Gerhard Potgieter

The mini-notebook market has no shortage of compelling systems, especially with this week’s release of the Eee PC 900 in the U.S And with models from both Acer and Dell on the way, how can a lesser-known brand stand out in the crowd?

MSI certainly thinks that their entry will shake things up. MSI shared that the Wind will:

1. Come in two display-size variations: an 8.9-inch and a 10-inch. Only the 10-inch display will be available to the U.S. market.
2. Be available starting June 3rd. The Linux version, running Novel’s SUSE, will have 512MB RAM and an 80GB hard drive. It will retail for $399. The Windows XP version will have 1GB RAM, an 80GB hard drive, and Bluetooth, retailing for $549. However according to MSI a base configuration of the Windows XP product will be available for under $500.
3. Come in four different colors, including black, white, silver, and pink. Both sizes will be available in these colors.
4. Get 6 hours of battery life with the standard six-cell battery. MSI attributes the power savings to the Intel Atom processor, since the system will not have a solid state drive.

Lets just hope that when the Wind hits the South African Market that it would retail for about the same amount as the EEEPC, cause then I would defenitly buy one of them. I love the EEEPC to bits it just that it doesn’t have the power I would like, but looks like things are about to change thanks to MSI.

Monday Nintedo went head on with Microsoft and Sony when it launched WiiWare, its new online repository of downloadable games.

From appearance a service where Wii gamers will be able to shop for new, independant games. WiiWare seems to be Nintendo’s answer to Microsoft’s XBox Live Arcade and its XNA Studio, and to Sony’s Playstion Store.

WiiWare launched with six games: Square Enix’s Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King, Frontier Development’s LostWinds, XGen Studios’ Defend your Castle, Nnooo’s Pop, High Voltage Software’s V.I.P. Casino: Blackjack, and Gameloft’s TV Show King.

Nintendo said that they would add new games to WiiWare each Monday, as there are currently more that 100 WiiWare titles in development.

And while many gamers would like to see more games in the system at launch, the fact that there are so many in the pipeline already means that Nintendo will likely not have to worry about populating the service with new weekly titles for some time.

For independent developers, the service also provides a new avenue for getting their work in front of gamers, and on a new platform. Microsoft has been very aggressive with using its XNA platform as a way of bringing independently created games to the Xbox community, and now Nintendo will be able to compete for some of those developers’ time.

Google has joined the revolution to make the web more social by introducing Friend Connect to enable people to interact with their friends.

Friend Connect follows just after announcements last week by social networking sites Facebook and MySpace to open up their data availability to be used on personal websites.

Data Availability and Connect let users move their personal profiles and applications to other websites.

Google says with Friend Connect, any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running right away without any complicated programming. This will run the complete range from invitations to member’s gallery and from message walls to reviews.

As 99% of sites are not currently socially enabled, Friend Connect has a big potential market in front of it and the route to all things profitable in this space will be through tapping into “the deep profit and user data flowing through Friend Connect.” In other words, mining that information through advertising.

Google is being cautious about approving sites to use the new code and is creating a waiting list for requests to use Friend Connect. It says it expects to give the go ahead to a few dozens sites in the next few days.

Meanwhile MySpace and Facebook anticipate rolling out their offerings over the next few weeks.

With the routerboard 433 already shipping to suppliers, Mikrotik will soon make available the bad brother of the 433. The RB433AH is a more powerfull version of the standard RB433. The 128MB DDR will be capable
of supporting new RouterOS features coming. The microSD slot supports an additional memory card that can be used for a Dude database and other features to be announced in during Spring ‘08.

The 680MHz Atheros MIPs 24K CPU, that can be overclocked to 800MHz, with a 64KB/32KB instruction/data cache is probably the fastest CPU used in low cost wireless access points.

The three Ethernets and mpci slots give you ample data interfaces to put the big CPU power to work.

The RB433 and RB433AH replace the RB133 and RB333 positions of the mikrotik product line.

