Rechargeable Batteries

One of the down sides of having lots of electronic gadgets around is trying to keep up with making sure that there are good batteries in them when they are needed.  If I were to use exclusively conventional alkaline batteries I’d go broke keeping up.  So I like to use rechargeable batteries anywhere it makes sense.

There are usually two problems with rechargeable batteries, though.  First, most do not hold a charge very long, so they’ll likely be dead or dying if they have been left in a drawer for a long time before attempting to use them.  Because of this they don’t work well in devices that use very little power, like remote controls, as the batteries naturally drain themselves long before alkalines would in the same device.  Second, the predominant chemistries used for rechargeables, at 1.2 volts instead of 1.5 V, produce less power than alkalines, so many high drain devices don’t even work with conventional rechargeables.

For devices that work well with rechargeable batteries (like digital cameras) I have been using Energizer 2000-2500 mAh NiMH (Nickel Metal Hydride) batteries up until recently.  They are fairly inexpensive for rechargeables, and rapid chargers are available to provide a usable charge on a battery in as little as 15 minutes.  But I have been having problems with those batteries wearing out quickly to the point where they will no longer charge at all, so I started to switch to Duracell, but I have been having really bad problems with those not holding a charge longer than a few days, so I have given those up.  I have been anxious to find something that worked better.

A few weeks ago I heard of a newer technology called NiZn (Nickel Zinc) that provides higher voltage and better shelf life than the more common NiCd and NiMH technologies.  NiZn batteries output 1.6 Volts instead of the more conventional 1.2 Volts provided by other rechargeable batteries.  This makes them usable in a lot of devices where others just won’t work.  I have some 2-way radios, for example, that absolutely refuse to even power on with regular rechargeables, but they work fine with NiZn batteries.  (Sparing a long technical article on why, 1.6V batteries are capable of delivering 78% more power than 1.2V batteries, and this can make a huge difference in a wide variety of devices.)  NiZn batteries also don’t drain themselves as quickly as other types, so if I don’t use them much I can go significantly longer between charges.  And for those looking for eco-friendly products, NiZn can be disposed of safely without harming the environment unlike the others.

So far I am really liking these batteries.  My camera flashes go through batteries faster than anything else I own, and these batteries are working really well there.  Conventional alkalines take around 30 seconds to fully charge my flash, NiMH models do it in about 15 seconds, and the NiZn are capable of going from fully dead to fully charged in about 10 seconds.  I don’t get quite as many shots on the NiZn as I did on the high capacity Energizer NiMH I had been using, but the difference is minimal so I’m happy to make that sacrifice.

I got mine from Amazon [with regular or fast charger], but they’re probably available elsewhere as well.  I still wouldn’t use them for remote controls (rechargeable alkalines are fine for that, but they are difficult to find) or other low drain devices, but they work wonderfully in devices that would otherwise go through batteries quickly.  I’m pretty happy so far.

Please Pay For Your Software (and Music & Movies)

Probably everybody reading this blog knows that I write software for a living.  Many of you may also know that one of my pet peeves is people using software that they haven’t paid for.

The software I have been selling for the last 10+ years, FileBack PC, took me years to develop.  Actual years.  If I had to re-write it again, it would probably take me two full years of long (16 hr) days.  That represents a huge investment of my time.  Tens of thousands of hours even.

Imagine how it must feel to me to go out on the internet and find web sites that are devoted to finding ways to cheat software manufacturers by providing commercial software for free.  My own software has been found on such sites.  And I know that people are using them because occasionally someone who is using an obviously fraudulent unlock key has the audacity to ask me for help.  It is extremely disappointing to me that people will willingly take my work without placing any value on it.  It is if they are saying, “I don’t care that you spent 8 years of your life working on this, that time you spent means absolutely nothing to me.  So I’m going to take it from you anyway.”  These people are robbing me of my time and taking money out of my pocket by not compensating me for my efforts. 

Some will justify that they would never use the software anyway, if they weren’t getting it for free.  But they are still getting the benefit of having that software, which in some way is saving them their own time and effort (or they wouldn’t bother).  Even with this argument, they are saying that their time has value, but mine doesn’t.

