Canon EOS 1100D

A few posts back I talked about cameras I was planning to buy, and mentioned the EOS as a possible option. Once upon a time back in my misspent youth, I had enough money to buy a Pentax Program A, an SLR Pentax film camera with KA mount lens. Over a relatively short period of time I purchased a second body (Pentax MX), accessory lenses (70-210 mm telephoto, a pretty high spec at the time as well as a 24 mm fisheye – the camera came with a 35-70) and I think if I can remember back that far a good external flash. Quite a lot of money went into those things – the Program A cost about $1000 and all the rest put together was probably another $1000 and that was back in 1986-87. Most of it ended up getting sold in a relatively short time when I was unemployed and needed the cash. I kept the Pentax MX along with a Sunpak hotshoe flash until I traded it in on the Powershot S1 in 2005. Now, it seems very odd to me that I haven’t owned an SLR since. DSLRs have steadily fallen in price until the cheapest EOS might just be affordable. At shop the 1100D in a kit with 18-55 wideangle zoom and 75-300 telephoto zoom now goes for $1055 or so, so the price has become very affordable overall. I did toss around whether to go for a slightly dearer model with certain capability improvements, particularly in video. However good SD capable video cameras have come down in price and you can get a Legria for about $400 with a lot of stuff like 41x zoom. So therefore it is probably better to stick with the EOS 1100D basic model as it is just within my range of affordability.

Although it is the cheapest model in the EOS range it still has quite good specs and can take pictures at 12 megapixels. However the EOS 550D apart from better video performance has an 18 megapixel sensor, the extra $400 retail is just that much more difficult to stretch to price-wise. So it is a tough call. Whilst I can get a discount on those prices and maybe cut down to just one lens for $200 cheaper, I think it more likely I will have to live with the somewhat lower specs of the EOS 1100, although it is likely to be quite suitable for my needs. On the other hand the EOS 550 can shoot HD video, so… hmm. What I do have already is the Speedlite 430EX flash, which was a gift from my previous employer (along with the Powershot S5, which has a hotshoe mount that can accept it). The truth is I don’t shoot video – hardly ever these days – so again this is a tough call. HD video is the video we should have always had, because it is about 2 megapixels – good enough quality to pick out a frame and use it as a photo. This is a great technique because instead of trying to get exactly the right moment in still photography, you can just shoot the video and then pick out exact frames. So the EOS 550 might win in the end…and if I can stretch to that I can probably stretch another $50 or so for an EOS 600 instead. Tricky, tricky, tricky…

After a lot of thought and looking at how I would find the money I have decided to save up and buy the EOS 550D or EOS 600D (if the price is nearly the same, as it is at present) with the twin lens kit at $1400 (current price). It is a lot of money but for a camera that should have a useful life of at least five years, hopefully ten, it is worth spending because the performance of a DSLR camera is in so many ways superior to a high end compact (S5) that it won’t date as quickly. So the money will start being put aside fairly soon. In the immediate term I am buying the SX260.

Powershot SX260 Released in NZ

At last the Powershot SX260 has got its NZ release. Although they have been on Canon’s website for a while the release was delayed because (I presume) Canon wished to sell out of stock of the previous model, the SX230. Some places still have stock of the SX230 and are not yet receiving the 260.

I am looking at the SX260 for many reasons, including supplementing or replacing my Powershot S5. It is a much smaller camera because the lens almost completely folds into the body and it uses a proprietary Canon battery instead of four AAs. It has lots of bells and whistles like the 20x optical zoom lens, 12 megapixels, inbuilt GPS and full manual controls. The size of this thing means it will fit into the same belt pouch that I currently keep the A2000 in most of the time, although I have to get a new one as it’s falling apart.

I think this thing will do most of what I use the Powershot S5 for now, the exception being the hotshoe flash. However I imagine that in time I will buy a low end EOS to replace the S5 since my finances will now permit it better than before. Also I suppose the A2000 will get replaced at some point although I haven’t thought about it too much. With the SX260 being such a high quality in a small package it may well be the case that I will either keep the A2000 or replace it eventually with the bottom end model in the Powershot range like I used to do when I had the A460.

