News-A-Roo

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I was going to close the site down, and then I changed my mind and decided to keep it running. Mainly because I have better things to do than build a new site. The trouble is I'm not really posting much here either. So I dont really know what to do. I think I'll see how it all pans out and I am sure I'll feel one way or another soon enough.

-Geek News-
For some reason I have a desire to learn Macromedia Flash MX. Enough Said.

I have also invested in an Airport (AP). I got a cheap Graphite Base Station and saved my self $400 over the cost of a new Snow one. We've got house guests at the moment, and my office has been repurposed as a bedroom, and this is where my cable modem resides. So Airport was the obvious answer. I already have a router on my network, so it was a simple case of putting the AP into bridging mode and plugging it into the router. This works a treat, and I don’t need the extra functionality that the Snow Base Stations offer. I also put a new AP card into my laptop.

I am a little disappointed with the reception. The signal is pretty weak, and drops out a fair amount. I'm still investigating ways to improve it. Really though, the problem is the five concrete walls between my laptop and the AP base station. I've gotten around the problem by running an Ethernet cable from the router in the office and into the hallway. I've placed the Base Station on a little table in the hallway and hooked the ethernet into it. My lounge is at the other end of the hallway. This give me a clear line of "Sight" to the base station if I sit opposite the door in my lounge. However this isn't really an acceptable solution; I may find blue ethernet cable attractive, but I am alone in this I fear :-D. So I've been investigating some more. I do wonder if the TV is causing a problem? I get much better reception in the room next to the lounge (closer to the base station). And the TV is so huge it may be causing some kinda interference. I'm guessing at that, I don’t really know, I'd thought TVs would be shielded. I havent tested this yet. The TV is virtually always on.

I've located a product called Ars'" had an interesting piece on war flying a while ago. Not that I'm gonna do that, but you'll get what I'm talking about if you read it. I think the AP card in my laptop a CISCO one, so I may be able to use one a CISCO antenna:Kewl Cisco Stuff

More likely I'd have a go at building my own. Cant find a link at the moment, but there are plenty of how-to's out there.

Actually WarDriving doesn’t really interest me and its a bit stupid,done-to-death and just not kewl anymore ;-). Not as kewl as War-BBQing anyway. I'm kinda more interested in extending the point-to-point range of my wireless network. Also I have also been told that you cannot create a wireless bridge using two Apple AirPorts. Hmmm. I wonder if it can be done using an Airport and a PCI wireless card in a Linux box or some such. Other brands of wireless access points and routers can bridge so I reckon there must be a way.

Anyhow I'm waffling now and not making any sense.

-Dark Side-
The BIY PC is still in planning stage. Its looking likely I'll go for an Nforce2 board. But who knows. Maybe I'll do a build report once I've got all the bits.

-And finally-

Its damm hot today. Not sunny as such. But hot. Not super hot, but just hot enough to let you know it'll get hotter and that hotter will be very hot indeed.

AOC 7KLR 17" CRT Monitor Review

AOC 7KLR web site

Hopefully this will be the last CRT monitor I ever buy. For those of you that dont know: CRT stands for Cathode Ray Tube, which is basically a normal monitor or TV to me and you. I only mention this because the cost of LCD monitors are rapidly falling and an LCD monitor would be preferable. LCDs look cooler for a start, and take up much less space. But for a tight arse like me the price isn't cheap enough and at the budget end of the range the quality just isn't good enough either.

So with this in mind I have been looking at CRT. I need a new monitor for use with my soon to be built PC, and to be honest I am finding the 15.1 screen on my G4 PowerBook a little cramped. This may sound a little unbelievable for those of you that have seen the G4 PB and are stuck with lesser laptops. Never the less its 1152x768 pixel resolution just isn't enough. That and I like to buy new toys and had a shopping itch that needed scratching.

I suppose I should point out the new PowerBooks have a resolution of 1280x854. Mine's a first generation G4PB which only does the lower res, but it does support dual head mode. More of which later.

I looked at lots of monitors from an amazingly large range of manufacturers (I am obsessed with product research) before settling on the AOC 7KLR. Now I admit to dismissing AOC thinking them to be an ultra cheap shoddy manufacturer of sub-standard monitors. Which just shows how wrong you can be! I am sure someone older and wiser told me never to assume anything, but I dont think I was listening.

The "AOC 7KLR" is a discontinued product and for this reason appeared on special over at Scorpion Technology for the handsome sum of AUS$295 inc GST.

Now there are cheaper monitors but they dont match the specifications of this baby at that price point.

Vital Statistics:
Max Res: 1600x1200 at 75Hz
Best Res: 1280x1024 at 85Hz
Viewable Diagonal: 40.6cm (16")
Dimensions: 410x402x420mm (16x15x16.4")
Video Signal Connector: 16-pin mini D-sub male (no DVI)
Video Cable Length: 6ft (very important that)
On Screen Display (OSD) Function with OSD Shuttle Knob (very cool)

For a full specification list you can visit the AOC web site here: 7KLR

I've decided that 1600x1200 is really too high a res to be useable with a viewable diagonal of only 40.6cm. Text is just a little bit too small to read, but its nice to have the option and i suppose I might use that res for gaming. I'm using it at the moment with a res of 1280x1024 at 85hz. Here's a resolution comparison diagram:

