Jonathan's blog

Recently I bought a Canon EOS 450D from Jessops. They were running a bundle deal, and it came with a Canon 18-55mm lens and a Tamron 70-300mm lens.

The long zoom was quite an important aspect to me, since I had upgraded from a Fuji S9600, with a huge range in focal lengths.

I’ve now owned the camera for a couple of weeks and I’ve had a chance to play with it a bit. Of course a fortnight isn’t nearly enough time to fully understand everything about a complicated device such as a DSLR, but I’ve tried a few things with it.

This review in particular is about the Tamron lens.

Obviously you don’t expect wonders from the cheapest lens in its class, but I am still quite disappointed. The S9600 was a jack of all trades (and master of none) and showed weaknesses at both ends of its range of focal lengths. That said, the whole camera cost around £200 and can now be bought for significantly less than £200. I think that represents fantastic value for money. During my 23-month ownership of it, I’ve taken about 10,000 photos. On average, that’s more than one every two hours!

Given that the Tamron lens on its own costs almost as much as the entire Fuji camera, I had hoped for significantly better images. Never mind.

At the shorter focal lengths, it’s OK. Nothing to write home about, but it’s fine. I took these self portraits at a focal length of 70mm and they seem OK.

But when you start to zoom in, the problems get worse. Some of this should have been obvious from reading the box – its largest aperture at 300mm is f/5.6, which is pretty slow. To make matters worse, there is no image stabilisation. You can’t complain about this – it says it on the box and if you want a fast lens, you have to pay more for it.

But I wasn’t at all pleased with the optical quality at 300mm. Take, for example, this photo of some distant horses. The first photo is the full image, and the second one has been cropped to show detail. Neither photo has had any other editing.

Horses in Hartshill

Horses in Hartshill

The first thing you might see is that the focus is very soft. It wasn’t camera shake because the sun was out and I used a tripod. The autofocus just seems to struggle at long focal lengths.

But then look at the chromatic aberration around the white horses. It makes the image look pretty terrible.

I also tried taking some photos of the moon last night, also at 300mm. As before with the horses, it couldn’t autofocus properly. The low light conditions made it much worse and the image was so blurry that there was no definiton on the surface of the moon.

I flipped the lens into manual focus mode where I was able to hugely improve the focussing. Unfortunately it seems in manual focus, as you approach infinite focus, the moon becomes sharper, but for the last little bit of the travel the lens goes beyond infinite focus and makes a garbage image. Not good at all.

In the end, this is the best I could manage. Here I used manual focus, spot metering and I’ve cropped the image afterwards.

The moon

It’s OK, but I’ve managed a better photo of the moon with my S9600.

I’m not sure if my lens in particular is faulty, or if these lenses are all equally bad. But I am very unimpressed with the results, even for a budget lens. Given how much more the 450D and this lens cost than the S9600, there is no excuse.

Tamron’s own website says:

Perfect 2^nd lens for your DSLR kit

So they are certainly admitting that it shouldn’t be your primary lens. However I would also hesitate to say it’s “perfect” for anything.

My advice would be to avoid this lens, unless you’re on a particularly tight budget, or you don’t plan to use the higher end of the zoom range. Be prepared to switch off the autofocus, and focus manually if sharpness matters. Get a Canon telephoto lens if you can.

Update

I may have been a bit hasty in my critical review. As I said in my comment below, I had another go today at taking a few photos with the lens.

First here’s a chimney stack at full zoom, and a cropped version below.

Chimney stack at 300mm

Chimney stack at 300mm (crop)

As you can see, the focus is very sharp. There is a little aberration, but that’s expected from a cheap lens.

This photo of the seagull was also taken at full zoom. The autofocus can be pretty slow going from one end of the focus to the other, but if you focus on a similar object first, it’s much faster. In this case, fast enough to get a lock on a swooping seagull.

Seagull

Yes, it’s not perfect – but it’s acceptable for the price. I’m going to keep this lens and see what I can achieve with it

Background

I decided to build a new media centre PC to replace my MSI Media Live barebones kit, which is getting a bit long in the tooth now. (The onboard graphics chip is not able to drive a display at 1080p).

Having been bitten by the limitations of the MSI Media Live, such as the proprietary motherboard and PSU, and the lack of any PCIe slot for expansion, I wanted my replacement media PC to be modular, expandable and flexible in the future. Building it on a budget I also planned to reuse the old system’s CPU, RAM and disk.