Some will justify that the software they are using is too expensive, or that the company that produces it already makes enough money and won’t be hurt by people stealing it.  If it’s too expensive, find a less expensive (or free) tool to do the same thing.  (Or, better yet, write their own software to do the same thing.)  And if that company sold more copies of their software, they could employ more workers, or provide their employees with a better standard of living.  Or create more software.  Most companies aren’t interested in throwing away their money; most will re-invest it into growing the company, or their employees.

The whole “too expensive” argument is kind of funny to me.  If someone were to come to me and ask me to create something like FileBack PC for them, I’d charge them about $50/hour.  And it would take roughly 10,000 hours to do it.  So the project would cost $50 x 10,000 = $500,000.  And yet I only ask $55 for my efforts.  Think how many people and how much time it took to create something like Photoshop, or Microsoft Word.  Those products represent hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of hours of work by actual real people.  The price the company is asking in return really isn’t so bad.

Without making this post too long, I beg you to be honest in the way you use your software.  Somebody has taken time to create it.  And they are asking for a small amount in return. 

The same goes for music and movies.  It is very expensive to create and market both.  Considering the budget for most movies is multiple millions of dollars, for a movie studio to ask $20 for a copy of that effort is really kind of a bargain.  Recording studio time to create a song runs well over $100/hr for the better studios, and most songs take a lot of hours to record and mix.  Add marketing and distribution to that, and the $0.99 or $1.29 that music labels and artists are asking for their songs is really a bargain as well.

Tech Tip: External Hard Disk Drives

If you’re thinking of buying an external hard disk drive for your computer, here are a few things to remember:

• Of the different ways available to connect, USB is by far the slowest.  And it slows your computer down when it is being used.
  
  Every bit of data that goes to and from USB devices has to be handled by your computer’s CPU.  This not only makes data transfer to and from your external USB hard disk drive slow, but it also slows down the rest of your computer as well.  Other interfaces, like FireWire and eSATA, are able to transfer data directly to your computer’s memory without going through or waiting for the CPU, making them much faster.  eSATA will be the fastest, but not very many computers have eSATA ports on them yet (especially laptops).  FireWire is more common, but still not available on lower end computers.  Desktop computers can have an add-in FireWire or eSATA card installed relatively inexpensively.  Speed-wise, eSATA is faster than FireWire is faster than USB.
   
• Generally speaking, bigger hard disk drives are faster than slower drives.
  
  The size of the actual platters containing your data remains the same, so bigger disks have to pack more data into a given area than smaller ones.  The more densely the data is packed, the more is read by the drive each time the platter spins a single rotation.
   
• Generally speaking, bigger drives are more prone to failure.
  
  Because the data is packed more densely, the net loss of any portion of the disk going bad is much more noticeable.  The higher density is more sensitive to imperfections in the disk platter surface.  Bigger disks also tend to use newer, and thus less time-tested, technologies.
   
  I never buy the newest disk drives.  I always wait until a drive has matured before I will consider investing.
   
• For USB and FireWire external hard disk drives, rotation speed doesn’t affect actual performance a whole lot.
  
  Manufacturers usually advertise the rotation speed of their drives, usually 5400 or 7200 RPM.  Just because a drive is 5400 RPM doesn’t necessarily mean it is going to be a lot slower than a 7200 RPM drive.  Especially if you are comparing a larger 5400 RPM drive to a smaller 7200 RPM drive (see the second principle, above.)
   
  For FireWire and USB drives, the performance bottleneck is the drive’s connection to your computer, not the speed of rotation.
   
• As far as power consumption and heat issues go, 5400 RPM drives are a better choice than 7200 RPM.
  
  Drives that spin slower use less power and generate less heat.  And tend to last longer.
   
• Brand name makes some difference, but outside of purchasing an external drive marketed by one of the major manufacturers, you never know what you’re getting.
  
  The major drive manufacturers (Seagate, Western Digital, Samsung, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Toshiba) market drives under their own names.  Other companies sell external hard disk drives, but usually use drive mechanisms from one of the big manufacturers, and there isn’t any way to know what brand of drive you’re actually getting.
   
  I have been buying Seagate drives for years without any issues, and that is what I generally will recommend. Hitachi drives have also been good for me.  My track record with Western Digital has been iffy.
   
• External drives which plug directly into your network, allowing multiple computers to access their contents at once, do exist, and they can be convenient in some ways, but they can be difficult to setup, and they are going to be the slowest of any external drive solutions.  They are called NAS devices (Network Attached Storage), and they can be a little pricey.
   
