Ok, many reviewers have knocked the MSI X340’s keyboard, build quality, reflective screen, and touchpad. I still have some gripes with the touchpad, it is too sensitive and I have contorted my typing style to avoid touching it while typing. For those who don’t rest their wrists while they are typing will be fine, unfortunately that eliminates most people who use notebooks on their laps as their wrist are used to keep the notebook from falling off.
So for me I have to say that the slim for factor has really made the difference for me. I can now say I understand what the MacBook Air owners experience with their notebooks. For me I couldn’t justify the price tag for a MacBook Air but in the light of the recent price cuts, it is ever so more tempting.
The Core 2 Solo SU3500 processor coupled with a 2.5” SATA II 320GB hard disk has made the performance very respectable. For day to day use I have not seen a performance issue and it even beats our my two year old Core 2 Duo in perceived performance with a SATA I drive. I suspect that this is mainly due to the faster SATA II hard disk. It is also nice that it has an HDMI connector so I can connect directly to my TV to watch videos or share photographs that are on my PC.
The laptop has no issues with any video that I want to play, DIVX, XVID, h264 etc. Even my Canon 5D MK II HD video plays without any hiccups. (You need to use VLC or some other player other than Windows media player of course)
All in all I am happy with the weight and portability, it fits my needs and is very functional.
One final observation is I do wish the price was a little less (who doesn’t), especially with other vendors offering slightly heavier but more powerful configurations for less.
As I mentioned in my previous posting about the MSI X340 the screen is highly reflective, so much so that you will never use it in an outdoor environment.
With that said, I have been using a screen protector for my Toshiba M400. Now on the M400 the screen protector is a little annoying since it does cut some of the brightness, but this doesn’t seem to be much of a problem on the X340, even at the lowest brightness setting.
I will post a picture of my screen installation later but for now I just ordered a screen that is slightly larger in length and width of the X340’s screen and I trimmed the protector to fit. Now I can see the screen with a bright background and reflection isn’t as distracting…
When you order the screen you should find one that is 1/4 inch wider/longer that the visible portion of the screen. The screen protector is attached using low-tack double sided tape. In any case wander over to www.strongengineering.com to take a look.
-Alex
One of the most talked about things on the MSI forums is the lack of drivers for the Sentelic touchpad. Someone even went to the extreme of replacing the touchpad with the Synaptics equivalent. The main issues with the Sentelic touchpad are:
- MSI doesn’t provide drivers
- Sentelic cannot use the familiar scroll to the left and right like the Synaptics touchpad, instead it just uses a prolonged click gesture to scroll up and down, which is not the same experience as sliding your finger up and down.
- Multi-touch is the future, why don’t you include a multi-touchpad?
In any case the MSI X340 uses the Sentelic touchpad. As you can see from the MSI driver download site, the drivers are missing. So what are we to do? Google is your friend here…I think I downloaded the file from one of the links on this forum post.
The driver works just fine under Windows 7 RC (7100). Also you might want to download the System Control Manager from the MSI driver site.
The MacBook Air and the Lenovo x301 have really put ultra-thin notebooks in the lime light.
Unfortunately due to the price and the economic climate, the new media favorite are the low cost/light weight/and long life netbooks.
(Netbooks typically have a low powered processor, have a 10” screen or smaller, 1GB to 2GB of RAM, No Optical Drive and cost less than $500)
MSI has broken the trend of both netbooks and ultra expensive ultra-thin notebooks with their X series. (X320, X340, X600)
Both the X320 and the X340 share the same thin chassis similar in size and weight to the MacBook Air, except that the X320 uses a netbook class processor and the X340 is using a Core 2 Solo 1.4GHz processor. The X600 is a 15.6” ultra-thin notebook.
Laptop Magazine has a MacBook Air vs. X340 comparison article. They also did a very nice review of the X340.
For me the most important characteristics for a new notebook was (1) Size and (2) Multimedia (HD) capability. I have other 4+ pound laptops with Intel Core 2 Duo processors so I don’t necessarily need power.
Just as I received the X340, DELL had released their Studio 14z which trumps the X340 in specs, NVidia GeForce 9400M graphics, Core 2 Duo processors,and 3-5 GB RAM for just around the same price albeit adding a pound and a half of weight.
Later this summer, Lenovo will release their S12 (NVidia ION platform) and U350 which will make the choice to buy the MSI X340 even harder.
Overall I agree with all the points from Laptop Mag…
- The keyboard is mushy and flexes too much.
- The screen is pretty bright and has good contrast but is suffers from some poor viewing angles from above and below. Side to side angles seem to be ok.
- The labeling of the Fn icons is weird, it took me a while to figure out why the WiFi wasn’t working. (Had to refer to the manual)
- I don’t like the glowing MSI logo on the back of the screen
- The screen is very reflective. So it may not do very well in bright areas
- I would never drop this notebook. It may not survive.
- HD video plays well with Windows Media Player
- Canon 5D MKII H.264 video still needs to be played in VLC on Windows 7 RC
- 2-3 hour HD video playback is good
- 8 cell battery should provide even longer life (Hopefully it will be released soon)
If you need something with more kick than a NetBook and don’t want to shell out for a MacBook Air, Dell Adamo, or Thinkpad X301 then the MSI X340 is for you today. If you can wait until August then I think the Lenovo U350 may be a better buy and from the looks of it better build quality.
For me this will be great to entertain the kids on trips and it will be light enough to carry back and forth to work.
After getting FIOS for my Internet and TV, I have nothing to say nothing but good things. There was big issue issue with pixilation. Since I used to have DirectTV I was used to some pixilation due to a storm, or something flying in front of the dish, but for FIOS, this was an un welcome problem.
It took me a little time to speak to an support representative to get someone to come out and take a look. But when the technician was out what he told me was interesting. Verizon was pushing too much signal through the wires in my house. I previously had ComCast internet and we had to run a direct homerun cable to the point on entry so that I had enough signal for a reasonable connection. Go figure.
In any case the tech installed an 6db attenuator on both my TIVO boxes and HD is not giving me any more issues.
We currently live in a world where our digital assets are just as important as our physical ones.
I know many people struggle with how to persist their data, beyond the life of their computer or storage device.
Alas there is no easy single device solution but there are ways to do this reliably without breaking the bank and most importantly, not losing all your data.
I am a firm believer in replicating your data so that it never sits on one physical piece of hardware or in even one location. If you keep in mind having a copy of your data on different pieces of hardware and different machines and locations, you will never lose data.
A general rule of thumb is that for every 1GB of data you need about 4GB-6GB of RAW data to protect it with my solution, distributed across machines of course. Remember, don’t put all your storage eggs in one basket. If you by 4GB of storage, it is better to buy 2 2TB enclosures and place them on different machines.
What are the backup options out there…
While all these options are nice, NOT one can be used alone and are not a complete solution. Why you may ask, isn’t this harsh?
Every device will fail, end of story. The enclosure could fail, the drive could fail, and worse two drives can fail while you are recovering a drive. This will result in a complete loss of data and thousands of dollars to one of the online companies like Drive Savers or Ontrack.
Why just mirroring (RAID1) why not RAID 5, 6, or the custom RAID protocols used in Drobo or Raid-X?
- Well mirroring is just plain simple. There is no underlying complexity for the mirror. What you write is just written in two places.
- The drives can operate independently if broken from the RAID1 array and placed in an external enclosure or different machine.
- The argument that you can’t expand the RAID volume is true but do you really need to do it? If you want a larger volume, just go out and buy another enclosure with 2 larger mirrored drives and copy the data. How difficult is that. The up side is that you get newer drives (less likely to fail, probably faster) and a newer enclosure (less likely to fail).
TIP: If you have a large amount of data, you should organize it on volumes in the order of importance. There is no reason to replicate ISO images of DVDs that you have the physical media for. Also you should use eSATA enclosures for maximum performance. Finally if you really need more performance that RAID1 doesn’t offer, think of RAID10.
Finally, some people like DVD or Blue-Ray media backup. In my mind, it is dead. It takes too long to backup, it is too expensive compared to a hard disk based backup.
Here is my current solution:
- All PCs sync to one main machine (multiple copies of data reside on multiple physical machines)
Use an automated program like Windows Live Sync to sync your data between machines automatically. I stress automatically since you will never remember to run the script
- All PCs with the exception of the Laptop have RAID mirrors for important data. I prefer to use external drive mirrors (both Western Digital and LaCie provide units that I use, that are reasonably priced. I have thought about Drobos but I will wait until they support eSATA) (multiple copies of your data on different disks on the same machine, will survive single disk failure)
- Run a backup program to backup to an External Disk AND also to the Cloud. If you can remember to take the backup disk to your safety deposit box every few months and swap it for a new one then you can skip the cloud backup. For me I will never remember.
(it is always a good idea to have a copy of the data that can survive a worm or a surge. my backup drive is not always live, I only plug it in to do backups.)
Well, Verizon has finally come around to install FIOS in my home after waiting for 6 months after they wired the neighborhood.
Installation:
The installation was fairly straight forward. The Verizon tech, spliced my existing SAT TV connections and it was up and running within the day. It did take a decent amount of time, 5-6 hours total. One benefit of FIOS vs. SAT TV is that Verizon only needs one connection into the DVRs/Cable box, SAT TV needs a homerun from each LNB to each tuner.
Broadband:
The wait was definitely worth it. The speed is good, download speed is similar to Comcast (My current and soon to be former broadband provider). Upload performance however blows Comcast away. Maybe when they get around to offering channel bonding modems I will switch back ;).
On the FIOS upload front, I haven’t been able to get 20Mb speeds. I usually see around 15Mb which is ok for me. If you use a file downloader like Free Download Manager, I have seen around 24Mb/sec in speed.
The one thing that I have observed (not scientific) is that latency is much less on Verizon FIOS, for example the time to actually see a streaming video begin to play was usually a few seconds on Comcast. Now it is almost instantaneous. Additionally while downloading a large file > 1GB, I can also still stream videos and browse the web with little issues in terms of performance.
TV:
Compared to Comcast and DirectTV (First Gen receivers HD10 MPG2) the quality of the video seems a lot richer and more detailed. It is probably due to the higher bandwidth that fiber has as compared to cable or SAT TV.
DVRs:
For me I didn’t go with the Verizon DVRs, I decided to continue using TIVO. So I got two TIVO HD receivers with Western Digital DVR extenders. There were a few things that I had to do before everything was up and running
- Connect TIVO to network
- Activate TIVO
- Run updates multiple times (5-10x) to get to the latest OS (I wish this worked a bit faster especially with a broadband connection) – do this before the Verizon Tech is there to install.
- Install single Verizon MCard Cable Card (Multi-stream) – Verizon Tech needs to Activate
- Rerun the Guided Setup (30min per receiver)
Like other Multi-Room DVRs, you can see other TIVOs on the network. Additionally if you download TIVO Desktop you can share media to and from your PC. If you subscribe to the pro version, you can watch divx and xvid media files as well. I haven’t fully tested HD divx/xvid content but DVD resolution files seem to play fine.
TIVO supported media types:
From a cost perspective, Verizon FIOS is going to give cable and sat tv some real competition. The only real negative is Verizon doesn’t let you to buy the DVR outright. They have some high monthly fees for the DVRs, $15.95 to $19.99.
For me the TIVOs UI is significantly easier to use that the Verizon DVR. I am ok with spending $170 extra over 3 years. If your box lasts longer than that, then it will be even cheaper (with lifetime service). I have had my DirectTV TIVOs for 6 years and 3 years, I think it will be safe to assume that your equipment will last 3 years.
| Tivo | Verizon FIOS equipment |
| Tivo HD $299 +$145 (cable card rental) = $444 | Motorola 7200 $575 ($15.95*36months) |
| Tivo Subscription (3 Years) $299 | |
| | |
I don’t know if many people have reported this but upgrading your applications on the iPhone is a hit or miss procedure. Sure it is easy from an iTunes or a AppStore icon on the device. This isn’t the first time it has happened as some of the applications in question have had multiple updates. The main problem(s) I have seen are as follows:
- Loss of login information (FaceBook, NetNewsWire, Todo, WordPress)
- Loss of Data (Todo – I spent 30 minutes entering data and then noticed that an upgrade was available. You get the picture…)
Now the one thing I would like to see out of Apple is a way of backing up each individual application’s data independently so I don’t lose all my data again. At least with ToDo they sync with Toodledo so I can at least sync online so I was able to go back to a previous days entries.
Anyone else seeing similar issues?
Well it isn’t launch day but I have done it. I have two black iPhone 3G 16GB phones in hand.
Unlike last year, the lines were shorter, with good reason, the wait was much longer. I would say there were about 100 people in front of me and it took an estimated 4 hours to finally walk out of the store with the phone in hand. Last year I think there was at least 200-300 people in front of me and the wait was an hour less. But with that aside, once I got to the store the process was pretty straight forward. I was able to walk out of the store with a newly activated iPhone, and two unactivated iPhone 1.0s, unlike the ordeal I went through last year. ;)
One thing I though was pretty interesting was the psychology of people, me included, while waiting in line for something you really don’t know if you are going to get. First we started in the line and an Apple employee came out and said, no more Black 16GB phones. Then everyone around me in the line started rationalizing the White 16GB phone or got off. Then an hour later the same Apple employee came out and said no more 16GB phones period, now people had to make hard decisions, get off and throw away time spent or wait it out and get one 8GB version and come back another day for the 16GB…Well you know what I finally walked away with, but this was due to a UPS delivery and a subsequent FEDEX delivery between 11am and 12pm. After we were alerted to the restock of iPhones, everyone around me decided since they have been waiting four hours and that getting the top of the line iPhone 3G in Black with 16GB was in order. So my question Apple is, why no 32GB iPhones, I am sure you will have sold them all even at higher prices. ;)
My 3G impressions:
- Much better phone audio quality! The speaker and ear piece sounds much better and is louder.
- The same AT&T reception and audio issues
- 3G is much better than EDGE albeit shorter battery life (Although at home 3G reception isn’t there, no big deal as most people will use WIFI at home. The main problem with WIFI is that Exchange PUSH email doesn’t work over WIFI as there is no sleep option in the protocol and enabling it will dramatically reduce your battery life. I guess there is mobileme.)
- The curved shape is much more comfortable to hold.
- Not scientific but it seems overall battery life seems shorter that with iPhone 1.0
- Screen has yellowish tint in many circumstances (Not very good for showing off your photos)
- Phone seem lighter in the hand (Maybe this is due to shape since it is only .1 oz less, 4.7oz compared to the original 4.8 oz)
- Seems a bit faster overall, maybe due to the new 620MHz ARM processor
For the last year or so, I have been using my Laptop to allow me to connect to my server hosted in VM at my home.
I had to use port forwarding to forward 3389 to my machine but I was reasonably happy (not thrilled) with the performance over Verizon’s EVDO rev A broadband network.
I have been in a constant struggle of wanting a powerful laptop to host the 4-5 virtual machines on the road and portability. I could go out and get a T61P and load it up with 8GB of RAM. But, lately I have been thinking that I don’t want to carry my laptop around, I actually am thinking of something like the MSI Wind netbook to satisfy my need for always connected.
The other issue is that I now have an Amazon Kindle and I don’t want to carry anything big around anymore. The Kindle is a topic for another post.
So, enter RDP over HTTPS, sound familiar? Well it basically uses the RPC over HTTPS that Outlook 2007 uses and tunnels your Terminal Services connection. Cool right? Now you tunnel through your corporate firewall to your home machine.
First you need to use the RDC (Remote Desktop Client) 6.1 that comes with Vista, or you can download an update for Windows XP from Microsoft.
Notice on the advanced tab you can specify the Terminal Service Proxy server. This is usually the server that is Internet facing. (You only need to open port 443 SSL, Yippee!)
On your server you will need to install the Terminal Services Role and then select TS Gateway. I am not going to go through the whole setup, as there are many detailed guides on the net.
Sample Status screen
RDC Screenshot
So every solution has some issues, here are some that you may face.
1. TS Gateway doesn’t support RDC sessions within a session. Yes I know many people including myself like to RDP into a machine and then from that machine traverse the internal network.
2. You cannot connect to machines that are not in the domain that the TS Gateway is in. Sadly there is no way to connect to a machine in a workgroup with this method. Nor is there a way to connect to another group of machines in another domain if there is NO trust. I had a few development VMs so I had to enable a forest trust so I could authenticate to the machines.
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