Archive for December, 2008
Logitech VX Nano Review
I ordered a VX nano on Monday evening, Less than 48 hours later i have it in my hands. That’s what you call service. It makes it all the more sweeter the fact the same mouse is now €10 more expensive than what i paid it for 2 days ago 
It’s €48 to buy on dell.ie now. I got it for €38 thanks to a 20% discount i stumbled upon which expired on Monday. Free delivery too so it was too tempting. I’d heard great things about the VX nano so i decided to roll with it even though i could have just settled for a cheap and cheerful wireless or optical mouse.
The first thing that hits me about the VX nano is it’s size. It’s perfect for a laptop / netbook. I have a full size Logitech MX 3200 keyboard / mouse combo for my desktop but i wanted a mini mouse to keep up the ultra portable theme. Unlike most mini mice, it has extra buttons on it which can be programmed to do anything you want. Very handy for quick knifing and reloading of weapons in call of duty quick opening of files and applications 
One thing i love about the MX 600 is the way it just wraps itself around your hand effortlessly. It feels beautiful to hold and it’s a a joy to work with every day. I hate having to use normal microsoft or dell mice now – logitech have me spoiled. The VX nano isn’t as curvy as the mx 600, but it has subtle rubberized ‘dents’ on either side which allow for easy griping.
Underneath is where the magic happens though. It’s a wireless mouse, so it needs a dongle or wireless usb receiver to connect to the PC. And here it is compared to a mini SD card.
Ridiculously small. Any smaller and i wouldn’t be able to get enough grip to pull the receiver out of the usb slot
Anyway, it has an on / off button underneath plus an ingenious hidden compartment for the usb receiver when not in use. You simply slot the usb receiver in to it’s slot (directly above the big red button in above pic) and use the big red ‘ejector’ button to release it when needed. That classy touch makes it perfect to carry about everywhere. Very james bond
So i’m delighted with the VX nano, it’ll be the perfect companion for my Samsung NC10 when it arrives. It also comes in a nice little pouch which should help keep it scratch and dirt free! I never did like touchpads, i only use them as a last resort or if i’m in bed or on an uneven surface or something.
I don’t like using college PC’s and other people’s laptops to do work on. They’re generally slower than my own, have default versions of everything installed on them and i end up wanting to ‘fix’ their PC before i start working with it.
- Image by ibarakaldo via Flickr
Any default vista PC drives me mad. I disable all security alerts, re-arrange the admin/user restrictions and do away with that damn sidebar. So much better, faster, smoother. I also enable ‘single click‘ and get rid of all of that crap which starts up at start up…. anti virus, cleaners, msn, spyware, software that’s never used… it all goes which speeds everything up nicely too and makes me feel at home.
Of course i can’t bring a second monitor or a surround sound system around with me all the time, so i can only go so far before i have to make do with these inferior setups. My current laptop runs XP at the minute, it’s 4 years old and slow. ‘Unusable’ would be harsh, but with a 20 minute battery life & faded, flickering screen, it’s on it’s last legs and has been for about a year. I rarely use it these days, maybe gets a run out once a month. It’ll be retired now for good and tucked away to gain value as a collectors item
My new samsung nc10 will be replacing it. Up to 8 hour battery life, 2.9 pounds in weight (my ferrari was over twice that weight), 160gb hard drive (my ferrari had 100gb), bluetooth, memory card reader, webcam & mic all built in…
Style wise, it’s not as eye catching as my old laptop, but it’s simple & classy. Black my colour of choice. White is too ‘apple’, blue would do but black always looks more menacing and slick.
Of course a new laptop means a new mouse & bag. They’re already on the way. I’ve ordered a logitech VX nano which the eagled eyed amongst you will notice is NOT bluetooth. The NC10 has in built bluetooth so why not opt for a bluetooth mouse? First of all, battery life – bluetooth uses more juice than a wireless usb receiver. Secondly, the receiver with the VX nano is so bloody small that it may as well be integrated
I can also use it on the college PC’s and any PC for that matter… with a bluetooth mouse, i’d need bluetooth. So that explains that decision. Plus bluetooth tends to be that fraction of a second slower and of course i already have a logitech mouse & keyboard with my desktop and have been mightely impressed with their ergonomics.