The A2000 has taken about 7600 pictures (as far as I can tell) and is still going pretty strong after three years of use. Usually I replace the cheapest camera every couple of years as new features come out, with the price around $150 for a bottom end model this is easy to do. I broke this pattern when I bought the A2000 because I needed a better spec camera that I could carry everywhere with me. Now that there are cameras like the SX260 out there which are quite pocketable I might go back to a cheap camera every couple of years. The GPS will come in handy when taking pictures outdoors, but it is not high sensitivity and will not totally displace a separate GPS unit. I am looking at replacing the eTrex H with a new model which can do mapping and won’t blow my smartphone data cap, so I expect I would carry a GPS with me more often when going on a photography expedition or train trip.

So here are some new camera stats:

• A2000: 35 months, 7600 images (217/month)
• S5: 44 months, 4500 images (102/month).

Office 365 for Education to launch

It looks like I can post pictures again from Windows Live Writer, but to do this I have had to change the account that I post messages with. This does not really have any technical impact on the blog itself, but it does indicate that Google’s blogging API has a few bugs in it, and doesn’t always support external blog authoring clients the way that it should. I’m guessing this is because the pictures for some reason aren’t being posted into the Windows Live Writer album for this account, when they should be. I don’t actually mind using a different Blogger account because it keeps the photos out of my main Picasa photo albums site.

Now, I read that Office 365 for Education is being launched during the northern hemisphere summer, which is fairly soon. I don’t know when it will come to New Zealand. The indications at this stage is that we will get more than what is currently being offered by Live@Edu. We will get free of charge, Office Web Apps and a Sharepoint offering. The relevance of Sharepoint is that hopefully with Office Web Apps integrated into it, it will allow us to have a central cloud-hosted document store so that our users can view and edit documents from anywhere.

You’ve already seen this picture which is included here for testing purposes. What will I use Windows 8 for? Much the same as my phone probably. How much use will this be? Well a fairly good 3G plan would be needed to get the best from it, but this will soon add up and become expensive. This is the real question for most of us. Can we connect it to wifi and save a lot of money on the 3G, do we really need the full 3G capability which is quite expensive? The cheapest I can see on Vodafone is Broadband Mini which is $20 per month for 512 MB, or $10 per month with an existing phone plan. There are a lot of useful things you could do with that and hopefully it is not going to use up all that bandwidth at a high cost.

Goldair GIR400 Radiant Heater With Turbo Fan

As winter approaches, with the new flat and things being different I have decided as previously detailed to change some of my heaters for more efficient power use better suited to the local conditions.

Briscoes have had lots of sales lately and I picked up this heater at $119 which is a big drop off the normal retail price of $199. I used their mail order service and with another item the total cost for delivery was $5 which is very reasonable as they were couriered down from Auckland.

This is quite a large heater but is not very heavy. There are three bars. Radiant heaters are particularly suited for draughty rooms or large spaces as they heat up people rather than the air around them, and they can warm things up very quickly like a regular fan heater, but without the noise. This unit like lots of heaters these days has a booster fan that essentially adds a convection (air warming) function by blowing some air through the heater from the back, which helps to improve air circulation on any type of heater, and therefore distribute the heat better in the room. Like other heaters which employ a booster fan it is nowhere near as noisy nor as draughty as a regular fan heater.

 Here's a view of the control panel and it is not like most heaters at all. Essentially the three switches control the three bars - one each - but it is a bit more complex. The first switch turns on the first bar, and also acts as the master switch for the whole heater. This bar is not controlled by the thermostat (that big gray knob), so it is on all the time regardless of where the thermostat knob is turned to or the ambient temperature. Turn on the middle switch and you'll get another bar, controlled by the thermostat. The third switch brings on the third bar as well as the booster fan which can therefore only operate on full power. The right switch only comes on if the middle switch is on, and the middle switch only comes on if the left hand switch is also on. So a bit unusual with the switches wired in series rather than parallel like most multi-element heaters. I'm usually sceptical of thermostats built into heaters because in a lot of heaters the heat in the body of the heater itself will fool the thermostat and prevent it from sensing room temperature accurately. Radiant heaters are a little different in that the sides of the heater don't heat up as much because the heat all goes out to the front, so a side mounted thermostat might work a bit better. Have to wait and see.

 Here's a picture of the back of the heater showing the fan vents. The fan isn't ducted internally and it's a bit difficult to tell how well it works. It is meant to blow air over the middle bar via slots cut into the reflector. It is very quiet and you would hardly know it was on.

