Ejecutive

Last year, I wrote about software I used regularly for work or for fun, my Essentials. Since then I’ve moved over from half-Mac-half-PC user to a full fledged member of the Mac society, but I still use a virtual Windows install for some of my work.

Here are my essentials in 2007, in no particular order:

OS X

1. Mail. I use Google Apps for my e-mail on my own domain, and I had been using it’s own web interface and Mailplane. But ever since Google added IMAP to Gmail, I’ve ditched those and started using Apple Mail again, especially now in it’s version 3.1 guise with much improved search and IMAP support. The little fucker still likes to crash though.

2. Safari. I sometimes find myself flipping between Camino and Safari, trying to decide which browser I prefer, and very often I just can’t seem to decide. But Camino doesn’t seem to play with the proxy servers at university very well and hangs for a few seconds every time I navigate go a page, which rules it out here. Add to that Safari’s excellent in-line find and its ability to show PDF files, and that wins it over for me.

3. Adium X. The best IM client for OS X, no doubt about it. Just lacks video support right now, but I use Skype anytime I want to video conference (which is very rarely) so it doesn’t bother me.

4. iTunes. Still the best music player, nothing else touches it on OS X.

5. Adobe Lightroom. I tried Aperture, but I find myself preferring Lightroom even though Aperture seems to be a more polished application. Lightroom is just far more powerful at photo editing, and that’s what wins it for me.

6. Adobe Photoshop CS3. I actually find myself using Photoshop a whole lot less ever since I started using proper RAW image processors such as Aperture and Lightroom, but it’s still useful for some touching-up or restoration, and it’s still the web designers image editor of choice.

7. VLC. This can be a bit of a bitch on OS X, but the simple fact that it plays all my videos with only the rare complaint means its my preference over Quicktime + Perian.

8. VMware Fusion. Even though I’ve moved over to OS X full time, I still do a fair amount of work on Windows (see below). I had the choice of either VMware Fusion, or Parallels Desktop, and at the time VMware were offering a half price discount, and I felt it was faster and less resource-hungry than Parallels. It runs my Windows XP Professional without much fault, although it does stretch the limits of my 2GB of RAM.

9. iCal. Still the best calendaring system for OS X, although it took a little while to get used to the new interface introduced in version 3.0.1 that shipped with Leopard. It’s integration with many other apps and iSync make it my choice over the competition. That and it’s free.

10. OmniFocus. My workload has increase significantly this year, so I’ve started to follow a GTD philopshy to my work, and I’ve found OmniFocus seemed the best tool to assist me. But I’ve just started testing an alpha version of Things, and my allegiances may change depending on how Things pans out (it’s currently a lot prettier).

11. Yojimbo. I don’t use it as much as other people, but for collecting bits and pieces of information and finding it afterwards, it’s priceless.

12. Papers. I’ve been reading a huge amount of scientific papers for my dissertation, and having an iTunes style interface to catalogue them with Papers is a massive time saver. It’s not without its flaws though, but there are some innovative features that means I parted with my hard earned cash.

13. Transmit. Same as last year, still the best FTP client (and for WebDAV too).

14. Delicious Library. Still waiting for the ever elusive version 2.0, but 1.6 is hanging in. Saves me buying duplicate DVDs and books (I don’t buy CDs anymore) with a quick and easy search. Scanning in the barcode is also fun.

15. Pages. I get on with pages, more because I have to and the only real alternative is Microsoft Word (which I’m still waiting for). There needs to be some more competition.

16. TextMate. I don’t use it as much now as I mainly write C# code in Visual Studio 2008. But one of my goals is to learn Ruby on Rails and this should prove very useful.

17. Unison. Best newsgroup app for OS X. It costs, but it’s worth it.

18. Twitterrific. There is no other Mac Twitter client to use, a great little app that does a simple task very well.

Windows

1. Firefox. Still beats IE out of the water, and the betas of 3.0 are looking very promising.

2. Visual Studio 2008. Only recently release by Microsoft, I haven’t had enough time to properly delve into it yet, but I’ve stopped creating new projects in VS2005 now, and Twitterlicious has been migrated over to VS2008 (although it’s still a .NET 2.0 application).

3. SQL Server 2005. The de facto database for Windows programmers. Full integration with Visual Studio as well, which makes it a pleasure to work with.

I’ve got a history with Toshiba laptops, my first laptop was a Toshiba Satellite 1800-100. Back then, laptops were rather depressing affairs, unless you remortaged your house for a nice IBM ThinkPad the alternatives were built like toys, had dodgy screens that made it look like you were on drugs if didn’t look at them straight on and keyboards that made mobile phones seem a joy to type on. Not a great experience, especially as you could get a desktop that was infinitely better for half the price.

The Satellite was the first affordable laptop I found with a good keyboard. In fact, it was more than good — I preferred it to a desktop keyboard and even the acclaimed IBM ThinkPad keyboard. Once I wiped Windows ME, upgraded the RAM to 256MB and installed Windows 2000, it was quite a useable little laptop and very capable of running Visual Basic 6 and Office.

My second Toshiba laptop was a Tecra M1, a fantastic machine that was intelligently designed and built well. I eventually gave up laptop computing when I really started gaming, and I’ve been using desktops ever since.

Until last year that is, when I got my MacBook – the first Mac I’ve had that really started to replace my desktop Windows machines. Since then I use my MacBook lots more than my desktop machine, which has been relegated to gaming.

So when TalkToshiba asked if I wanted to review one of their laptops, I jumped at the chance.

Tecra A8

The Tecra A8 is the bottom of the line Tecra model in the range, but still possess a very good specification, including a 2GHz Core 2 Duo processor. The review model sent to me is an old model which came with Windows XP. An up-to date model with Vista Business can be had for around £900.

