I’ve done SIFF for six years straight, if I am doing my math right. After tonight’s experience, though, this year may be my last. One of the things that has really been bothering me in recent years, particularly after getting my own home theater is how mediocre the presentation of films has become at SIFF. Tonight was a really, really bad experience on all levels.

I still go to a lot of movies in commercial theaters, especially for the opening nights of blockbusters. I love the soundtrack of a audience’s reactions that you don’t get watching a movie at home. I love the big screen and thumping bass that would annoy the neightbors. Theaters offer a whole host of intangibles that a home theater just can’t match. So to, do film festivals. I love sitting in a cafe after a film and discussing it with other festival attendees, picking up trivia and recommendations.

I don’t like running all over town trying to get from theater to theater. I don’t like standing in the rain for an hour before a film just to get a seat. I don’t like having to watch the same pre-film SIFF promotion for 20 straight movies and here the non-sensical, incoherent remarks of the programmers prior to the films. Mostly, I don’t like the disrespect that SIFF gives its audience.

Today, I showed up to watch Henry of Navarre at The Neptune. This is an epic scope and length film with lush presentation, big battle scenes, sweeping vistas, lots of detailed sets and costumes. In short, it is exactly the type of movie that I still like to see in a real theater. After driving into Seattle, paying for parking, buying overpriced hot dogs and drinks and sitting down, the programmer informed us that the distributor sent them a cut that wouldn’t work on the venue’s projection system, and that instead we would be watching a DVD version. They offered to provide a film voucher if in the first 20 minutes of the film you couldn’t stand the quality. What they ended up showing was a poorly cropped DVD screener with huge watermarks in both upper hand corners, muted colors and blocky compression artifacts and poorly translated subtitles. The video looked like something you might stream via Real Player circa 1995. Needless to say, I took the voucher. What pisses me off is they waited till everyone was seated and had already paid for food to even present this option. The offering of a voucher instead of a straight refund also pisses me off. I paid cash for my ticket, to say nothing of being out gas money, parking & concession costs. Offering a voucher doesn’t affect their bottom line at all.

I receive daily marketing emails from SIFF. This is exactly the kind of information that could be provided in advance via email, a twitter feed, etc. They do have the emails of a good percentage of people purchasing tickets and a simple database lookup would give them the emails of a lot of people who had purchased tickets. It would be nice if they had spent one iota of effort to save me some time and money.

For the last couple festivals, I’ve encountered inconsiderately handled issues such as this at two or more screenings. Last year, I was at a screening during which the audio kept breaking up every couple minutes for 10-20 seconds at time, during which you couldn’t hear the dialogue. I fought for and got a refund, as none was pro-actively offered. I later spoke to someone who went to a later screening of the same film and reported the same issue and lack of consideration.

I don’t know where they got the video, but I’ve already found superior copies of it available online. As everyone but those involved in the industry seem to have grasped, the real reason illegal downloads are flourishing isn’t the free vs cost issue, it is that piracy offers a superior experience than what can be had legally. I am earnestly considering just scrapping SIFF next year and spending more quality time with Netflix streaming, Hulu, the several independent film channels I have on my dish, etc. This little infographic from Making Light sums up the issue quite nicely:

Here is my schedule for SIFF 2010. If you would like to join me for a movie, let me know. I have spares available for some films.

Hollywood fails yet again…

The futility of even the most byzantine copy protection schemes has been proven once again. For several days now, copies of the movie Avatar derived from a retail (region 2) DVD source have been circulating online. DVD copy protection has long been broken, but Blueray has been slightly (and only slightly) more resistant. Now, it appears that Slysoft, maker of the AnyDVD software blueray video player have updated their software to decode the latest Blueray encryption scheme, which appears to only be in use on a single title – Avatar. It is likely that the same source that leaked the retail DVD also has copies of the Blueray version of the film and it is likely that Blueray rips of Avatar will start appearing online as soon as this evening.