- Image by bangdoll@flickr via Flickr
As for a bag, well i don’t really need a bag as i’ll be carrying this around in my normal college bag or my old laptop bag which will now have room for books & my NC10 
but i do need some sort of sleeve or tight casing for peace of mind… this is expensive stuff and it’s extremely easy to just fling your bag down as you normally would without thinking about what’s inside it. So this bag from ebay will do the job nicely. Small enough to fit inside another bag, but also big enough to carry around by itself…
The size & battery life of this NC10 will mean i’ll have access to a word processor and the internet for 2/3 hours during the day where i wouldn’t normally have it or would spend most of it reading rather than writing and working. I’ll also, probably, go to bed earlier every night by an hour or so and just write.
The silence and releaxed mental state of mind leave me at my most productive around that time (12-2am). With my desktop, it’s impossible to switch off mentally when i’m at it and using it. It’s just too loud (fans), too bright (dual 20″ monitors at max brightness), plus i know in the back of my mind i can’t switch off an fall asleep as i’ll have to go to bed at some stage, so i must remain awake.
With a netbook, i don’t have to worry about that… noise isn’t a problem (or shouldn’t be – i’ll have to wait and see), i only have one small 10 inch monitor so realistically i’ll be doing things one step at a time, one window at a time. It will act as a ‘warm down’ before i finally go to sleep at night time. Similarly, at college, my netbook will act as a ‘warm up’ to the hardcore work that will take place on my home PC system.
Curry’s & PC World are both selling the Samsung NC10 for €399 here in Ireland. In the north, they’re selling for £320. AT today’s exchange rate, that’s works out at about €340.
Now you might say, but Sean those prices are ONLINE so obviously you’ll get a discount for buying online. Not only that Sean, but Irish VAT is now up to 21.5% -v- the new and improved 15.5% in the north.
Firstly, neither PCWorld nor Currys have an Irish website or deliver to Ireland from their UK websites. That’s probably because they don’t think we’ve a big enough market here to make it a priority. Secondly our government can be blamed for an immediate 3% difference in price. They raised VAT by 0.5% whilst the British slashed theirs by 2.5%. It now brings the difference in VAT to 6%.
Ingenius move by our government, given the fact that over half of the population is within a 2 hour drive from the border. It technically means an instant saving of 6% if you shop in the north. Given the fact sterling is now falling in value by the day, it means not only do we get a 6% discount on pretty much everything, our euro now stretches further due to exchange rates… almost level pegging with the pound. 1 euro will soon be equal to 1 pound.
Anyway, i’ve ordered an NC10 online, for £310 delivered. That should be about €330, even allowing for my bank and credit card company tag-teaming my ass with all sorts of charges and fees. €330 – almost a full €70 cheaper than buying Irish and buying locally.
And the funny thing is, this isn’t even an expensive item – it’s a netbook valued at about €340. If i was buying a 50″ plasma TV or top of the range laptop i’d be saving literally hundreds of €€€ buying online or from Britain.
This isn’t new to me of course, i rarely buy anything electrical in Ireland. The problem now facing our government is that average joe soaps are now realizing they can save big money online & by buying up north (Northern Ireland).
That creates a huge problem for our government – do they cut VAT to remain competitive or do they ride it out like a storm and hope it just goes away after a while? I’d hazard a guess they’ll do the latter and run the economy further in to the ground before they cop on they’ve made a massive mistake. People WILL NOT pay more when they don’t have to, especially not in a recession 
Ryanair have proved that, Lidl and Aldi have proved that… more and more people cannot afford ‘frills’ anymore. They’re reluctant to spend full stop now thanks to scare tactics by our own government – raising VAT, cutting back on all departments, hitting students and elderly people hard…. People will look at two items and buy the cheapest, regardless of where it’s coming from or who’s selling it.
