I purchased the HP LP2475w 24-inch monitor a while back, looking for a nice monitor larger than the 21-inch monitor I had. After a good while of digging around I finally fell for this one, the HP LP2475w.

But as I don’t have any decent hardware stores around where I live/work, I have to really base my decisions on what other people say about the product, and then order it online. Usually not a big deal, but when shopping for a monitor, which is very much a view-to-review type product, it becomes a bit trickier. So actually reaching a decision takes some time.

But the user reviews were great, both “amateur” and “professional” reviews and it seemed like a very good product. The specs looked very good as well, it’s got a whole lotta inputs, no argue there:

• 1 DisplayPort input
• 1 HDMI input
• 2 DVI inputs
• 1 VGA input
• 1 S-Video input
• Component input
• Composite input
• 6 USB inputs
• 1920×1200 Resolution
• 6ms Response time
• 1000:1 Contrast ratio
• 400 cd/m2 Brightness

The viewing angle is fantastic (178h/178v), it’s almost impossible to not see what’s on the screen from any angle. And this monitor is super bright, too bright depending on color settings.

But those colors… No matter what I try, the colors are over saturated. I’m not done fiddling with it yet, but I sort of ran out of time at the time of purchase, so I’ll have to get back on that. It was OK out of the box, but not very good.

Actually, the monitor is fantastic as a gaming monitor. I’ve only tried the Xbox 360 using HDMI on it, no PC games, but it’s very nice.

One thing that bugs me however, is that the USB-ports doesn’t work with my Macbook Pro. There are no drivers for them, which is terrible.

Another thing that’s bugging me is that it’s incredibly slow switching between inputs. Well, maybe not actually switching if you switch manually, but scanning through all inputs. And it doesn’t activate the last used input if it’s active, nor the first active input it finds. No no. It first scans through all inputs before activating any of them. THAT is terrible. Just one of those things that makes you really dislike a product more and more for each time you use it.

All in all, I love the monitor. It’s a great monitor, and I only turn it on and off once or twice a day, so I guess I’ll have to focus on my breathing for a few seconds a day. The monitor looks good esthetically, though it’s pretty thick, but that doesn’t bother me. It’s silent, buttons are OK to navigate, and it’s got PiP (Picture in Picture). I haven’t tried that one yet, I think you can’t use two DVI or DVI/HDMI combination, I think you have to use one VGA or S-Video or something stupid like that. It’s a nifty feature, but I need the screen real estate, so I wouldn’t use it anyway.

I don’t want to mislead you, this is not a guide, not a how-to, just a mere story about a failed attempt to reduce the noise level of my Xbox 360.

I purchased a new Xbox 360 a while back. Nothing was wrong with my old one, in fact I was very pleased with it. My only caveat was it had no HDMI output, hence the purchase. When I received the new one, the first thing I noticed was that it was significantly louder than my old one, which to me is a big deal. I hate hardware noise, there is nothing worse.

So after much consideration, I realized Microsoft doesn’t allow you to use the warranty if you’re anything but the first owner of the Xbox 360, and as I was the second owner of this thing, I thought “heck with it”. I cracked it open. My master plan was to switch the fan in the new box for the fan in my old box, then i’d be all good. Psssh, yeah right.

The flippin’ fan connector was different on my new box! What the hell man! Here I’ve spent my good nerves disassembling this freaking thing, and I get slammed on the nose by a connector? Unhappy.

So back to the ads listings trying to find a fan with the proper connector. Thing is, how am I supposed to know if it’s as quiet as my old box’s fan, and not as loud as the new box’s fan? Eh… Well, I found one, bought it, received it, disassembled my new Xbox 360 again, installed the new fan, assembled the Xbox, fail.

The new fan was as loud as the fan on my new Xbox. So there it is. Fail. I gave up. Not worth any more of my time. Microsoft, make a better product next time, Xbox 720 or whatever it may be. Promote it “Xbox 720, now with ear plugs. Caution, may cause inconvenient IRL death by heart attack after weeks of noise torture.” or freaking make it better.