• The happy medium between price and storage size right now is 1 TB for 3.5” drive mechanisms, and 500 GB for 2.5” mechanisms.  Going much bigger than that generally demands a hefty price premium.
   
• If a drive fails, you will lose everything on it.  So it might be better to have two smaller external drives than one huge drive.
   
• Some manufacturers are offering great warranties (some Seagate drives have a 5 year warranty!), others are just 90 days.  Read the packaging closely.  Every hard disk drive is going to fail someday, and even the best won’t make it much beyond 3-5 years.  Having a good warranty will get you a replacement when yours dies.
   
• Having a good warranty will allow you to get a complimentary replacement, but it won’t get your data back when a drive fails.  Always store multiple copies of your data in different places.

Generally speaking, for best performance get eSATA or FireWire before getting USB.  USB is available on nearly all computers, where FireWire and eSATA are not.  Check to see what ports your computer has.  Get a drive that is going to have sufficient storage for you for a few years, but don’t go excessively large.

Is It Really Worth It?

Every once in a while I really start thinking about the time value of money, and I decided to come up with a way to figure out how much potential interest I’m losing by buying a product instead of investing that same amount for retirement. This calculator is the result.

Enter your age now, and the purchase price of something you’d like to buy. If you wish, adjust the retirement age and interest rate. Then click Calculate. And see just how much you give up by buying something now instead of saving for the future.

UPDATE: A friend pointed out to me that (1) this doesn't include inflation, and (2) 8% is too high of a rate for the default. My response: (1) no, it doesn't include inflation; but inflation doesn't change the amount of money at the end of the investment period, just its value; so a calculator like this is still accurate. I added a field to show what that dollar amount is worth in today's dollars. (2) 8% is quite achievable in long term investment accounts like those for retirement, which is what I was illustrating here. If you are investing in money market or savings accounts, the interest rate will be drastically lower.

Trip Summary

I just got back from a long trip…

Duration: 14 days
Days spent driving: 6
Nights in hotels: 10
Saved by using priceline.com for hotels: $404

Friends seen: Brian, Jess, Dale & Katie
Friends I attempted to see: lots more
Other friends connected with: Mark
Family seen: Mom & Dad

Number of Point-of-Sale systems installed: 2
Number of computers installed: 8
Number of man-hours spent installing at each store: about 12
Number of hours spent supervising and training employees: 10

Number of electronic gadgets acquired: 1 (HTC Touch Pro 2 cell phone, 32GB iPod Touch given to Brian for his help with POS installations)
Number of electronic gadgets that died: 2 (80GB Zune, Dash Express GPS)
Repairs to Truck: New brake light switch to repair failing brake lights

Number of miles driven: 3136.0
Gallons of fuel purchased: 141.151
Highest MPG on one tank: 25.993 (75 MPH freeway + 65 MPH highway in NM)
Lowest MPG on one tank: 19.924 (70 MPH freeway in OK, KS… dang oxygenated fuel!)
Average MPG Overall: 22.217
Average Fuel Per Gallon: $2.437
Tolls Paid: $8.90

Weather…
Every day but the last two were overcast, with some mist and rain.  The last day was the most varied, with snow, rain, cold, hot, and dry all within a couple hundred miles. 

Audiobooks: C.S. Lewis’ “The Problem of Pain,” Jeffrey R. Holland’s “Christ and the New Covenant.”

Highs: Getting to stay with my parents for a few days, seeing Jess for a couple days, hanging out with Brian when POS installations permitted, getting a new cell phone, playing with the computer I learned to program on in the early-to-mid 1980s.

Lows: GPS and Zune dying, staying up all night for POS installation, crawling around in ceilings with fiberglass insulation.

This is what a typical register looks like when we do an installation.
That’s my software running on the computer. Most stores have 3-4 like this,
plus a server computer. I installed 6 registers, two servers, and two
LCD monitors at the make line.

This is Brian.  We went to High School together, and have kept in contact since.
He drove up from Houston and helped me with the installation.
Without his help I would have been in trouble.  I wish I got a picture of his Corvette.

 
Me with Jess.  I spent Friday evening, Saturday afternoon,
and part of Sunday with her in Denton, TX.

