Sinds die tijd hield ik een half oogje op de evolutie van digitale spiegelreflex cameras. Zou het de moeite waard zijn? De prijzen zijn gezakt, de beeldkwaliteit is super, tegenwoordig heb je goeie video-mogelijkheden… Het ideale moment om de overstap te wagen, zo lijkt het.

Maar ik ben niet gezwicht.

Je kiest een (goedkope) spiegelreflex voor zijn beeldkwaliteit en goeie prestaties bij weinig licht dankzij de (relatief enorme) beelsensors.

Maar de dag van vandaag is er nog een ander type camera dat vergelijkbare voordelen biedt: de spiegelloze compactcamera met verwisselbare lenzen.

• De sensoren zijn groter dan die van compactcamera’s, waardoor de prestatie bij weinig licht beter is en je kan spelen met scheptediepte.
• Toch blijven de sensoren nog wat kleiner dan in een spiegelreflex, waardoor de camera’s én lenzen kleiner zijn.
• Door de afwezigheid van een spiegel wordt de behuizing ook platter, maar…
• … dat betekent ook dat je geen zoeker hebt, op de meeste modellen kan je enkel kijken op het scherm.
• … wat eigenlijk ook al geldt voor de meeste ‘gewone’compactcamera’s.

Een nieuw soort camera dus, met voor- en nadelen ten opzichte van de spiegelreflex.

Ik heb uiteindelijk de sprong gewaagd en speel nu met een Panasonic Lumix GF-1 (met micro Four Thirds lens-system). De eerste ervaringen zijn meer dan OK, waarover later ongetwijfeld meer…

It was not a page-turner like “iWoz”, but just as interesting to read.

Just like with the book by Woz, I already knew some of its contents — this time by accidentally browsing the folklore.org stories that form the basis of the book.

The anecdotal structure of the book makes it easy to read in pieces, but it tends to not ‘draw you into it’ as much. Nonetheless, I enjoyed reading about this exceptional computer system and its uber-geeky creators.

I figure that the book would be perfect for Mac users and fans, but even for a Linux/Windows guy like me I’d heartily recommended it.

This is actually my first ‘all-new’ computer. My previous expenses never went above €150. Which basically means that I’d seen enough reliability and compatibility woes for quite a while.

I had some experience with assembling computers for relatives before, and I like making my own choice about components, so I bought all parts separately. Below is a descriptiong of the ‘component selection’ process that I went trough. I’m not claiming this is interesting, but I might be of some use if you’re in a similar situation…

A Mac mini would have been very nice, but it’s a bit expensive for just running Linux and the g/f also needs the odd Windows session for using crappy ‘multimedia’ educational software. Besides, where’s the geek fun in buying a pre-assembled system?

Other ‘mini’ systems (like mini-itx) are a bit underpowered, and hard to extend or upgrade. I’d certainly consider them for a media center setup or a server-in-the-closet system, but as a new desktop I wanted something powerful for a change. That meant going the ‘mainsteam’ route.

So, plain ‘el cheapo’ x86 hardware it would be. I optimized for price (still a cheap bastard), acceptable noise levels, and ergonomics (i.e., no more huge CRT on the desk ).

The first choice you have to make when building a computer is ‘the platform’. If you want live on the cheap side, there are only two choices, really: AMD socket AM2 or Intel socket 775. Intel has the best performing chips, but not always the cheapest ones. Critical factors are features (like dual core) and — more importantly — power consumption (and the related noise levels for cooling). You also have to take into account what kind of motherboard you can choose to go along with the CPU.

I decided to go for an AMD Athlon X2 BE-2350, which is reasonably priced, has two cores, low power consumption (65 nm process, 45Watt), and virtualization capabilities. Comparable Intel chips were more expensive, and scored worse on motherboard options.

Which is important because I’m not much of a gamer and wanted a nice integrated graphics solution to save some money on a graphics card. I chose the (fairly recent) AMD 690G chipset, which has the best 3D performance on the market and is, in general, a well-done modern chipset. According to reviews, it’s fairly power-efficient as well.

Now, actually nVidia has a better reputation for its Linux drivers, but AMD/ATI has announced better support for open source drivers developers. I can live with that…

Just because you know what chipset to buy, doesn’t mean the motherboard choice becomes any easier. Of course you want something from a brand that usually delivers stable products (say, Asus, MSI or the like), but even then the choices are endless.

Slight differences in prices and/or model numbers may mean you get less cables or connection ports (DVI? FireWire? HDMI? Serial-ATA cables?). I opted for an ASUS M2A-VM with HDMI expansion (which I don’t really need and takes up the PCI Express x16 slot, unfortunatly). It has some nice features, such as lower cooling fan speeds when the temperature is low. It came in a box with two SATA cables, which saves quite some bucks compared to the single cable that came with the MSI K9AGM3-F that I built before. The MSI however had a driver/documentation CD which was actually readable. Handy if you want to store the motherboard manual PDF document on disk somewhere — you’ll regret later if you don’t.

I didn’t really care about the hard disk model. As long as it’s big enough, and doesn’t make too much noise, I’m happy. I took a gamble and bought a Seagate 300 GB (Gigabyte, not GibiByte) serial ATA disk. It could have been a little more silent, but maybe I can fix that late on with hdparm -M.

Even less attention went to the DVD writer. A serial ATA model with a nice price did the trick.

As a case, I went for something cheaper than the ultra-silent Antec Sonata (drool). An AOpen QF50C is not butt-ugly and nice to work with, although it lacks a removable motherboard tray. The fan noise is not inaudible, but minimal.

The screen, though, was a tougher decision. Many video cards and most motherboards have crappy analog output quality, so I wanted a monitor with digital input. Which is not present on most of the cheap monitors — much to my surprise.

Most panels on the market today are TN panels, which usually only have a 6-bit brightness range per color sub-pixel. An ideal monitor would have 8-bit per color, in order to get a full 24-bit color depth. (When the specs don’t show a panel type, you can usually determine the color range from the specified color space: 16.2M colors instead of 16.9M actually means 18-bit (262K colors) with interpolation). However, screens with better color fidelity are hard to find and a lot more expensive. In the end I decided to ignore the panel type, thinking that all modern panels are better than the ones of previous generations, and even laptop screens are just ‘good enough’ these days.

Next, I actually prefer a plain 4:3 form factor over the widescreen (16:9 or 8:5 or what have you) models that are common these days. Widescreens have less display surface compared to similar 4:3 with the same ‘inch size’. On the other hand, regular form-factor monitors usually have a lower resolution. So it’s hard to find an optimal combination, certainly if you require DVI input and a low price.

In the end I bought the cheapest 19″ wide monitor with DVI input which is not totally ugly. The (analog) Acer 1916WAs failed so miserably on the ugly test, that its lower price could not make up for it. The LG L194WT-SF is so much nicer; it’s a really well-built monitor with a thin bezel.

To finish off the system, I included an internal card reader — I especially like the extra front USB port it provides. I also scavenged a twelve-speed CD burner and a floppy reader from an older, broken system. Wondering if I’ll ever use the floppy drive though. The keyboard is nice black one that came with the Netvista, and we have a wireless Logitech thing as mouse.

It’s funny that the resulting system is very comparable to the budget models of the ‘best buy guides’ by both tweakers.net and Ars Technica.

Due to very low price differences, I bought all components in one shop: tones.be. It’s a cheap webshop, but also a nice physical shop not far from my home with a professional attitude. I can certainly recommend it.

• A Torx TP #8 screw bit (TP means ‘Tamper Proof’)
• A complete Netvista X40 with a broken power supply, but a working display

So, I happily set out to assemble one working, complete system out of these two siblings. Of course I first tested the display of the new system, and it showed the BIOS menus just fine, crisp and brightly lit.

I put the screws back in, the cover back on, connected all the cables, and booted up. Everything went just fine for about ten seconds, and then the display failed. It went dark and started flashing. Then it stopped flashing for about a minit, to give on last flash of death, accompanied by some strange buzzing noise (which I first feared was the hard drive).

So, this display is now just as bad as the other one. When this thing boots, it now produces some short flashes and then remains dark.

So there I was, now the owner of not one, but two headless systems.

Of which the first is now using a second-hand replacement head: I managed to cram in a (full-size) PCI video card in it, so it’s using an external monitor now, with some brackets plied, the cover removed and the hard disk bungling top-down at the back.

About time to start using the Torx bit, don’t you think?

Too bad the inverter module shows no visual signs of b0rkenness. There is a capacitor with some strange colors on, but I think they are simply made with a color marker. Also, there is a coil with a weird drop of glue next to it, but this too seems to be quite normal. Any suggestions as to what might be the problem are welcome…

The system itself is still fully functional, but the display remains black as, well, very very dark grey. Not very good because, unlike a laptop, this box has no VGA-out. It is therefore destined to remain headless, unless I manage to find a suitable (low-profile) video card for its PCI slot. In which case I’ll have to buy a new monitor as well.

Considering all symptoms, and the age of the beast, I suspect the display lamp (CCFL tube) simply broke down. An inspection of all the components remained — however fun to perform — without results.

Of course, I could try to either replace the CCFL tube or the display panel altogether (a 09N2671). The latter would set me back at least $75 + international shipping costs.

Plan B is to modify the system into a silent, low-power, always-on server. Given the compact motherboard and tiny power supply, it could easily be wall-mounted on a wooden plate, close to modem and router.

I just have to be careful not to break the implicit SLA with the girlfriend

As always, I donated some money to the organisation and received a t-shirt and an O’Reilly book in return. Saturday evening I didn’t go to the closing session, because, well, you never win the draw anyway.

Well, guess I was wrong! Sunday morning I was already charging the Nokia 770 internet tablet. And it’s a great product: very small, nice design, good battery life, easy bluetooth and WiFi discovery, and above all a sharp, bright screen (800×480 resolution). It runs Maemo, the Debian derivative created for it by Nokia, and Opera mobile as the browser. Too bad the RS-MMC slot does not accept plain SD cards – that would’ve allowed me to directly browse pictures taken with the camera.

It has RSS and PDF reader applications, and it plays audio and video. In the coming weeks, I’m planning to get root access to the device and install some additional Maemo packages.

Update: I am actually typing this update on the 770 now, and Opera is behaving really well — even on Gmail. Only hours ago I had some fun leeching internet connectivity at a bus stop. Open WiFi networks are really ubiquitous in Antwerp, apparently

Aangezien de goedkopere compactcamera’s tegenwoordig niet veel winst meer opleveren, stellen de andere fabrikanten zich op om wat weerwerk te beiden op DSLR gebied. En blijkbaar is dat toch geen gemakkelijke opdracht, want stuk voor stuk gaan ze samenwerken met concurrenten: Pentax met Samsung, Konica Minolta met Sony en Olympus met Panasonic. Ikzelf kan voorlopig nog wel even verder met een ‘compactje’ van 3 Megapixels, en kan mooi de — ongetwijfeld zeer pijnlijke — prijsdalingen afwachten

Update 2006-01-20: De voorspelling komt al uit! Konica Minolta stopt met fotografie en Sony neemt enkele deeltjes over.

Toshiba and Canon’s SED is showing actual working products that appear to have superior specifications to both CRTs and TFTs. They claim they are able to reach competitive prices points in a couple of years. What is still unkown, however, is what the lifetime characteristics of these screens will be. Will these be ‘mature’ products?

One thing is for sure: TFT technology isn’t giving up the fight, starting with the use of LED backlights instead of CCFL tubes. That change alone could bring better brightness and better color fidelity; altough it will be limited to the very high end products in the beginning. Sony for example has announced the $10.000 Qualia 005 to be available this year, and Samsung and NEC are preparing releases too.

In the mean time, Samsung is also boasting about cheap FTFs without a color filter. While this may be a very cost effective system, I doubt it will go without visual artifacts. Because of the single-color backlight, some kind of dithering system will be needed. Dithering in the time domain produces ghosting or flicker effects, and spatial dithering could yield blurry images. Of course there are shortcuts to be taken (like you don’t need all 16 million colors in one given image, and some color differences can simply be ignored), but let’s wait and (literally) see!

Philips, on the other hand, works on fast-switching CCFL backlights that can be used to reduce ghosting by switching off the backlight during the pixel’s transition from color to the next color. The effects of this technique on image stability and brightness are still unclear.

Speaking of image stability — it looks like electronic ink is really coming to an e-book near you, and it will be rollable. Here too we only need to wait until next year, says Philips.

And all this is happening while major manufacturers are releasing more and more gadgets with OLED displays.

So I’m eager to see if this new iPod sibling will do as well as its predecessor.

De Canon PowerShot A510 (review) is dankzij zijn 3.2 Megapixels opmerkelijk genoeg net iets sneller dan zijn duurdere broer PowerShot A520 (4 Megapixels).

De voordelen van dit recent model zijn:

• Een 4x optische zoom (tegenover 3x bij de meeste gelijkaardige modellen)
• Veel lichter en compacter dan de voorganger PowerShot A75; het formaat is net iets groter dan de Nikon CoolPix modellen
• Uitstekende batterij-levensduur met goede AA accu’s; werkt (voor noodgevallen) ook op alkaline batterijen
• Goede beeldkwaliteit, redelijke ruis-bestendigheid
• SD geheugenkaartjes zijn zeer voordelig
• Extra mogelijkheden zijn het opnemen van filmpjes met geluid en een TV-out aansluiting om foto’s op TV te bekijken