Update: Added some pictures.

I ended up purchasing the Flip Clock (Pic above) and the Night Stand (pic below) app. But the first thing I noticed was that the dimmer function wasn’t actually a dimmer function. What it does instead is just to make the graphics opaque letting more black background through. The screen is still just as bright. Black isn’t black. So it’s still too bright, very annoying. Also, the dimmer function on Night Stand is super buggy. The double tap to dim is very nice — but it doesn’t work. Well, it works once out of a hundred or so tabs.

On the Flip Clock app, the navigation’s all messed up. Muy bugg-o. And the dimmer is not a dimmer, just an opaque-er. And I decided after some usage that having a built in alarm was overkill. I just use the iPhone “repeat daily” alarm. Flip Clock doesn’t have an alarm, Night Stand does. Also, I like the design of Flip Clock better, and it supports the iPhone alarm including snooze, sooo… Flip Clock it is.

All this ranting to come to a completely unrelated point. While reading reviews I come across a comment by some moron saying (in Swedish) “Hey, stop writing comments in English, it only shows up in the Swedish iTunes store!”.

So Mr. Smith moves from Somewhere, CA USA to Sweden because he very much likes to work at the Royal Institute of Technology, he purchases an iPhone, he finds himself an application he likes and feels he wants to contribute with feedback to the nice developers, but oh… oh no!… my god, he doesn’t speak Swedish yet. He was so busy spending 10 years becoming a professor in whatever-ology that he forgot to learn Swedish to please ignorant Swedes!

Or Ms. Mgundu from some obscure country I have yet to learn of seeks refuge from persecution, makes an effort to speak her mind in the only language she masters enough to feel comfortable using making a public comment, and the highly enlightened Swede strikes again.

Ok, all very much not likely, but you get my point. Peoples rush to judgement pisses me off sometimes. Actually, people pisses me off sometimes in general. Stupid people always pisses me off. Obviously, he/she masters the English language enough to understand comments in English. Either that, or he had someone else write up this angry comment for him to post. But that would just be plain stupid. Oh wait, that was my point, he is stupid. He did however follow up with a warm and fuzzy comment and a 4/5 rating. How nice.

English is the second language here, it is beyond “likely” that anyone who owns an iPhone and is browsing the App Store, can understand comments written in English. Maybe he/she wanted to make sure his/her commented was understood by the developers so they can make use of it.

I actually got caught in the whole country catch 22 in the Apple store when I moved back to Sweden from the US. I had a song that the payment didn’t go through for, and when I noticed, I didn’t have the American credit card anymore. Couldn’t pay for it with a Swedish credit card because my account was american, and I couldn’t switch to a Swedish account because I had an unpaid song. Paypal to save the day. See my reasoning? American moves to Sweden + Swedish credit card = Swedish Apple Store riddled with moronic comments.

My plan was always to purchase some sort of protection for my iPhone 3G, and when I noticed how my first iPhone 3G was scratched, if ever so little, even though I took great care of it, I was on a mission during my wait for the return of the iPhone. It was no easy task. I didn’t want a bulky pouch or leather casing, so my list got pretty narrow rather quickly.

So I read all the reviews, and I watched all the instruction videos and learned from other peoples success stories and failed attempts with their feedback and conclusions and the whining and the crying and joyful dancing. I finally decided to go with a combination of the ZAGG invisibleSHIELD Apple iPhone 3G Back protection and the BodyGuardz for Apple iPhone 3G Front protection (Screen only), and a micro-fiber cleaning cloth of course. I decided not to go with the ZAGG invisibleSHIELD front due to the orange peel effect reported by so many all over, and who likes oranges on their iPhone?

I placed my orders and waited and waited (the overseas shipping way), and finally after a few weeks they arrived a couple of days apart. So, all that was left was to actually install the bastards. Which would be the hard part from what I’d learned from all those reviews. I decided to do it in my server room, figured it’ll be the safest way to escape dust particles. And just to be on the safe side, I cleaned the room before I started.

