Jonathan Hong

Quick thoughts on the iPhone 3G S

June 30th, 2009

The Good: Storage! I’ve had the original iPhone 8GB for about two years before I upgraded to the 32GB iPhone 3G S, and oh my, I am really enjoying this extra storage. I have the majority of my music, along with several TV shows, and podcasts, and I still have about 8GB free! Speed! It’s definitely faster than the previous models, which is a nice plus. Camera! The camera is pretty awesome, you can now embarrass your friends with video and upload it to YouTube before they convince you otherwise. Screen! Oleophobic screens are awesome! You can EASILY wipe off smudges and fingerprints without much effort, I just hope the coating will last a couple years. New headset! The iPhone 3G S now comes with volume control built into the headset.

The Bad: No accessories included. I love the dock, I have one at work and one at home. How I’m stuck having to either modify my existing docks, or go out and spend money on new docks. Also, whatever happened to the cleaning cloth?! No MMS or tethering support on initial release! There was a time, I believe Apple would have insisted on having these in place before launching the product.

The Facts of Life: If you have an original iPhone and really enjoy the platform, the iPhone 3G S is a solid upgrade. Chances are you won’t have to pay the early upgrade fee, and it’s really nice having the faster processor, extra RAM, extra storage, and 3G radio. If you are a current iPhone 3G user and you are happy with your storage, there is no need to upgrade. There also wasn’t as much wow factor from the original phone–when I restored my original iPhone to the iPhone 3G S it felt like the same phone I’ve been using for years…just faster, I supposed I’ve acclimated to the platform.

Tags: apple, iphone, review
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A message to laptop manufacturers

May 6th, 2009

A quick thought, I promise…

I’ve had the opportunity to use the Dell Latitude E4300 and E6500 recently and it was a very pleasant user experience. It was nice because it didn’t come with a lot of crapware that the Lenovo IdeaPad came with, the laptops are fast and responsive (like any new laptop should be!)

However, one thing that irks me about the E series…the trackpad. I get that the form factor for the E4300 (a 13″ laptop) is much smaller…and would have a smaller trackpad, but why oh why is the E6500’s trackpad (a 15.4″ laptop) the same size as the E4300?!

The E-series laptop has a trackpad of roughly 2.5″ x 1.5″…my Latitude D510 has a bigger trackpad than that (2.5″ x 2.0″). Although I think it’s excusable for the E4300…the E6500 should have a much larger pad, more like my MacBook Pro (approximately 3.5″ x 2.5″–I think the new ones are even larger!).

Also…who do I talk to about enabling two finger scrolling on these PCs?!

Tags: apple, dell, laptop, lenovo, trackpad
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To my TV junkies

April 27th, 2009

There are so few good shows out in TV land that step away from the forumalic crime or medical dramas. Don’t get me wrong, I love crime and medical dramas, but we have plenty. There are a handful of shows that are a little quirky, or a little different, or a little too badass, but are absolutely amazing.

Chuck. It’s a great show with a lot of heart about a computer geek who gets turned into a spy. For a better recap of why you should watch, click here. Please watch Chuck tonight! If you haven’t had lunch already–go buy Subway and support a sponsor of the show. You can get more information at twitter.com/savechuck.

Dollhouse. It’s getting so good, and is one of my favorites this season. I’m not quite sure how to summarize this one. I suppose it’s about programmable people, which lends itself to great episodic shows, but Joss Whedon has created such a wonderful and rich universe. Check out www.watchdollhouseweek.com for more information.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. This one needs to be saved! If you are a fan of the Terminator movies, you will totally love this show. This deserves another season to explore what happened to John in the season finale! Check out www.savethescc.com (although I think it may be down right now) or twitter.com/saveterminator.

Tags: chuck, dollhouse, terminator, tv
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A quick thought on new laptops

April 25th, 2009

My uncle had recently asked me to help him purchase a budget laptop. His requirements were a big screen to watch DVDs, a webcam to chat with friends, and lots of space to store movies and pictures, all for under $600.

After searching the deal sites for a couple weeks, I found a decent deal for a Lenovo IdeaPad Y530. Spec wise, it is a decent system; 2.0GHz Intel Core2Duo processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 320GB hard drive, quite similar to my MacBook Pro.

