Picasa: OK, great. This installer will automatically use Romanian based on you location. Who cares if your default language is English. Heck, I won’t even give you the option to switch languages.

Me: Oh well, I’ll just change that later.

Picasa: I’m done installing. Let’s run Picasa for the first time! Do you want to scan all your computer or just your Desktop and My Documents folders?

Me: I keep my photos on my network! I want more options or a cancel button! Oh well, I’ll just select My Documents folder then.

Picasa: OK, searching right now. It looks like I found a 1080 HD movie on your desktop. I bet you want me to generate a thumbnail for it. Working…

Me: That’s it. I’m removing these folders from your settings.

Picasa: No you are not. I’m not responding to your commands anymore.

Me: The I’ll just end the process.

* tries again to start Picasa and remove the Desktop folder. Same problem. Finally deletes the troublesome file from the desktop. Picasa eventually accepts the removal of the folder.

Me: Let’s change your language now… English US. Great, it works!

Picasa: Yep, although some shortcuts in the Start Menu are still in Romanian. Isn’t it great you couldn’t change the language before installing?

• OK. A 13 inch display screen isn’t really that small and having a 1280×800 resolution (like many of the 15″ laptops) means you get a decent amount of space. Most IDEs like Eclipse fit just fine on the screen but I wouldn’t recommend doing any graphic editing since that does require a little more than this resolution has to offer.
• BAD. Capacitive media buttons are cool for about 5 minutes.
• AWESOME. The remote control that fits into the express card slot is awesome. Apart from shielding the slot from dust (which would be otherwise covered by a useless piece of plastic) it proves quite useful at presentations or watching a movie.
  
• USELESS. Fingerprint reader is also cool for a few hours. I haven’t even installed the drivers anymore. So it’s useless at this point for me.
  
• USELESS. Who uses a DVD unit anymore? Even Windows can be booted and installed with an USB stick. If I could I would remove it completely and probably buy an external USB unit for emergencies. Now it only uses space, power and adds to the laptop’s weight.
• BAD. The power button should be positioned on one side, not beneath the screen. You may want to connect the laptop to an external display + mouse + keyboard and disable the laptop’s monitor. But now you still have to open the lid to power it up.
  
• BAD. Not having an edge to edge monitor screen means you get dust and dirt stuck right on the margin above the actual pixels.
• OK. The integrated webcam and microphone are rarely used but prove useful when the need arises. The bluetooth and card reader are great as well.

So what would I look for in a laptop If I was searching for one right now:

• A maximum 13″ display if you want a mobile unit. Otherwise let’s just call it a desktop replacement :).
• Power button access without opening the lid.
• Multimedia remote control (play, pause, mute, next, etc).
• Volume controlled by a physical wheel situated on one side. Yes, it’s not so cool but is extremely fast and easier to use than buttons for +/-.
• HDMI output. This is a must have.
• A minimum of 2 USB ports.

I would also not worry about the HDD’s capacity too much. Out of a 250GB HDD I’m only using 50GB (Windows 7 32 bit and all software needed is installed). All the important and heavyweight data (photos, movies) are stored at home on my NAS.

Here is a quick guide:

1. Launch Adobe Flex Builder.
2. Help > Software Updates > Find and Install… > Search for new features to install
3. New Remote Site…
4. URL: http://flexformatter.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/FlexFormatter/FlexPrettyPrintCommandUpdateSite
5. Finish
6. Restart the IDE
7. Use Ctrl+Shift+F (by default) to autoformat your source files.

It’s great that you can sync your bookmarks now. Another nice thing is that an extension from Xmarks is available (last time I checked on the Xmarks site, they didn’t offer any integration with Chrome).

However, no Firebug yet. And Firebug Lite doesn’t count!

Firefox is like an old wife:

• you have lots of things in common with her
• she doesn’t move too much and is very slow
• she’s not exactly the prettiest one out there
• she takes a lot of your memory
• sometimes she breaks down (and cries)

On the other hand, Chrome is like a young chick:

• looks sexy
• she is very active and fast
• she doesn’t have any experience

I want to switch over to Chrome, but she is still too young :P

It’s a screenshot from Age of Empires: Rise of Rome (a great game, by the way). Using TinEye you can find the (supposedly) original source at http://www.lauppert.ws/screen1/rise_of_rome.jpg. However the ad takes you directly to Travian, a multi-player browser game.

• $56 according to mywebsiteworth.com
• $2372.5 according to websiteoutlook.com
• $95 according to websitevaluecalculator.com

The disturbing problem is when people use those values in business proposals:

Hey, my website was valued by websiteoutlook.com at $2372.5 so I got to get at least $2000 for it.

