I’ll be the first to admit that my backup habits leave something to be desired.  Saying that I back up once in a blue moon might be too kind.  I’m amazed that I’ve made it this far without a catastrophe.  So, when I first saw the HP MediaSmart Server, I knew that I didn’t just want one, I needed one.  I loved the idea behind it…a small box with only network and power connections designed to backup up all of your household computers and act as a media/file server as well.  The 500Gb model was in my price range ($499.99 after a $40 instant discount on the HP Employe Purchase site).  It seemed to be a lock for my next purchase and then several small things happened.

•    1 Tb hard drives became widely available…still at quite a premium, but available.
•    I realized that the HP device could only be purchased with 500Gb hard drives.  The 1Tb model that HP sells has 2 500Gb drives leaving only 2 slots available to put more drives.
•    A couple of months before I was going to buy the HP MediaSmart Server, I checked the website and found that they had removed the instant discount, effectively increasing the price to $540 before shipping.

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Whenever I travel, I struggle with carrying far too many clothes. I have yet to crack the code for carry on luggage. I remember on one trip my roommate packed one jacket, a pair of pants and two shirts to last five days. There’s no way I could go for that – I need to have a change of outfits at a 1.5 ratio per day! On my last trip, my luggage was delayed for two days; by then my jeans were standing straight up. Now look at this picture; granted I am on the road for an extended work trip, but I have to get a better grip on the amount of gear I carry. Do I need help or do all road worthy gadget lovers carry this much stuff?

I hate DRM so much, but the music from iTunes is good quality, has all the album details and has high-res album art, so I put up with it. So to allow me to play my music on my Boot Camp partition, this morning I decided to authorize the iTunes install.

As many of you will know you are restricted to 5 authorized devices at any one time, be they Mac or Windows PCs, iPods or Apple TVs. Currently my iTunes account is authorized on my MacBook Pro, my iPod Touch, an Apple TV and the Media Center PC in our lounge room. It then occured to me that I had authorized the MacBook Air review unit I had recently, making up the total of 5 devices.

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The Easter holiday delayed the delivery by a few days, but never mind, my new unlocked BlackJack II is here! I’ve had it for less than 12hrs but I wanted to post my first impressions of the device.

•    Looks great. The glossy black body is more stylish and “hip” than the original BlackJack. The new design is less functional, loosing out to the original’s superior grip and ruggedness, but with competitors like the iPhone and Nokia N95 8GB around it was a necessary change.

•    Build quality is top notch. No flexing , creaking or general crapness to be found. Very impressed.

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It’s been a long time, but I finally feel like I’m coming home! In the last few months I have had the pleasure of trying several fabulous devices from HTC, Nokia and Sony Ericsson but none of them could match my favourite form-factor: the one of the BlackJack. I love its thin design, excellent thumboard and beautiful screen. Combine that with HSDPA and Windows Mobile and it was pretty much the perfect phone for me. Alas it was short lived, as it went back to the shop for repair and never returned.

It wasn’t until today when I needed to respond to a bunch of emails while on the road, with no laptop, that I realised I need it back. I just can’t stand T9 for emailing. So tonight, with Judie’s ever helpfulness in considering gadget purchases, I clicked “Buy Now” on an new unlocked Samsung BlackJack II. Faster, more memory, bigger screen and much improved battery life, the new one looks to update and fix the original, in the same design and compact package as before.

As Judie will attest I have long wanted a HTC Tytn II, but alas it just didn’t fall into my price range at the moment, but hopefully the BlackJack II will serve me well for a while to come.

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Inside my house, there are 28 recessed lighting receptacles; if you count the garage apartment upstairs, there are another six, so let’s say 34 lights total. These receptacles are sized to take indoor floodlights, and they measure approximately 5 inches across and six inches deep; you could put a standard lightbulb inside one, but its light beam wouldn’t be properly focused, and it would simply look wrong because the fixture would swallow the bulb.

When I bought this house, it had been remodeled a few years before, and the recessed lighting was actually a selling point. What no one bothered to point out, and what I never really questioned until later, was the wattage necessary to drive those beautiful, bright, incandescent lights.

For those who were wondering, take a look…

Yeah, you read that right. It’s a 120 watt bulb, and I have 34 of them running at various times. No, they never all run at once, because obviously I am never in every room of the house at the same time, but just having four of these lights in the office, running in the evenings, was the equivalent of 480 watts. The truth of that horrific wattage amount was borne out every time I turned on the lights and sweltered underneath them, but even more importantly - every time I saw my latest electric bill.

Something had to change, and the new solution would have to work with my existing light set up. I wanted lights that looked right in the holders, that were more energy efficient, and that would hopefully reduce the amount of each month’s energy bill. The way I saw it, I had two obvious choices: compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs or a less familiar option - LED bulbs.

I’ve been using CFLs in my outdoor lighting fixtures for some time, but hadn’t really brought them inside the house. I had never bought an LED bulb, but I have been reviewing LED flashlights for some time, and I already knew that even the smallest LEDs were capable of significant light output with minimal power. Each type of light would have their own plusses and minuses, and they were up to me to discover…

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For several months I have needed to take my MacBook Pro in for repair. Some of you may remember the ExpressCard that melted inside my MBP, due to a faulty motherboard. I’ve also noticed an increasing amount of grey pixels on my display, very annoying during normal use, and even more so when editing photos and video.

Finally managed to sever myself from it for a week, dropping it in last Tuesday. Was told it would be ready for pickup this morning, but that I would need to drop it back tomorrow because instead of a new screen, Apple had helpfully sent them a new optical drive!

Very annoying, but the repair centre is only a few minutes by train from my university, so it’s not that bad.

Have to say it is nice to be able to use the ExpressCard slot! Shortly after the slot went mental, the Novatel XU870 HSDPA modem arrived! Took it for a spin this morning, mmm, sweet sweet HSDPA Look how fast it is!

One of my goals is to work more productively when outside the office. I’ve already done away with Microsoft Office and Microsoft Exchange in favor of working “in the clouds” via the suite of Google Apps. The only problem with working in the clouds — is you need clouds (aka an Internet connection). To accomplish this goal I put the Verizon Wireless Broadband Connect service to the test. Keep reading to find out if I got anywhere close to the promised 400k to 2 mb wireless connection speeds - as well as the best place to buy the modem for $ .01.

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After saying I would eventually get one, for more years than I care to count, I pulled the trigger tonight and bought my first Mac: the 15″ MacBook Pro.

Isn’t it lovely? This is the newly announced version with the Multi-Touch trackpad, an Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT graphics processor (256MB of video memory), and the new Penryn processor.

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When I bought my new car in September 2007 I knew I would be keeping it for a few years, so I decided that I was going to take the plunge, and build a Car PC like those that I had read about on the MP3Car.com forums. The computer would replace the standard audio system, and add MP3 playback, video, GPS, GPS tracking and internet access to my car

After months of dreaming about such a setup my Car PC is finally installed. I’ve had the computer on my desk for over 3 mths now but time and money kinda pushed it WAY forward to this day. Since my dad was off work for the Australia Day holiday, we decided it was time to tackle it.

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