VC’s Techie CockTail

I usually back up my work into my Western Digital Passport 80 GB the manual way i.e Copy & Paste and if it asks for over write I say ‘Yes’ . But this I found to be cumbersome and trying some free back-up softwares didn’t cut the ice with me.

But when I read about Microsoft’s Sync Toy V2.0 , I was curious enough to download and try it. First of all its free and relatively a small download package at 8 MB. The installation was easy & straight forward but additional services like Microsoft Sync Framework runtime & services.

After running the software, it first asks to create a Folder pair with one on the left (usually my HD folder) & other on the right (my portable drive folder) and then it gives 3 options

1. Synchronize - Renames & deletes both sides
2. Echo - Renames & deletes only on right side
3. Contribute - Renames and updates on right side no delete.

After that, the task can be previewed or run. It was able to run in the background without majorly affecting any other tasks and the time it took to run was quite OK. All in all a good software to backup and synchronize your work, files, photos, music etc.

written by Vignesh \\ tags: free software

Sorry for the recent inactivity in my CockTail !! Went on a Nature trip and back now refreshed ……

I would like to share my experience with BSNL Data card as the opening salvo for this month. When some of my friends my small town had a BSNL data card and that too supposed to be with broadband speeds & EVDO connectivity, I laughed it off saying it would be same as the Tata Indicom CDMA 1X data card .

So when i finally had my hands on a ZTE branded data card (with No SIM card inside) and downloaded the drivers . After a few minutes I was setup & ready to go. The signal strength at my home was varying between 1-3 ticks and amazingly it showed as EVDO connection and got downlink speeds of almost 627 Kbps (as you can see from my screenshot).

In my office the signal strength was far worse so too the speed but for a wireless data connection it was the best I’ve seen so far. Sometimes the signal goes off and that prompts the data card to be taken out and restart the connection once again. The main problem I think, is the lack of BSNL’s CDMA towers and if they can increase the coverage it will be a great boon for wireless broadband users.

At a cost price of Rs. 4062/- (83$) and a monthly rent of Rs. 550/- (11$) its the cheapest wireless net connection available in India.

Those who want to share their experiences of BSNL data card can write their comments so potential buyers can know your opinion in your city.

written by Vignesh \\ tags: bsnl, data card, evdo

This week, I was able to spend some time with my friend’s laptop a Compaq Presario V3777TU . Nowadays the “Value for Money” of laptops has been HOT in India with all major brands competing in the price range between 32000/- to 37000/- bucks but if you can stretch it a bit you can even have a Sony VAIO starting at 40,000 bucks. Before my thoughts on the Compaq laptop here is the specs at a glance,

• Intel Core Duo 1.73 GHz processor (Oops …didn’t note the processor number)
• 2 GB DDR2 RAM
• 14.1″ WXGA Display
• 120GB HD
• DVD Burner
• WLAN, Bluetooth, 5 in 1 Card Reader, USB, Firewire ports
• Windows Vista Basic

As my current notebook is the Lenovo Y410, I will compare it with this compaq in certain areas. First & foremost the finish of the laptop is sleek & stylish with a black glossy look with a wavelike pattern at the top of the lid. The finish is more appealing than my Ideapad but the hinge and overall solidity is better in my Ideapad. The keypad area is finished with a black matte look and sufficiently spaced but according to my friend the Y410 was bit better for typing. The 14.1″ WXGA screen was bright with good color reproduction.

The Core Duo processor was OK for all the mundane office work like e-mailing, word & spreadsheet processing and lightweight multimedia functions. The 1.3 megapixel webcamera was good with the bundled Cyberlink You Cam software pity that my Y410 doesn’t have a preloaded software for using the webcam. Even though the Y410 is supposed to have sub-woofers & all (honestly i haven’t tried it yet), the JBL speakers of the compaq was louder.

Connectivity shouldn’t be a problem as I’ve mentioned the various options available in the specs column. The DVD burner should suffice for reading / writing CD’s and DVD’s. I didn’t have enough time to test its battery strength, but at a price of 38,000 bucks (by the way 2000 bucks costlier than Iphone’s official price in India) it is worth a buy for people looking at a basic laptop with enough power to do all their regular PC stuff.

written by Vignesh \\ tags: Laptop

Its been more than 1 year when I shifted my blog from Blogger to Wordpress, my initial attraction being purely professional reasons since wordpress had a lot of demand in the market and also to have more technical control of the workings of the blog. After some initial hassles and some bugs midway while upgrading wordpress the ride has been smooth so far. Here are some plug-ins which I found to be useful,

• Wordpress Automatic Upgrade - According to me a god send, to avoid your upgrading blues
• Wassup - Track your visitors
• Feedsmith - Automatically redirects your feeds to feedburner feeds
• cForms - Create forms to enable visitors contact you from your blog
• Akismet - To aviod the ever increasing problem of spam in your comments
• AddThis - A social bookmarking widget to help visitors spread your blog

That’s all in this post, in time i will come back with some more plug-ins and themes to “spice up” your blog further.

written by Vignesh \\ tags: blog, wordpress