I’ve seen this pattern time and time again. Retail DVD/Blueray derived copies of movies will start showing up online sometimes as much as 2-4 weeks in advance of official store release dates. This is an aweful failure on the part of the entertainment industry. The copy protection schemes have proven a minimal deterent, so the next best thing they could do IMO is to ensure just-in-time delivery and manufacturing of physical media and to better track physical media through manufacturing and distribution channels. The entertainment industry really needs to take a page from Amazon, Dell, etc. and learn how to do just in time manufacturing and delivery and look to the example set by NGO’s and various relief organizations on end to end tracking systems that help prevent physical theft/graft issues by pinpointing dishonest individuals in the chain of responsibility.

To have a major title like Avatar show up more than two weeks in advance of store release is pure negligence.

I’ve been using a Nokia N900 as my cell for about 4 months now. I usually write about new gadgets in my collection much sooner than this, but with the N900 I wanted to take some more time for emotion to dampen down and to see how the platform matures before giving my take. Here are some thoughts:

Hardware

-The n900 is a big beautiful brick of a device. It feels very solid and well engineered cradled in your hands. I don’t worry much about accidental damage when I purchase a Nokia device, which is a big consideration for me, as I am a bit of a clutz.

-The screen is bright, beautiful, and daylight viewable. The resolution on the Iphone and similar smartphones is a joke compared to the screen on the n900. I wish Nokia had stayed somewhere in the 4.1 inch range or even gone a little larger, rather than shrinking the screen to 3.5″, which is a bit squint inducing to my eyes these days. The screen surface is a bit softer than those of the previous Nokia tablets, enough that I felt the need to purchase a screen protector. The screen also gathers fingerprints to such an extent that I was whipping it off multiple times a day with a microfiber cloth.

-The resistive digitizer is ultra-precise and has never needed any sort of calibrations. I’ve never had a problem with a touchscreen on a Nokia device. I’ve never found multi-touch to be much more than a gimmick in terms of usability and don’t like the other trade-offs from using a capacitive touchscreen. I really prefer using a stylus, or the edge of a fingernail in most situations due to better precision and not adding fingerprints to the screen.

-I don’t like the positioning of the slide-to-unlock switch or stylus silo. The n900 is really designed to be a two handed, horizontal orientation device and the positioning of these two components is less than optimal. Having the stylus in the lower right also forces you to pickup the phone to draw the stylus when you have it propped on its stand on a desk.

-The headphone and charging ports are located on opposite ends of the device, which makes the N900 awkward to use in a lot of circumstances while charging.

-The charging port is a Micro-USB port, rather than the standard round Nokia connector found on pretty much every other Nokia phone and all previous Nokia Internet Tablets. This forces people to buy new accessories, which is a small but non negligible issue. The bigger problem is that Nokia chose to use a surface mount micro-usb connector with no mechanical stabilization other than a few solder pads and wishful thinking, rather than a proper through hole connector. A large number of users have managed to pull this connector right out when detaching the charging cable, or place enough strain on the connector to stress the solder joints, resulting in intermittent or total loss of charging ability. Nokia’s response to user with this issue has been less than forthright or consistent. This is a design and manufacturing error, period, and is not a result of improper treatment by users. Users who experience this issue either in or out of warranty should receive a priority replacement of their device and not be forced to wait 6-8 weeks. I am absolutely dreading that this will happen to my N900 at some point. I am being extremely careful when attaching and detaching my charger and have taken the additional step of filing down two overly large metal nubs on the tip of the Nokia supplied charger, which are designed to prevent the charger from slipping out accidentally, which exacerbates the issue by requiring much greater force to be used to detach the charging cable. Most other Micro-USB cables I have also have these two nubs, but they are much less prominent than on the Nokia official charger. Just to be safe, I filed the nubs on all my cables down to almost nothing.

-The kickstand integrated into the N900′s battery cover plate is a bad joke, especially when compared to the excellent, full device width, adjustable stands built into the N800 and N810. The N900′s stand only has one viewing angle, and it is one which is suboptimal in almost any use case for the device. It is located so far to the extreme left of the device that virtually any pressure on the screen causes he device to wobble or fall over. This is a major step back in design for Nokia. It would have been better to leave it out entirely, rather than leave it there for everyone to comment on in virtually every review I’ve seen. A laser cut stand designed by a member of the Internet Tablet Talk community has proven to be a hot seller.