My plan

So I settled upon an Antec Remove Fusion case, which takes a standard ATX PSU, a standard mATX motherboard, and has 4 expansion slots at the back which can take full-size expansion cards.

Of course all this makes the case quite large, but at least I can build whatever system I want in there. So let’s get down to my review.

Appearance

Well, at 5.5″(H) x 17.5″ (W) x 16.3″ (D) the case is a lot bigger than I had anticipated. It’s a little wider than your regular AV equipment, but this is no problem with today’s wide TV stands for today’s wide TVs.

It’s about the same height as some of the larger AV receivers. For example it’s exactly the same height as my Sony STR-KG800 receiver.

The snag is that it’s a lot deeper than you might expect. I can’t get it all the way back on my TV stand because of the rear poles so it overhangs the front of the shelf by an inch, but luckily the feet still fit on the glass.

In terms of looks, this case is great. The front is very plain and fitted with a black aluminium fascia that blends in perfectly with other AV equipment, like my Sony receiver. It feels heavy, solid and expensive which is a refreshing change from the cases you see all too often that are cheap, bendy and plasticky.

The DVD drive has a concealed panel that pops open when you eject the drive. This is nice, because I was slightly concerned that my plastic DVD drive might spoil the effect of the aluminium panel.

Inside the case

The case is split into three compartments. One holds the hard disks, one holds the PSU and DVD drive, and one holds the motherboard. There are adjustable holes in the dividers so you can pass cables through and then close the gap up.

The hard disks fit into a bracket and are secured by rubber grommets. I had a quiet hard disk in the first place, but in the rubberised bracket and with the lid of the case on, I can’t hear the disk at all.

It’s also easy to get the CD/DVD drive bolted into its bracket, which just slots into place.

I would strongly recommend buying a modular PSU (i.e., one where you can remove the unused cables). There isn’t a huge amount of room behind the power supply to tuck unwanted cables. Unfortunately I didn’t realise this until it was too late, and I bought a PSU renowned for quietness, which also happened to have about a million connectors. The entire space between the DVD drive and PSU is filled with a bundle of unused power cables.

My other gripe is about the number of unnecessary cables inside the case. The VFD/IR front panel has a regular, external USB connector and an adaptor that converts it to a motherboard USB connector. It also has a molex passthrough to take power. The two side fans also have molex connectors. This means you have to string a power cable from the PSU right around your tidy case.

Acoustics

As I already mentioned, the disk holders are very good at keeping noise down, especially if you choose quiet disks in the first place.

The case itself comes with two 120mm fans in the side. They are pretty quiet so I wouldn’t say it’s necessary to replace them unless you want to. They have standard molex power connectors (as opposed to the mini 3-pin motherboard fan connectors) and each has a switch to set the speed to low, medium or high. On low speed they shift plenty of air and my system is very cool running, so I will probably disconnect one of the fans to reduce noise even more.

Sitting on the sofa some 3m away from the TV, I can’t really hear the media PC at all, which is a definite improvement on the MSI Media Live, which looked the part but sounded like a computer.

VFD screen and IR remote

The Antec Remote Fusion, as its name implies, comes with a remote. The remote itself is cheap and not at all to my taste. I immediately discarded it and decided to use a much better Logitech Harmony 515.

On the MSI Media Live, the IR sensor “just worked” with Windows and so I was able to use the remote immediately. The VFD needed a driver from the CD and thereafter “just worked” with Windows Media Center.

Unfortunately, the same is not true of the Antec case. The VFD and IR receiver come as a unit, which happens to be a Soundgraph iMON. It does not natively work with Windows, and the driver CD that was supplied with my case was dated 2007 and didn’t work with Windows 7. I downloaded the latest version from Soundgraph’s website which seemed to install OK but still can’t get anything to appear on the screen. It doesn’t support Media Center anyway. I tried to install a program called Frontview, which is supposed to let iMON work with Media Center, but I had no luck with this either.

The software looks like it was written by a chimpanzee in Visual Basic and is a poor excuse for an application.

It also seems that the iMON IR receiver is only designed to work with the iMON remote, rather than a Microsoft remote. I set my Logitech Harmony to work as an iMON remote rather than a Microsoft remote, but pressing the arrow keys on the remote, rather than scrolling through menu items in Media Center, has the same effect as moving the mouse an inch. Yep – iMON remote is a substitute for moving my mouse.

Useless.

