Singtel's 512K mobile broadband is faster than Starhub's 2MB cable!

This really puts Starhub's Maxonline to shame. I have been hitting 40k-55k consistently when downloading, as compared to the 20k-30k that Starhub is giving me. That's 2 or 3 times faster than Maxonline, even though Maxonline is supposed to have 4 times the bandwidth... I'm so not getting my money's worth out of Starhub!

Ok I signed up for Singnet's mobile broadband on Monday and it was activated on Wednesday morning before 9AM. The connection is stable and fast enough that I can surf on the bus, watch videos on veoh, play ikarium, even download BitTorrent.

Let's compare the prices:
Singnet's 512K mobile broadband is $11.21 a month (12 month free for a 24 month contract) and gives reliable speed of 50k. There is a 50GB quota per month, but I'm not sure if it is for download only or download + upload.
Starhub's 2MB cable broadband is $26.96 (10% off for 24 month contract) and sucks at only 25k. It will be difficult to hit 50GB a month even if I leave my comp running 24/7, so what if there is no 50GB cap.

Yup, Starhub's 2MB plan is disgustingly slow. So slow that their staff expressed surprise when I asked them some question about adding a router. The response is why-on-earth-will-anyone-want-to-share-a-connection-when- it-is-already-so-slow which really surprised me given that I have used a 1MB link from Singnet and found it to be good enough for me. Now I know. It is way below what is advertised.

When my Starhub contract expires, I'm just going to take 2 mobile broadband plans for Sunshine and me, and give up our fixed line broadband. Singtel is not the friendliest ISP around, but they do give the speed that you are contracted to get.

The day I paid $55 for a spare charger

It is said that generic adapters and adapters meant for portable dvd players can work for the EEE PC. But when you dare not use a 3rd party accessory, you have to pay a premium for ORIGINAL parts, right? As much as double the price that you would have to pay for alternatives.

So I bought a spare adapter from the Asus service centre at 4th floor of The Adelphi, opposite Funan. At least I know that this is guaranteed to work without frying my laptop, considering how careful they were not to sell me the wrong charger. I had to produce my SERIAL number, not just my MODEL number, so that they can be sure the charger is suitable for use with my battery. Mine is one of the earlier pieces with battery capacity of 5200mA. It has since shrunk to 4800 and 4400, which probably means they have to cater for 3 different adapters even though this is still the 701 model.

At least I have the reassurance that the adapter will not die within 3 months (the laptop is a year!) and that it will not fry my motherboard. But it is worrying in that if I were to buy a newer model next year, it probably is not supposed to use this spare charger that I'm buying today. This reminds me of how Palm intentionally changed their sync cables such that you will not be able to use the cable from your older model. So no thanks for faithfully supporting them and sticking to them.

Now that I have a spare charger in the office, I can travel a bit lighter when I go to work and not ever have to worry about the battery running flat. I also found a spare mouse. I'm still considering whether to buy a 4GB SD card (or 8GB? *drools*) and I can leave my portable hard disk at home. Pay a bit more to be a bit more mobile. Pay a lot and I can be very mobile indeed.

Million Blog List

Are you listed? I'm #497.

Nokia wifizone

I finally got the chance to take one of the buses that Nokia has equipped with a free wifi network. I failed to join the network on the first day, but could surf the net on the second day.

First try
Using my eee pc, I was able to detect more than 10 wifi networks coming from the HDB blocks around me, but just could not find the Nokia WifiZone despite refreshing several times. I carried on with my ebook reading.

Second try (10 min later)
I finally saw the Nokia WifiZone but failed to get a DHCP lease. Hence, not connected.

Third try (10 min later)
Reconnected and joined, but could not go anywhere, not even google. If you can't even reach google or delicious, or connect to msn or google talk, you are pretty much screwed right? The address given to me starts with 192.168. and the DNS server is 202.65.247.152. I couldn't reach it. Was it too far away?

Fourth try (4 days later on the same bus)
I could log on to google talk, msn messenger, replace my twitter badge on my blog with the latest version that works, twittered via instant message, played Ikarium for a while and didn't have enough time to post this while on the go.

Fifth try (anoter 4 days later)
Good enough that I can post this on the bus. How useful is this free service really? Is it like oh since I'm in luck and on a wifi bus, I might as well try to surf the net and waste some time on this long bus journey? So yeah it works but don't depend on this if you're a net junkie since free wifi services are notoriously unreliable. In the worst
case, it could just be a waste of time and battery charge trying to connect! I'm better off writing or reading something on my eee. It's as bad as wireless@sg in that you can't do anything about it if it is not working, short of changing another bus or going to another fast food outlet. Changing to another bus hardly seem feasible. Download speeds are comparable with wireless@sg, and it's as free.

One difference from wireless@sg: I don't need to sign up for a free account with my IC and don't have to log in with my password everytime I'm using the free wifi (having to log in again is an inconvenience when moving around and changing base stations). I just need to click 2 buttons to indicate that I accept the terms and conditions (which nobody reads).

Evolution of T-shirt design

I like to people watch when I'm out of the house. Sometimes it can be fun reading what is printed on their T-shirts.

I started noticing T-shirts with the message "Explain to me again why I need a boyfriend" a few months back and was thinking that this must be a girl who couldn't get a boyfriend, or who has "alternatives" and didn't need a boyfriend for whatever purpose a boyfriend was supposed to provide for. I will not speculate on those alternatives here...

Then there are T-shirts with the message "I <3>copycat viral T-shirt designs.

Huat Ah!

This is probably the first time that I had won something useful in a lucky draw.

I signed up for a 24 month broadband contract with Starhub at the IT Show 2008 (ended on 9 Mar 08) and was entitled to a lucky dip. I was commenting to Sunshine just minutes before that we will probably win some crap that has no value, such as the fridge magnet or lanyard, those that did not even have their value printed in yellow and bold fonts on the promotional brochure. Imagine my surprise when I opened the folded piece of paper and saw "HP" and "printer" staring back at me!

I had to record down my initials on a sheet of paper (with less than 20 names on it) and one of the starhub guys was supposed to give us an instant photo of us holding up the prize and smiling. But he could not get the instant camera to work. So I told him to forget it and just let us go back since we had queued for over an hour to sign up, collect my modem and do my lucky dip. And I'm expecting a long queue at the taxi stand since the walk to either the bus stop or MRT station will be very very long with this heavy box to lug along.

The prize was a HP C5180 Photosmart printer with scan and print capabilities. And I suppose it can print photos nicely on 4R paper. The brochure says that it is worth $476. I had never been so happy paying for a taxi ride home, even with the $3 surcharge for boarding the cab in the city area.

I had never been a gambler and never been lucky in lucky draws either. The only time I ever bought Toto, I donated the money to Singapore Pools and hope the money made its way to paying for the staff at Singapore Community Chest. To win something at the IT Show when the lucky draw is not even the thing that draws me, is totally unexpected. Not that I'm complaining.

Upgrading my portable storage

Was at the IT Show 2008 at Suntec City. 8GB thumbdrive from SanDisk Cruzer cost $55 from 1 stall. A 160GB portable harddisk (2.5" from Western Digital) cost $109.99. Which should I get?

I already have a 4GB thumbdrive, I can pay $55 to double it.
I already have a 40GB harddisk, I can pay $110 to quadruple it.

The Cruzer comes with U3, which I will probably format away since I don't like the extra drive it emulates and I don't need its pre-installed programs. After all, portable apps is free...

Decisions, decisions... Cheap storage is a good problem. :-)