I picked up a Toshiba NB205 netbook shortly after Windows 7 launched and have been enjoying it every since. The netbook shipped with an Intel® Atom™ processor N280 running at 1.66GHz, 1GB DDR2 memory, a 10.1″ WSVGA LED-backlit widescreen display at 1024 x 600 resolution, a 160GB 5400 rpm drive and more. It weighs in at only 2.9 lbs. and is 1.3″ high. The battery offers up to 9 hours of run time. Over all it is a pretty standard package, but at a current price of $399.99 at Best Buy it is a nice machine.

Not content to leave well enough alone, I did three simple mods that have it running better and doing more. I upped the RAM to 2GB, swapped out the spinning platter for an SSD drive and did a clean install of Windows 7 Home Premium. The result is a netbook that is quick, quiet and cool… and runs for a long, long time.

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So you have Windows 7 and you are all fired up about installing it on your netbook. The problem is that your netbook doesn’t have a CD or DVD player built in which means that DVD media that Windows 7 comes on is pretty much a coaster. You can solve the problem by popping $80-90 bucks on an external drive, but what if you could make that 4GB USB flash drive do the magic for you? Well you can, and it is pretty straight forward to do. All you need is a 4GB or bigger USB flash drive, a little bit of patience and your Windows 7 media.

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By default the iPhone limits the user to a total of 11 visible springboard aka home screen pages.

Dayna from PHP-Princess has discovered a way around this limitation.

Yes needing more than 11 pages of applications (180) is truly for the hardcore iPhone app user, but there are a lot of them floating around.

This was a trick I discovered while moving around my icons. First, you have to be an app-aholic and have 11 pages of iPhone apps (and more hidden ones since they can’t be displayed). Then move some of the default apps you do not use like “Weather,” “Stocks,” “YouTube,” “Audio Memo,” etc. to the last page.

Now take one icon from the 10th page and drag it over to the 11th page. This will force the last icon to be booted off the page and into the iPhone abyss!

Now download another app to replace that empty space. And magically, a 12th page will be created with all the apps you weren’t able to view on it. I repeated the same steps and was able to make a 13th page.

The reports on this actually working seem to be mixed so as always do it at your own risk.

Via TiPb via PCP-Princess.

If you take advantage of Gmail’s option to send messages within Gmail using one of your other email addresses in the “from” line, you may be aware that your email is depicted in some email software as being from your Gmail address “on behalf of” your other email address. In the Gmail blog last week, Google announced a new option that eliminates the need to show your Gmail address and the “on behalf of” text.

The option is available if your other email provider supports POP or IMAP access.  To take advantage of this new option, go to the Accounts page under Settings, and click “edit info” from the “Send mail as” section.  From there, choose “Use your other email provider’s SMTP servers” and complete the blanks with your server and password information.

Should your other email provider not have a server that allows you to send outbound messages, you can still use the original method.

Back in May I wrote this tutorial which detailed the process for using the iPhone application VOIPover3G on your Jailbroken iPhone to get around Apple’s limitation of only being able to use the Slingbox application for the iPhone over Wifi.

Once iPhone OS 3.0 was released the VOIPover3G application stopped working.  It was not compatible with the 3.0 update.

Turns out that’s not such a bad thing.

3G Unrestrictor is a just released application for Jailbroken iPhones that does the same thing as VOIPover3G but in a much easier to use interface.  And it’s all done on your iPhone (VOIPover3G require editing of files on the iPhone and transferring them back and forth from your computer.)

The application could not be any simpler to use.

Click through for the tutorial.

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This began as a review of Audioboo, a relatively new service that allows you to create voice podcasts either on your computer or on the go using an iPhone, or an iPod touch in quickly and easily upload them to the net and share them with the world. In the process of creating this review I decided to make a brief podcast of my very first recording and realized that it actually might be more useful and, I hope, more interesting, if I did this post more as a “how-to” than a review.

So here’s a step-by-step of how to go from scratch to the online podcast below these words in just a few moments.

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There you are standing on the edge of a beautiful lake on a warm July day. With the naked eye the scenery is magnificent. Captured with the 3GS’ video you get a full sense of it. Unfortunately while the upgraded camera on the iPhone 3GS works well, any given image only captures a small portion of the view.

Fear not! For there is a simple way to capture and share a beautiful panorama of the entire image in just moments. Here’s a quick “iPhone How-To”.