Get this: As I opened my ZAGG invisibleSHIELD, I noticed (see photo below) that the spray bottle had been disassembled. I can only assume that the stupid customs have opened it and poured it out. I got so mad, there is no limit to how much I despise the customs, both the US customs and the Swedish customs. I have had my share of encounters with them both, so even though I can only write this off as a purely coincidental incident of bad luck, I still hate them. I got to keep the BodyGuardz spray bottle intact, so I decided to take my chances hoping it would work just fine with both protective products.

I decided to start with the front, installing the BodyGuardz cover. I figured I had a practice run to fail since you get two covers from BodyGuardz, so if I mess up, I’m still all good. Wouldn’t want to fail and have to order more and wait another whatever number of weeks, no no.

All ready to go. Spray fingers, spray cover when removing it from the paper, apply, align. Align. Re-align. Align.

Cover is on, wet and aligned. Time to squeegee the wet and bubbles out of it.

OK, I squeegee the hell outta that thing. I was afraid I had oversqueegeed, as you can see all the scratches in the cover. But I decided not to freak until I had waited 12-24 hours like the box said, depending on conditions like weather, humidity, temperature bla bla equals wait. So, I waited, like the good geek I am.

And while we wait, let me just tell you. The micro-fiber cleaning cloth from BodyGuardz, which states it is lint free… is not lint free. Not by a long shot. Sure, the lint is micro-fiber sized, but there is lint. There is lint I tell ya! I just got tired of replacing micro-lint with micro-lint polishing that thing over and over again, so eventually I just went for it and hoped for the best.

Installing the ZAGG back protector was no easy task. Well, removing it from the paper was the hardest I think. And guess what! I ran out of application solution! Go figure… Stupid customs. I did however manage to make due with what I had left, I pfft, pfft, pfft desperately, and I got it in place. Slightly crooked, but still. And I had to skip the tiny guys that goes on the top and bottom because of it, but I’m still happy. To be honest, I just want to make sure I have the screen protected. Everything else is just bonus.

So to summarize, I’m happy. Not too impressed by the ZAGG back protector. Yes, I did installed slightly crooked, but still, there are quite a few gaps where I’m certain the protector will get peeled off and dirt will get stuck and create an ugly dark edge. However, the back of my iPhone 3G is protected, and that’s fine. The front protector by BodyGuardz however is a different matter. I am very impressed by it. All the scratches are completely gone and there’s practically no orange peel. It’s sleek and barely noticeable, and feels very able to protect my phone. I can not even touch the screen light enough for the phone not react. I don’t think there is any loss of operability what so ever. One thing I’m not sure what to think of is the tiny jack in the BodyGuardz screen cover. I didn’t cause it, it was like that straight out of the box. Very odd.

It took me about 5-10 minutes each to apply them, but like I said, the back result is a bit crooked, so I could have put a little more effort to it. But it wasn’t very hard or time consuming. The wait for it to dry was worse. Also, I squeegeed the back as I went when applying, like the video below said. And lastly, yes, the BodyGuardz application solution works for ZAGG invisibleSHIELD, at least it did for me. As far as I know. Maybe it’ll fail me in a month or two.

I do notice a slight bulky feeling, but really, it’s what… Like 1-1.5 mm? I’m happy! The grip is better, my iPhone is protected and it’s barely noticeable, at least the screen protector. And functionality wise, the screen is 100% perfect. I still have a few tiny bubbles on the back, but they’ll likely disappear after a few days. What more can you ask?

This is the installation video from BodyGuardz:

And the installation video from Zagg:

Telia is planning to build the next generation mobile network called 4G, and they think they will be the first company in the world to offer its services. A service which is said to be ten times faster than 3g! In Sweden, Ericsson will be developing the technology, where as in Oslo, Norway, chinese Huawei got the deal. Though Ericsson already started building the LTE network there.

