Tomorrow will be the day the registrations for the Singapore Progress Package will be open. I would expect a heavy flow of traffic on the website the moment that happens, considering almost every Singaporean who sign up for it will get $800 (on average) credited to them by May this year - a definate welcome move to the community as our Prime minister Mr Lee Hsien Loong said: “to share with Singaporeans the surplus of the past year”. I will get an additional $100 having completed national service, so thats $900 total in the bag for me. Goodie.

Progress Package website

On yea, the official exam slip was mailed in yesterday, better get photocopying in application for my scholarship.

Caught this on a regular surf by, interesting to share here though.

Men love women. The way they look, smell, walk and talk are just some of the reasons why we consider them a divine species. Yet we can’t live with them, and we certainly can’t live without them…

…for the most part anyway, because perfect, they are not. And upon serious analysis, I’ve discovered the top 10 things women do that drive men to the brink of insanity.

Read more of it here.

Important but Urgent?
or
Important but not Urgent?

These are the things which came to mind after a short chat with mum over lunch today at BM central, when considering the purchase of my laptop before school reopens. Maybe it wasn’t the calories in the popular Hainanese Chicken rice we were having which sparked my mind going on the matter.

Few months ago, I was seriously considering the Fujitsu T4020 as my primary laptop, till the release GMA950 & dual core laptops, then I started wondering whether I should still put my $3999 on this Fujitsu & be 2 generations old in 6 months time when dual-core 64-bits & Window vista comes around Jan next year.

Any layman given this problem will definately recommend to get a laptop when you need it, because technology always moves on. So as they think but I need to make my purchase worthwhile, not to mention able to last & be “technologically compatible” for generations to come. Considering that laptops are not as upgradable as their desktop counterparts.

On a research front, I am considering the Asus A6J Intel Core Duo laptop with 2Ghz T2500 Yonah processor, Radeon X1600 512MB HyperMemory, 100GB Harddisk, 1GB Ram, 1,3MP Camera for $2700. Another possible candidate is the Acer 8204WLMi (A brand which I usually don’t patronise) having everything the Asus A6J has but a 1680 x 1050 screen, VOIP Bluetooth phone, same carbon fiber body & few more extras for an additional $1299.

But all these are laptops! I had outgrown laptops 3 years ago & am more geared towards PDAs & tablet PCs now, but the 1 year old Toshiba Tecra is still retailing at $4222 & the New Yonah Toshiba Portege m400 is no exception at $4020 too (called Toshiba Singapore to confirm the prices last week). I can choose to get the old Sonoma T4020 now but that would definately be an insult to my research & homework just for impulsive wants. On the forefront there is the unreleased Asus R1F Tablet PC with a Core Duo processor, 13.3″ widescreen but unspecified on board graphics, due to be released in Spring 06, (which I hope won’t be too long for now).

Asus is reputable being an ODM for Sony, Apple, JVC & Dell. Fujitsu however, is notoriously slow to release successors or refreshes to their laptop line. Let be a speculated refresh of the T4020 around August/September this year, judging how long they take to release their Sonoma tablet in August 2005 when the chipset was avaliable in Jan that particular year.

As the saying goes: “Good things come to those who wait”
But next semester will have 2 computer demanding modules, haiz Fujitsu & Asus quickly release your new Tablet PCs… dunno should I still wait or get one now…

Mmm didn’t really get much of blogging lately. Anyway here are some worthy highlights of the last week worth noting.

I did mentioned that I got myself an Antec True Power-II 480W Power supply unit (PSU) on my birthday to replace my old Antec 430W supply. The PSU’s fans suddenly burnt out & stopped spinning. I only discovered about the fault after noticing the absence of lights from my computer’s led fans. Diagnosing the problem & shockingly, the PSU part of the case was too hot to touch (comparable to a metal kettle filled with boiling water).

The first thing which came to my mind was, no I didn’t overclock, neither did I power any fans down… Immediately, I powered down the PC after 4 hours uptime only to find out that not only all 6 fans in my mid-tower are not spinning, the PSU’s dual fans are dead too. The only fans functioning are my GPU & CPU fans. & man was the air around the case warm…

Fan power are totally burnt, but overall the system is still very functional & stable with the absence of cooling. Voltage to Harddisk, mobo & External Drives are all stable, so theres not damage or current surge which could damage other components. Guess its a “fail safe” feature I have to commend on Antec Quality PSUs. With this I can conclude that antec “fan only” connectors share the same output from the PSU’s only internal fans.

This PSU is about 5 years old already, an expected lifespan for a PSU at my given current daily computer uptime of about 15 hours daily. Usually power supply failures will result in a full system burn out, i.e the taking the mobo & harddisk with it when the current surges on failure, giving not only a spectacular show of electric hisses, pops but see your system die in a cloud of blue smoke as well, not to mention a fire hazard as well. I definately won’t want that for a birthday present! Overall I am glad I choose a truepower previously & I guess I have Antec’s experience in the PSU market to back for my new PSU too.

System up & running with only 1/2 day downtime, glad to see everything up & functional again. After $185 poorer.

Been trying out my new Oregon Scientific Weight GR101, its very niffy maybe I will write a review on it when I have the time.