Since I haven’t got the VFD to work (at all) or the remote to work (properly) I am thinking of simply disconnecting them, and replacing the IR receiver with a generic USB one that I can attach internally and install behind the window. This should let me use my Microsoft remote or my Logitech Harmony in Microsoft mode and forget the iMON nonsense.

Whoever at Soundgraph invented the iMON system and thought it was fit for sale is almost as cretinous as whoever at Antec picked iMON above its competitors and thought it would be a good way of ruining an otherwise decent case. I don’t know why they didn’t pick one that is more standards-compliant.

I will probably butcher the old MSI case and take its VFD and possibly IR, if I don’t have better luck with the generic USB receiver.

Summary

The case itself is fantastic. The quality, strength and finish of the panels is great. It’s a little on the large side, but so long as you measure your TV stand first you won’t be caught out.

Acoustically, it is very quiet indeed. Make sure you pick a quiet PSU with a 120mm fan, and a quiet hard disk and you won’t be disappointed.

In terms of fixtures and fittings – yuck. The iMON VFD lights up like a strip of burning magnesium, and wouldn’t work properly even if it worked as designed. The iMON IR receiver is also a huge disappointment.

Having owned it for a few days, I’ve got my Windows 7 Media Center set up and working nicely, but unfortunately the VFD and remote aren’t working, so we are having to change channel with the keyboard.

On the whole I would recommend this case if you are prepared to put in some effort, and are also prepared to possibly give up with the VFD.

I’ve now had an iPhone 3GS for a couple of weeks, and it seemed only right to write something about it. This is not a review – there are many, many other reviews of the iPhone out there. This article is just a collection of my own thoughts, and a few comparisons to my other current smartphone (an HTC Magic) and my old smartphone (a Sony Ericsson P1i).

It might sound like a daft thing to complain about, but the iPhone doesn’t have an “alert LED” to warn you when there’s a text message or voicemail waiting. The P1i and the Magic both have this – and it’s great because you can see from across the room whether you’ve missed a message. I didn’t realise how much I used it until I realised that the iPhone doesn’t have such a feature. It’s annoying to have to walk over, pick it up and unlock it to check.

The iPhone suffers from poor battery life. Admittedly I tend to keep wifi and GPS turned on all of the time, but with an average day’s use (0 phonecalls, a handful of texts and maybe 30-60 minutes of app usage and web browsing) the battery gets down to 25% and I have to recharge every night. It’s OK provided I’m able to charge it every night. If I was going camping, I’d make the effort to turn wifi and GPS off, and maybe even get 2 days of use out of it! My P1i lasted for days before it needed fresh coal, and the Magic lasts for a few days between recharges with wifi enabled.

Some people have also complained that the iPhone’s battery can’t be changed by a mere mortal and have cited this for a reason for not buying it. I agree to a certain extent, but the battery isn’t likely to wear out for a couple of years, and by then I’ll be wanting a new phone anyway.

This next item might be seen as a pro or a con – the iPhone doesn’t really have many options. This is probably OK for most people, but it is not as configurable as the Magic. If an app or an aspect of the OS works the way you like it, then good. If not, it’s a bit tough. The Magic is inherently more geeky and everything has options. Having said that, the options aren’t in your face and are not intimidating for novice users.

The browser, as many have noted, is excellent. I won’t go into detail about it. The browser on the Magic is also good at rendering pages properly, but unfortunately lacks a multi-touch interface. This means you can’t do the pinch-zoom gesture, among other things. Other HTC handsets have multi-touch interfaces, though.

A minor annoyance with the iPhone is that it has to be registered with iTunes, and must be connected to iTunes when you want to update the firmware. It might not affect most people (especially if they already use iTunes for listening to music), but it could be annoyance for those who don’t want to install an unnecessary music player, and especially for me, as I had to build a Windows virtual machine to install iTunes. In contrast, the Magic simply receives its updates over the air, using 3G or wifi.

I prefer the feel of the Magic in my hand over the iPhone. The Magic is a bit smaller, a bit lighter and a nicer shape, I think. Doesn’t make a huge difference though. By this point, I’m just nitpicking.

Both devices have good screen, good onsreen keyboards and generally similar. The iPhone is a bit slicker, but I think my favourite phone out of the two is the Magic. I’d like it even more if it had multi-touch, too

For some time now I’ve been running Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix on my EeePC 901. I’ve been very impressed with it.