-The bezel around the otherwise excellent 5mp camera is chrome and allows light to reflect into the camera, especially when using the flash. This causes many pictures to have a nasty haze to them. There is also a piece of blue plastic that is too close causing many pictures to have a bluish tinge. This issue can largely be fixed with a sharpie marker, but I am surprised it slipped through QA. A cell phone accessory manufacturer could make a lot of money selling replacement backs for the N900 which fixes this issue and includes a better stand.

-The battery life is pretty abysmal. I find myself hard pressed to get through a full day without throwing the N900 back on the charger for an hour. For the first time in my life, I’ve purchased a car charger for a phone. I also bought a portable external battery from iGO for those times when I just know I won’t be able to plug in during the day. The included battery should really have been about 50% higher capacity, even at the cost of additional size/thickness to the device. Mugin, a 3rd party battery manufacturer, appears to be making an extended capacity battery along with a replacement backplate, but the backplate appears to be extremely basic and doesn’t appear to have a stand.

-In general, I LOVE the guts of the N900. The processor is an extremely zippy OMAP which provides enough ooomph for substantive applications to actually feel fluid. 256 MB of ram and a large pagefile make for useful multitasking. I often times have 6+ applications running simultaneously on my N900. 32 GB of flash gives plenty of space for my media files, and there is also a Micro-SD card slot for expansion. The n900 has a 3d accelerator powerful enough to play Quake 3. There is both an FM radio receiver and transmitter. The GPS unit is much better than on any previous Nokia device Ive used and gets a lock quickly and maintains a lock in more challenging locations than the one in the N810 or N95. It isn’t as good or as accurate as the MTK chipset Bluetooth GPS I got to use with my N800 and N810, but it is good enough that I haven’t felt compelled to carry the Bluetooth GPS, either. The N900 also has TV-out, Wifi, Bluetooth, etc….

Software

-The N900 UI is quite fluid and easy to navigate. I like the concept of multiple virtual desktops on which you can organize your various widgets, application shortcuts, etc. I generally keep my most often accessed program shortcuts on one screen, keep all my phone and communications related widgets and shortcuts on another and keep a screen-full of iconized website bookmarks on a third.

-I LOVE the multitasking experience on the N900. I often times have a half dozen or more applications running on the N900 simultaneously and rarely experience anything like a slowdown. This undoubtedly is part of the reason for my dreadful battery life, but I ultimately have the choice of how I want to use my device.

-The Nokia Internet Tablets have always offered what I consider the best pocket-able Internet experience out there and the N900 is no exception. The browser is as close to a desktop level browsing experience as I have found in a device this size. Broadly speaking, all those rich Web 2.0 sites just work. The n900 is also one of the few phones with real Adobe Flash support. Go ahead, use Youtube. For all you social networking types, the multitasking abilities of the N900 let you stay constantly connected to Twitter, Facebook, IM, RSS feeds, etc. all the time without needing to manually switch back and forth between apps as with some of the single tasking or pseudo multi-tasking alternatives out there. The N900 is also the first cell phone to receive a officially sanctioned/produced mobile version of the Firefox browser, complete with plugin support (Weave Sync, Adblock Plus, etc.).

-The Maemo 5 OS powering the n900 offers very close to the full Linux desktop stack of libraries and frameworks, making it very easy for Linux developers to write and port existing apps to the platform. Additionally, because ARM is already a target platform for Debian (the flavor of Linux from which Maemo shares its roots), a lot of existing Debian tools and apps work essentially out of the box. There is a project called Easy-Debian to make installing a full Debian environment alongside Maemo even easier.

-I really like the combined approach of having a commercial app store (Ovi Store) alongside the traditional Linux application repository approach. Nokia has also developed a multiple repository approach by which users can choose from application sources based on how much testing they have gone through. There is no need to “jailbreak” an N900. You can install and run anything you like. On the flip side, as a developer, you can write anything you like and not have to worry about having your application being rejected by the boys in Cupertino for some unclear, unstated reason. Maemo is quite simply by FAR the most open phone platform for phones as of this post.