CPU Atheros AR7130 680MHz network processor (Tested at 800MHz)
Memory 128MB DDR SDRAM onboard memory
Boot loader RouterBOOT
Data storage 64MB onboard NAND memory chip and microSD
Ethernet Three 10/100 Mbit/s Ethernet ports with Auto-MDI/X
miniPCI Three MiniPCI Type IIIA/IIIB slots
Extras Reset switch, Beeper
Serial port One DB9 RS232C asynchronous serial port
LEDs Power, NAND activity, 5 user LEDs
Power options Power over Ethernet: 10..28V DC (except power over datalines). Power jack: 10..28V DC. Voltage monitor.
Dimensions 10.5 cm x 15 cm, 137 grams
Power consumption ~3W without extension cards, maximum – 25 W, 16W output to cards
Operating System MikroTik RouterOS v3, Level5 license

The expected shipping date of these units are still to be made public, but I’m sure WUGs arround South Africa will scoop up these units as soon as they arrive.

Rumor has it that Telkom will be launching a 8mbps ADSL trial anytime soon. According to several users from the MyBroadband forum, Telkom techies told them that Telkom will soon be launching a 8mbps ADSL trial.

This comes to no surprise as cellphone companies MTN and Vodacom has launched their 7.2mbps HSDPA services as a trial a month or 2 back.

According to the techies the 8mbps will be first run as a trial to current 4mbps users. My question is just with all this speed when will we have uncapped accounts or high cap account to accommodate all that speed for a fraction of the cost it currently goes for.

So lets just have a look at what the requirements are to have a 8mbps line running at its full speeds. Currently there are various 4mbps users that can’t even achieve their full line speeds, this is cause of the fact that they live far from a exchange. ADSL works at a maximum distance of about 5km from the exchange for normal low end speed. According to the graph below to achieve a speed of 8mbps you’ll need to live about maximum 1.8km from the exchange and that is the worst case to sync at 8mbps. Just take in consideration that there are other factors that can also influence sync rates to the exchanges such as.

• the length of copper wire from your premises to the exchange - this is always higher than the distance ‘as the crow flies’.
• the number and type of other digital services being used by other customers over copper pairs within the same cable sheath.
• the configuration and line quality of the copper wire pair between the exchange and your premises.
• electrical interference from outside sources (such as electric motors).
• the configuration of the copper wiring within your premises (ie use a central splitter for optimal performance).
• the software configuration and application on your computer (in particular how it uses the uplink back to the exchange).
• your ADSL hardware.
• the capacity of, load on, and access data rate of the destination host computer which you are accessing.

All and all I wont say no to a 8mbps line, and sure the majority of users out there won’t either. Maybe this is just what is needed to bring down the cost of faster ADSL speeds and maybe introduce cheap uncapped or high cap accounts. You can follow the MyBroadband thread here.

Yesterday on Microsoft’s marketing-team-operated GamerScoreBlog, the publisher dished on the stats breakdown for the 6 million copies of the game sold in its first week at market.

According to retailers, more than 60 percent of all GTA IV games sold during the first week was sold to XBox 360 owners. Sony had not responded to queries for comment on this claim as of press time. According to Microsoft’s most recent numbers, the global installed base for the XBox 360 currently stands at 19 million as to the mere 13 million of the PS3.

Microsoft also said that the release of GTA IV caused a spike in the sales of its consoles to 54 percent week-over-week and that retailers’ data indicate that GTA IV is attached to new console purchases at a rate of 40 percent. GTA IV has also proven to be a hit at online gamers as the publisher noted earlier this week that the game had overtook Call of Duty 4 as the top XBox Live title for the week.

If you haven’t got GTA IV yet, I suggest you go out and buy it. As with all previous versions of the game the developers really put in allot of effort, and you can see it. If you are a PC gamer you’ll have to wait and see if this title will hit your market anytime soon.

Not many South Africans know about the ZA Tech Show yet, but its popularity is growing with every podcast.

The ZA Tech Show is a weekly South African technology podcast where they discuss all the latest trends and technologies thats happening in South Africa. The podcast is now at their 10th episode and can be download for free from their website.

The ZA Tech Show is led by a panel consisting of Simon Dingle from Hypertext Media, Duncan McLeod from the FM and FM Tech, Jon Tullett from IHS, Benedict Kelly from Finweek and Brett Haggard also from Hypertext Media.

