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About this site

For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul

Friday, August 29, 2003

Fastest PC in the world now the most delayed PC in the world
Surprise, surprise. It's the last weekend of August, and Apple promised to ship the G5 in August, and ... ta da ... the model everyone wants, the 2 GHz, so-called "fastest PC in the world," is nowhere to be seen. Well, there's a reason: It won't be shipping until late September. If this isn't an I-told-you-so moment, I don't know what is. This is probably a rude awakening for some Apple customers, but it shouldn't be: They do this all the time, folks. "I ordered a dual Power Mac G5 at 9:00 a.m. on 6/25 through the Apple Store for Education," one reader wrote. "The shipping information for the last three months has been 'on or before 8/29/03.' At approximately 7:00 p.m. PDT the shipment information changed to 'on or before 9/26/03.'" Another reader reports the same...

[ Posted at 11:23 AM | Permalink ]

Thursday, August 28, 2003

Thunderbird 0.2 release candidate
Mozilla Foundation's excellent standalone email client, Mozilla Thunderbird, just hit the version 0.2 release candidate phase. Check it out here.

[ Posted at 11:23 AM | Permalink ]

Triage: Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen NX
My Creative Zen NX finally arrived this week, while I was in Austin, so I'm just now getting to it. Frankly, I'm not convinced it's excellent and will try it out during my CEDIA trip in Indianapolis next week. If I don't like it, it's going back. So far, I can easily identify some definite pros and cons when compared to the iPod (My iPod is an original 5 GB model, which I prefer to the new ones in a huge way).

Pros:
Price: NX kicks ass: $300 for 30 GB? With Apple, $300 gets you only 10 GB. Yawn.
Compatibility: USB 2.0 and WMA support are much more important to me than Firewire and MP3-only, as with the iPod.
Storage capacity: Again, 30 GB for $300. Awesome.
Battery life: I'm told this thing gets much better battery life than the iPod (14 hours vs. 8 hours, both claimed by manufacturer). I've never needed more battery life than I got with the iPod, however.
Replaceable battery: Neat. Assuming a spare is cheap, which it won't be. Or that I'll need it, which I might not.
Headphones: The NX's bundled headphones are much nicer than the crap Apple gives you. I even bought Apple's newer models and they still stink (another $30).
Extras: Creative gives you a wrap-around leatherette holder for the thing, which is nice. Apple charges you $40 for a comparable holder, and arguably you need it more with the iPod, which scratches when you look at it.

Cons.
Size: It's significantly bigger than my iPod. I will take a picture to demonstrate this, and it's kind of surprising. It's still pocket-sized, of course and very portable.
Elegance: The NX software blows, the way the thing works blows. The interface/screen on the device blows. Even the packaging blows.
Complexity: There are about 25 buttons on this thing. The iPod just works. I missed the iPod's ease of use instantly, but we'll see if I can migrate to the NX.
Cords: You need USB 2.0 for file transfer, but you can't charge the device over it as you can with Firewire. So there's a separate power cord. That's one more thing to carry/lose/forget on a trip.

That's about it so far. The sound quality is fantastic on the bundled headphones. I just called Creative to see what my return rights are and I have 30 days/no questions asked. So I'll bring it on the trip next week and see how it fares. So far, I'm really mixed on it, but the NX has no class at all, and I'm actually struck by that after using an iPod for long.

[ Posted at 11:20 AM | Permalink ]

Mozilla 1.5 beta out
The Mozilla Foundation unleashed the Mozilla 1.5 beta yesterday. It includes a spellchecker for MailNews and Composer, the ability to mark message as read by date in MailNews, color settings for HR and BR HTML tags, line and column numbers in the status bar of the View Source menu, improved performance, stability, standards support and Web compatibility, and much more. Download it here.

[ Posted at 11:09 AM | Permalink ]

Sunday, August 24, 2003

G5 continues to lose benchmarks against PCs
As expected, the benchmark race continues. And as expected, the "world's fastest PC" is a PC, and not a Mac. On the G4, G5, and AMD Shoot-Out site, AMD trounced the G5 in most tests. "I was a bit surprised at the relative strength of the AMD 2000+ versus the 1.6 [G5]," the site reads (ahem). "In some arenas, the gap was wider than I had expected it to be. In some others, the 970 was competitive ... It's evident from these benchmarks that the 1.6 G5 is competitive with the 1.67 Ghz AMD (2000+ rated), though in most cases the AMD showed itself to be slightly stronger. Of course, these are the results of only one benchmark. Personally, I like this benchmark (Cinebench) since I work graphics and video ... It's nice to see that Apple is at least being competitive from a speed standpoint." I guess it'd be nicer if they lived up to their billing, eh?

[ Posted at 10:18 PM | Permalink ]