Erik Hallberg at TeliaSonera says there will be a commercial launch in 2010 and that they hope to launchvery early that year.

The 4G network technology is also called LTE, but it seems I won’t be having the pleasure of ever using it, unless I go to Stockholm or whatever city they might choose to include in their launch. They say they will be delivering it to high population density areas only, which exclude me. Like I covered in an earlier article about Telia, I can’t even get 3G reception in my house, nor my summer house. Seems I’m pretty much off the map. The Tech Map. Yeah, I get 3G reception a few yards outside my house…

I had to send my iPhone 3G for repair/review last week because of a dead pixel. Well, the pixel wasn’t completely dead, it was more like a walking dead, a pixel zombie if you will. It started right out of the box, when I noticed a pixel was just green (see photo below). A green pixel just sitting there, mocking me. And then… It went away. Go figure.

I spoke with the sales lady at the local Telia store (yeah right, like I have a local Telia store… I have to make an hour drive to find one) on the phone, and she said that because I have such a drive to make each time, she would hook me up with a replacement straight up, so I don’t have to drive back and forth. But by the time I got there, the pixel had gone away, and I had nothing to show for.

So I went back home, went on with my life in a normal paste, and then the pixel went green again. So I ran to get my camera and took a bunch photos and shot some videos to have as proof, so I could have the iPhone replaced, and then called the Telia lady back up and told her all about it. She said that the photo proof would do just fine in case the pixel goes away again (which it did) and I drove over there once again.

But now, for some reason, her promise of a replacement right there in the store, had become null and void. Just like her promise of a loaner, which she promised me before the instant replacement deal, for the 14 day wait to get the iPhone back, and I got slightly ticked off. But I kept my cool as one does, and I gave her my iPhone 3G with its limp pixel and went on home preparing for the wait and to use whatever phone I had lying around (I landed on the Sony Ericsson K750i). And today, a mere 8 days after I took it to the store, I received a text message saying my iPhone was returned from the undead.

Though earlier than expected, it was not a moment too soon. I have missed it so. Productivity went down, and the feeling of being naked went up by the hour. Welcome home my friend. The worst thing about this I think, is the fact that the iTunes Backup application does not remember placements of application icons, so now I have to rearrange the whole thing. That’ll set me back a while. Also, WEP/WPA keys isn’t stored in the backups, which I suppose would be considered more secure than actually storing them, but with no copy/paste… it’s a bitch. I truly, truly despise having to type WEP/WPA keys. Email passwords aren’t stored either. All good, I wouldn’t wanna have them stored.

Oh, one more thing for you to consider if you’re returning/selling your iPhone. Resetting it to default, meaning erasing all the data and settings and what not, took roughly two flippin’ hours! I had not expected that, so standing there in the store, I had to tell the nice lady I’d get back to her after a few cups of coffee at the nearest coffee shop. Which turned in to a very nice lunch, yummy taco pie. Good coffee. Good company.

Everyday there’s a struggle going on in my head about what is really going on in the world, or more specifically in Sweden, as of late. We’ve always been early adopters of technology and often somewhat pioneering some fields. We have 7.2Mbit mobile broadband/3G network (a.k.a. 3.5G a.k.a. Turbo 3G), 24Mbit ADSL broadband for many, many homes via the standard phone jack, 100Mbit and hell, 1Gbit connections for the lucky few.

The struggle that is going on in my head is this: I can not get any what so ever 3G reception for any of my cell phones in my own house, which is by no means located out in the woods. Heck, more often than not I can’t get more than 40% of 2G reception! When I do have full 3G signal, being anywhere else, and do some speed tests, I’m lucky if I hit 1.5Mbit. And now, Telia is starting to test out their up and coming (if tests are successful) 100Mbit ADSL.