-The commercial application market for the N900 is still quite new, but community developed applications have filled most of my mobile app needs at this point. Here are a list of just a few of the apps I routinely use on my N900:

Firefox – Firefox on the N900 is still a bit slower browsing option than the default Microb browser, but on the other hand it supports tabbed browsing and a decent subset of the full desktop version of Firefox’s plugins. I love using the Weave plugin to sync my bookmarks, passwords, etc between my desktop and N900. I also highly enjoy not having to look at ads on a mobile device thanks to Adblock+…

VNC, SSH & Remote Desktop – I frequently use these to check in on servers I administer while out and about. This can be a real lifesaver when you need to fight a fire at an awkward moment.

Pidgin – I use this for my mobile IM needs, although there are now plugins for the built in conversations application that probably make this unnecessary.

Witter – This is an excellent twitter application that is actually better than most desktop twitter clients I have used.

Gpodder – Nice podcasting client

Xchat – Cause all the people / Turing AI’s worth talking to still hang out on IRC.

FM radio app – Lets you use the built in FM radio tuner.

Canola – This was probably the best overall media player for previous Maemo devices. It works on the N900 as well, but there are some significant bugs/gotchas that the authors have been slow to fix.

Maemo Mapper – This is an excellent mapping/gps application that can use a variety of map sources. Was one of the killer apps on the previous Maemo devices. The n900 version was a bit slow out the door, but seems to be in rapid development now.

FBReader – Excellent ebook reading software which supports a wide variety of file formats and is highly configurable

Wizard Mounter – Lets me mount windows file shares on the N900. I transfer most of my media wirelessly this way.

Battery-eye – Lets you see a detailed view of battery status / discharges rates and helps you figure out if a particular application is draining battery at a abnormal/unacceptable rate perhaps due to a bug.

DialCentral – DialCentral is a client for managing and making phonecalls through Google Voice.

Skype and Sip VOIP support – I can’t think of another phone that gives you as  many options for making low cost VOIP calls out of the box and in such a highly integrated way. Making a VOIP call is just as easy as any other phone call on the N900.

Much has been written about the Apple Ipad and its pros and cons. I got a chance to play with one for a while today and I found it quite compelling in a lot of ways. I believe it to be  an early representative of a fundamentally new class of computing devices. I also don’t think that the present device does enough or enough better to justify purchasing one for the vast majority of current computer users. That said, I am sure Apple will sell a ton of them. Here is what they would need to do to sell one to ME:

-For me, the Ipad at present is an extremely niche product. This isn’t a bad thing. I own a LOT of niche products and tend to use the device that is most appropriate to the task WHILE AT HOME. Out and about, I am limited in what I can or am willing to carry and I can’t see myself lugging this along when I have other devices like my Lenovo X300 which are more broadly suited to a wide range of purposes. At home, I can see myself using this as a media consumption “appliance” to read books, listen to music, etc. while chilling out on the couch in front of my projector. As a “couch computer,” one of the blatantly obvious uses for an Ipad would be as the ultimate universal remote control, yet the Ipad lacks the inexpensive infrared hardware necessary for such functionality.

-One of the most compelling uses that my dad and I both agreed upon was viewing photos. The Ipad, due to its beautiful, bright, wide angle screen and extremely fluid photo browser, makes the best digital photo frame ever. Unfortunately, the Ipad doesn’t have any kind of media slot and one has to transfer pictures to the device through Itunes. An SD slot is an absolute no-brainer in a device like this, but Apple probably wants to bilk people out of $200 extra for the 64 GB version rather than give consumers an inexpensive option for expansion. They do sell a “camera connection kit” but I sure as hell don’t need another external, easily lost dongle.

-Include a good quality 1-2 MP webcam for video calling use and Apple would not only get my dollars, but a huge potential market of people looking for something they could give to the elderly as a “grandma safe” limited use computer.

-I insist on user replaceable batteries in all my products. My experience with virtually all rechargeable batteries on devices I frequently use is that the batteries all exhibit severely diminished capacity within a few years. I view the Ipad as a computing “appliance” and when I buy an appliance I am willing to pay for quality, but it has to last more than just a couple of years. I would only be willing to plunk down $500 for a device like an Ipad if I could reasonably expect ~5 years of use from it.

-USB port for connection to external peripherals & HDMI for video/audio out. The proprietary dock connector is not an acceptable alternative to me.

-Good quality GPS chip.

-Multitasking. The technical arguments against multitasking on a device like this fall flat and the user experience arguments are intellectually dishonest in the extreme.

-Something closer to a real file-system and more options for getting files/content onto and off the device.

-An end to the walled garden mentality that is the Itunes/App store ecosystem. I am capable of chewing gum and walking at the same time and am an adult capable of making my own decisions on what constitutes appropriate content. I don’t like the degree of central control that Apple exerts over what you can do with a device that you have after all purchased and own. Ownership is a term that has pretty broad meaning to me. I believe that Apple is acting in an extremely anti-competitive fashion in their control of the app store approval processes and there are a great many Apple products that I would have bought if Apple didn’t constantly try to manage every aspect of my device usage / user experience. I just can’t stand  paying to be a captive consumer and so I don’t.

Do I think Apple will address many of these issues and gain my $500? No, not really, but someone is likely to build a tablet running Google Android that offers almost as good as a user experience as the Ipad, with a lot more versatility and at a fraction of the price. I wouldn’t count Microsoft out either. They have a long history with tablet style computers and with the forthcoming release of Windows Phone 7 have shown a willingness to dump the tired Windows WIMP user interface metaphor for something more appropriate to the way people would ideally interact with a tablet.

I’ve been reading books electronically in one form or another since 1996 (on a USR Pilot 5000). Since then, I’ve owned ~8 devices on which I regularly read ebooks. Several of those devices have been dedicated, purpose built devices, ostensibly for reading ebooks and little else.

I currently do most of my electronic reading on a Sony PRS-505 with a Sony front light wedge/leather case accessory. I’ve been enacting a boycott on purchasing Sony products since the Sony Rootkit Debacle, but received the reader as a gift. Since receiving the Sony reader, Sony has released 3-4 new readers.

This year, it seems like hardly a day has passed when the tech news sites haven’t covered the release of a new reader product from some company or another. In some cases, this latest batch of e-ink readers represent 3rd, 4th or even 5th generation products. One would expect a pretty fine degree of design refinement from a 5th generation product, especially one devoted to such a singular task. Yet, virtually all the readers, announced or on the market today, fail to address 3 fundamental user experience issues. I seldom see these issues brought up to any great degree in product reviews, either. Yet, for me, these issues are key to enjoying an electronic reading experience:

1. An ebook reader should be comfortable to hold in one’s hand (notice the singular there) for an extended period of time and without risk of slipping or dropping the device due to positional fatigue, accidental jarring, etc. Virtually all the readers on the market are thin, rectangular shaped devices and are often made of slick plastic or metal that provides for an actively slippery surface when combined with sweaty palms. Additionally, the above should apply in both horizontal and vertical orientations for both right and left handed individuals.
2. Regardless of screen orientation, the next page/previous page buttons should lie under one’s thumbs. Simple turning of the page is by far the most frequently accessed function on any ebook reader. It should just be there without need to reach or place the reader in a stressful/uncomfortable position. The next page button in particular should be over-sized. A D-pad is not an acceptable substitute.
3. This last is going to be somewhat controversial. The vast majority of day to day recreational reading (novels and the like) is done in the evening and at night, often times in less than ideal lighting conditions, especially for those who share their beds with a partner. Ebook readers need to incorporate some form of front or back lighting into their designs or offer well integrated official lighting accessories. This is a somewhat unpalatable task with the current crop of E-ink displays, where adding front lighting generally consists of placing an edge lit piece of clear plastic in front of the display. Adding another layer in front of the display diminishes the clarity and contrast of the display. And the high contrast, paper-like nature of E-ink displays are a good part of the reason that ebook readers use this sort of display in the first place instead of LCD, OLED and other display technologies.

The only reader I’ve owned which has come close to satisfying these requirement was the Nuvomedia Rocket eBook.

This was one of the first electronic book readers sold and yet in many fundamental ways it was more enjoyable to use than devices made over a decade later in a far more mature & technologically advanced marketplace. It had an ergonomic, curvy wedge shape that was easy to cradle in the palm of one’s hand. Later versions of the device included a rubberized backside to make it even easier to grasp. The page up/down buttons were over-sized and comfortable to actuate without moving one’s hands in the portrait orientation for both right and left handed users and weren’t too bad in the horizontal orientation, either. The screen resolution doesn’t really compare to modern readers, but it was a high contrast B&W LCD and had decent back-lighting for night reading. Astoundingly, 10+ years later, a variant of this original device is still being sold as the eBookwise 1150 for ~$100. My personal experience with the later revisions of the Rocket eBook (post Gemstart acquisition) is that they used much lower quality displays, but I would be interested in opinions from more recent users.

In conclusion, I would really like for Sony/Amazon/B&N or SOMEBODY to make a comfortable to use ebook reader.

I’ve been using a Shuttle SN25p as the basis for my Home Theater PC for 2.25 years now. I built this system on the cheap out of hand-me-down components including a low end AMD 3800+ X2 processor and 6800 GT when I upgraded my main system to an Opteron 185 processor and 8800 GTX. I’ve since upgraded my main system yet again to a Core i7, allowing the Opteron to trickle down to the Shuttle and the 3800+ X2 to trickle down to my friend Ryan. This worked out fine, but for one problem…

In upgrading to the Opteron, I inadvertently pushed the power intake a little past what the power supply could handle..but only at boot. Many electrical devices use a lot more power when you attempt to start them up than when they are fully running. This is a phenomena sometimes referred to as inrush current. The kludgey short term (&cheap) fix was to unplug the video card’s auxiliary PCIe power connector when cold booting the system and then plug it back in immediately after POST, but before Windows started booting. This was inconvenient, but I cold boot the system so seldom it hardly mattered. Recently, the system got powered down while I was away and I really needed some files on the system and because of the power-up issue couldn’t simply have a family member hit the power button. I finally decided to fix the issue.

I looked at spreading the power load more evenly across the system’s internal power connectors, but met with no luck. My guess is the power supply is of a single rail type design and so it didn’t matter which combination of power connectors I used, as they were all drawing from the same place. I tried leaving the optical drive and hdd power connectors unplugged, to see if using lower power versions of these might work, but the result was the same. I doubted this would work, but I always try cheap/free solutions before resorting to buying something.

I ended up looking for video card to replace the old and fairly high power using 6800 GT. I ended up deciding on an Nvidia GT 240 card 512 MB of GDDR5 memory made by eVGA. This card is something like 4 major product cycles newer than the 6800 it replaces. Anandtech seems to be fairly underwhelmed by the GT240, as it is an oddball new offering that comes between several other cards in terms of performance, but doesn’t offer much in the way of price savings. However, it happened to be one of the few cards I could source locally which met all of my requirements. Namely:

-The GT240 has one of the lowest power requirements of any reasonably performing cards on the market. It uses less than 10 watts when idle and something like 50 watts measured running full tilt. This was a big consideration given the Shuttle’s slightly too anemic power supply. The GT240 uses such little power that it doesn’t even need a PCIe auxiliary connector, it can get all the power it needs from a standard PCIe x16 motherboard slot.
-The eVGA card uses a single slot cooling solution and is fairly short as non low-profile cards go. A lot of other manufacturer’s cards have a cooling solution which takes up the adjacent slot or have a heat-sink which wraps around the back. I have a card in the adjacent slot and the case sides run very closely to the back of the x16 card slot, so I really needed a single slot solution.
-The eVGA card isn’t fanless, but the fan is extremely quiet, which is an important consideration in a HTPC.
-The GT240 has VGA, DVI and HDMI on one card. The HDMI implementation was particularly intriguing to me as this video card also has onboard sound which outputs over the HDMI. This may help me cut down on the rats nest of cables present in my shelf system and allow for simpler video switching in the future.
-The GT240 also supports some of the newest hardware video acceleration standards, which are of particular use for Blueray playback. The 6800 GT card it was replacing hardly supported any, requiring much more CPU for smooth playback. I’d noticed some minor frame skipping issues when doing some HD playback while running other stuff in the background, so this was a small but not insignificant consideration to me.
-The GT240 performs decently in a lot of games I play at the relatively modest 720p resolution of my projector. The 6800 in my HTPC really couldn’t cope with a lot of the games I play on my primary Core i7 desktop. I figure it might be fun to play L4D at 100+” sometime.
-The eVGA GT240 only cost me $90. I like cheap and $90 to keep this HTPC working for a while longer is a lot cheaper than upgrading to a newer Shuttle box and having to buy a new CPU, memory, etc.