Today is my birthday! A year older, a year wiser (as they always say). What else to but to stuff ourselves silly at an International buffet at Trader’s Hotel, whats more, with Birthday compliments from Singtel, I got 20% off the total bill. The spread was cool, with lotsa my favourite lobsters, sushi & meats. I was like oww.. totally unable to move at the end of dinner…

Got a Perlini’s Silver Pendant as a present from my family, coupled with a little cute personalised birthday card with dolphins jumping all around it. Neato! Well, we are family anyway, so more of less we all know what each other want, which is a good thing.

Other than that, got an Oregon Scientific Digital Weighing Scale (GR101) with digital wireless remote & purchased an Antec Truepower-II 480W power supply on my own expense to replace my old disfunct 430W Truepower (tell ya more on my PSU later).

Thanks all who sent your regards through the various channels, let be through online forums, email, MSN, SMS or GSM. Thank you!

Yesterday was the second day of the freshmen enrollment day, which goes in hand with the CCA promotion day as well. Interestingly after each freshie is enrolled, they will have to pass through a series of classrooms where student clubs had set up booths to promote their respective CCAs. After going through this sequence & passing through the laptop purchase corner, then they are finally being able to exit, evil!

I was manning my club’s Track & Field booth for the whole day then, & got 10 freshmen to sign up for the day (out of the odd hundred which came through). 10 new members was a number seriously “owned” to the number signed up the day before – “record” 2 people, so as my track member Darius said & who joined me in the promotion booth in the afternoon. Elrick also dropped by for awhile during lunchtime, who relieved my position for lunch.

Dropped by the Student Alumni & Affairs (SAA) department to enquire about the SP scholarships I am dying to apply, if successful, I can get approx $3000 in total for the year, minus about $2000+ for school fees, I will still have about $900 extra spending money for my laptop! Moreover, asked them about a flaw in their Scuba diving course featured in the 27th Student personal development programme. You see, diving manuals are supposed to be included in the course package, but we were told in the course that manuals have to be purchased separately as its not included in the discounted package they offer for Students, contradicting? Sure is, as controversial it will be, I will do what it takes to get the manual under the school’s accord, as the manual is officially stated to be provided black & white on the pre-registration.

The SAA is notorious for red tape, payment & awarding of CCA points, taking up to a year to get anything done. I guess to date the SP Student Alumni & Affairs (SAA) owns each member of the track & field at least $50-$100 for transportation, competition registration & admin fees, since last year. But to date, not a single cent awarded, not to mention great delays in CCA points submission as well.

There was an interesting thing I got in the mail yesterday, an expected large envelope with an SP SAA stamp on it. Initially I thought its some official letter or cash bonus notification for the few best performing students. Interestingly it turned out to be a Sports Award Cert which I recalled my president nominated few of us in early this year. Personally, I’ve never really seen the real through value of the sports award or even know about its “prestige”, though it looks & sound nice, a nice achievement to add to a portfolio I guess.

Been working quite hard to clear commissions & jobs in time for my birthday tomorrow, then tomorrow, strictly no work! Only play whahaha.

Been surfing around a lot lately to check out good laptop buys, hoping to get one before school reopens. But there are just no good Tablet PCs around at the moment.

I was once fascinated with laptops in secondary school, where I got my first personal notebook in secondary two. It lasted with my till Junior college days, an old 33Mhz AMD Compaq Presario. Then it’s screen went “kaput”. Then till now I had always used my Dell Axim X50v as my personal net/email notetaker when I am out. Thinking that I had “outgrown” laptops. But so as old habits are to stay, I think I am in need of another laptop again…

Then till I get to find out so many limitations a PDA can have, like not able to work out intensive programming/designing at Starbucks or MacDonalds which I always love freeing myself out of in comparison to slaving at my workstation at home or office. Moreover, when school reopens, it will definitely be a very good tool for studies.

Yes I may have out grown laptops & notebooks, that’s what I am getting a Tablet Pc this time – a perfect companion for lectures, school work, not to mention the ease of notetaking. The thing is that with Windows Vista due to be released in Q1 2007 (yes its delayed). There are no good Tablets which can run windows vista currently except for those high end $4000+ ones, like the Toshiba Tecra M4 ($4222 SGD w/GST) & the newest Toshiba M400 ($4010 SGD w/GST), killer prices. I can get those dinky one year old tablets like the Acer C300 series or the Fujitsu T4020, but its not worth it considering that it will be 2 generations old in 6 months time.

I just hate this period where the new Intel Yonah chip being recently released, then it’s the “silent period” where we can only hope & pray that some new model just pop up in store one day. Even online review sites are all quiet on Tablet PCs now.

Till then just hope that Fujitsu/Asus/Acer refreshes their Tablet PC line in time for school reopens.

After some weeks of hiding in an out of the box, its offfical this time, Dell had acquired long time gaming rig OEM Alienware for an undisclosed price.

An anonymous philosopher once said: “While it is possible to change without improving, it is impossible to improve without changing.” In that spirit, Alienware announced earlier today that it had agreed to be acquired by Dell. As Alienware’s Chief Executive Officer and one of the company’s original co-founders, I believe we have an obligation to lay out the rationale and logic behind our decision. After all, since the inception of the company in late 1996, Alienware has built a successful and growing following with thousands of customers…

Well hopefully with the acquiration, maybe we can see Alienware products readily available to the Asia-pacific regions as opposed to currently.

Read more on the official article over here.