Today I was prompted to upgrade to the new version, 9.10. On my connection at work (via Janet) the upgrade didn’t take long at all…

Upgrade Screenshot

After 9 minutes of frenzied downloading, the upgrade itself took around an hour and a half. Afterwards, I rebooted. I like what they’ve done with the UI!

Ubuntu Screenshot

The roll-over animations make it look and feel nice and polished to use. They’ve also paid close attention to certain aspects of the interface, such as the package manager. It’s a breeze to configure the system.

One notable new addition is Ubuntu One, a free cloud storage service. I have no need for it, as I have my own server, but it’s a handy feature for most people.

Most of the stuff is the same old. Most things work the same as they used to, so it takes no time at all to find your way around the new version.

Well done Ubuntu!

Strada Cadence

Over the years I’ve had a number of cycle computers. Most have been Cat Eye, although some haven’t. It’s clear to me that Cat Eye make the best cycle computers – both in ease of use and in build quality (which is rather important when it will be subjected to rain, sun, vibration, heat and cold).

A few months ago I fitted a Cat Eye Strada Wireless to my racing bike. It was my first wireless computer and I’ve been extremely impressed with the results. The computer itself has a single-button interface and is nice and easy to use. The numbers are big enough to read easily while you’re riding.

But recently I’ve been tempted by the gimmick^[1] of seeing my pedalling cadence too. I enjoy cycling and I love gadgets. So I ordered a Cat Eye Strada Cadence for my racing bike, and moved the Strada Wireless to my commuting bike.

The Strada Cadence is a wired computer, and you need to go through the rigmarole of attaching cables to your bike frame with cable ties. Unusually, the sensor attaches to the inside of the chainstay of the rear wheel. The other sensor attaches to the outside of the chainstay so it can sense the pedals going round.

Installation is no more tedious than any other wired computer, and you get loads of tiny black cable ties in the bag. The only tricky bit is strapping up the loose cable by the sensors. They both share a common wire back to the computer, which splits off into a Y around 8 inches from the sensors. If the shape of your bike means the sensors have to be at different positions then you’ll have to take up the slack cable securely. Unless you want it to go in your rear wheel!

I don’t know if my racer is unusual, but with the pedal crank magnet in place, it was a lot more than 3mm from the chainstay sensor, which is the distance it has to be to make it work. I got round this by putting a piece of rubber in between the crank and magnet to move them a bit closer. An easy fix, especially if you have spare rubber feet lying around – but it’s a shame Cat Eye didn’t provide them.

The FlexTight bracket is great, as it easily lets you install the computer on the handlebars or the stem. On both bikes I have the computers mounted on the stem, to save maximum room for lots of lights.

Using the computer is also easy – just press anywhere on the unit to “click” it and cycle through the modes. The Strada Wireless and Strada Cadence both have the same modes, except that the Strada Cadence also has a cadence mode. This simply shows your current pedalling cadence, in revolutions per minute. There are no functions to show you the average or maximum cadence, like there are with the speed.

So, in summary, I would absolutely recommend that you get a computer from the Strada range. Up to you if you want to go for the wireless or cadence options. They might be a few quid more than the competitors, but it’s well worth it for the quality.

[1] Whether you see this as a gimmick or a training tool is entirely your own opinion!

Today my new bike lights arrived – a pair of RSP Asteri 2 LED lights.

The manufacturer’s website has hardly any details and reviews of these lights are scarce, so it is practically my duty to write this review, for the benefit of anyone else who is considering buying them. Also note that the pictures on the manufacturer’s website are wrong. Both the battery pack and the lights are different!

What you get

In the box, there are two lights, each with one 1W LED. There is a battery pack which actually contains 4xAA NiMH rechargable batteries. There is a Y-adapter to attach both lights to the shared battery pack, and there are two velcro straps to attach the battery pack.

The box

Build quality

Build quality is not actually as good as I might have hoped.

The lights themselves seem sturdy. The silver ring around the front is metal and feels solid. But the attaching mechanism is made entirely from rubber. I don’t know how supple this will be after a couple of years. Other rubber cycling products I’ve seen have perished after a few years and no longer stretch, eventually causing them to crack.

One of the lights

The battery pack is flimsy in my opinion. It has a belt clip which can be used to attach it in a number of ways, but it looks brittle and would expect it to snap off before too long. The lid of the battery pack is held on by a single screw, which could be damaged by over-tightening. Be careful! There is also no rubber seal between the lid and the body of the battery pack, so I don’t know how it will fare in rain. However, the box does claim that the set is waterproof, so we will see.