I was at a Cameras West in Bellevue searching in vain for the cable accessory kit for a Canon D10 when I spotted a real steal of a deal sitting unnoticed on a high shelf behind the counter hiding amongst a crop of netbooks, a new in box Lenovo Thinkpad X300 for a mere $800. This laptop was selling for ~$3000 a year and a half ago. While this notebook has been replaced in the lineup by the moderately updated X301, the X300 is still one of the best constructed, no compromise ultra-portables around. The specs of my unit are as follows:

-Core 2 Duo L7100 at 1.2 GHZ
-2 GB DDR2-667
-60 GB 1.8″ Samsung SSD
-1440×900 13.3″ display
-DVD Burner
-Wifi, Bluetooth
-3x USB ports, VGA, Gig Ethernet
-3 cell battery

My unit came with XP Pro installed, which I promptly ditched for Windows 7 64bit. Lenovo has official drivers for Windows 7 on the X300 and their complete gamut of system utilities available for download from their website, but most of the hardware is supported out of the box or via a quick Windows Update, so most of the Lenovo downloads are unnecessary. I also upgraded the ram to 4 GB, which only required the addition of a single SO-DIMM. The two ram slots are behind a thoughtfully provided access door which makes upgrading a breeze. The two ram slots make it possible to upgrade to as much as 8 GB, although 4 GB modules are currently hideously expensive. Two of them will cost you about $370!

What I likes:
-Heavy duty Thinkpad “brick” construction, yet only 3 pounds. This includes things such as rigid internal metal frame, keyboard spill tray/drain holes, metal block hinges, latching screen, etc. This thing just oozes quality construction that few other laptop makers even come close to matching.
-The typically brilliant full sized Thinkpad keyboard we have all come to know and love.
-This thing has both a track stick and a trackpad. Some of Lenovo’s newer, cheaper ultraportables only have the trackstick.
-The Thinklight on the X300 does a much better job of illuminating the keyboard than the one found on my Thinkpad Z61m.
-Did I mention this thing is only three pounds?!?!
-The USB ports are separated from each other by enough space to plug in bulky adapters without blocking anything, something overlooked in a lot of laptop designs.
-The fingerprint reader does a much better and quicker job of reading my fingerprints and logging me in than the one on my Z61m
-The system feels very snappy in all the tasks I have thrown at it. I’ve read a few reviews that have balked at the mere 1.2 GHZ, but this 1.2 GHZ Core 2 feels a lot snappier than the 1.8 GHZ Core Duo in my Z61m. For the type of tasks I do on the run, the processing power in this machine more than satisfies me. I have my Core i7 desktop at home for games, etc…
-The SSD in this machine provides faster transfer rates and lower seek times than any conventional laptop HDD I’ve used. I will probably replace it with a Lenovo X18-m or similar TRIM supporting SSD once they get cheaper, which will make this system even snappier.
-From the ever so slightly rubberized feel of the casing to the silky feel of the keys, this machine just begs to be touched. Thinkpad’s black on black color scheme might get lost in all the flashy neon and metal trim you see on other laptops these days, but for me it is understate, classic minimalism at its best. This is one sexy beast imo.
-The relatively full complement of ports and optical drive mean this is one ultra-light you can actually do meaningful work on.
-The screen is pretty much the perfect resolution for the size and has a beautiful LED backlight. Way brighter and nicer looking the my Z61m.
-I can use it in my laptop and there are barely any warm, much less hot spots.
-The keyboard is absolutely rigid. I can type on it at speed with no slop whatsoever.