I have a 24Mbit internet connection to my house and I’m well below the maximum distance to the connection platform which delivers it, and yet, I can only get a maximum of 14-15Mbit download speed. I’m sticking to download speed in this article, although upload speed is lacking as much. My 14-15Mbit of download speed is commonly considered to be good and that I should be “thankful” for such a good connection, and yet I am paying for, as advertised, 24Mbit. Just like I am paying for the 7.2Mbit data plan on my cellphone.

I spoke with Telia today and the nice lady told me that they are preparing for the tests right now, and if they’re successful, they might start to roll out the upgrades early 2009. And here I am, with no 3G signal in my house. And paying full price for my 7.2Mbit data plan producing a weak 0.2Mbit at this particular moment (and any other giving moment in my house), a 24Mbit internet connection that gives me about 55% of what I’m paying 100% for… When will we stop accepting these outrageous facts? I fail to come up with any other product or service where one might accept a result of a bleak puny percentage of what you pay for and hope to get. Yes, you can always cancel within whatever number of days, but really… What options does it leave us with? Let’s just face it, being connected is becoming less and less a luxurious option in life and more a necessity. A fair comparison could be a phone line, any phone line, mobile or not. Would you pay 100% to get a line 10% of the times? I know so many people who’ve gotten replacement cellphones and discounts on their cellphone bills due to poor reception (that should not be, when comparisons have been made for the case).

A friend of mine had an 8Mbit internet connection producing a mear 3-4Mbit in his house, and after dawging Telia for 6 months he got 6+Mbit all of a sudden. So, shouldn’t we either pay for what we can get, or get what we pay for? Obviously, it can be done.

The nice Telia lady told me that for this 100Mbit upgrade to happen, they need to upgrade the connection platforms, which are located here and there all over our communities. Manual labor it is.

This takes me back a few years to when I called up Telia and asked for the opportunity to upgrade my connection upload speed, a request that was denied with the reason “it’s not possible, the hardware can not produce this”. And about a year or two later, with absolutely no hardware upgrades made anywhere, this was starting to roll out nationwide.

100Mbit ADSL… and not even good cellphone reception in my house… Oh, and I checked something else out. A house dead center in the city, was scheduled to get its connection platform upgraded to handle 24Mbit in late January 2009. It’s just funny I guess… 24Mbit been out for years. Oh, and did I mention the Swedish government used to own Telia?

Aww snap! Steve Jobs is not holding a keynote at Macworld San Francisco 2009… Apple announces that this year will be the last year Apple attends the Macworld Expo and that this keynote will be delivered by Philip Schiller, senior VP of Worldwide Product Marketing.

I suppose there might still be announcements of new products and product upgrades, but if Jobs isn’t announcing them… Where’s the party at then? There are so many rumors out there now, an upgrade for the Mac Mini which I wrote about not long ago (some speculative specs), iPhone Nano, which you have to admit would be cool beans and of course the speculation of an Apple Netbook, even though they already have the Macbook Air.

I’d love to see an update for the Mac Mini, but right now, I’m not sure what to expect. I’d hate to get my hopes up and then get nothing, but lets face it… I always have my hopes up when it comes to gadgets. I always expect new things, and wait/hope/wish for stuff to come out even before the slightest hint of any rumors appear.

Well, no matter what, I think we can safely expect December 24th, or 25th, whenever you celebrate christmas, to come and that we get to sit by the window looking out for the fat man in the red suit. Hmm, well, if that’s how you do it. Man, you can’t really describe christmas in an easy, generic fashion, can you? Oh well, please don’t hurt any bunnies, they don’t like it.

Unfortunately, my schedule was shifted around, so my plans to have some photos of it, videos and pictures taken with it before I returned it, fell through. But I figured I’d at least share my experience in words.

The first thing I did was to try and use it as a webcam. I failed. This is a USB camcorder, it has no Firewire, so it was not detected as a camera by neither Mac OS x nor Windows XP. I’m no video wiz, so I didn’t know exactly what to expect or how to go about this, but man did I fail. I tried everything, every software out there. Fail.