That’s exactly what i’ve done and the above picture is exactly how i see it. I’m not living in 1916, so i’ve no loyalties. I’d buy this netbook from China if i could, only i know i’d be hit with import duties and taxes when it would arrive on Irish shores
Anyway, i’ll be looking forward to getting my NC10. Probably won’t arrive in time for this week (being new year and all), but it should be here between 5th-9th all going well. This netbook is hands down the best out there at the minute. Battery life delivers the killer blow when put up against any other netbook. 8 hours on paper and apparantly, pretty close to that in real life too
Christmas for me always signals the end of a year. The period of time in between Christmas day & New Years day is probably when you’ll catch me at my most relaxed all year round. As soon as 2009 kicks in, it’s a case of getting out of the traps quickly and making a good start to the year. That’s why i’m determined to get BeerChief online & finished by January 27th.
photo credit: brettneilson
Tomorrow (25th), don’t expect to hear from me… i’ll be online but probably just messing about aimlessly seeing what other people are up to. Happy Christmas to all my readers and take it easy until the new year…
Here’s the amount of posts i’ve published on this blog for the past two years….
- 2007 = 705
- 2008 = 407 (+ a few more as we’ve a week or so left in 2008)
So 700 in 2007, 400 in 2008. A massive REDUCTION in content. For every 7 posts i made in 2007, i only made 4 in 2008.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that would mean my traffic would be down significantly. I’m afraid not
Traffic has in fact more than tripled in 2008 from roughly 25k unique visits in 2007, to almost 80k in 2008. It means i’m now averaging over 200 unique visits a day and that’s excluding RSS readership which has also tripled in 2008 to 120+ subscribers up from around 40 in 2007.
In terms of traffic and RSS subscribers, here’s some graphs which date back from day 1 one up until now (I only installed feedburner (to track RSS subscriptions) about 6 months after i created the blog).
In general, always on the rise. Of course i’ll have spikes here and there, i can’t control or predict them, nobody can – in one day alone this year i racked up 12,000 unique visits Overall, the blog’s progress is slow and steady and has been now for over 2 years.
I can safely say 2009 will eclipse 2008 again in terms of traffic & subscribers. Why can i safely say that? Because i’m in control and i call the shots. I have the power to destroy the blog or enhance it further. With just me running the show, it allows me to make instant spur-of-the-moment decisions and write about anything i want. That freedom is what makes blogs addictive to read… they’re uncut. Take my samsung nc20 article. I’d be shot if i wrote something like that for a newspaper or professionally edited blog.
The fact i can almost half content, but triple the amount of people coming to the blog shows that i’m either upping the quality of posts or just making more connections and getting myself out there more. It’s probably a combination of both actually. It’s not just luck, although that plays a part too.
I’m learning how to attract people, how to give them what they want, how to distance myself from the norm but at the same time do all that with a personal stamp of authority on everything. So long as i keep blogging, i’ll keep learning and it’ll only make both me and the blog stronger. That’s why i say 2009′s statistics will continue the trend of onwards and upwards.
You can also chuck in the fact that i’m always sharpening my SEO skills and trying to develop the blog continuously. In 2008, 36% of my traffic came from search engines. Almost the exact same percentage as 2007. But when we break it down in to unique visits, 29,000 came from search engines in 2008 -v- 9,000 in 2007. A four fold increase in search engine traffic.
SEO is definitely something i’ve improved over the last 12 months. Looking at the stats it’s pretty clear i’m working smarter rather than harder these days If I stop working though or stop learning, traffic will die – no doubt about it. But i’ve no intentions of stopping anytime soon.
When i started out, owning a blog of this size was fantasy stuff. It’s tough to do, but at the same time it’s very simple. The key to growing any site is simply determination and dedication. So many people start blogs, start out enthusiastic and then just go missing after a few months once the novelty wares off. The key to keeping motivated is renewing the novelty factor once it starts to ware off. Get a new theme, launch a competition, create some challenges to keep yourself entertained…
When driving on a long journey on a motorway or something you don’t just switch off and take it easy even if you’re tired and the road ahead is clear… you’ll turn on the cold air or put on some motivational music or something… anything which gets adrenaline flowing or ‘wakes you up’. Maybe stop at a petrol station and go in to a shop… You do all that because you know you ultimately need to get to the finish line in one piece and you also know you need to remain alert and awake 100% of the time.
If you apply the same thinking to blogging or running a website it makes life much easier for you. Slack off and you risk death (or your site does). It is of course easier said than done to keep motivated and keep working on something that may seem pointless or not rewarding financially, but if you want a career in IT, a proven track record of developing sites over a long period of time speaks volumes about the type of person you are. It is the ultimate reference for an employer (particularly a personal site/blog).
