Blackberry Storm Specs

Display: Touchscreen, 65K colors, 360*480 pixels, 3.25 inches

Dimensions : 112.5 x 62.2 x 14 mm

Weight : 155 gms

Memory : 1 GB internal memory + 8/16 GB Micro SD

Connectivity : GPRS, EDGE, 3G

OS: version 4.7

Camera: 3 + Megapixel, 2048x1536 pixels

GPS: GPS/A-GPS, BB Maps

The Blackberry Storm

I have waited for the BB Storm for so long. I hv decided to throw my speel on how it compares with the iPhone (I do have both phones). Here is a quick jab at what the Storm is all about. 

We all know that Blackberries are traditionally big on havinga  real full QWERTY keyboard. It is all about improvising corporate productivity by providing email access to cell phone and be able to reply back to it in a jiffy. You would be surprised to see the Blackberry Storm being a drastic change from RIM's usual products, the real keyboard is missing. This is replaced by a Suretype keyboard in Portrait mode and full qwerty touch screen phone in Landscape mode.

The screen is slightly  bigger with a resolution of 480*360 (a tid more than the iPhone and true letterbox mode).  The touch screen provides full tactile feedback to keypress. Altogether the touch screen is a totally different experience on the Storm unlike any others.

When the Storm came out on Nov 21st, 2008, every one started comparing this phone with the iphone  and a lot of bad reviews have come out about this phone partially due to Apple junkies telling around how the Storm is not an iPhone. I absolutely love my storm. I also own an apple iPhone so i know what is good and bad on both phones.

Just like some  one said on the internet, either you will absolutely love it or you would hate it totally. But dont make the decision based on reading mixed reviews on the internet. Go to a store play with it, demo it and make sure you like most common features like Email, Internet browsing, audio/video playback, sound quality of phone calls etc.

I am sure you wont be disappointed at least after the first few updates on software for the BB Storm. Remember the iPhone is so good now only after 2 - 3 yrs and several software updates that came out. Most Apple junkies tend to forget that

Windows 7 and VMware fusion

I wasnt very keen on trying the beta for Windows 7 up until one of my buddies mentioned about it. The reviews looked pretty good, but after all the pain from battling with Windows Vista, i thought it would be a waste of my time trying out this new OS. I recently purchased a Macbook (not Pro) and had upgraded it to 4 gb ram so that i can run my Windows XP and applications while enjoying the MAC interface using VMWare Fusion (2.x).

Started downloading the beta (which i heard some rumours that the download was going to be slow as well as Microsoft taking the site offline in early hours). Either ways, i did start the download during the night time (US), so it really did go fast eventually. The DVD iso image was a whopping 2.4gb..jeez...


Copied over the iso image to a USB external hard drive so i could boot using ISO image from VMWare Fusion in MAC. I also selected the type of OS as Windows Server 2008 (32bit). The default HDD type is SCSI, for safety reasons (driver issues) i changed this to IDE (you have to delete the SCSI and add a new IDE). Allocated 100 gb (not all at once) to the hard drive. The installation process was super fast. All i remember is telling it to boot from the image and a few things like new Install or upgrade, as well as the CD key. I have to give that to the WIndows 7 team that the instalation went with out any hassles and was much faster than any of the previous Windows versions.


The interface seems so much Like Windows Vista. It has a much better selection of themes and backgrounds can be slideshowed (change at specified intervals automatically). IE 8 looks pretty sweet and fast to load. Some of the new features for browsing and resizing windows are very cool. I think the WIndows 7 team really did their homework from bad feedbacks about how Vista was so slow.

New features like Accerelerators help improve search on the internet more productive and faster. Two problems i have so far with Windows 7

a. I run it on VMWare , so i dont know if its because of that. The sound card on my macbook is connected to the VMWare machine. All other OSes like XP, Vista can recognize and play sounds, but on Windows 7, the sound card does show up, but does not play any sounds...Bug ???, driver issue?

b. I downloaded the free beta edition of Kaspersky labs Antivirus (one of the Recommended 3, AVG, Norton are the others). It did install succesffully but its not able to update its antivirus database. It seems connecting to the update server, but then it errors out...cant expect much when its free beta software...

Over all i am impressed with the performance enhancements which were lacking in Vista...Good job Windows 7 team.

Sony PSP joins da KlUb

My console collection for now is complete. Bought the God of War edition PSP (red) with Kratos's head carved on the back side. The bundle also comes with Superbad movie on UMD and the PSP game God of War : Chains of Olympus. The total cost was 200$....worth every penny spent...the PSP is the best handheld console in the market as we speak...

Nintendo DS Lite adds to my collection

Got a new Nintendo DS lite as gift from my better half. The Cobalt Blue color one....hard to find...preordered it. It arrived this weekend, March 1st. Looks very attractive, sexy blue color, need to purchase a few games for it hopefully soon.

Xbox 360 and Halo goodies

Insides of a Cisco IP Phone

Insides of a Cisco IP phone 7960 (the phone's ethernet port went bad).

Macbook

Finally bought a mac book (of course for my better half). This is the best laptop i have bought so far. Looks very cute, light weight and pretty much loaded with all the features we need. It comes standard with 1 gb ram, the new Intel Core2Duo 2.2 ghz with Santa Rosa processor, 802.11n radio ,bluetooth radio, iSight built in webcam, gigalan, 120gb SATA hdd, 8x dvd writer. Plus the biggest advantage is that i can dual boot MacOS Leopard and Windows Vista/XP. i am in love with this laptop.

Wii has finally joined the club

Got a Wii this Xmas (Santa really did stop by). Now i technically own all three consoles, Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii. What more can you get ?

Xbox 360 Elite

This is my 3rd Xbox360 in less than 1.5 yrs. Thanks to Microsoft for the infamous Ring of Death problem. I m lucky that i did buy warranty for the first and second one. Each time 60$. Last week my 360 's dvd drive crapped out. It quit reading any discs whether it be games, movie dvds etc. Talked to Frys and finally they agreed to give me the Xbox 360 Elite for an extra 50$ as the price of my Xbox 360 Premium unit was 399$ list and the current price of the Xbox 360 Elite is 449$. At the end of the day turned out to be a good deal, as the Elites have better cooling, a 120 gb hard drive and black matte finish which matches with my entertainment center. The Elite also came with two games free, Ultimate Alliance and Forza Motorsport 2. Mostly gonna sell this on ebay.

Orange Box : Half-Life2

Orange Box released on 10th of October and i rented off of Gamefly. Best bang for the buck, as you get 5 separate games for 59.99. With gamefly discounts i purchased this game for 40$. And sadly to say i have finished playing this game.

Halo3 End Credits - Spoiler Warning

Do not watch this if you havent finished the game yet..........You will see this video only after finishing the game in one of the difficulty levels and sit through the boring end credits for 5 minutes.......but worth watching it.....there may be hope for Halo4 [:D]

Halo3 Multiplayer - HiRes Screenshot

This picture was taken from in-game theater. You can save videos of every game that you play and then play it in theater and then edit and take snapshots. See Maccspayne in action!!!!!!

Some Halo3 Screenshots

Graphics could have been better, but the cut scenes look awesome!! Even though the game is FPS, when you use turret guns, you can get to see a TPS view of Master Chief. His armor looks shiny....looks like he polishes it every day...LOL.

A lot of really cool vehicles and guns have been introduced. Grenades are not just limited to plasma and frag grenades. Now you have the spike grenade and also the bubble shield. You also get a deployable shield, personal gravity lift etc. SOme of the controls from Halo2 have been changed, so it takes some time to get used to them. Like X is not used to reload weapon any more. RB and LB are used to reload the appropriate weapons (if dual wielded).

Halo Trilogy

I swear I will never sell these three games LOL

Halo3 Released - Sells 192 million

Can you F'ing believe that one game makes history, by selling more than any other video game released to date ? Even beat Super Mario Bros sales over 20 years in just 1 day. I pre-ordered the copy of my Halo3 from Amazon. I m getting old and dont want to experience like what happened to me last time when Halo2 was released. I had to wait in line for 2 hours in front of Gamestop on a chilly night in Novemeber 2004. Amazon shipped the copy a day before the release date so that it gets to me on the day it releases. and it did!! Thanks to Amazon prime trial for the 2 day free shipping.

Halo3 Fever

Dennis (my colleague) bought me this, as he knows i m a big time halo fan.....The game fuel from Mountain Dew....Tastes much like MDew: Livewire....has a cherry kick to it......gonna save this bottle being a halo fan.

Installing Yellow Dog Linux on Sony PS3

Many of my friends warned me not to fry the PS3 with in 2 or 3 weeks of buying it. Since Sony has been widely supporting Linux installations on PS3, i didnt think it was much of a risk to do the same. Several websites comment about Sony starting to officially shipping Linux OS on PS3 so that you can use it as a PC. After several weeks of reading through variouis blogs and websites, i was comfortable enough to perform this task of loading linux on the PS3. Now the big question was which version. There were websites talking about Fedora and Yellowdog which are the most popular. I decided to go with Yellowdog from Terrasoft (http://www.terrasoft.com/). Yellow Dog Linux (YDL) is at version 5.0 now. It is the only flavour of Linux that is officially supported on the Sony Playstation 3 (Atleast thats what they claim).

I dont mean to make this post repetitive by describing all the nitty gritty details of how to install Yellow Dog Linux. You can find a very good article about this here.

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/power/library/pa-linuxps3-1/

The big step before installing Linux on the PS3 is that you are going to have to create a separate partition in the PS3 harddrive for Linux to run. Essentially, this is going to be a dual boot between Sony's game OS and the Linux installation. Since its been two weeks, I bought the PS3, i had already downloaded many game demos, videos and also save files from my favourite game Resistance : Fall of man that i couldnt afford to give away while formatting the harddrive to make Linux run on the PS3. I used a 1 gig USB flash drive to save the important files off the PS3 temporarily. Once that was done, from System Settings you can format the harddrive. Now Sony GameOS let you allocate only 10G towards any other OS installations (Big downside). But 10G is enough for the YDL installation.

Next step is to install a boot loader so that you can boot another OS. You have to download two files for this.

a. otheros.self

b. otheros.bld.

Both these are not that hard to find, if you do a quick google search, you should be able to easily find them. The otheros.bld is something that you download specific to the Linux distribution you are installing. The otheros.self is the PS3 OtherOS installer that you can download from Sony's official website for Playstation. Both these files need to be placed in the USB flash drive (Check the FAQ i posted above for detailed instructions). You can install the boot loader again from the PS3 System Settings.

Remember the last step before you start the install to download YDL 5.0 distribution disc (on ISO). Again links to download this is not hard to find (Google is your best friend). Download it burn it in a DVD. I used a slower rate to burn just to be on the safer side.

After i slipped in the disc for YDL 5.0 into the PS3 discdrive, I rebooted the PS3 and in a few seconds (30-45) the infamous penguin started showing up on the left hand screen (pictures above). The installation takes about 1 hour to complete though there were certain parts of the installation wizard that scared me to death. The installation wizard said "YDL cannot read the partition on the disk, so it needs to format the PS3 harddrive". My heart sank for a minute and then the first thing i do is freeze the installation, go to my laptop, search for any information on the FAQ about this. And then i was relieved, reading the information that YDL installation has no idea about the GameOS partition (the remaining 50Gb left in my 60Gb PS3). So its ok to format the 10gig partition as you wish. Still i think Terrasoft should have worded this properly to prevent future heart failures to PS fans.

Once the installation was over, there is a one time setup wizard that will run through setting Time, Date, Root password etc. The default resolution on the Yellowdog system uses 720p, So if you need 1080i or 1080p you have edit some config files to get there. "ps3videomode" is a command you can use to change the display mode (one time only) to various modes that are supported. All in all the YDL distribution looks very kool with its Gnome interface. It comes with all basic tools required to run a PC - IM software, media player, graphics programs, Firefox etc.

After doing all this you will be asking yourself....WTF ? what did i gain after installing Linux on my PS3 ? Some bragging rights....

Xbox 360 versus PS3 networking with Windows Vista

Installed Windows Vista Ultimate on my home PC and have ever since been getting the urge to network my Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 with the PC. This would let you stream Photos, Video and Pictures across the network from your PC to Xbox or PS3. Detecting the Xbox 360 or PS3 happened in a jiffy.

Vista detected Xbox 360 for me automatically, but had to do a little setup for the PS3. Both requires WIndows Media Player 11. Simply go to Library Menu and click Media Sharing. Click the Share My Media check box. You may optionally need to enable Media Sharing under Network Connections and Sharing (Control Panel). Select the Xbox 360 that goes automatically detected and click the Allow button.

To setup the PS3 disable/enable Media Server Connection from System Settings (PS3) and then search for Media servers from Photo, Music or Video menu. This should detect your Windows PC. On the Windows PC make sure you allow the PS3 as an allowed device. Note that PS3 wont get automatically be displayed by its name (instead it will show up as Unknown or Other device with the mac-address displayed.

HD Collection

Here is my HD-Collection so far, 5 more free movies are on its way from Sony. The 5 I have so far are

HD-DVD format: 300 and King Kong.

Blu-ray format: Casino Royale, Apocalypto, Gone in 60 Seconds.

Hope to see a HD-DVD/Blu-ray combo disc sometime soon, what Warner calls it THD (Total HD Format).