Sony PSP Go

My mother-in-law bought me a PSP Go for Christmas, thanks Mommy! I’ve had for almost a month now. So far it’s great. But first, let me just say that I came from a PSP 2000. I love the console but I didn’t play it as much so I sold it last year. Now the PSP Go comes out and I started to miss my PSP. I had a choice between the PSP 3000 or the Go. So I spent a few days to weeks trying to figure out which to get. I heard both sides and I have my reasons.

Here are the reasons not to get the PSP Go and some notes as to why I still went with the PSP Go.

1. More expensive. (It’s free for me since it’s a gift.)
2. Can’t sell downloaded games when you’re done with them as oppose to old UMD games. (I never sold any of my UMDs either even after I was done with them.)
3. Not all games are available for download. (I’m more of a classic guy. I like playing older titles.)
4. New games aren’t available the same day as UMD versions are released. (As I stated above, the new titles aren’t such a big deal to me. I have a PS3, Wii, 360, iPhone, Google OS phone – so the PSP won’t be my primary gaming console let alone the only portable gaming console I have.)
5. Frequent deals on UMD version games versus the downloaded games. (See #4 and I’m a patient person.)
6. The controls are awkwardly placed. (As with any new console, we all have to get used to the newly shaped controller. You can also use the “claw” position when playing the PSP.)
7. Smaller screen size. (No big deal for me.)
8. 802.11 B only. (I know it doesn’t support at least G or N, I doubt the PSP can process that big of information even if it did. Also, Sony’s servers are slow most of the times, even if it had the capability of 54mbps, I doubt you’ll be downloading at that speed anyway.)

Here are reasons why I like the PSP Go over the old series.

1. Smaller. It’s more portable and fits easier in my pockets.
2. Lighter. Not that much lighter, but lighter.
3. Downloaded content. I hated UMDs. I hated carrying them around. I’ve lost too many in the past. With downloaded content, I don’t have to worry about losing games. I can re-download them.
4. Bluetooth. You can connect headsets and the PS3 controller.
5. Pause a game any time. This feature is great. I can pause a game any time without having to look for a saving point. Of course you can only do this one game at a time.
6. 16GB internal memory. It’s plenty to begin with. I’ve downloaded a few games and demos and still have 10GB of space left.

Other things I noticed.

• It took a little over 2 hours to download God of War (1.3GB) and 34 minutes to install. If you have a PS3, use it to download the content and extract – it is so much faster.
• Downloading content from PSN is noticeably slow whether on my PS3 or PSP.
• There is no L2 or R2 buttons on the PSP. You may run into problems with PS1/2 games such as Twisted Metal and the Street Fighter Alpha series – they use L2 and R2 buttons. You may have to reassign them.
• When connected to OS X, it mounts as if it’s an external storage device. Transferring data shouldn’t be a problem. No official software from Sony is available if you want to use your Mac and download from the PSN website (of course).

So far I like it. Many others don’t like it but for what I need and use it for, it fits me just fine. Here are a few pics next to the old PSP.

Compaq Mini 110C-1100DX and 1105DX netbook

I just picked up 2 Compaq netbooks from Best Buy. It was part of their black Friday special. Because I’m a premiere reward zone card holder, I was able to get their door buster deals on Monday, 4 days before the deal and was able to call them to place the order. I really didn’t need the 1105DX model but I was limited to one per so I had to get the higher one.

I bought 2, one for me and one for my mother-in-law as her Christmas gift. Both netbooks are fairly the same. The 2 differences I see is one comes with Windows XP Home and 160 GB hard drive (110C-1100DX). The other Windows 7 Starter and 250 GB hard drive (110C-1105DX).

Here are some pics I took. I have them next to an Asus EEEPC 900A (8.9″) netbook and Macbook Pro 13″ to get a size comparison.

Overall, the netbooks are great. I’m replacing my Asus 900A with this one. I just needed a bigger keyboard and hard drive space with a web cam. Here are a couple of things to watch out for.

• Make sure you figure out a plan for restoring the netbook if something happens. These do not come with restore CDs. You can buy them from HP for around $16. Even then, netbooks don’t come with CD/DVD rom drives so you may have to use an external USB CD/DVD drive.
• There is no hidden partition that contains the restore data for the 110C-1100DX. There is a restore program installed by Roxio. What the program does is creates an image file (proprietary) that can be used to restore your netbook. It is not the usual restoring of only the OS and default programs from day 1 (unless this is the first thing you do after the first boot). You can use a memory card or USB external drive. Unfortunately, it requires a format of the device – unlike Time Machine (OS X) where it can use an existing hard drive or memory card and doesn’t require it to be formatted. Kinda a bummer there. There is also a program that you need to download (SP42226) which will format a memory card to make it bootable and allow you to restore an image created by the Roxio program in case you cannot boot into Windows. Don’t bother searching for it outside HP’s forum. At the time I wrote this, it can’t be found. I’ll save you the trouble – http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?softwareitem=ob-72722-1&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&product=3943766&os=228&lang=en. It’s 184MB. It’s a wonder why it wasn’t included with the default HP programs. You will need a memory card that has at least 2GB and it will format it so make sure you don’t have anything on there.
• There is a partition that will restore the 110C-1105DX. There is a program that can create a restore CD but again, netbooks don’t have CD/DVD drives so you will get an error that it doesn’t detect one. You can use another program to create one using memory cards. The program will tell you that it needs at least 8GB. Another tip, get a 16GB. After it created one for me, it ended up close to 12GB.
• The F and J keys have the usual “bumps” that let you know you’re on the home row keys. To me they aren’t as obvious as the keyboards I use. They could have been raised a little higher.
• There is only 1 memory slot. It’s using 1GB DDR2 PC6400 and according to HP it isn’t upgradeable. I have read people already have upgraded to memory to 2GB but you must use DDR2 PC5300. I haven’t upgraded it yet but am planning on doing so.

Aside from the list above, they are great netbooks. It’s my second netbook. If it’s going to be your first, get used to not having a CD/DVD drive, smaller keyboard, and installing things via memory card or internet. Also, they feel sturdier than my Asus 900A netbook.

iPhone 3G tethering with MyWi

I recently jailbroke my iPhone 3G running OS 3.1.2. Then I installed MyWi to check out the tethering capabilities for the iPhone. With this app you can tether using USB, bluetooth and wifi.

Here is the speed test results.

The latency is pretty high but the connection seems consistent. I used to run a Verizon V740 internet card and was getting higher speeds – close to 2x faster download. I’m also getting a full signal on AT&T 3G – surprisingly.

Anyways, my Verizon contract is up and I terminated the service. I hardly found use for it. With MyWi, $10 seems like a good deal. Hopefully, AT&T doesn’t pull a “switch” to somehow disable this app.

Wordpress [an error occurred while processing this directive]

I’ve been getting the [an error occurred while processing this directive] error every time I go to my website. I googled it and found this http://wordpress.org/support/topic/204631?replies=4. People suggested it was caused by the WP Super Cache plugin. I’m currently running 0.9.7. Well, how could you get to the plugins interface if every page displayed that error?

I ended up using phpMyAdmin that my host has and went in the database to manually disable the plugin. Luckily the tables and data entry values were specific so it wasn’t hard to figure out where to start looking. The table you want to look for is “wpau_active_plugins_info”. This table should have records of plugins that are active – hence the table name. Inside this table, look in “plugin_name” column. This is where I found the WP Super Cache entry. I deleted it and reload the page. It fixed the problem.

Snow Leopard UTD finally arrived

After 6 days since the release of Snow Leopard, my UTD discs finally came in the mail yesterday. I was somewhat upset during launch day when my order status said backordered. It’s puzzling that the company who made the software and distributes it, is backordered. I could’ve gone to the store and bought a full version. I heard they had a ton there.

My co-worker got his full version copy 10am that day. I couldn’t wait so I borrowed it from him after he upgraded his MBP and upgraded my MBP. So far I’ve gotten a few app crashes but it seems after the first crash, they tend to run normal again. I hear 10.6.1 is around the corner so it should fix some stuff.

Anyways, here are some pics I took.

As you can see from the 3rd pic, the UTD (Up to date) discs are upgrade only. The retail $30 ones should be full versions. Another thing I noticed is there is a Optional Install folder now on the disc. It has OS X applications such as Mail, iCal, Address Book, etc. Also has Rosetta. This is great coz in the past, if any of the apps needs to be reinstalled, you can either copy it from another working OS X and fix the permissions or reinstall OS X. Now just pop in the Snow Leopard disc and you can install it anytime.

Here’s a before and after pic of my hard drive on my Mac Mini MB138LL/A. Notice the changes to the hard drive size.

Here’s an article that explains about the capacity change – http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=589.