Category Archives: Hardware

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Wi-fi dongles

Hackintosh, Hardware

Cheap speed.

The location of my Hackintosh makes it uneconomical to run wired broadband from the Airport Extreme router in the adjacent room, so when I built the machine I installed a PCI-E wireless card to receive wireless. This card emulates the Airport card in Macs and works natively through the System Preferences->Network pane. Yes, a lot of brain cells were destroyed trying to find the right driver to make this work!

The other day, wanting to add a little more computing power to my office, it occurred to me that I had an older MSI Barebone in the closet. This inexpensive computer had been used as a media center but the poky Intel Atom CPU and Intel GMA 950 GPU struggled with routing movies, resulting in stuttering. So I replaced the Barebone with a MacMini and the problem went away, owing to the faster CPU/GPU in the Mini. The Barebone was consigned to the closet – it has negligible resale value.

However, for my use – streaming stock quotes – the Barebone would be ideal. The only snag is that it had no wireless capability and as it had been hacked to run OS X Leopard adding wireless would be tricky as there are no expansion slots in the machine.

Now my Apple Airport Extreme router is not the latest dual band version. It can deliver 802-11n in either shared b/g/n mode at 2.4gHz or n mode only at 5 gHz. I cannot use the less interference-prone 5gHz mode (where baby monitors, cordless phones, etc, do not venture) as that makes my older iPhone unworkable and also disables the HackPro whose internal card runs at 2.4gHz only, albeit in n mode.

So when I started shopping around for a device to add wireless to the Barebone, I limited my search to 2.4gHz devices, as I could not use 5gHz because of these limitations, and I did not want to spend another $180 to upgrade to the latest dual band auto-switching Airport Extreme router. I bought one of these, having owned one ages ago to add n mode to an old Mac iBook:

The Newer Technology n mode wireless dongle. Click the picture for MacSales’s site.

I plugged it in to the Barebone and, voila, after installing the driver (I downloaded it from NT’s site rather than using the older one on the provided disk) I was up and running.

The next thing was to run Speedtest.net on the Barebone and …. blow me down …. but the dongle was far faster than the Hackintosh with the internal card.

Ping/Download/Upload measurements were as follows (Ping, or latency, should be as low as possible, the others as high as possible):

MSI Barebone: 71/7.6/1.2
Hackintosh: 24/6.5/1.5

Both machines are in the same location.

So now, getting ambitious, I switched off Airport in the Hackintosh and plugged in the Newer Technology Dongle. Wow!

Hackintosh with NT dongle: 24/9.1/1.5 (The maximum download speed possible is 10.0 with my service)
Hackintosh with internal PCI-E card: 24/6.5/1.5

So the download speed was 40% higher with the dongle in the Hackster than with the PCI-E internal card!

Finally, I went to the MacMini which is hard wired to the cable modem which pipes broadband to the home:

MacMini hardwired: 26/8.6/1.3

So the Hackster + dongle on wireless, in a remote location, was faster than a hard wired MacMini!

These dongles run their own software and do not use the Airport app. In the past they deposited an ugly icon in your dock but the latest version of the software now places a discrete Ralink icon in the status bar, thus:

Click the icon and you get:

The Ralink software supports WPA2 secure encryption, even if it’s not pretty to look at:

All those disparate wireless sources reflect the additional Airport Express wireless extenders throughout the home, and the Virgin one is the MiFi portable 3G wireless gadget, of which more here. ‘2WIRE665’ is the router provided by AT&T. Fire up System Preferences->Network and you will see both the Airport-emulation PCI-E card inside the Hackintosh and the external dongle, identified below as ‘802 11 n WLAN’. In practice, the slower of the two – Airport – is switched off and the Hackintosh enjoys the faster speed conferred by the $30 dongle. You can save the Profile for your network, thus obviating the need to enter your password every time you reboot or restart. As I never switch off my desktop computers, it’s not an issue for me.