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If you’re using one of the new iPhone 3GS models you may have noticed it’s no longer possible to force quit an application by holding the home key down for 5 seconds. This worked on prior models but now holding the home key down will only bring up the voice control. Instead to force quit an application running on an iPhone 3GS press and hold the power button for 5 seconds. When the Quit/Cancel screen appears THEN you can hold the home key for 5 seconds and the application will force quit. When even that doesn’t work I’ve found the combination of holding home and power for 5 seconds will still force a reset.

Appmodo

Ten years ago, I acquired two 55-gallon plastic drums to store an emergency supply of water for the impending Y2K disaster occurring at the stroke of midnight 2000. Of course, I became suspicious when the plane I was flying on did not fall out of the sky on 9/9/99 and my trusty Honda still ran like a charm well past January 1, 2000.

Being the positive person that I am, I was grateful to acquire several storage containers of personal hygiene items, first aid supplies and all kinds of camping paraphenia that I still use. So what if Y2K was the biggest con ever-perpetuated on mankind? I have all kinds of emergency supplies on hand, plus two 55-gallon plastic barrels!

As an avid vegetable and flower gardener, I’ve been hearing about the importance of using a system of collecting rainwater runoff from roofs. The benefits are having a mindset of being eco-friendly, lowering water bills by recycling rainwater, and having a ready source of water for garden use. There are a number of rainwater collectors available for sale using a large size capacity barrel and facets. After ten years of having these barrels, I decided to build one!

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This is Part One in a series about my journey with my new Dell Mini 9 into Hacktinosh territory…I’ll be talking about my installation process, my impressions of the Mini as a Mac netbook, performance, software, and more.

I was pretty early to jump on the netbook bandwagon.  When I saw the original 7″ Asus Eee PC for the first time, I knew that I had to have it.  I had been lusting after computers like the Sony Picturebook for a long time–something that could fit in my purse and go with me everywhere!  As a writer, having a full computer with me at all times really appealed to me.  As a geek, having a full computer with me at all times appealed to me even MORE!  So, imagine my dismay when, as much as I tried to make it work, my precious Eee PC really didn’t cut the mustard.  The keyboard was too small, the screen was too small and dull, the battery would barely last two hours, and the CPU was underpowered.  I had it tricked out with a nice, stripped down installation of Ubuntu, but even that performed poorly on the Eee PC.  So, what’s a geeky girl to do when she is disappointed with her technology? Continue Reading

When Mac Rumors first leaked the story that the Slingbox application for the iPhone was set to launch cries of joy rang out from iPhone users everywhere.  That is until they read further and learned that the application would only run on a wifi connection.  For fear of overloading their network AT&T apparently asked Apple to restrict use of the Slingbox application.

Luckily for those users who running Jailbroken iPhones there’s a nifty utility called “VOIPover3G” which tricks applications into thinking there is a wifi connection present when in fact there’s only a 3G.  This allows the Slingbox application to work perfectly over your 3G connection.

Set up of this utility isn’t difficult but as with any tinkering you do with your iPhone’s system files, please do so at your own risk. Continue Reading

Over the past few months, I’ve seen a lot of people talk about netbook computers and how hackable they are. Sites like JKontheRun, The Gadgeteer, and even Gear Diary have all posted articles on hacking this particular netbook.  While none of these sites recommends hacking ANY device, it does go a long way to  showing everyone just how versatile this device truly, truly is.

Honestly, I wasn’t really interested in any kind of netbook computer until Dan posted his article on the creation of a “hackintosh,” or non-Apple PC running OSX.  Before then, I really didn’t seen any real value or have any interest in using something that, at the time, I thought was underpowered, limited in functionality and versatility, and, well, way smaller than my 15.4″ MacBook Pro.  I just didn’t see the point… Until Dan’s article, that is.

Please note that this is an ADVANCED piece of work. You also need to understand that no one at Gear Diary sanctions or recommends this. You shouldn’t do any of this without understanding that you do all of this at your own risk.

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Before I get started, I wanted to say special thanks go out to Dan Cohen, who stayed up with me until 3am Eastern/2am Central working on the Flash drive needed to get this all done. So… OSX 10.5.6 and the MSI Wind… Yah ok… maybe not so much.

Quick update – I’ve got OSX installed on my Wind (calling it miniMBP); and I’ve learned some interesting things as of this morning.

1. 1. I can still survive and be human on as little as 2.5 hours of sleep as long as there’s good, strong coffee around…somewhere.
2. 2. You have to find the right version of Chameleon in order to get the flash drive right so that you can get OSX installed on the Wind
3. 3. Deselecting the Kernel and installing a different wireless card are no longer required, as long as you use the right source and get the right driver for the Wind’s WiFi card, respectively
4. 4. Software Update runs and works!
5. 5. Installing OSX 10.5.6 “works” (the OS gets updated) but in the end, may not be the best way to go.
6. 6. Boot Camp apparently requires TRUE EFI in order to function, so THAT’S why is not in the build of OSX that was hacked for the Wind.  The Wind won’t run Boot Camp (but that doesn’t mean you can’t dual or even triple boot your Wind..!)

There appear to be keyboard and trackpad issues between the Wind and OSX 10.5.6.  Everything still works if you use an external keyboard and mouse, but not with the Wind’s keyboard and trackpad.  So once you buy the prize, its yours to keep… Meaning, once you hack it, you may not be able to go main stream for all updates. 

Thankfully, I know what I need to do to install Leopard on the Wind, so I have a Mac in my pocket whenever I want it.  I need to know if I can find the 10.5.5 update out there, download it and install it and see if my 10.5.6 theory is correct. I’m going to be trolling the Apple Support site and forums for this tonight and tomorrow.

Also, any MSI Wind fans out there need to check out forums.msiwind.net. This is a great resource and will help you if you run into any problems with your Wind whether it runs Windows XP, Vista , OSX, or whatever.

UPDATE: It looks as though ALL OS updates that are released MUST first be modified (by someone with a lot more development and programming skill than me) and be released as a hacked update before it can be installed on the Wind. 

The OS version that Dan and I both used was 10.5.4.  Installing updates for either 10.5.5 or 10.5.6 renders the internal keyboard and trackpad unusable.  There’s obviously some kind of a driver issue or conflict there, at the very least.  I’ll be looking around forums.msiwind.net for those updates as well.

A little over a week ago I installed Mac OS Leopard on the MSI Wind I had picked up at Best Buy. I’m pleased to report that after a week of use, it is still going strong. I’m amazed at how well the Mac OS runs on the device; I am grateful to everyone who figured out how to get Mac OS X running perfectly on a Wind and were then kind enough to share their work.

Well, I couldn’t leave well enough alone, and so I decided that I need to trick out the diminutive Mac just a bit. The first victim… the hard drive.

I always wanted to have a notebook with an SSD drive. Unfortunately, the premium for getting flash on the MacBook Air I had last year was too high, and I needed a large drive on the new MacBook I got last month. Since the goal of the WindOSX is to be able to throw it in my bag and go, I figured I didn’t need a huge drive. Moreover, I figured I could always add additional storage by using the SD slot. I found a reasonably priced 32 GB SSD at SuperBiiz ($90 plus a $20 rebate) and ordered it.

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(Note- This post is done in order to share my experience creating a Hackintosh. It is not intended to recommend or encourage similar hacks. Gear Diary neither recommends, nor takes any liability, if you choose to do the same.)

I’ve been through the whole UMPC thing from the start. I had a TabletKiosk UMPC the day they were shipped. I had a Samsung Q1P, Q1Ultra, Q1Ultra Premium and a Sony UX 280P in rapid succession. I loved the whole UMPC concept but none of the machines ever fit the bill quite well enough for me. Each was either returned or, more often, found their way to eBay in pristine condition.

When I made the shift to Mac a year and a half ago I figured I had left the whole “netbook-thing” behind- at least until Apple made their way into the arena with more than the iPhone and iPod Touch. Three weeks ago, however, I decided to try again. I had an Acer Aspire One for a week and was impressed with it on many levels. The trackpad did me in, however, and it went back. From there I jumped into an HP Mini-Note 1000 and loved it. Seriously, I absolutely loved the machine. Yet after a few days using it I realized that as much as I loved the Mini-Note I hated being back on XP. (here is one exception- XP Tablet- but that is another post.) Then, earlier this week, I saw that RealTek had released a wifi driver that allowed the MSI Wind U100 to be “OX S-ified” without having to make any changes to the hardware. (Prior to this in order to get wifi working you needed to either use a WiFI dongle or open the machine up and swap in a different WiFi card.)

So goodbye HP Mini-Note, hello MSI Wind.

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