Dell UltraSharp 2009WFP monitor review

As promised a few weeks back here’s my short review of the Dell UltraSharp 2009WFP monitor I recently purchased.

The first thing I noticed after switching it on for the first time was how much brighter it was compared to my old 19″ CRT. I hadn’t realised how bad my old monitor had become over the years. The monitor has 4 built in USB 2.0 ports which are a nice touch, makes plugging in memory sticks a bit easier when your PC is under the desk like mine. It comes with a height adjustable stand which was a major selling point for me personally. Due to the height adjustable stand the monitor can also be rotated 90 degrees, while it makes reading a long document slightly easier I haven’t really used it at all and I don’t see me doing so any time soon.

The resolution is an excellent 1680 x 1050 which is more than adequate for my needs. I had been looking at 22″ & 24″ monitors originally but the UltraSharp versions of these weren’t in my price range and now I’ve decided I’d rather have 2 of these monitors sat on my desk. It has both DVI & VGA connections allowing me to plug both my PC’s into it which is very handy. It also comes with Dell’s 3-year Premium Panel Exchange service which gives you peace of mind when it comes to dead pixels.

Overall I’m very impressed with my new purchase and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a new monitor.

Nokia N96

Last week I was told by someone in work that the Nokia N96 should be available via Vodafone UK by mid October. With all the negative feedback I’ve been seeing on Twitter about the iPhone’s battery life & 3G quality I’m looking around at other options at the moment.

I’ve been really impressed with my Nokia N95 so far and it re-awakened my interest in the Symbian platform. The only things the N95 lacks when compared to the iPhone is a bigger screen, a touch screen and oooh factor in terms of looks. In terms of technology the N95 is far superior, quite surprising when you consider it’s been available for over 18 months.

With the recent news that Nokia is going to acquire the rest of Symbian and open source the platform makes a Symbian based phone even more appealing to me. The N96 is looking like the best alternative to the iPhone, improving on the excellent N95.

Think I’ll wait to see if the N96 does come out in October and if Apple do anything about the issues affecting the iPhone 3G before I rush out to get one.

Dell UltraSharp 2009WFP monitor

The time has come to retire my Hyundai ImageQuest Q910 and join the world of flat panel monitors! I ordered a Dell UltraSharp 2009WFP monitor yesterday while Dell are offering a 25% discount plus free delivery. The offer runs out on the 30th July so tomorrow is your last chance if your in the market for a new monitor. According to the very weird call I received this afternoon it should arrive tomorrow! It’s kind of a birthday present to myself.

I’ll post a mini review once it’s been used for a while. If anyone (in the North Wales area as it’s bloody heavy) wants my old monitor leave a comment.

iPhone 3G

Dear Vodafone, unless you can offer me the iPhone 3G in the next 3 months I shall be leaving you after 6 years and joining O2.

The 3G version of the iPhone has been announced by Apple and should be available sometime in July here in the UK. I’m assuming it’ll only be available via O2 again. It’s been released quicker than I thought, while the rumour sites had been predicting it would be I wasn’t so sure.

I upgraded to the Nokia N95 last September in the hope the 3G version of the iPhone would appear sometime this year. I managed to get a 12 month contract out of Vodafone (along with the free upgrade) just in case it was released. I was very tempted to get one last year but couldn’t justify the handset cost along with the 18 month contract required, I was also a little disappointed that it wasn’t 3G.

I’ve got to decide whether I go for the 8GB or 16GB version now. Decisions, decisions!

Alternative to iPhoto?

I’ll be retiring my trusty PowerBook G4 very soon and until I decide on what my next laptop will be I’ll be moving all my data onto my Windows XP desktop PC for the time being. I’ve been using iPhoto to manage all my photos so I’m now looking for a Windows based alternative. The first one I thought of was Google Picasa so I’ll try that out. Does anyone have any other recommendations?

Set Group ID permission in Linux

chgrp group /path/to/directory

chmod g+s /path/to/directory

find /path/to/directory -type d -exec chmod g+s {} \;

Vodafone Mobile Internet Part 2

I’ve just seen this article about Vodafone’s ad over at The Register. I remember seeing the ad in question a while ago while the limit was still 120MB. I couldn’t believe it myself, they were trying to sell a data allowance of 120MB as allowing you to browse any website, any time!

Talk about hyping a service up!

Vodafone Mobile Internet

I tried out the Vodafones Mobile Internet bolt-on when I got my Nokia N95 as it was free for the first month. I used the Internet quite a bit, more than I thought I would while trying out the various features of the N95. I cancelled the bolt-on after the free period was up but quickly found I was running up larger than usual bills due to my continued Internet usage. After a few months I signed up for the Mobile Internet pack again (that free month obviously worked Vodafone!). I thought £7.50 for 120MB allowance was pretty poor compared to what other networks were offering at the time but there wasn’t a lot I could do about it.

Recently Vodafone upped their limit to 500MB, not quite up to the deal on offer from other networks but a significant step in the right direction! Vodafone have now informed me that their data allowance is ‘unlimited’, although this is subject to a fair use limit of 500MB! If my understanding of Vodafone’s t&c is right they don’t mind you occasionally going over 500MB but if you do it continously they may charge you for the amount you go over.

I’m against the term ‘unlimited’ when it comes to data allowances or transfer limits and when I found out the fair use limit was still 500MB I was disappointed as it’s hardly an upgrade at all.

With 500MB though I can actually think of using my mobile’s 3G connection with my laptop without worrying about my allowance. One thing having the Nokia N95 has hightlighted to me, is how large some web pages have now become. An eBay listing page is nearly a 1MB alone!

Having said that I do try to use the mobile versions of most sites (Twitter, eBay, Facebook etc.) for their speed more than anything else.

Come on Vodafone get your act together!

Webmonkey is back!

While browsing the blogs on Wired last week I noticed the Compiler blog had moved to the Webmonkey.com domain.  While the Compiler blog has become the monkey_bites blog the site is also providing tutorials & reference documents once again.

Hopefully it’ll become again the resource it once was for web development, as I learnt so much from it in the late 90′s.

Welcome back Webmonkey, you’ve been missed!

Set service to auto start on Red Hat EL

To set a service to automatically start at boot time on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (or CentOS) use the following command:

/sbin/chkconfig –level <level> <service> on

<level> is the runlevel, use 3 as it’s the ‘Full multi-user text mode’ runlevel on Red Hat EL/CentOS.
<server> is the name of service, i.e. the script in /etc/init.d/

Or you can use the ncurses-based /sbin/ntsysv utility.