Not so much:
-The X300 doesn’t have the now standard x-in-1 media reader, which is disappointing as I intend to use this for culling photos on trips. It also doesn’t have an ExpressCard slot, so I can’t add a card reader or much of anything else by anything other than USB. I’m considering switching to micro-SDHC in my cameras and carrying one of those so-tiny-they-are-barely-there readers on my keychain, so that I don’t have one more easily lost adapter/cable/widget in my daily carry bag.
-The 3 cell battery that the unit came with only gives 2-3 hours of useful work. I will definitely be picking up the 6 cell battery and possibly the 3 cell bay battery which can be easily swapped with the DVD drive to give me a closer to a full workday’s use without needing to plug in. This is really a necessity for me as I am often times bouncing around town seeing clients with little to no opportunity to plug in for any length of time, save for the possibility of recharging in my car.

I really love the X300 and hope I get as many years of active use from it as from my Z61M, which is still chugging along in Thinkpad style despite all my abuse.

Addendum:

I have since picked up the 6 cell extended length battery and 3 cell “bay” battery which replaces the optical drive. In doing so, I encountered the first of what I consider real faults in the X300 design.

Swapping the optical drive for the bay battery is fairly easy, but not convenient in the field. Unlike the “Ultrabay” system found on most Thinkpads, swapping in/out the optical drive/battery requires the removal of a screw. The optical drive is itself quite fragile and really needs a hard shell case of its own if you plan on carrying it with you in a bag. I feel like a hard plastic carrying case to hold the battery/optical drive and tiny screwdriver should have been included in the price of the battery.

Additionally, the X300 drains power from the bay battery first instead of from the main battery. In my opinion, the bay battery should have been the “reserve” battery, as it is not hot swappable. If the drain order had been reverse, one could drain the main battery and still be able to swap in a charged one without needing to stop working, shut down the computer, swap the battery and reboot. If you are a long haul air traveler, you get the importance of this feature.

Ryan pulled a late night and did a final sync of data from Frankenputin (old server) to Minimus. I mainly sat back and let Ryan do the heavy lifting, just acting as cheerleader, head scratcher in chief and occasional googler of error messages. There were some struggles with Mysql and the usual Gallery puking, but eventually the beast was wrestled into submission. A few port forwarding changes and now everything is being served up by Minimus. Frankenputin has been powered down, quite possibly for good. My garage no longer sounds like a jet taking off and I kinda miss it.

If you are a silverfir.net user, please poke your head into infrequently visited dark corners and see if you find anything growing there. I plan to consign Frankenputin to its new role as boat anchor and kick Minimus into a closet as soon as it is verified that the new server is stable and no additional settings/data need importing from Frankenputin.

Despite getting rained on last year, leading to general miserableness, my brother Scott decided to run the Portland Marathon again this year. I think he chose to do Portland again, specifically, as it was close to family support and friends Ryan and Theo who also opted into the 26.2 miles of masochism. Both Theo and Ryan managed to push through the blisters, black and blue feet and earn their t-shirt, medal and those other, less tangible kudos.

Scott managed to complete the race in a start time compensated 4h:19m:3s, a slight improvement over last year’s 4h:20m:55s. Given that he is a year creakier, he seems happy with the improvement. And well he should! At this annual rate of improvement, by the time he is 101 years old he will have beaten world record holder Haile Gebrselassie‘s time of 2h:03m:59. And because Scott likes statistics, here is a graph that proves it! I have assumed that Haile doesn’t improve any with age, but other than that my logic is impeccable :)

I look forward to watching my brother compete in future events, especially when he is 101, I just wish he would do something other than check his watch as he crosses the finish line. Other people do fist pumps, raise their arms in celebration, puke or pogo stick on one foot backwards while wearing an afro wig and a tutu…all of which make for more interesting photography :)