The battery pack

The battery pack

The cables are thick and appear suitably strong. Their connectors are all standard push connectors, but they have a “click” to keep them in place. The strength of that “click” seems to vary across the connectors and some are not as strong as I would like. I don’t plan to unplug mine very often so I will probably tape them up with insulating tape.

Mounting

The mounting facilities are not as good as other sets of lights I have used. The headlight units attach to the handlebars with a rubber strap with holes, and a plastic peg that pushes into the hole. There is no way to set the tightness to a setting between holes (e.g. the way that other lights have a screw).

Mounting of the battery pack doesn’t seem great either. The pack itself simply has a belt clip. There is a velcro strap in the box, presumably to attach the unit to part of the frame. However you’d have to figure it out yourself, and loop the velcro under the belt clip. Luckily I have some other rubberised velcro strips from other cycling products I’ve bought over the years.

Bear in mind that you will probably have to remove the battery pack in order to charge it (unless you leave your bike within reach of a mains socket overnight).

The cables are not curly, so if they’re too long then you’ll have to put up with them being saggy, or tie them up. You’ll need to be careful running the cable between the handlebars and the frame, in case it gets pulled taut when you steer. Nothing is provided in the box to attach the cables to your frame. I plan to use regular cable ties.

The lights have short (5cm) cables and the Y-splitter is perhaps 15cm long. The battery has the longest piece of cable and this is rather annoying. To remove the battery, you also have to remove the cable from the frame, so there’s not much choice to fix it permanently.

The system boasts a low battery warning so you don’t over-discharge the batteries and break them. Unfortunately you are unlikely to be able to see it as it’s on the battery pack, which will probably be on your luggage rack, on your frame or in your back pocket! Never mind.

Both the lights and the batteries are very light.

Performance

Despite my grumbles so far, these lights are really bright. Much brighter than any other so-called “1W” lights I’ve come across. The beam is fairly narrow, such that no light is wasted but it’s by no means a narrow beam. It can be seen from all angles.

Lights running

Each light has its own button, so you can use one light or both. The button cycles through 3 modes – dim, bright and flashing. The separate buttons means you can have one flashing and one on constant. Nice and versatile. Other twin lights I’ve seen have a central button on the handlebars. I guess each system has its pros and cons.

The battery pack contains 4 x AA batteries as opposed to simply being a proprietary NiMH battery pack. The intention is to keep the pack sealed and simply plug the charger into the battery pack to charge it, but of course you can remove the batteries to charge them in a conventional battery charger if you wish. See Modding for other ideas.

Modding

The system is quite simply put together, so it should also be nice and simple to take apart!

As I mentioned above, the battery pack takes 4 x AA batteries, and a set of 1600 mAh batteries are provided. This immediately gives you options – you can replace them with more expensive rechargeables (such as the 2500 mAh ones I use in my camera) or simply use regular alkaline batteries.

Using the included batteries, the manufacturer quotes 1-2 hours runtime at full power, and up to 6 hours flashing. Swapping these for 2500 mAh batteries immediately adds 50% to those figures for not much outlay.

Using AA batteries also has a huge bonus in that you can always keep some spare alkaline batteries in your rucksack so you’ll never be caught out if your rechargeable batteries go flat on you. This is often a problem with rechargeable light sets that use proprietary battery systems.

The battery pack has a standard power connector that you can buy from any good electronics shop. Maybe even a bad electronics shop, too. You can create your own battery pack so long as you use the same connector, and you won’t have to alter (and risk breaking) your light set.

The power connector

I plan to build a bottle battery with D batteries, for long runtime. Naturally I will post about it here when I get round to it.

Verdict

As far as lights go, this is a good, versatile, powerful set. Shame about the build quality. If you buy these, expect to have to do some DIY when you install them. You will probably need cable ties and insulation tape – the kit isn’t even in the same league as a CatEye set. However, it is a fraction of the price!

Some simple oversights exist in the system, such as the battery back not being detachable from its cable. It would cost pennies to rectify the design, but you’ll just have to make those changes yourself, or work around them.

Overall, I would recommend this light set to a fellow cyclist, on the condition that they weren’t expecting miracles, and that they were prepared to do a little work to install it.