On Monday night my parents took me to Braum’s for ice cream.  I got a Strawberry Shortcake Sundae.  It was excellent.  But we were surprised by how much inflation has affected the price of the food there.  Actually, it got worse after this picture was taken.  The next day, instead of $29, the same meal was $299.

I, unfortunately, didn’t get any pictures of my parents while I was there.  Or any part of the drive home for that matter, even though I saw some beautiful scenery.  But the drive was already long enough, and I didn’t really want to make it a lot longer by stopping every few minutes for pictures.  Some other trip when I don’t have pressing tasks waiting for my attention.

UnitY

My cousin Colleen’s husband Jim drew and posted this on their blog, and I thought it was rather clever…

“I’m sick of everyone fighting about football. Let’s stop being jerks to each other.”

Zune HD vs iPod Touch

Just a relatively quick comparison between my Zune HD and the iPod Touch (2nd gen).  More information to follow sometime later.

• The OLED screen on the Zune HD is amazing. It is quite bright, and very vibrant. When I held my ZHD up to my Touch, the display on the Touch looked, well, pathetic. It hadn't ever been so obvious how much backlight seeps through until I compared it to a device without a backlight. And as a result of the backlight, colors on the iPod look very washed out and poorly rendered when compared to to the Zune. One quick photo to compare below… The original is on the left, Zune HD’s rendering in the middle, and iPod Touch on the right.
  
  
  
  I played with the camera settings to get a better image from the Touch, and I couldn’t do it.  Its display just isn’t very good.  I’ll be posting more pictures later.
  
• Brightness on the OLED is NOT a problem. At equivalent brightness levels (the Zune only has Low, Mid, and High to choose from) the Zune's display is at least as bright as the iPod's. The real plus side for the Zune is that picture quality doesn’t deteriorate at lower brightness levels like it does on LCD.  So you can comfortably use the Low setting and it doesn’t detract from the experience.
  
  In direct sunlight the Zune is a bit harder to see.  But the difference wasn’t huge, and who attempts to use their device with sunlight falling right on it?
  
• I have been trying for several days to take a picture that shows a decent comparison shot. But none come out quite right. The white balance of the two displays is quite different (ZHD tracks in at D6500, while the iPod Touch is closer to D5000), so either the iPod's display looks yellow, or the Zune's display looks blue when they are in the same shot. And for some reason the Zune's display shows up a little bit blurry in pictures, which I can't explain. When you see the display IRL it is extremely crisp and sharp.
  
• The Apps on the Zune don't even begin to compare to those on the iPod Touch. iPod wins hands down here.  Microsoft promises more apps later, and they will be free, but they’ll never catch up to where the iPod Touch/iPhone App Store is.
  
• The browser on the Zune is better than expected. It is a hair sluggish while a page is loading, but once the page is loading the Zune zooms and pans a lot faster than the iPod. Page rendering is fine, but it seems like a substantial number of web sites are serving up their mobile version to the Zune where they serve the full version to the iPod, so direct comparisons aren't really possible. On sites that serve the full version, though, the Zune page rendering seems fine. One obvious lacking on the Zune is that only one page can be open at a time. It doesn't attempt to mimic the multi-page capability of the Touch.
  
• The user interface on the Zune is much snappier and responsive than that of the iPod Touch. Where the iPod is rendering page transitions at roughly 10 frames per second, the Zune is easily doing 30 fps or more. Scrolling on the Zune is also at least 30 fps, where the iPod is less. The iPod Touch never really felt at all sluggish to me until I compared it to the Zune's interface.
  
• The experience of listening to music on the Zune is WAY better than the iPod Touch. Between having a more logical and flexible layout of the menu structure for finding music, and the additional features that MS has added to link between artists and provide information (and photos) about the artists in your collection, the Zune provides a much more pleasing experience. And these features are available without the Zune Pass subscription. If you add the Zune Pass subscription, the Zune leaps further ahead because you can not only download but stream any of the music in the Zune catalog in real time. So any track is available at any time so long as you have access to WiFi. And the Zune's Channels feature is a lot cooler than I had eve anticipated. It not only makes music suggestions, but it actually downloads the recommended songs directly to the device automatically so they can play anywhere even without WiFi. Apple ought to be taking notes here.
  
  I’ll be doing a full video or blog post about this.  The Zune HD changes the way you experience music.
  
• Video playback on the Zune is better primarily because of the better screen. It also does a better job of organizing your video collection, because you can manually tag video files as being movies, TV shows, music videos, or other. iTunes doesn't let you do that on your own; the only things tagged this way are the ones you download from the iTunes store. Letting the user catalog their own collection makes it much easier to find your way around.
  
• The Zune's battery capacity is technically lower than that of the iPod, but it seems to be better at managing it. After two hours of watching video my iPod Touch is dead (my unit could be an anomaly, but it doesn't seem to be). I watched more than 4 hours of video on the Zune HD and the battery meter hadn't fallen past half yet.
  
• The HD radio is cool, but I have a hard time picking up the HD feeds in my basement. Then again, I can't pick up stereo in my basement on any radio either. When I take the device upstairs or outside, the HD kicks in, and it is definitely clearer than the analog transmission. The primary benefit here is that all static goes away and you get a clean signal, and higher frequencies are much better reproduced in the digital feed.
  
• One feature on the Zune I find particularly useful is the WiFi syncing. It is very convenient to be able to click three buttons and have the device connect and download updated podcasts, music, and video from anywhere in the house.
  
• Another thing I noticed is that the Zune software automatically picks up on changes in files in the music and video folders, and reflects them in the software automatically and virtually instantly. So as I was moving files in and out of my music folders the tracks would instantly appear and/or disappear. It has always bugged me that iTunes doesn't automatically pick up on music or videos that I add to my folders.
  
• As demonstrated in my last blog post, the iPod Touch seems to have some issues with sound quality.  The Zune did much better in testing.
  
• The Zune desktop software is also significantly snapper than iTunes on Windows. And I think I like the design and interface better. With its polished interface, it is certainly snazzier and more refined. iTunes looks relatively dated at this point.

Complaints

My biggest complaint is mostly with touch-based devices in general, and isn’t specific to the Zune HD.  And honestly it is something that I’m surprised we don’t see talked about.  It’s the lack of physical buttons for navigating through music tracks.

Recently we have had the dangers of text messaging while driving crammed down our throats, and it surprises me that some of this hasn’t spilled over into other areas.  Attempting to operate a touch-screen music player while driving is just as dangerous.  In order to control the device you have to take your eyes off of the road for significant amounts of time.  And many operations on both the Zune HD and the iPod Touch require two hands to perform effectively.  Just adding two buttons for changing tracks would be huge in attempting to fix this problem.  But the current trend is to move away from buttons, and I believe this is a mistake.  I’m not asking for a device with 47 buttons for every possible function, but there really ought to be dedicated buttons for the most basic functions of the device.

I took my Zune HD with me the day I got it when I went out running a few errands.  I found that it was extremely inconvenient and potentially dangerous to do even the most basic of tasks.  This isn’t limited to the Zune, either; it is a problem with every touch-screen based music player, whether it be the Zune, iPod Touch, or iPhone.  It’s enough of a problem that I must publicly shun anybody that operates one of these devices while behind the wheel.  It’s dangerous, and it shouldn’t be done.  Apple and Microsoft both really need to rethink their designs a bit to make these devices a little more friendly to situations where full attention can’t be given to their operation.

As a result of this, I will continue using my previous Zunes in my truck.  The Zune HD will probably become my primary travelling device, but not the PMP that gets used the most.

Wrap-up

So to summarize, when comparing the Zune and iPod Touch, people looking for a device primarily for music and video, the Zune will provide a much richer and more interactive experience. For people looking to take advantage of the App Store, the iPod Touch can't be touched (hardy, har, har). So if you’re buying to listen to music, I recommend the Zune. If you’re buying for the App Store, the Touch is the only way to go.  For web browsing, the iPod has a bit of an edge, but it isn't much.  Both will provide a similar experience there.

If someone already has a significant amount of DRM protected content from the iTunes store that they want to keep, there is probably no reason to consider the Zune (though they need to get out from under the thumb of the music industry). But if someone doesn't care much about the App Store and their main focus is music and video, the Zune HD provides a significantly better experience for both. Since the Zune can play all of the file formats supported by the iPods (plus more), switching from the iPod to Zune isn't too painful, and it’s a switch that I bet a lot of people would be thankful to have made later on.