This is what radiant / bar heaters looked like when I was growing up. The classic Shacklock Conray heater, made out of thick gauge sheet steel with a knob control for the heat which is top rear. Today's modern heaters are aluminium and plastic and a lot lighter. They also have extra safety features like overheat and tilt cutouts which these old classics often have missing. However the old heaters provided useful employment for New Zealand workers and lasted forever so I don't think new really is better.

Mophie JuicePack Powerstation External

This useful gizmo (seen below next to the phone and some Microsoft furry rodentry) is an external battery that can charge most USB Micro devices. Mophie’s idea was to charge up things like an ipad or iphone. While they do make a range of battery docks for iphones and ipods, this one doesn’t have any dock. Instead it has two USB sockets: a Micro for charging it up, and a standard A socket for connecting it to a device for it to charge up. The power capacity is 4000mAh which means it could charge up the Trophy up to  three times.

It is about the size of an average smartphone and just a little thicker. Apart from the two sockets which are both on the top edge, there is a little button on the side that activates a 4 LED battery meter to show you how much charge it has left. When it is being charged this meter lights up giving some idea of progress although it never actually reaches 100%. The button also needs to be pressed when it is connected to the phone so that the phone can recognise it.

I bought a little Apple USB charger on Trademe to charge the Powerstation, unfortunately it blew up after only half an hour’s use. I will have to get another charger from somewhere, maybe Jaycar have one. In the reviews I read these chargers are known to blow up after a short life at times. 

The JuiceStation External is not the only device of its type out there but it is probably the easiest to get in NZ as it is sold by the Apple Store. They are currently retailing for $119 and come with a short USB Micro cable which can be used both for charging the battery (from a USB port) and charging a connected Micro USB device. It is very well made with a stainless steel edge and rubberised casing and will last a long time.

Well unfortunately the JuiceStation External had a relatively short life and I replaced it with something cheaper.

Windows 8 CTP

I have built up the CTP on a Hyper-V virtual machine. It will be interesting to have a play with it. It will also be interesting to see if it comes to market in time for NZ schools to get their hands on it for the start of the 2013 year.

What you can see there is pretty similar to my Windows 7 phone as they both use the Metro design language. Using it should be similar to Phone.

If this comes to market later this year then I could be very interested in buying a Windows 8 slate rather than an Ipad, due to the positive experience I have had so far with Phone and W8 being able to do the stuff Phone can. This doesn’t of course mean we can do x86 applications because a slate is likely to be running the ARM platform version of W8. But MS will have produced something that is every bit as good as what an Ipad can do and probably at a cheaper price, and I think schools will also take a hard look at W8 slates because MS I expect will produce something that can be integrated with existing Windows server networks. However, the ARM versions of Windows 8 will, at this stage, lack the enterprise centralised management functionality of the x86 editions, for example joining a domain and being managed by domain-based tools on servers. This seems to be Microsoft having a buck both ways on the Windows 8 platform, and being unwilling to accept an ARM-based mobile platform as competition to their dominant x86 platform. Effectively this means ARM-based Windows 8 slates are really only of value to consumers or enterprises in scenarios where they are not centrally managed. Enterprise support has been a key strength of the Windows ecosystem that is superior to most other platforms out there. Yet we have Microsoft digging their heels in on the assumption that ARM based devices can be considered equivalent or viable for traditional enterprise scenarios.

Using as an example the Galaxy Tab 8.9 which is currently an Android tablet, I would expect this type of device could be competitively priced to an Ipad and useful in a variety of educational scenarios. Of course, schools might also choose to look at OLPC devices which will probably come to market in a similar time frame. The lack of enterprise management in ARM based Windows 8 slates just means that they are less attractive to schools where there would have been an opportunity to integrate them into a traditional Windows Server managed environment. Therefore amongst all the Windows 8 hype, Microsoft has clearly missed an opportunity to make a dent in the educational marketplace where they seem to be denying reality. Maybe there are going to be viable x86 slates but most that are Windows capable are in the high price end of the marketplace, at the moment Acer and Gigabyte have one model each for example that are under $1000. Typical battery life for Windows 7 is around 5-6 hours, still better than most laptops. Maybe MS thinks in the x86 slate market enterprises will be willing to have slates that are more like traditional laptops running normal desktop apps and with similar battery life.