Bottom Line? If you are OK with using 2.4gHz n mode wifi and want speed with a minimum of futzing about in your Hackintosh, or you want to add n mode to an older computer which has b/g mode only or has no wireless capability, plug in one of these NT dongles into an available USB port, download the software from NT’s site and off you go. It protrudes some 2 3/4 inches. If that does not work, plug it into the provided cradle and connect the cradle to your Mac using the provided USB cable.

Snow Leopard 10.6.8 update – late June, 2011: The existing Ralink wireless utility fails to work after upgrading Snow Leopard from 10.6.7 to 10.6.8. However, the maker, Ralink, is on the ball, and you can find an updated version here – it’s the file named USB(RT2870 /RT2770 /RT3X7X /RT537X) and dated 6/21/2011. I had to try the installation twice before it worked and after rebooting all was fine again.

iMac HDD swap? No way.

Computing

Another consumer unfriendly move from the fruit company.

I wrote of the clear evidence that the new iMacs continue to have cooling problems here.

Now yet another reason has surfaced to avoid these machines. You cannot change or add internal hard disk drives yourself!

While accessing the drives in an iMac has never been easy, the post-white aluminum shell models with the ghastly glossy screens are easier to dismantle than their white predecessors. The glass screen is removed with a couple of small suction cups, the glass being retained by magnets. (Talk of form over function). A bunch of Torx screws retaining the LCD in place is removed and the LCD carefully raised while connecting cables are detached. The drives are then easily accessed. There’s room in there for an SSD in addition to the HDD. SSDs rock and I highly recommend the use of one as a boot and application drive.

But forget about swapping the HDD for a bigger one or replacing a blown one yourself, because Apple has made jolly well sure that your replacement will not work properly. You see, the greedy fruit company has installed unique connectors in its machines and in the HDDs they use. The connecting cable to the HDD controls the cooling fan speed for the HDD. Install a regular off-the-shelf HDD and the fan will spool up to a roar at 6,000 rpm, rather than the <2,000 rpm at which it ordinarily runs. So the only way you can get an HDD exchanged is to tramp down to the local Apple Store with your whopper iMac and tramp back there weeks later when it has been fixed. And if your 'local' Apple Store is 200 miles away, well then you are going to have to move closer, right? Or would you rather drive 800 miles per round trip? All so that they can hose you down an extra $100 for installing a replacement drive. A supremely thoughtless move by Apple, which I can only think is motivated by greed. Hard to explain it any other way. Here's the scoop from the fine people at OWC where I buy all my hard drives:

Any hard user of a Mac should avoid the iMac like the plague. When it does overheat or blows out its HDD, you will be stuck without a machine for a considerable period of time. And if that happens after the warranty has expired you are looking at very high repair costs. Remember my old 20″ and 24″ white iMacs which fried their graphics cards? Apple wanted $900 to repair that and to this day refuses to admit fault despite widespread comment on the flaw. Ridiculous.

There has never been a better time for demanding users to build a Hackintosh, at a fraction of the cost of the overpriced MacPro. Why, you could build two – talk of redundancy – and still have over $900 to spare, not to mention superior performance. Oh! and by the way, replacing an HDD in my HackPro takes two minutes – and that’s with one hand tied behind my back with breaks to play with the resident border terrier.

Overheating issues? Get real.

Intel SSD in the HackPro. Two 1 tB Samsung HDDs to the right. Drives slide in and out on spring-retained mounting plates.
The massive cooling fan at the top cost all of $10 and is many times the size of the one in any iMac. A replacement
can be found at your local computer store.

My HackPro has 2 x 1tB HDDs and the smaller SSD for the OS and applications. Replacing the HDDs with 3 x 3tB ones would give me nearly 10 tB of storage for a total cost of $575. I just don’t need that much storage (though my movie file server is now up to 10 tB!) but it’s nice to know I can use any off-the-shelf HDD if I ever do.

The Razer Death Adder 3500dpi mouse

Computing

I take a leaf from the gamers’ book.

My initial enthusiasm for the Apple Magic Mouse has cooled.

There are three reasons.

The first is that it frustratingly loses the Bluetooth connection now and then which simply drives me up the wall. It does this both with my HackPro and, far more often, with the MacMini I use to watch stored movies. You would think it would work better with Apple’s hardware, but no. And that’s from two MagicMice – so unlikely it’s a sample fault. Go figure.

The second is that the ergonomics are not right. Even though the device is gorgeous to behold, it’s too low and I am developing wrist pain after extended use. And whoever designed that sharp edge – on a device meant to be held in the hand – well, the less said the better.

The third, another cause of extreme frustration, is that I cannot consistently get to the desktop by touching a selected point on the surface no matter how hard I try, using the MagicPrefs application I mention in my earlier piece. The touch point seems to change at random, working when it wants to. Just beyond irritating and the reason that finally made me change.

I checked around and one photographer friend recommended a Logitech model (the MX900) but sadly that is discontinued here. Others prefer to use the multi-touch pad on the MacBook Pro or whatever. However, I need a mouse for business use and also find it the easiest way to outline areas in Photoshop where localized manipulation is required.

So as those in the farming community like to say, I got me to thinking. Who would know most about mice? Why, the gaming community of course. They use them all day long, use them hard and are very demanding when it comes to smooth and instantaneous response. So I checked reviews of gaming mice with the following dictates in mind:

  • Must be wired. I am through with batteries, RF and Bluetooth.
  • Must have outstanding ergonomic design.
  • Must be programmable for use with Mac OS X Snow Leopard.
  • Must be super responsive.
  • Has to have a scroll wheel.

I eventually settled on the fancifully named Razer Death Adder 3500dpi mouse, replete with glowing scroll wheel and adder design on the body. Mercifully, the glow can be switched off. On receipt, I downloaded the latest software from Razer’s site and read through the comprehensive instructions. The application runs as a stand alone program rather than installing as a System Preference pane. The Mouse pane in System Preferences continues to work so you can experiment between that and the settings in Razer’s application, though the latter has many more options.

The contrast in shape with the MagicMouse is clear from the picture:

Two side buttons circled. Illuminated scroll wheel and death adder (!) switched on for this picture.

The Death Adder is larger in all dimensions, maybe too large for small hands; most importantly it is far taller, meaning your palm rests lightly on it, which is impossible with the Magic Mouse. It’s some 1 3/4″ tall compared to 7/8″ for the Magic Mouse – that’s a big difference. The indented sides further aid comfort. The left and right buttons are discrete and a comfortable concave shape, unlike on the Magic Mouse which uses a contiguous convex surface and, although the Razer’s two programmable side buttons are on the left only, the mouse can be configured for left hand use. Nice. For serious lefties there’s a true left handed version with the buttons on the right. Every control surface can be programmed for any action and macro programming is also possible. I left dpi and polling at their maximum settings (only a slow CPU working near capacity would need these reduced) and simply programmed the side buttons for Desktop and Dashboard, respectively, and programmed a press on the scroll wheel for Exposé- all windows. I hop into the desktop and between apps often.

The dramatic height difference is clear.

Double click speed, scrolling sensitivity, cursor speed/acceleration are all adjustable. I have scrolling set to the lowest speed otherwise it’s crazy fast. It’s a fraction heavier than the Magic Mouse which means just right. There’s a satisfying heft to it. The cord provided is very long at 7 feet – no issues reaching the HackPro under my desk. When shipped the lower surface is protected with clear plastic; once removed the mouse is wonderfully smooth on a mouse pad, resting on three protruding nylon pads. The side buttons are responsive and you can even adjust the delay before they kick in. There is no ball, a laser beam being used for tracking. Tracking is very smooth – I can detect no jerkiness or ‘steps’ as the cursor is moved on screen. It’s as good as the Magic Mouse in that regard, meaning excellent.

What’s not good? Vertical scrolling is stepped rather than smooth, something that only Apple seems to do right. The scroll wheel does not tilt sideways for horizontal scrolling, though it’s not a feature I miss. Let’s hope that the eventual ingress of dirt through the scrolling wheel will not wreck the mouse in the way the Magic Mouse’s predecessor, the Mighty Mouse, would fail. The Lazer’s body is sealed, so it’s not like you can clean it.

Other than that, the Razer Death Adder seems like a winner, at under $50. I had $20 left over after unloading both my (not so) MightyMice for $35 each. Good riddance. The only thing that ‘Just Works’ here is eBay.

The current issue of The New Yorker has an interesting piece by experienced technical writer Malcolm Gladwell about how a young Steve Jobs saw a prototype of the original mouse at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s. He had his engineers make it mass produced and cheap. Too bad Apple has forgotten how to design a good mouse. Like its iMac, the Magic Mouse is a triumph of form over function, looks trumping all else in the design brief.

Fuji X100 – deeply flawed

Fuji

DP Review confirms my worst suspicions.

DP Review, a subsidiary of Amazon, publishes the best equipment reviews on the web. OK, second best. If you want no punches pulled, tell it like it is, I-paid-for-the-hardware-with-my-own-money-and-accept-no-advertising real world use tests, you come here. And though you may not call DP Review’s photography memorable that hardly matters, for they know how to test gear. Thus DP Review will do, as you sure as heck will not be seeing a review of the X100 here.

So when they published their Fuji X100 review yesterday, my worst suspicions were confirmed. Here are their conclusions:

Click above to go to the DP Review of the Fuji X100

This is somewhat cold comfort for me, as I bought, and resold for a profit my X100 in its unopened box, after growing concern that the thing was deeply flawed, especially in the one area of most vital need for a street snapper. Fast focus. And DP review confirms that it is not good in that regard. For “…. mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras” in the ‘Cons’ above, you can read “…. the Panasonic G1”. And for “Autofocus not quite as fast as ….” you can read “It sucks compared to ….”.

Stated differently, this appears to be a camera with an excellent lens and sensor which is so flawed elsewhere as to be virtually unusable. Quite how something so unfinished ever made it past quality control and acceptance testing beats me. Fuji’s early web site attempts for this much hyped camera suggest that they need some photographers on staff. How else could this alpha test model ever have seen the light of day?

I’ll put my profit toward the price of the Panasonic G3 which I have on order.

Oops, I almost forgot. Yes, the X100 is ‘pretty’. That will really improve the pictures it takes while you wait the seven seconds for it to write your last snap to the card. How could I have overlooked that? It’s generally not fair to judge gear based on someone else’s review, but when the review source is credible and the review stinks, it makes sense to do so.

The Panasonic G3 – Part I

Micro Four-Thirds

The best street snapper yet?

With today’s announcement of the Panasonic G3, scheduled to ship in June, Panasonic may have created the best street snapping camera yet. What follows is largely viewed from that perspective.

Some history. The Panasonic G1 was the first Micro Four-Thirds camera. Like the first iPad, there was so little wrong with the design that there have been few compelling reasons to upgrade. The GF1 and GF2 bodies deleted the eye-level finder, rendering the body largely useless for serious photography. The short lived G10 used a cheapened EVF and was discontinued shortly after release. The G2 added a movie mode and a touch screen – the latter the ‘push’ rather than the true touch type in the iPad and iPhone. A solution looking for a problem. The costly GH1 and GH2 bodies added sophisticated movie modes with the GH2 sporting the second sensor design in the G range, all the others having shared the one from that original G1. That sensor brought more megapixels and reviews suggest that the noise levels are now down to those in APS-C cameras.

The Panasonic G3 – complete with strange model designation.

While the G3 does not get rid of the faux prism hump, it is nevertheless of great interest to street snappers. My G1 has seen more pictures taken with it in my 21 months of ownership than any camera I have ever owned, and I have been banging away for some 50 years now, since I was a kid. My shot counter shows well over 10,000 exposures. So any improvements to the G1 make my radar screen. Nearly everything I have been reading about the G3 suggests it’s worth upgrading to one, especially as I now have no back-up camera, my Canon 5D gear all sold in favor of the smaller, lighter Panny and its three lenses – the Oly 9-18, the 14-45 kit zoom and the 45-200 Panny, all superb and all very light and small.

Here are the major changes in the G3 compared to the G1:

  • The body is smaller, the unnecessary hand grip slimmed down. Smaller is always better.
  • The battery is smaller at 7.3mAh vs. 9 mAh, or 20% less. As I routinely get over 400 exposures on a charge with the G1, getting ‘only’ 320 is hardly an issue.
  • The EVF eye proximity sensor is gone – this would switch off the LCD when the camera was raised to eye level. No problem. The only time I use the LCD it when formatting an SDHC card; otherwise it remains folded with the screen in to the body.
  • The focus mode dial top left is gone. I use AF all the time so I don’t care and there’s still touch manual focus when the shutter release is part depressed and the focus mount is touched. Apparently the MF enlarged area now appears in a window so that should make this even more useful.
  • The AEL/AEF lock button is gone. Not good, but there are two programmable function buttons in its place where the AEL function, which I use quite a bit, can be assigned.
  • All the dumb-as-it-gets scene modes have disappeared from the mode dial. Hooray. Let’s also hope they made the click stops more robust.
  • The single shot/motor drive/delayed action lever has disappeared and is now a menu choice. I use single shot only so it does not matter.
  • The mode dial now has two Custom settings – wonderful. I will set one at ISO 400, the other at ISO 1600.
  • As with the G2, the thumb wheel is on the rear, not on the front as with the G1. I cannot tell you how frustrating the placement of the one on the G1 is – I am still frequently depressing it accidentally, going into +/- exposure mode, when all I want to do is change the aperture (I snap only in aperture priority mode).
  • The square format mode has been dropped (no problem) but there’s still a choice of 4:3 or 3:2 – the latter essential for one brought up with 35mm Leicas. That’s all I use.
  • The body is rumored to use an alloy frame, replacing the plastic one. Nice, I suppose.

Sadly, no blue model is available, the silly choices being white, red or brown. All ‘Yecch’ colors. Black is the way to go.

As with all previous Panny MFT bodies, there is no OIS shake reduction. That’s built into select Panny lenses. Only Olympus MFT bodies have in-body OIS.

There’s some sort of setting to blur backgrounds which I have yet to understand. No matter – I simply use Auto Blurâ„¢.

The simplified mode dial on the G3.

But the most important changes are under the skin. First, Panny claims that the speedy autofocus in the G1/G2 is now even faster, and comparable with that found in most DSLRs. This may actually make that slow focusing dog, the 20mm Panasonic lens, useable. I returned mine after a trial run which delivered 30% of my pictures out of focus. For comparison, the kit lens has a focus failure rate in my hands of maybe 1%. Second, the new 16mp sensor, likely a variant of the one found in the costly $900 GH2 body, has been installed. That probably means one to two stops less noise and should substantially clean up noise at 1600 ISO. My G1 with kit lens ran me $640, whereas the G2 is $700.

I have ordered a black body only for $600 and will write more when I have had a chance to wring it out. The learning curve should be low, owing to the similarity in the bodies, and I already know my three lenses are just fine for what I do, so I’m optimistic that things should work out well, with the G1 moving to the role of back-up body. Mechanical noise? No way of telling until I try it, but let’s hope it’s the same or less as in the G1, which is a very quiet camera. Indeed, the low frequency of the noise emitted by the G1 puts any M Leica to shame.

Part II is here.