The HP SLATE 2 Fire sale!

The HP SLATE 2 Fire sale!

After the coming of the iPad, well everything else tablet was put aside..

Androids came about and joined the fray to see which would reign. The tablet which started it all, the tablet PC was fast becoming a pathetic excuse for a tablet, and just sat on the sidelines, minding their pathetic existence.. Well i came across a firesale of the HP Slate 2 and it was just too good to resist. 

YES! YES! YES!

Before you start cursing me to be some dumb fellow, who bought rubbish in a fire sale, Yes , I agree

Dumb fellow, who doesn't realize he got a heavy computer with a lousy touchscreen, Yes

Dumb enough to spend money on a failed systed. Yes

Basically YES YES YES to all cusses and malicious intent.

I will not be reviewing the HP Slate 2 , Reviews are better found on the internet, so I will be telling you how life is after a day's ownership of the HP SLATE 2.

I'm not plugging this guy's sale but the firesale is still available here

I have always wanted a tablet I can just use to watch movies, read some PDFs, while I'm on the move, or even when I'm at home, and don't want to sit in the PC room... ie taking a dump...

IPads were irritating as they could never get onto the home network, even with 3rd party software, ie Video Stream it still could only stream at horrible quality, and would jerk in any other quality other than low.

Streaming PDFs from the network was a pain,  CBZ files were not streamable.. basically, old farts like me had to start a new life, with the iPads, as i couldn't access my files on my home servers..

Very simple solution, get a Tablet PC and just use that to stream movies, read the magazines etc..

Which idiot would want to spend anything more than what it would cost to buy an iPad?? IPads are great! why buy something less great than an iPad and spend more?

SO

This Fire Sale was amazing.

Paying less than half the retail price for a HP SLATE 2

If i'm not mistaken, the same thing happened for the HP SLATE 500. Got tossed into the fire sale as well.

Well.. from a day of use. Here's the take.

The damn tablet is bloody heavy. Feels twice as heavy as an iPad 2. Probably about the weight of the iPAD 1

Touchscreen is 70% as sensitive as an iPad.

Processor feels like its 100X slower than an iPad, but inreality, its just not quick enough to make things smooth

Hasn't hung yet, but things are not happening lightning fast eh.. bloody slow.

Its a little warm when running, but passable.

Battery life - err.. i'd put it as fair, and not iPad like, but the claim is 6 hours.

It connects to the home network like a BOSS!

So easy to connect, and yes! It plays all my movies flawlessly.

Reads my PDFs well, pinch and zoom works.

I can probably do my excel sheets.. (did i mention the resolution is 1024 x 600) 

Resolution is ok, 1024 is almost decent. (my current notebook runs 1440 x 900)
Scrolls with your finger pretty well, about 70% as well as an iPad.
Pinch and Zoom, half as well as an iPad, Well this is because its a PC, not an iPad.

One thing about a HP Tablet PC is that there is so much dignity in unboxing and owning something from HP.

Its got a good sized box, there's a leather cover for it, 

THere's a screensaver provided and a stylus as well (battery operated stylus)

The good thing here is that this is really going to be an extension of your work station , if you have a PC as a workstation.

You're not going to be able to work regularly off this machine, but if you would like to travel lighter, well, this is pretty nice.

You can actually read MS Office files, install pc programs, LOL, i just installed office via image drive on my server for the tablet.

The verdict - nice to buy if you have the money to burn in the fire sale.

Totally not worth the money if you have to buy it at full price. Save a while and go get an iPad instead or buy an android tablet if you like.

So this isn't the typical light weight, long batt life tablet,

and its the heavy, short battery life, non finger friendly variety type of tablet.

FTTH in Malaysia

FTTH in Malaysia !Nov 15, 2009 16:43

I got very lucky to be one of the beta testers for Maxis Fibre to the Home Broadband internet. It was only open to about 50 users in Bangsar Baru. Lucky Me! They had some sort of an interview for each of the beta testers, but apparently it wasn't too stringent and it was a rather good mix of power users, average users and "hardly any use" users.

This bump in speed is definitely a big one for me, as I was previously on the cheapest broadband package all this time. 512kbps Streamyx Package.

Here's Maxis Fibre To The Home speed:

Kuala Lumpur Server test on top and Seri Kembangan Server test below

Considering its a fiber optic connection, its not super duper blazing fast, but it is very much more than adequate for the home user. OMG. you tube is where you see the biggest difference. It streams flawlessly on HD full screen. Torrenting is up to 600kbps!+++ Installation of the FTTH was seriously very labour intensive. These guys brought a snorkel to pull the cable to my home

And that was just the first team. They had to pull a cable from the main line to my home. These main cables were apparently gas filled. Once the cable was up, they filled it with gas, and that would be the conduit. The cable from the junction box to my home would be the fibre optic cable. The 2nd team was resposible for laying the cable from the junction box of the mainline into my home. They installed the Optical Cable junction in my hall

Then the 3rd team came in to fuse the fibre optic cable to a thinner manageble yellow wire to the modem. They really have to sort out the part about installation, as it is really very labour intensive to install just 1 modem. The engineers used a strange machine for connecting the two cables. Very geeky indeed

After verifying a good connection, with yet another device, they plugged it into the optic fibre cable modem.

No setup was necessary on the computer. Just plugged to the ethernet jack behind the modem, and another one to my computer. Simple as that.The home network hasn't been connected to the optical modem as of yet but i'll do that later. (err.. my workstation is littered with networking stuff. Have to clean it up.. later...) The beta testing is supposed to go on for the next three months before Maxis Offers FTTH to the public. Right now, the testing phase only involves a small area, Bangsar Baru, in Kuala Lumpur.

More to come, Maxis will be providing an IP phone for testing calls. Astro and Maxis are going to do a tie-up to provide HDTV thru the optical modem. Finally, Justification to buy a HDTV! As of now, with the light load of being in a testing phase, the speed is a "Happy fast". Just hopes it stays that way when the server gets loaded. I'm off to download stuff at my "happy fast" speed !!

S2000 AP2 rims and Shocks

Twin towers at night

Laser contactless thermometer