After a couple days with the Lenovo, what I discoverd was this brand new laptop was mysteriously slow. It had problems connecting to my wifi network, and it hangs on shutdown. I thought about reformatting it, but it didn’t come with any media. So I was left to uninstall the bloatware, and do my best to speed up the user experience. Disabling Aero transparency and removing unnecessary startup items helped out a lot. But during this process, I wondered how my uncle would have fared if he had to be the one to configure his new computer.

I think this Lenovo experience was the first time I used the factory installation of Windows. What struck me most was that compared to my MacBook Pro, the Lenovo user experience was not very pleasant. When I first booted my Mac, I answered a few questions, and I was ready to go. No uninstalling bloatware, no problems with connecting to wifi networks, no weird issues to diagnose.

The Lenovo is in pretty good shape now and runs pretty smoothly, it’s pretty pleasant to use. What wasn’t very pleasant was getting it to this state.

Tags: laptop, lenovo, review
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Genius

March 5th, 2009

Some people love it, some people hate it, some people haven’t heard of it…but the genius playlist feature on iTunes / iPhone rocks!

Sonic Youth to The Pixies and now Dinosaur Jr. Gotta love it.

Tags: apple, genius, iphone
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Sennheiser MM50 iP

February 22nd, 2009

Over the past twenty-one months or so I’ve gone through three pairs of Apple iPhone headsets. Two of them have blown drivers, and the third’s rubber earbud ring has deteriorated. I wanted to try something new, and after a little research I decided to go with the Sennheiser MM50 iP in-ear headsets.

I’ve been using the headset for about a week and I do enjoy them, but they are not without quirks. Music sounds fantastic on these headsets, and it has pretty good bass. The cable length is good, and the plug fits into my original iPhone with ease. The headset also feels great, even after prolong usage I barely noticed that I was wearing them.

The multifunction button runs up the left side of the headset instead of the right. This isn’t a major issue, but after using the iPhone headset for a long while I’ve grown accustomed to the multifunction button being on the right side of the headset. I should mention that the multifunction button doesn’t work nearly as well as Apple’s. The button is a little small, and difficult to press. Also, to skip or repeat a song requires you to press the button much more rapidly.

Sound isolation on the Sennheiser MM50 iP isn’t great. Sound tends to penetrate with music playing at a lower volume level. However, with music playing at a moderate, the headset provides adequate sound isolation.

I think by far the quirk that I will have to adjust to the most stems from the design of the headset. I’m sure many audiophiles love their in-ear headphones, however I am willing to guess that they don’t talk much while their music is playing. When used to speak to people I find myself speaking louder than normal because it feels like my ears haven’t fully depressurized.

For a more in-depth review, check out the review over at HeadphoneInfo.com.

Tags: apple, headset, iphone, sennheiser
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Updating my Blu-Ray player

January 3rd, 2009

I got Firefly on Blu-Ray today and was greeted with a message telling me to update my blu-ray player. I thought the process would be fairly pain free, plug in my USB drive with the firmware to my service port, click “Update” and be done! However the damn player could not find the files on the drive!

This is how I resolved the issue:

Reset your BD-HP20U (Click “Setup” on your remote, then navigate to “Settings”, then “System Reset”
After it has been restored to factory settings, download the latest firmware and extract the files to a blank or freshly formatted USB drive (be sure to format in Windows).
Insert the drive into the service port and perform the firmware update (Click “Setup” on your remote, then navigate to “Settings”, then ” Software Update” and follow the onscreen instructions.)

I tried step three several times before I realized that my Mac didn’t format the USB drive in a way that the blu-ray player would recognize. So I booted up my Windows VM and did everything from there. Of course at this point I already called Sharp and was speaking to a customer service representative who said the only thing left to do was to ship it back to Sharp (for free, and be without the player for a couple weeks), or go to Best Buy and purchase a upgrade disc from the Geek Squad (and pay $3).

(Popping in the new Blu-Ray disc now…)

I forgot how long Blu-Ray discs take to load, every since I got my AppleTV I’ve been renting movies from iTunes. Okay, so the disc is loaded and I’m looking at a black screen. Awesome!

I see an update wheel spinning…I wonder what is going on.

Okay, if you see a black screen, the disc is still loading–just wait some more and it should be fine.

And we have the Firefly theme song!

Enjoy your weekend–I know what I’ll be doing.

Tags: blu-ray, sharp bd-hp20u, update
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