in sharing file and printer between Windows and Mac and found file sharing works wonderfully after ensuring file sharing is enabled. Appropriate setting will be applied to the firewall settings.

I trying to find ways to share my printer connected to the Windows 7 machine.

Conclusion

It is a worth while investment that I have made. Will I purchase another Mac once this fellow dies? That I am not sure. Only time will tell. You will never know, I might end up with Mac Pro (desktop).

Usage wise is damn friendly. If you are newbie and very used to Windows, you wont find much difficulty moving over to this machine. I took two days to get comfortable with the usage and trackpad and I doubt you guys will take more than that.

I will be exploring more with this machine and will be sure to update this blog regularly.

Go get a MacBookPro!