My installation

Here are some photos of how I’ve got my lights set up. The other headlights are a pair of CatEye ABS-35 halogen headlights. They’ve long since been discontinued but are still going strong. There’s a 20W spot and 15W flood, with individual handlebar-mounted switches. With both lights burning, you get around 45 minutes runtime…

The new RSPs are mounted below the handlebars, and the CatEyes are mounted above.

Front view

Side view

You can barely see the RSPs hiding below the handlebar in this one. Each light has a switch on its top (so underneath, in my case) which can be a bit fiddly to press while riding. The CatEye lights have the yellow/grey switch to control them.

Cyclist's eye view

I’ve fixed the battery pack to my luggage rack with a rubberised velcro strap.

The battery pack

Another shot showing the CatEye batteries under the bottle cage, and the loose cable for the RSP lights along the top tube. It’s held in place only with velcro straps as I need to remove the cable every time I want to remove the battery for charging.

The cabling

After I’ve used the lights for real, I will post more pictures of them working outdoors at night.

Promise NS4300N

I decided to buy a NAS and remove the disks from my home server.

I didn’t want to spend too much money, since this was one of those non-essential projects. But equally, I didn’t want to spend too little and get something that would break and destroy all my data with it. Eventually I decided upon a Promise SmartStor NS4300N.

Features

It had all the features I wanted, including:

• SMB/CIFS for Windows clients
• NFS for Linux clients
• RAID5
• Gigabit Ethernet with Jumbo Frames

First impressions

So how did it shape up?

The build quality was relatively poor. It’s made from thin plastic and feels flimsy. The disk caddies are incredibly flimsy and flexible, and I felt nervous even handling them; but this didn’t matter because I planned to assemble it and leave it alone.

It wasn’t exactly quiet either. There is an 80mm fan for the disks and a 40mm fan for the internal PSU. The 80mm fan only spins when the disks are hot but it is very noisy when it does so. The 40mm fan is constant but not so loud. And of course there’s the sound of four hard disks, which varies depending on make and model. Overall, it’s probably quieter than a standard computer, but you wouldn’t want to sleep with it in your bedroom.

It’s not a problem for me because I’m putting it in the loft.

Setting it up

The initial setup wasn’t as straightforward as I thought it could (should?) have been, especially for beginners. But it wasn’t really much trouble to set up a RAID5 array with 4 x 500GB disks and format it, for a total of 1.4TB.

More confusing, perhaps, was the selection of different protocols and the layout for setting up users, shares and permissions.

I wanted to set up two shares, public and private and set public to be world-readable (for my media centre) and private to be accessible only by me. If you create these accounts on the NAS, it’s simple enough to tick the boxes and set the desired permissions on Windows (SMB/CIFS) shares.

But NFS was a different kettle of fish. No user-level permissions are available on the NAS for NFS, and the only control you get is a list of allowed IP addresses. By default the NAS says it allows *.*.*.* but I found that this didn’t let anyone in. Adding real IP addresses to the list worked.

However, I found that when you have data shared both as NFS and SMB/CIFS, the permissions go out of the window and are not respected at all. An unauthenticated guest user was able to read and delete files from my private share.

Performance

Performance was far worse than I had expected.

With the NAS mounted on my PC via NFS, it would only manage 4.8MB/s sustained write rate, and 13.5MB/s sustained read rate. That’s significantly worse than the sustained 30MB/s I used to get with the same disks in the server, as a Linux software RAID array. On top of that, writing at this speed tied up my computer’s quad-core CPU 100% with IOWait.

With the NAS mounted on the same PC via SMB, it was able to write sustained at 9.2MB/s.

This is really quite poor, given that the same set of disks when connected directly into the server with SATA could write at some 35MB/s.

It depends on your usage though – if you simply want to play music and videos from the NAS then 10MB/s is fine, even for high definition. However I use mine for large backups and I don’t want to wait almost ten times longer for the backups to complete.

Summary

• If you already have a NAS or storage server that you are happy with, don’t buy this.
• If you want to use NFS, don’t buy this.
• If you care about high performance, don’t buy this.
• If you want a reasonably-priced solution for backups or sharing media between computers, buy this. I reckon it would be fine to shove in a cupboard and simply drag your movies onto from your computer, so you could watch them on your media centre.

However, it didn’t cut the mustard with me, so I sent it back. I’ve now returned to my original system with the four disks hosted in the server. It’s fast and the permissions work fine – the downside is that I have to keep a large, noisy ATX tower case and can’t switch to an Intel Atom solution

Today my new 35mm scanner arrived – a Plustek OpticFilm 7200.

