Mobile Tech

Lately I’ve discovered that my Canon S3 IS supports the new SDHC cards. This news was exciting for me because when I bought this camera, the specifications showed that it supports SD only. Usually when it comes to SDHC compatability, a thumb rule is that if not specified otherwise, the device does not support SDHC.

Devices that have no support for SDHC can take SD cards upto 2GB. Some of them can take 4GB SD cards. Those 4GB SD cards are not SDHC, and since the SD standard doesn’t allow the file system to be over 2GB, they use some kind of a hack for this. It’s not acceptable for all devices so you’re taking a risk by buying a 4GB SD card.

As I was saying, the rumors came from well-known forums. They refer to the official US Canon website which added this specification only recently.

I’m still skeptic about it and wouldn’t believe until I am able to take a 16GB SDHC card, put it in my camera, shoot 16GB of pictures, and finally copy them all to a PC to verify the data.

Recently 8GB SDHC cards have become very cheap, as well as 16GB SDHC. As for myself, I wouldn’t be happy with SD cards until they will be available in 64GB or 128GB SDHC. This will probably happen by the end of 2009.

I’m trying to get my hands on one of these SDHC cards to test my camera so I’ll update soon. Read the full article to see updates.

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Finally I’ve got a new laptop. A brand new ASUS F3S. It comes with Windows Vista Home Premium Edition and as expected, I’m facing many new problems. Windows Vista is heavy and slow unfortunately.

Even though this computer comes with a good specification: 2GB RAM and Duo Core T7300 2.0GHz CPU, I can feel that the new operating system is eating all the resources too easily.

The thing that mainly bothered me was the speed of the Start Menu. It is simply unbearable to work with. When you want to see All Program, you have to wait for 3-5 seconds. If it’s not enough, when you try to open a sub-folder, you have to wait again. Is this the way it’s supposed to go with 2GB RAM and a Duo Core 2GHz?

However, after being frustrated over the slowness and trying to find alternate ways to bypass the Start Menu, I’ve finally found the solution.

The solution for slow Start Menu/All Programs

1. Right click on the Start Menu

2. Click Properties

3. You should see now the Start Menu tab in a window titled Taskbar and Start Menu Properties.

4. Click Customize.

5. Un-check the box: Highlight newly installed programs. It should show: Highlight newly installed programs-OFF.

6. Click OK.

7. Check out the speed. If it was slow, it will be lightning fast now.

I have no idea why Microsoft had this checked by default in the first place, but go figure. I hope it will help you feel a little better about Windows Vista. After I discovered this option I can finally use the Start Menu again to execute applications.

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Usually I check my mail via Outlook and POP3, but recently I heard there was another storage upgrade for GMail (4GB) which convinced me to check my web-based account, only to discover that GMail offers today over 5GB of storage place! To be exact, it’s 5189MB as of today.

Interestingly, as you can see from the logo, even after several years GMail is still a Beta version which makes you think, when is it going to get out of the Beta stages and what would be the implications in the future.

The competition (Yahoo! Mail) still offers unlimited storage. Unfortunately they don’t have free POP3 which is very sad. All in all, both Google and Yahoo have a reliable mail service so just open two accounts and use each as you like.

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While looking for a notebook computer, I was confused with the unusual amount of Windows Vista editions. There are six of them, and this can obviously shock someone who is unfamiliar with them. As a side note, if you don’t already know, Windows Vista requires quite a lot of resources to operate properly, which means a powerful computer. The main reason I’m looking into this kind of upgrade is because my work environment requires handling with the new operating system.

There are six editions of Windows Vista, making the choice of what you need very confusing. Fortunately, only four of them are available to the regular user.

First, I will disqualify the two of the six which are not meant to be used by private people.

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Is this the beginning of the end for portable hard-drives? SD cards are extremely small, they don’t consume as much energy and they are more robust. There’s nothing like SD cards for sharing storage among different mobile devices, that is until the SDHC was invented and crashed the party.

The problem with SDHC cards is that they look exactly like normal SD cards but when you try to use one, you discover that you can’t. NO compatability. This means that it’s going to take some time until SDHC cards would be useful for normal people. Forget about your SD Card Reader, forget about your digital camera, forget about your PSD and PDA. All of them are quite worthless today when we talk about the new exciting SDHC cards from Toshiba.

Toshiba announced that the first 32 GB SD-Card-Like (SDHC) would be released by January 2008 (16GB SDHC by October 2007). This is great news for device manfucaturers because now people will have to buy everything again. Old stuff goes to the garbage. Long live the new generation that supports the SDHC format.

As for prices, the 32GB SDHC card will cost 700$. Its smaller brother 16GB SDHC will cost 350$. Like all the other SD memory cards, the price will drop a couple of months later. Both cards are classified as Class 4, which practically means that they can transfer data at a minimum rate of 4MB/s (upto 6MB/s).

Another surprise from Toshiba is a Micro SDHC 8GB memory card which will be a serious storage tool for cellular phones. Like the bigger cards, it will also require a new generation cellphone.

I must say that if I could use SDHC on my old mobile devices, I would be much happier. A couple of 32GB cards means you can carry 64GB of storage which is not so far from my 80GB 2.5″ Toshiba hard-drive.

One thing I can say for sure: 2008-2009 are going to be fabulous for digital photographers. Next step is 64GB SDHC, and by 2009 I believe we will see 128GB SDHC.

Does this mean bye-bye 2.5″ portable hard-drives? Not yet.

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After using the ELOOK LK-A6 for over two months, I can happily say that this device, although not perfect, is absolutely great for backing up image files, sharing images on-the-fly and getting files out of the storage for immediate usage.

I got this device from eBay for 45$ (includes shipping) directly from China. It came along with a leather case (which I didn’t take with me), a battery case (which I’ve hacked to support my PDA), and a screw-driver.

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Before my big journey to the far east I had two main concerns regarding the mobility of my data: Battery-Life and Storage. These two have always caused me problems and made me choose or compromise between which device to take. When you plan a voyage of over two months, you must take into account these two, as well as a couple of other factors.

Canon S3 IS

First, I will describe my needs. I planned a two months journey to the far east, into countries where electricity is not always availiable, equipped with a Canon S3 IS camera and ready to take as many pictures and video clips as possible. Thailand is a well developed country that offers many places with access to the internet and other places that allow you to burn your images on a CD for a small fee. That is not the case in Cambodia and Laos, the two other countries I’m about to visit during my journey. There are places in Laos that have electricity for a few hours a day, and in others none at all. In some areas, Cambodia is not too far behind. Travelling in these countries requires a lot of patience. Even a person who is used to wait 30 minutes at the doctor’s office while doing absolutely nothing, would find it very difficult to do the same during the tough rides (4 to 12 hours bus-ride) between some of the remote cities. You must have some way to make your time more pleasant. It can be by chatting with the locals, reading a book or anything else that can pass your time.

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Mobile Tech is a personal website that brings some interesting ideas about useful mobile technologies used in the past, present and future. I’m a software developer specializing in mobile applications, and have always been looking for those great solutions that can make our lives more pleasant and fulfilling for those times of need.

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