Meridian to transfer Power Manager customers to Mercury Energy

Our block of flats has Power Managers fitted throughout. It’s not a bad little system even though I have run out a few times in the nine months due to financial stringency. Now that my pay has risen to a level that compensates me for the rent increase when I moved here, I can afford to buy more credit without having to cut it so fine. One of the biggest issues with Meridian Power Manager is the limited top-up opportunities. There are just twelve retail outlets in Christchurch that are capable of topping up the cards. In my case the nearest such outlet is the nearest Mad Butcher branch about 1 km away. Since they close at 7 pm there have been a few times where I have missed out on top ups such as staying at work late. These days of course you should be able to top up on the Internet or something.

Well Meridian this week announced their Power Manager customers would be transferred to Mercury Energy. The new system will allow a much larger number of outlets to credit the cards, as well as being able to do it by phone, text or internet. Although I am quite in favour of the Power Manager system, Consumer NZ has come out against it. The issue from their point of view is that prepay customers don’t get the prompt payment discount that on account customers get and so are charged more for power. Whilst that is reasonably significant, in my view it is balanced by the convenience of not having to pay the account all at once and also having better control over power expenditure particularly in winter, that could well make it easy to recoup the difference. It is certainly better for situations where tenants haven’t got an account or perhaps have a bad credit history. Here we didn’t have a choice as the landlord had them installed. Certainly it is a convenient system in a lot of ways and I have found it to be very good for managing my use of power to the extent I have probably saved a significant amount in the time I lived here. Generally I do agree with the idea that prepay customers should get some sort of recognition for the fact we pay in advance and don’t incur credit and payment processing costs for the power company. Maybe the added cost of the meters and topup systems is significant enough to use up the difference.

The main difference for the GLO-BUG system is that the meter itself doesn’t actually display instantaneous usage or remaining credit like Meridian’s one does. The first feature is quite useful on the Power Manager for telling how much power a particular appliance is using, if most other things in your house are off. The credit balance can be texted or emailed to you daily. The unit display uses a bar graph to give some idea of the credit remaining plus it changes colour as well. It is claimed that the earlier GLO-BUG display that gave out the same information as Power Manager cost too much. Another issue I see is the minimum topup amount of $20.00. This is definitely going to be an issue for people on tight budgets who might only have $10 (the Power Manager minimum) to top up their phone until their next pay or benefit day. The GLO-BUG sits inside your house and is just plugged into a power outlet, so it can be put anywhere rather than being fixed in one place like a Power Manager.

Smartphone revolution or Tablet revolution?

Just got my hands on a HTC 7 Trophy and it’s not so bad. I might even be able to use it for more than just reading work emails, and perhaps there might even be a chance of it displacing my Nokia 2730 classic. The biggest issue on these phones for someone who enjoys writing like me is of course the miniscule onscreen keyboard. This will make or break this phone for me. I understand that the software is predictive capable which should improve the overall experience, still it is almost tempting to get something like the stylus on the old Palm Z22 I first tried out a few years back, to pick out the letters quickly without mistyping. This phone isn’t going to be the all-in-one that you might hope for, I guess I am going to end up with a separate MP3 player for the music because it has a fixed amount of memory and playback uses up the battery too quickly. Windows Phone 7 is really a preview of Windows 8 and I expect its format is going to become a lot more seen in the future on these types of devices along with full tablets. In my view MS has got the potential with it to give Apple a run for their money.

What makes it hard to choose is that for a little more money you can have a full size tablet albeit without a phone function – but otherwise so much more functionality. As I may have written a few weeks back the iPad 2 has become so affordable (albeit without 3G) at $579 for the cheapest model, that it is tempting to save up your pennies for one of those and keep a relatively cheap “unsmart” phone just for voice or perhaps music. But the 3G model at $779 would be the best to have, just a bit out of my reach though. Maybe I’ll take another look when Windows 8 hits the market to see if there is something that’s a bit better value than the iPad. Maybe – Samsung’s Galaxy and a few other tablet brands aren’t any cheaper just yet. The fact you can use a keyboard that is much closer to a normal size and also on some of these tablets connect an external keyboard makes them just that much more useful than the smartphone.

Still, I’m going to leave further judgment until I’ve had a really good play with the HTC just to see what I really can do with it. However it is a vast step up from the Palm Z22. I remember the appeal of that in having something I could carry around and write notes on rather than putting them onto paper, with the idea I could easily keep track of whatever I was working on and sync it back to the PC. The HTC has that sort of appeal and the interface is a massive improvement on the Z22 so I expect that over time it will grow on me. So far the predictive text has turned out quite clever with being able to compensate for miskeying individual characters of a word so it might not be so hard to write after all. Actually it isn’t really that difficult at all…