Why would you even consider this information useful to your buyer? There could be only one of 2 explanations for this:

1. you are dumb
2. you believe your potential buyers are dumb

And here are a few such listings:

• http://flippa.com/auctions/82838/High-Traffic-Directory-Earning-Over-100-Per-Month
• http://flippa.com/auctions/82871/Domain-and-Site-TwitterTrafficTips-com-For-Sale
• http://flippa.com/auctions/83096/Custom-Coded-Forum-Approved-Free-Image-Host-For-Sale
• http://flippa.com/auctions/81837/Link-Directory-Network-Earning-240-Per-Month-No-Reserve

Also, there are some other cool features I found out about just now: http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/about_whatsnew.html. You can also buy storage starting from 5$/year for 20GB that is shared between Docs, Gmail and Picasa (higher packages have a proportional price, so no discounts there). Imagine sharing all your photos with everybody. Flickr has a pro account at 25$/year so we should see a decrease there also.

I love when Google plays around and sets trends. First there was the 1GB email storage space on Gmail which forced Yahoo to lift their 10MB limit (seems funny now, doesn’t it?). Competition is always great for end users.

A couple of weeks ago I’ve bought a Network Attached Storage (Edimax NS-2502) with 2 additional HDDs (WD10EAVS). The complete tech specs for the NAS can be found at http://www.edimax.com/en/produce_detail.php?pd_id=272&pl1_id=18&pl2_id=75, so I’m going to jump straight to the review.

First of all, the price is quite small compared to similar solutions from D-Link. Unfortunately so is the quality of the product.

Hardware-wise it is pretty OK. It doesn’t have any special design (like LaCie). Also, there are no screws for opening the case. The bad part is the loud fan situated underneath the unit that doesn’t have a variable speed. If you are planning on keeping it in the bedroom think again. Also, the front LEDs are pretty bright.

package

front view

rear view

bottom view

HDD2 slot open

one of the 2 HDDs

Web management

Here comes the bad part. The web UI works fine until you start using the torrent download. This made all the pages load very slow. For some unknown reason the torrents were also extremely slow. The speed of any torrent would not exceed 50KB/s at all and of the time the torrents would simply refuse to start. This was happening on the same router where a standard PC would reach speeds up to 1MB/s.

web interface

torrent management

crappy English

The file and FTP server both worked fine. I didn’t experience any problems even when the torrents were active.

Solving the torrent issue

I found the solution on a thread from the official Edimax forums. You basically have to upgrade the firmware with one from a different product.

I’m going to explain the steps I took to upgrade the firmware. Please back up any important data you might have stored in the NS unit. Also note that should you do this upgrade, you are doing it at your own risk.

1. I downloaded the firmware version 1.3.6tw from http://www.planex.net/download/nas/mzk-nas02sg.htm.
2. After extracting the archive there were 2 important files there: images_1.3.6TW.bin and btmodule.bin.
3. I used the first one to upgrade the firmware. After doing this I was unable to access the Web UI (the default IP had changed). However it wasn’t the 192.168.2.5 from the original factory settings, it was now changed to 192.168.1.100 (there is a short setup guide for the Planex product where this is mentioned). For some reason none of these IPs worked until I pressed both the release and copy buttons for 5 seconds (this is to reset the unit to factory defaults). Now the new firmware had default settings and I was able to access the Web UI at 192.168.1.100.
   

   new web interface

4. I had a RAID1 configuration before the upgrade so I went to the Tools panel and rebuilt it without any problems. All the data from the HDDs remained intact.
5. In the BitTorrent panel you have to upload the second file, btmodule.bin. Now only specify a default download directory and everything is set. There is a button there that will launch a separate window to manage your torrents. It looks good, it’s updated via AJAX and works well.
   

   the new BitTorrent client

6. There is a new Print Server panel present but I don’t know if it actually works. Also note that the LEDs will be mixed up with this new firmware because the product it was intended for has a different LED layout. Don’t rely on what they display now.

One more thing: I had problems with the internet connection on the unit (both on the original and new firmware and both web download and torrent download) when the IP was not set to be obtained automatically.

I have not tested any of the following, either because I don’t care or don’t need them:

• iTunes server
• media server
• print server (found on the new firmware)
• connecting external HDDs or Flash Sticks via the 2 USB ports

Conclusion

A cheap product. I haven’t seen a worse interface on any other piece of hardware I had. However, with this new firmware I hope it will be more stable in which case the investment was worth it.

This was my first experience with a product from Edimax and it was a bad one. They created a really bad web interface with lots of bugs. I don’t think I’ll ever buy anything from them ever again, even if it means paying an extra buck.

Other useful links

I really did a lot of searching for other reviews but apart from this post I couldn’t find much information. And yes, I don’t consider articles with some dumb picture from Edimax and a couple of sentences with the specs useful. I can read the manual myself.

Andrei from Dream Production

Alina Manolache

Cornel Creangă

Lucian Huţanu

And the video: