Raymond Chandler is one of my closest friends, and like many people, is seeking employment. He lost his job as Vanguard Car Rental merged with another company and moved to St. Louis. He was given the opportunity to move with the job, but elected to stay near family in Tulsa.
Raymond has an MBA and is seeking employment as a Financial Analyst, Budget Analyst, Investor Relations Analyst or anything financial related. Raymond’s geographic preferences are Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Stillwater, or any nearby city. However, we will relocate as needed to Dallas/Ft. Worth, Kansas City, or other area.
One of the great things about my job is that I get to test new gear from time to time. Most of the time this usually consists of new computers that are just a new iterations of existing models. On occasion, something interesting comes along. Dell has recently entered the specialty market of ruggedized computers. Although the market is small, it is primarily dominated by the Panasonic Toughbook line. Dell has expanded their Latitude line by releasing a semi-rugged model (Latitude ATG), a fully ruggedized model (XFR), and a rugged convertible multi-touch tablet (XT2 XFR).
While the tablet is the most interesting to me, I have my hands on the Latitude E6400 XFR. All these models fall within the Latitude line and have the same internal specs as the mainstream Latitudes. As was explained to me by my sales rep, these are Latitudes which have had the cases removed and new cases applied by hand. Seems inefficient to me, but what do I know? This is good news if your business already has an investment in the Latitude line. All of your images, peripherals, and docking stations should work without modification.
The term “fully ruggedized” is confusing to some. The term does not imply 100% waterproof. The computer is meant to withstand dirty conditions, moisture and rain, and some abuse but cannot be fully submerged. Update: My Dell rep told me today that the XFR can be fully submerged for up to 30 seconds. There are no exposed ports, the speakers are enclosed, even the heat vents, speakers, and webcam are covered. The XFR achieves an ingress rating against blowing dust and moisture of IP65 (if you know what that is).
To further increase the durability, my eval arrived with a solid state diskdrive (SSD) to reduce the chance of mechanical failure. Dell utilizes an alloy casing called Ballistic Armor Protection System featuring PR481 which they claim has twice the impact resistance of traditional magnesium alloy. I have performed some minor drop tests but can’t bring myself to really test the durability. Dell claims the XFR is first in class to achieve the military’s MIL-STD-810F specification for a four foot drop on plywood over concrete. My test was a two foot drop on carpet over padding as I prayed.
You would think with all the covered ports, that heat would be a concern. According to Dell, the XFR meets military standard MIL-STD for temperature extremes. Heat dissipation is managed by their QuadCool thermal management system (See photos below for the QuadCool vent).
The computer does not lack horsepower. This is one of the most responsive computers I have used. I am running Windows 7 Ultimate and it takes about 20 seconds from power-on to being in a usable state. Impressive. There does seem to be a refresh glitch with the Intel video driver from the Intel site. I find myself having to minimize/restore various windows to force a refresh. I have the latest driver as suggested by Intel’s auto-detect utility.
As I mentioned before all the ports are covered to prevent dust and moisture from entering the system. The port covers are opened by a two step motion by pressing and sliding the release. The SD card slot is the most inaccessible. It is located behind the handle on the front of the unit. Open the cover and inserting the SD card involves some phalange gymnastics. Even getting a good photo (see the gallery below) of the SD slot was difficult. Other than that, the design seems well thought out. This model includes a VGA, Display port, modem, Ethernet, three USB, one USB/eSATA combo, PCMCIA, SD slot, fingerprint sensor, and one 1394 Firewire port. Like all other manufacturers, there is a swift move from serial interfaces. This laptop is no exception. The serial port is following the steps of the parallel port and the diskette drive.
The battery is small and based on the body design, I don’t think an extended capacity battery will fit. However, with Windows 7’s power management features and the SSD battery life has been very impressive so far.
Here are some photos of the XFR. Sorry for the lack of professionalism, my wife sold her studio a few years ago so all I have now is my dining table.
WordPress is a great blogging platform which is updated frequently with useful features. However, as useful as it is, the WordPress developers realize they cannot make a platform that contains every single feature that every user could possibly need. As a result, they have made the platform extensible so that other people can create plugins to extend the functionality. I’m not a heavy blogger so I don’t require much functionality beyond what is included in the core product, but I have found some plugins which are very useful to me. Let me know if you have a plugin which you consider essential.
AdSense Manager – This plugin allows you place Google AdSense ads on your blog. Using this plugin, I place one banner ad at the bottom of the page and as a widget on the right side.
Akismet – REQUIRED plugin to kill spam. Keep it updated and it will do an excellent job for you.
Bookmarkify – This plugin places a footer on each article which allows you to share the post through email, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, StumbleUpon, and many many many other services. There are other plugins which accomplish the same thing, but this is the one I started with and am familiar with.
Enhanced WP-ContactForm – Allows you to create a CONTACT page with enhanced features referrers, spam protection, and allows the commenter to cc himself.
Google XML Sitemaps– REQUIRED if you want search engines like Google, Bing, & Yahoo to index your site. The sitemap is created automatically and is updated each time you create a new post. When the sitemap is updated, the major search engines are notified automatically. Very useful and efficient.
IE6 No More – This is for the IT geek in me. I’ve noticed on my blog and my wife’s photo site that there are still many people using Internet Explorer 6. Do you realize IE6 was released in 2001?!? Many of the malicious attacks which are around today were not even conceivable when IE6 was developed. As a result IE6 is considered security Swiss cheese. Microsoft finally took the browser seriously in subsequent releases.This plugin places a banner at the top of each page for all IE6 users suggesting they upgrade to IE8 or another modern browser. I modified the plugin slightly for my use.
Kontera ContentLink– The purpose of my blog is not to make money. However, I do have this plugin enabled to create paid links based on certain content. I haven’t gotten a check yet.
NextGEN Gallery– A REQUIRED plugin if you want to included photo galleries in your WordPress blogs. Once you figure out the basics, this is extremely useful. This plugin is updated often.
Official StatCounter Plugin– I use statcounter.com to track usage on all my sites. This plugin automates the task of placing the invisible StatCounter code in your blog entries.
Subscribe to Comments - This handy plugin allows your readers to subscribe to comments on your various posts. I just added this one this week – I wish I would have thought to add it before.
Random Image- While not a plugin, I use this script to rotate my header image. With each new page load, this script displays a random image.
It was raining a few weeks ago and I got a little bored. For some reason I wanted to load up OS/2 Warp as a Windows 7 Virtual PC instance. You may recall that Windows 7 has XP Mode, but that doesn’t mean you cannot run other operating systems. Check out the screen shot below. The host OS is Windows 7 (32-bit 3GB RAM). Ubuntu, XP, and OS/2 Warp 4 are running as guest instances. Look closely and you will see Windows 3.1 running within OS/2 as “Win-OS/2.”
I took the boys and dogs for a walk in our backyard this afternoon and of course I took a camera. I saw a tree with a single leaf hanging on and had to grab a shot. After some processing in Photoshop and Nik’s Color Efex Pro, I came up with a nice Autumn theme for Windows Mobile and Windows Phone. If you like it, feel free to download and install. Enjoy!
By the way, does anyone know what kind of tree this is?
In last week’s post about my new AT&T Tilt 2, I asked the question if anyone knew how to remove the “Getting Started” item from the Windows Mobile, I mean Windows Phone 6.5 default menu. There is no menu editor included with my phone (that I can find) so I was stuck with this useless item taking up real estate. Well, I’ve had MANY hits on this blog entry but no one has posted an answer. After poking through the Windows Phone Marketplace I found a free app called the “Home Screen Customizer.” This app is simple and does one thing – allows you to customize the home screen menu. You can remove any item from the menu, but for some reason you can only add certain apps. Additionally, you can easily rearrange the order of the items in the menu.
The following screen shots show the Windows Phone 6.5 menu before and after editing. You can clearly see the “Getting Started” item is present in one shot and missing in the next (ignore the time stamps).
Below is the interface of the Home Screen Customizer tool. It’s simple and does its intended job well. To remove an item simply tap the “X” – don’t worry you can add it back if needed. The red heart denotes which menu item is highlighted at load time.
After you customize the menu you can remove the app, or it is small enough to leave in-place. Thanks to these guys for creating this great free app. It is something I was looking for.
I’m not a phone geek but on the other hand I don’t want a clunker phone. I want a good phone that will last a couple of years. After having an AT&T Tilt (made by HTC) for nearly three years I decided it was time for a new phone. This was a good phone that has seen several crashes on the ski slopes, a drop here or there, and most impressively my two young boys. Getting a new phone now is good timing since Windows Mobile 6.5, now known as Windows Phone 6.5, was just released. I compared several phones including the Pure and Tilt 2. (BTW, I’m stuck with AT&T since that’s the carrier my company has selected.) The two phones were comparable with slight differences:
The Tilt 2 is a little larger than the pure.
The Pure has a 5MB camera and the T2 has a 3.2.
The T2 has a very nice speaker phone, I’m not sure what the Pure has but it wasn’t obvious.
The T2 has a physical keyboard, the Pure does not. This contributes somewhat to the larger size of the device, but they did a good job keeping the keyboard as thin as possible. This obviously makes the Tilt 2 thicker than the iPhone.
The T2 seems to have a nicer screen than the Pure.
Although I don’t use the physical keyboard much anymore on the original Tilt, I went with the Tilt 2 over the other devices I considered. It felt good in my hands, the screen was one of the best I have seen, and believe it or not, I use the speaker phone.
So how does the new Tilt 2 compare to the original Tilt? It’s night and day:
The old Tilt had Windows Mobile 6.0 or 6.1, the new one has Windows Phone 6.5 which is basically the same OS but with a much needed face lift.
Included in 6.5 is a vastly improved mobile Internet Explorer. I can’t even begin to describe the improvement here.
The Tilt now feels like a brick in my hands compared to this sleek ergo device.
The new Tilt has a radio. Haven’t tried it yet.
The screen, as I mentioned before, is amazing on the T2. At the time, the Tilt screen was nice but we’ve come a long way.
The Tilt had no accelerometer so the only way to change the orientation was to slide the keyboard out or hit an onscreen button. The T2 does have an accelerometer but it is very underused with the bundled software. The bundled game Teeter does an excellent job demonstrating the capabilities.
I wasn’t sure I would like this phone at first, but after I removed some proprietary HTC/AT&T stuff I am thrilled with my decision. Namely, I removed the TouchFlo 3D and enabled the default 6.5 UI. The TouchFlo interface is nice looking and great programming but it’s not that efficient or useful. You can flick photos and emails all around, but it seems more for show and selling phones in the store than it does for actual use. The TouchFlo interface quickly becomes a nuisance and gets in the way. On the other hand, the native 6.5 UI is efficient and very natural to use.
Note: Even though Windows Phone 6.5 was officially released just last week (as of this writing on 10/21/09), there are already rumors and leaked builds of 6.5.1 (or 6.51). I’m sure there will be an HTC upgrade in flash ROM format when this is officially released. HTC did this with the original Tilt providing a ROM upgrade from Windows Mobile 6.0 to 6.1.
Here are a couple of screen shots of the TouchFlo and the native Windows Phone 6.5 interfaces. Both have a nice look in these screen shots, but you can’t get a sense of their usefulness until you get your hands on the device.
How to disable the HTC TouchFlo 3D interface:
Start > Settings > Today > Items. Now uncheck TouchFlo and check “Windows Default” – This will give you the new 6.5 UI. I really like this interface, it is very Zune and/or Windows Media Center like. (Don’t get me wrong, there is room for improvement in 6.5.1 and the complete rewrite of Windows Phone 7.) Alternatively, if you prefer the WindowsMobile 6.1 look, you can select your own items for the Today screen. However, I find the 6.5 interface very useful and efficient.
How do I remove my Microsoft Live or Hotmail account?
This isn’t exactly obvious, but if you set up a Live or Hotmailaccount and want to remove it, follow these steps: Start > Windows Live > Switch LiveAccounts This will remove all emails and account settings which you previously entered.
Remaining questions I am working on. Can you help?
The phone came bundled with some software I can’t remove. Specifically, how do I remove Opera Mobile 9.5? I like Opera but I prefer to use 9.7. Skyfire is also a very good browser that supports Flash.
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