Exterior

Being a business orientated laptop, it has quite a smart appearance. Its gun metal grey lid gives the appearance of being metallic, but is just plastic. And its quite weak plastic too, as the screen visibly bends if I apply pressure to the back of it.

There are a generous three USB ports on the back side, and even a serial, PS/2 and modem port. I can’t help but think that the space would’ve been better utilised with FireWire and USB ports though, although the serial port is incredibly useful for people with legacy devices that don’t work with USB to serial adaptors.

Build

My old Tecra M1 was a fantastic machine that was built well and looked great for its time. Unfortunately, the A8 doesn’t inherit the M1’s superior build, magnesium alloy casing or sharp looks.

Although the specifications claim its 2mm thinner, it feels thicker than the old Tecra because of its clunkier design. It also feels heavier than its 2.9KG state weight, which is a shame as the plastics used are quite thin. Overall I was expecting much better from Toshiba, although this is their bottom of the line Tecra, maybe the higher end models are better, but the build is on-par with a £500 laptop, not a £900 one.

Keyboard

The Tecra A8 keeps the tradition with a great keyboard. It has a resounding click that gives just the right amount of feedback. Being a 15.4 inch widescreen laptop, there is a lot of width for the keyboard, unfortunately not all of it is utilised and is rather cramped which makes touch typing on it more error-prone. Toshiba should take a lesson from Apple here and give its keys more breathing room.

Its good to see dedicated Page Up, Page Down, Home and End buttons, something I miss on my MacBook. The Function (Fn) key and Control are in the right order too, which is Control on the left and Function on the right, something else my MacBook muffed up.

Trackpad

Unfortunately, the track-pad leaves much to be desired. Its far too small which either makes it difficult to move the cursor across the screen if you set the speed slow, or makes it difficult to control the cursor accurately if the speed is set too fast. It also confuses tap-to-click with drag very often, which is frustrating. You can use the right and bottom area of the touch pad to scroll, which would’ve been far more useful if the touch pad was bigger. Such a big laptop and such a small touch pad, its just a waste of space.

The mouse buttons also give rather tacky feedback and feel horrible to press. There isn’t a physical difference between the left and right mouse button, which makes it easy to press the wrong one.

It would’ve been nice to have a touch point as well, although this is present on the more expensive Tecra A9 series.

Performance

I don’t have much to say here, other than the 2GHz Core 2 Duo processor is more than enough for most people and seemed very quick in use. It could do with another 1GB of RAM though, especially if you plan on using Vista with it.

I ran Super Pi and Prime95 simultaneously to saturate both cores, and the Tecra only got mildly warm on its bottom side. In this respect its much better than the MacBook or MacBook Pro.

When idling, its very loud in comparison to the majority of laptops I’ve used. There is a definite humming sound from the fan that doesn’t seem to stop. Under load, it manages to keep the noise levels fairly reasonable although the pitch of the fan is quite high.

Software

The included software included with the Tecra is, sadly, a joke.

The wireless configuration utility is impossible to use, it visualises your computer as the nucleus of an atom and the wireless networks in rage as the electrons orbiting it. You have to hover over an “electron” to see the details about the network, all of which will fly over the head of those not familiar with WLAN terminology. Clicking on an electron doesn’t give the expected result of joining that network — it does nothing. There are other buttons with images that give no idea of what they do, so I gave up on this and used the perfectly good built-in Windows WLAN configuration tool.

I had a quick look over the other included configuration software, none of which seem to offer more than another interface over what Windows already has, and 99% of the time its harder to use.

The £900 Question

So would I buy one for £900? No, there are far better laptops at that price point. Apple offers a better specified MacBook thats lighter, better looking and better built for less money, and there are even far better laptops in Toshiba’s consumer Satellite range.

To truly compete, the value of the laptop would have to drop to £500 or under, and even then I’d probably still buy a cheap Lenovo or HP that are a little slower, but much better built and better looking.

Better luck next time Toshiba.

You’ll often hear a lot of FUD on the internet, but one of the biggest culprits has to be the on-going plasma vs. LCD debate. The majority of the negative points about plasma are just not true, and someone is going to have to debunk them, so here are the six most common myths about plasma TV’s, debunked.

1. Short TV lifespan. You’ll often hear people saying that plasma TVs last a lot shorter than LCD and CRT based TVs. This is a complete myth. The majority of modern plasma panels now boast a 60,000 hour half life¹ which if you work it out, is nearly 14 years of watching the TV 12 hours a day, or almost 28 years if you watch the TV six hours a day. I don’t think the majority of people will keep their TV for 14, let alone 28 years.
2. Plasmas suffer screen burn. This may be the case if you leave your plasma panel on 24 hours a day, seven days a week on the same TV channel or game. But again, current generation panels do not suffer from screen burn nearly as much as they used to² and I happily watch BBC News 24 and other such channels with static content without problems.
3. LCDs are sharper. While technically true as LCD pixels are more clearly defined than plasma ones, you can only notice if you stand less than a metre away from the TV. At a true viewing distance, there is no distinguishable difference between an LCD and plasma with the same resolution.
4. LCDs have better colour. LCDs are possibly the weakest technology when it comes to colour reproduction. They have a small colour gamut, smallest out of all the current screen technologies³ and also one of the poorest black reproduction (black looking grey). Currently one of the best technologies for colour fidelity and accuracy is plasma.
5. Plasma technology can’t bulid as big panels as LCD. Panasonic make an 108-inch plasma panel. While it’s prohibitively expensive at $69,999.95, it does show the potential of the technology.
6. You can’t get a full HD plasma. Pioneer, Panasonic, Hitachi and Fujitsu now offer full 1080p plasma panels.