The 7200 is the bottom of its range, but perfect for my needs. All of the scanners in the range have the same optical resolution, but some offer features such as iSRD infrared dust and scratch removal, or MultiExposure where the scanner makes 4 images and combines them to reduce noise.

As I’m scanning brand new negatives, I don’t plan to scratch them or let them get dusty. The MultiExposure might have been nice, but it nearly doubled the price of the basic 7200 model, which set me back just £115 from Amazon.

First impressions

Opening, the box I was impressed straight away. Obviously the basic were there: the scanner, power and USB cables but there was also a padded carry case.

The build quality of the scanner definitely puts it in the realm of home users but it’s perfectly fine.

There are two plastic trays: one that can take four slides and one that can take a strip of up to six negatives. I was a little disappointed by the negative tray, as it didn’t have the “dots” to help the film keep aligned and it can be tricky to get the film into it, especially if it’s new film that still has a tendency to curl.

When sliding the trays into the scanner, you can feel it “bump” into notches so it sits in the right place. These notches aren’t as precise as I would like and you can’t always tell if you are exactly in the right place until you’ve done a preview scan.

The software

According to this page, the OpticFilm 7200 is not supported by any SANE backend, and therefore cannot be used with Linux. Shame.

Installation on Windows was easy enough, although the supplied SilverFast software has a distinct “Windows 3.1″ look and feel about it. It works well enough though and after a few minutes of playing I worked out most of the important features.

Image quality

So far I’ve scanned two rolls of film and I’ve been impressed with the results. I’ve been scanning at 3600dpi which gives a resolution of round about 17-18 megapixels. Saved as a TIFF, this takes up about 55MB.

The built-in sharpening feature does a good job – I can’t tell that my scans have been sharpened which is a relief. Some sharpening software overdoes it and you end up with unsightly artefacts.

The colours are good so long as you’ve done all of these:

• Chosen the right film manufacturer
• Chosen the right film type
• Chosen the right ISO film speed
• Done a prescan to allow SilverFast to calibrate itself

In extremely over- or under-exposed photos, the software can do some funny things with the exposure. But I guess the moral of that story is to expose your photos properly…

The photos I’ve scanned so far have either been on old, grainy film or not focussed properly so it’s hard to tell how sharp the scans are. Except that some of my old negatives from a disposable camera had scratches, and these showed up lovely and sharp in the scans!

Conclusion

This scanner is fantastic value for the money.

Sharpness, colours and dynamic range are all very good.

Serious users should consider getting one of the higher scanners with iSRD and MultiExposure which will help with image quality even more. And they still don’t cost ridiculous amounts.

Sample

I took this picture recently with a Canon AE-1 Program 35mm SLR, using a 50mm prime lens and ISO400 Fuji Superia film.

Unfortunately the lab who processed the film also scratched it, which is pretty annoying. But it demonstrates how sharp the scanner is, and highlights the reason for buying a scanner with iSRD.

Flowers

I recently bought (and blogged about) an O2 mobile broadband USB stick.

As I was on a camping holiday in a remote part of Pembrokeshire last week, I decided to take my Eee and the USB modem, just to see how it would work. I was aware that there would be no HSDPA coverage, since I had checked the coverage map before I left.

UK cellular network coverage

	2G
	3G
	HSDPA

Three give the following summary of the different connection types:

• 2G network: gives you voice, text and picture messaging services
• 3G network: gives you all of the above, plus video calling and the internet on your mobile
• HSDPA network (Mobile Broadband): gives you all 2G and 3G services, plus high-speed internet access on your mobile and with your dongle (USB modem)

When I connected to the network in rural Pembrokeshire, I was not surprised to find that I only got a 2G connection. The dongle’s LED was green, and according to Huawei:

• Green - a GPRS data service is established
• Dark Blue - a UMTS data service is established
• Light Blue - a HSDPA data service is established

But what surprised me most was the latency in the connection. Pinging www.google.com gave responses between 4 seconds and 35 seconds! This of course makes web browsing totally unusable.

So my advice to anyone who is thinking of getting a USB 3G modem is to make sure your target areas are covered, and don’t expect it to work outside cities.

Note: This article is under development. More info and screenshots will be added later. Keep checking back!

