Jason Sidabras

Okay, I admit. I get swooped up sometimes by glamorous things and high expectations. Luckily I have friends who don’t. With that being said: Netbook is out. The price is right, the power is not. It just can’t compete. So instead, I will be saving up for the Sony Vaio Z. This was my original love I just wanted something here now.

This weekend I went to the Sony Outlet store in ~Kenosha and checked out what they had in stock. They had the 13.3″ Vaio SZ and the 11.1″ Vaio TZ. Both had 1280×768 screen resolution which actually looked pretty good on the 13.3″ screen. The SZ is heavier than the TZ but the distribution of weight both seemed balanced unless you had the 9-cell battery in the SZ.

Size wise, the 11.1″ is just a tad uncomfortably small. But the 13.3″ is right on the money.

So where does the Vaio Z sit in: at 13.1 inches it should be about the same size as the SZ but with a 16:9 aspect ratio of 1600×900 resolution. I could be happy with the 1366 x 768 that they have but for only $200 more I get the nVidia 256MB 9300M GS and the bump in resolution instead of the nVidia 128MB.

So here is the specs and price

Price: $2200 tax/shipping included.

• Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor P9500 (2.53 GHz) 6MB cache 1066 MHz FSB
• 2 GB 1066 MHz DDR3
• 160 GB SATA HDD (later to replaced with SSD)
• 13.1 ” 1600×900 Screen
• Bluetooth
• Wireless N
• Fingerprint Scanner
• DVD+/-RW DL

I will be much happier with this system.

So I’ve been kicking around in my head the past couple of days of really pulling the trigger on a netbook. I have a few reasons. First, my battery life on my Powerbook G4 is 20 minutes on a good day. Weight is about 4 pounds and all I ever use it for is typing master’s thesis and some programming. So, why do I need a new one? Eh, I can never answer that question. But I think in the next couple of weeks, pending friends reviews, I might pull the trigger on a new netbook.

I’m looking at the HP 1000 series. I saw them at the store a few weeks back and really like them. It didn’t seem cheaper than the HP2123 netbook that made some waves 9 months back.

So what are the specs:

• Intel Atom N270 (1.6 GHz) Single core 2.5W
• Intel MA950 graphics
• 1GB DDR2
• Bluetooth, webcam, wireless n
• 16GB SSD
• 10.2″ 1024×600
• 92% full keyboard

It seems that the N270 is a 32-bit chipset which is a little bit disappointing. I could wait until the Atom 230 hits or even the 300 series (dual core) for a little hit on power, 4 W and 8 W respectively. But I doubt they will come out because they are for mini-desktops. Which don’t care as much about the power constraints.

Although it comes with a 3-cell battery I will quickly be looking for a 6-cell, for 2 times the battery life (linear?). Also soon MIE will be available which seems to be HP’s Ubuntu version. But I will be reformatting it and installing either OpenBSD or Ubuntu myself.

The bad… seems battery life. Three hours on the 3-cell and a 6-cell is in the works. This may have been tested with regular harddrive, because SSD option is new.

Also proprietary cable for VGA

So, what do you think?

EDIT: All of this and I forgot the price. End of the day $519. Plus whatever the 6-cell battery costs.

Other choices:

Lenovo S10 -  Anti-glare screen. Same basic specs $449. No SSD option (yet?).

Dell Mini9 - Same specs $20 cheaper, not sure on looks or keyboard. Ubuntu 8.10 on bootup! 4 hours battery life on 4-cell. No upgrade options noted. Glossy 8.9″ screen

Ever since Firefox 3 came out and google browser sync was no longer supported, I’ve been looking for a replacement to keep my computers in-sync with each other. The first maintainable sync program I found was Weave. It currently has a little lacking in support across platforms and is in highly beta mode. This will become my bookmark program when it becomes more stable.

As for my current bookmark program I just changed to foxmarks. It supports encryption, your own server and seems fast and stable. I’d like to take the rest of the blog to show you how to set up your own bookmark WebDAV server on Dreamhost, and then generalize it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Below is my presentation for today.

I’ve come down to the end and all I have left to do is write. This presentation gives a good summary of why I am doing it, what I have done, and where I have to stop. The conclusion: non-trivial problems are too complex for analytical solutions, full geometry 3d numerical modeling is needed. If each slot was individually excited this problem would have been finished, but since they are all excited by one source that gives rise to eddy currents to drive the slots they become mutually coupled in a non trivial way.

Either case great learning experience on the Equivalence principle, limits of Born’s first approximation and dyadic Green’s functions. All and all, I’m proud of my work.

All done in Latex with the beamer class.

Sidabras, J.W., “Coupling into Waveguide Evanescent Modes with Applications in Electron Paramagnetic Resonance”, Marquette Microwave Seminar, November 18, 2008.