Resolution comparison image

The case is pretty bland and inoffensive. Apart from one amazingly useable feature; the OSD Shuttle Knob. The OSD it self is very comprehensive and isnt lacking features. It has all the usual geometry adjustments, brightness & contrast as well as colour temperature and moire reduction. Which is nice. All of this is accessed using the shuttle knob, which is essentially a dial on the front of the monitor which can also be pushed like a big button. So to activate the OSD you push the button in, then you just turn the dial to select an option, hit the button again and turn the dial to change the values. All very simple, incredibly tactile and so enjoyable to use. Adjusting monitor geometry has never been so much fun. ;-)

The picture quality of the monitor is excellent. Its bright, crisp and stable. I really cant fault it. OK, so I have seen better monitors. The offerings from Sony are awesome, but cost twice the price, as do my favourites from Mitsubishi. Never the less for my use the AOC is much better than I had hoped. Of course I am coming from the 18 month old LCD on my laptop, which in comparison now looks dull and washed out. But I have recently been testing the monitors from the likes of LG, Philips and Samsung, and the AOC comes out champ' IMHO. There is the Philips 107P 17" which is damm fine display. Which for a 17" has an absurdly high max' res' of 1920x1440 and equally high price of AUS$535.

When describing the somewhat subjective virtues of a monitor it is very difficult to say just how good it is. With out doing side by side comparisons its nigh on impossible to say if one good monitor is better than another. You do certainly know if a monitor is really bad, its just so glaringly obvious and painful to the eyes. But with good monitors it really comes down to how much you liked it at the time.

I dont happen to have any calibration equipment so I wont even begin to waffle on about how good colours look. I'd be talking out my arse with nothing to back it up. Anyway this isn't a pro monitor, for that kind of work you could do worse than get a LaCie blue III. But if you are a budding digital retoucher on a tight budget you would not be disappointed. I have no idea who makes the tube in these AOCs, but its certainly not Trinitron technology. I'll see how the screen ages over time but I'm confident it will still be looking good in a year or two. Which is all I need it for. By then big LCDs should be cheap enough for the likes of me.

Some specifics about use with a PowerBook

My PB has a standard 15 pin external monitor connector on the back of it. So I could just plug it straight in. It worked and synced with no problems at all. Pleasingly both OS9 and OSX know what the display is and list it as "AOC Spectrum 7K". I even get a colour sync profile for the monitor. I dont know how that works, I'm guessing the profile is built on the fly and is just set to defaults. I went through and made a colour profile anyway using the built-in Display Calibrator Assistant. I am really rather pleased and it all looks really rather good. :-D

As mentioned earlier I can use the monitor in dual head mode with the PowerBook. Which means I now have two monitors. I can use the built in PB screen at the same time and have different things on each screen. I am amazed at the amount of people that have never seen this working, but its very cool. I can move windows from one to the other. its so useful; I can have the specs web page open for the monitor on one screen and my word processor window open on the other. Or the PDF manual for some software open and the application window. It really is a very productive way to work.

Which leads me to my one gripe. Its not a gripe with the monitor, more a strange weirdness from Apple. I play a lot of Warcraft and I play it under OS9 as its faster. I was looking forward to playing it on my new CRT as it was bound to look better, and the CRT should update quicker than the LCD so everything will look smoother. So I rebooted into OS9, set the main display to the CRT and fired up WC. And wouldn't you know it but WC appears on the LCD. Damm. So I then put it in mirror mode. Same thing. The CRT goes dark and it appears on the LCD. Double damm. Im getting annoyed at this point. So I rebooted into OSX and tried it agin. Oh joy of joys it worked fine. WC appeared on the CRT as expected. So I'm thinking it must be a software issue. I'm now cussing and abusing Apple for being such a bunch of weiners. I do recall having similar problem when I tried to mirror the iTunes visual effects out to a TV via S-Video under OS9. Apple stopping my party fun once again.

I did a quick scout around and found some hints over on the MacNN forums. I dint manage to solve it fully but I did find a work around which has an added bonus too.

You need an external keyboard and mouse for this to work.

The trick is this:

1. Close the screen on the PB.
2. Wait until its in sleep mode.
3. Wake up the computer using the external keyboard. Just hit any key.

Now the PB should wake up and sense the external monitor. It should at this point use this as the sole display and leave the LCD off. This has the added advantage of allocating all available video RAM to the one display, which is what you want for gaming. Video RAM in my case amounts to a miserly 8MB. Still WC runs, just about, with all the settings at minimum.

There is a minor down side: heat. The PB gets hot, damm hot, with the lid closed. These isn't much ventilation when its placed on a flat surface. So you can just open the lid again and the LCD should stay off. However I have read varying reports on this so it may depend on what PB you have. I also raise mine up about a centimetre by standing it on a few mini-discs I had laying about. This provides some much needed ventilation underneath. Ideally I suppose some sort of heatsink stand would be ideal for this. The PowerBook doesn't normally get very hot by the way. Just that when playing things like WC everything is working over time. The CD and HD are being constantly used and the G4 is processing its little silicon legs off. Which makes every thing much hotter than under normal non gaming usage.

It all temporary however as I should be getting my super duper new PC very soon. I'm just waiting to see how the soon to be released NForce2 motherboards work out. :-D

Rego'

News-A-Roo

AOC 7KLR 17" CRT Monitor Review

Some specifics about use with a PowerBook