I decided to buy a mobile broadband USB modem yesterday. For those of you who don’t know, I work as a wireless network & VPN specialist for the University of Bristol. At the time of writing, there are 507 access points around campus, giving pretty good coverage. However I often have to visit locations with dead wireless to fix it – and it’s times like these that mobile broadband would come in really handy.

After a bit of market research, I found that Three was the cheapest network; however their standard issue USB modem is made by ZTE and some Googling shows that this isn’t well supported by Linux. That’s a showstopper for me. However, O2 offer Huawei modems which, according to the Internet, work out of the box with recent versions of NetworkManager, which is included with distros such as Fedora and Ubuntu.

After a quick word with an O2 sales adviser, I was told that Windows and OS X are supported, and Linux is not only unsupported, but “won’t work”. Of course, I took this with a pinch of salt. I prefer to believe articles on FedoraForum, for example.

I run a number of operating systems on my various computers. It’s not essential to have it working on all of them, but it would be nice. Here’s what I’ve got:

• Home desktop PC: Dual boot Fedora 11 with Windows Vista for occasional gaming or audio work
• Main laptop: EeePC 901 with Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04
• Secondary laptop: HP nx7400 dual boot Fedora 11 with Windows XP for occasional stuff (such as using my slide scanner)
• Work PC: Fedora 10
• Work laptop: Macbook with OS X 10.5 Leopard

So how did O2 Mobile Broadband really fare on these various systems?

Ubuntu Netbook Remix

First I tried it with the computer I am likely to use most on the move – my trusty EeePC. I connected the modem and was immediately greeted with a screen saying it had detected a USB modem.

I was asked to pick a network provider from a short list.

Setup was complete!

I now connect by using the NetworkManager list, the same way as for regular wireless networks. However, even if I connect to O2 Mobile Broadband, it still uses wireless networks in preference if possible. Very sensible!

Using NetworkManager to select a 3G connection

Fedora

Fedora runs a very similar version of NetworkManager to Ubuntu. The main difference is that you don’t get a magic wizard to put the settings in for you. But don’t worry, it’s quite simple.

1. Right click the NetworkManager icon, click Edit Connections
2. Under the Mobile Broadband tab, click Add
3. Do the same on your Ubuntu PC, except click Edit.
4. Copy the settings over (or look them up from O2).
5. Done!

Windows XP

Getting it to work on Windows was easy, although I was not impressed by the software. When you plug in the USB modem, it automatically mounts as a virtual CD-ROM which then autoruns the installer. It’s all themed in the O2 colours and looks smart, even if horrible and blue. Installing it is a simple case of clicking Next repeatedly.

But what I didn’t like was the way that the software automatically takes control of your wired and wireless connections too, without consent.

The main screen

In its defence, it does work and it does do the job. It even has nice features, such as being able to prioritise various connections or networks. You can say you want the wired to always take precedence, followed by your home wireless network, then the 3G network, and finally your neighbour’s wireless.

Listing wireless and 3G networks

However, the application is ugly, blue and blobby. It looks like a UFO. It installed yet another tray icon I don’t want, and it’s changed the way I connect to wireless networks. Of course I’m capable of adapting to the change, but I liked the way I connected to networks before. Why force me to change?

One thing I haven’t tested yet is its ability to connect to WPA2-Enterprise (802.1x) networks, which I use daily as part of my job. This is where lots of other third-party wireless applications fall down.

Tonight I will look into ways to remove the app but keep the driver – and perhaps have the 3G connection available to me as an on-demand connection, the same way that Windows handles VPN connections.

Overall, I’m glad I will almost never be using this laptop with my 3G connection.

Mac OS X Leopard

Despite Apple Macs having a reputation for being intuitive and easy to use, installing the USB modem was a nightmare and I still haven’t got it to work.

While Windows and OS X are the two officially supported platforms, the OS X software is just the default Huawei software without any O2 theming at all. O2 haven’t even bothered to bap in the config in advance. Plugging in the USB modem causes a directory to be mounted, containing an installer and a PDF document. The PDF briefly explains how to install the application and fill in the settings. It has a series of screenshots and simple instructions, although still daunting enough compared with the ease by which most Mac applications are installed.

The software itself is ugly and a bit clunky. It doesn’t have anything sensible like a “tray” icon. You have to load the application manually before you want to use the connection. If you frequently use the software, it would be best to make a dock icon, which you also have to do manually.

Worst of all, it doesn’t actually work (for me). I followed the guide exactly and yet when I came to connect, it always fails with a useless error message of “Connection failure!”.