So if you are a technology junkie and would like to keep up the trends then this podcast is a must for you. Big up to Simon Dingle - founder of ZA Tech Show - and his team for a great weekly podcast, i’m sure you’ll make it big with this show.

Vodacom in collaboration with Vodafone is bringing the Apple iPhone to South Africa. Vodafone signed a contract with Apple to sell the iPhone in ten markets including Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey. The iphone is expected later this year — thats all thats made public for now.

Mikrotik announced the release of the RB433 early this week. The RB433 is a high performance AP (Access Point) with a 300mhz Atheros CPU. With the announcement of the RB433 came the EOL (End of line) announcement of the RB333 a performance AP that was based on the PowerPC CPU.

The RB433 is the replacement for the RB333, which is weird cause the RB333 hasn’t been in production for that long. Mikrotik probably used the RB333 to test the PowerPC CPU in their devices. We at CTWUG have a RB333 on one of our highsites and it perform very well.

Back to the RB433, it is kinda a exact replica of the RB333 with exception to its hardware specs and price. The RB344 boasts a Atheros AR7130 300MHz CPU, 64MB Memmory, 3 x 10/100 Ethernet ports with one POE (Power over ethernet) enabled, 3 miniPCI slots for wireless radios, 12~28V DC power jack aswell as POE, and the great RouterOS level4. One thing that it doesn’t support is remote voltage monitoring, something that is expected in a later hardware release.

I spoke to william at Scoop Distribution earlier today and they expect stock arrival by the end of May. The best thing about the RB433 is the price, it will be sold for just under R800 here in SA as apposed to the RB333 that is currently going for R1300 exlc vat. Scoop also told me that they will be selling the RB333 for R1150 as they are trying to clear our the RB333 in expectation of the new RB433.

All and all I’m looking forward to this new High Performance AP from Mikrotik and know they won’t dissapoint as always. Im sure CTWUG will be stoking up on on the RB433 for new highsites and even relay nodes as soon as these babies goes on sale.

Kudos to Spur Steak Ranch Canal Walk aka Mexico Spur for having the worst service I’ve seen in the restaurant industry till date. Me and my fiancee and her one bridesmaid set out to Canal Walk yesterday to chill, have something to eat and do some shopping.

So we decided to go to the Spur as we all were having a crave for a nice spur burger. Upon arrival we were asked to take a seat outside the Spur to wait a while, I thought ah well probably busy. After waiting for about 10 minutes a waiter took us to a table, gave us our menus and told us he would be with us shortly. So we waited and waited and waited and after about 15 minutes he came and took our drink orders. By this time I was getting quite hungry as it was just past 13:00 and I haven’t eaten a single thing the whole day.

After waiting another 15 minutes I had to remind Ricky (Our waiter) to bring us the drinks. So he said yes its on its way, after saying that I saw how he only then placed our order. So after waiting another 10 minutes or so I called Ricky again to hear where our drinks are and to place our order aswell. By this time I was starving and craving a nice double burger, but just to be told that sorry they can’t serve any burgers anymore cause they have ran out of stock. This just took us over the wall and by not having received our drinks and not having burgers we decided we just gonna go.

I would have understand If the place was busy, but there was allot of tables open in the restaurant, and not even once did a manager come and ask us if things where okay. So I did the reasonable thing and laid a complaint at Hello Peter. The Spur Steak Ranch head office replied swiftly, and while I was busy typing this entry I got a call back from Mexico Spur.

Thanks for calling me back, but damn I could hardly hear him as his phone was breaking up the whole time. After a second call he got better signal and we talked things out. He gave a explanation about a delivery truck breaking down and not planning well enough for the long weekend, and offered us a free bottle of wine at out next visit. Well thanks for all the opologies and wine offer, but your service sux big time and you wont see me at your spur ever again as you have terrible service.

So after this bad experience we set out to the nearest restaurant we could find, and this was Dodge City Diner. We were served by a trainee, and I must say he did a great job. I ordered a nice V12 Burger with 2 big patties, and it was very tasty. Just too bad we dont have a Dodge restaurant in the northern suburbs, otherwise I would gladly eat with them from now on.

Thanks Mexico Spur for waisting my time, and thanks Dodge City Diner for your nice tasty burgers and showing me there is allot of other nice places out there.