So eventually I started trying out the camera as it’s intended to be used. I shot some videos. For storage I used the SanDisk Extreme III SDHC Card which did its job well. But the camera… not so well.

I started to shoot some video inside my well lit office, imported it and had a look. The quality was what you would expect for this low budget camera I suppose, which was not well at all. Very grainy video, and there was a very annoying noise, a constant static disturbance in the audio, which was a little surprising. I did expect poor video quality, but not audio as bad as this.

Just for fun, I tried walking outside, beautiful winterland Sweden. Since it was past 2.30 PM it was pitch black (I know, disturbing huh?) and I turned on night mode. Hah! Night mode my ass. All you could hear were my steps crunching snow, and a solid black picture. I walked over to a street light, and it merely showed up as a small dot in the picture.

Since my schedule was thrown over, I never did get a chance to try it outside in daylight, but I’d expect it would be a decent video. However, with the poor audio, I wouldn’t really approve anyway. To Aiptek’s defence, I never checked out any settings for the audio, maybe there is some sort of compression/normalization feature, but I doubt it.

Conclusion: Uh-uh. No thank you sir.

Update: Here are two short clips shot in daylight by Jan Persson (in beautiful summerland Sweden). Looks fine. Hear the audio though? I know it’s outside, but it’s very noisy…

Aiptek z500 hd from Jan Persson on Vimeo.

Aiptek z500 from Jan Persson on Vimeo.

I’ve been looking at the new upcoming Nokia N97 for a while now, doing research, watching videos and what not. I’ve noticed I’m drooling more than I thought I would. My initial thought was that it just looked way too chunky, and I guess yes, it is pretty damn chubby. But couldn’t it be worth it?

It looks like it is a pretty fast device, which is one of my biggest concern when it comes to Smartphones/PPC’s. But the one thing I truly dread however, is that I think the buttons at the bottom, the Send/End buttons, are “touch buttons” or whatchamacallit. I had this on the E-Ten Glofiish M800 (PhoneArena review) and it was just horrific. You always touch them by mistake and either hang up on the caller or just switch screens on yourself. Not too exciting when driving using the GPS… And with a slow device as it was, it drove me nuts all over…

The N97 has got some nice specs as reported by CrunchGear and nokian97.org (which of course is down at this particular moment) amongst others, including an impressive amount of memory:

• OS: Symbian S60 (5th Edition)
• Size: 117.2mm x 55.3mm x 15.9mm
• Weight: ca 150g (ca 0.33lbs)
• Memory: Up to 48GB memory (32GB built-in + 16GB microSD)
• Display: 3.5 inch TFT up to 16M colors nHD 16:9 (640px × 360px)
• Talk time: Up to in min. 320 (3G) / 400 (GSM)
• Standby time: Up to in hrs 400 (3G) / hrs (GSM)
• Video playback: Up to 4.5 hrs (offline mode)
• Music playback: Up to 37 hrs (offline mode)
• Image capture: Up to 5 MP (2584 x 1938) JPEG/EXIF (16.7M/24-bit color)
• Input: Slide-out QWERTY keyboard
• GPS: A-GPS with electronic compass

I never really got the whole 2G/3G specs. Well, of course I understand them, but in my opinion, who the heck switches 3G on and off? Or, who wants to switch it on and off? I’ve had 3G phones for many years now, and the “better” the technology gets, the worse off are we when it comes to battery life, and this becomes almost necessary if you want to have a phone turned on for one lousy day. C’mon people, give us some better batteries! Go nuclear batteries go! Wonder if that’d be possible…

No reports of the keyboard being less than good what I can find so far. I wish I could get my hands on it to test it myself. I’m a bit worried the upper row of keys could be too close to the screen, so you’d have trouble hitting them without interference. But the keys look large and to be spaced out enough.

If any phone should be referred to as a possible iPhone 3G killer, shouldn’t the Nokia N97 be it? And are you as tired as I am at that expression? iPhone killer…

A very nice hands-on video by Phone Scoop where both hardware and software is discussed and captured: