One Shot Design

I purchased a set of wireless transmitter to output audio from my PC through the stereo. I must say I am very pleased with the product. British-established company Oono hit a home run with this cleverly thought product.

The Transmita Vii is the upgrade of Oono previous line: the Transmita. The Vii set is much smaller and lighter than its predecessor, roughly the size of a Zippo lighter. The Vii wireless transmitter and receiver feature the same casing: both items feature a tiny rotating antenna, run on a battery that can be charged through mini-USB.

Operating is pretty much straightforward: the light on top turns blue when the device is switched on. There is a power-saving feature, by which after a determined time both devices automatically switch off if audio isn’t fed through them.

When recharging, the light turns red and then orange once the process is complete. The longest I have needed to used them is probably around six hours of continuous use, so I have not had yet the opportunity to push them to their limit.

Overall this is a no-nonsense product, very practical to use and affordable. I sometimes carry on the receiver in my pocket to plug earphones in and wirelessly listen to the audio while wandering around the house. My only complain is the lack of visual difference between transmitter and receiver. Apart from the tag on the bottom face, there is no way of knowing which one is which. Still, I am very pleased with the set.

I give it a 5 star: simply superb.

I alway rip my purchased CD’s to (Ogg) Vorbis, notably because the format outperforms all other lossy audio compression codecs. I has looking for a portable player supporting Vorbis and big enough to hold my entire collection of thousands of songs. I didn’t want the added cost of video playback (I’m not yet used to watching movies on a thumb-sized screen) and it needn’t to be a recently-released product. In the eventuality that the device maker would drop software support, the ability to install Rockbox^* was a definite plus.

To select a device, I basically proceeded in reverse: I browsed the Rockbox page of version releases, looked up the devices specs and tried to locate one of those meeting my requirements. I eventually located a Cowon iAudio M5, which appeared to be one of the last items on Swiss store shelves.
Unveiled in August 2005, the M5 was simplified version of the codec-ubiquitous, color screen X5 released in May 2005. Measuring 61 x 104 x 19 to 15 mm, the M5 had been downgraded to a gray screen. The radio has been removed but the device can play MP3, (Ogg) Vorbis, WMA, ASF, FLAC and WAV; and it keeps the excellent sound output quality and the BBE-Jeteffect system of the X5.

I purchased my device in October 2007, and the battery capacity had been seriously reduced during the year spent in the store warehouse. The play button was not mounted properly, so after two weeks of warranty repair, I got my M5 player back with a new battery and could start playing with it.
The equaliser features presets such as Normal, Rock, Jazz, Classic, Pop, Voice or user personalized. The BBE-Jeteffect system also allow for 3D enhance and a surround effect. The 5 directions navigation button is sometimes cumbersome to use: if sometimes gets puched down when I meant to flip it or change track when I intended to change the volume.

The M5 features the X5 voice and line-in recorders, which can respectively be set to 32, 48, 64, 96 or 128 kbps; and 64, 96, 128, 192, 256 or 320 kbps. I have used both: the voice recorder uses the inbuilt microphone, which is good at accurately picking up sound within 1 meter while leaving out other ambient noises; and the line-in recorder requires a docking pad with the dedicated jack plug. Unfortunately, the start and end activation is not self-explanatory.

I have alway paid attention to tagging my audio files with as much information as possible, to the extend of looking up each release year on my Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gay compilation CD’s. Over time, I ended up hierarchically dividing the songs by:

(First letter of album artist) / Album artist / Album title / (track).Song_title.format

That way, it is easy to scroll down the libraby structure with the M5 file explorer. The device always takes half-a-dozen seconds when switched on. It usually resumes play unless the USB port has been used to connect or recharge it, in which case it updates its table of content. The player can be set to play songs in sequencial, random or playlist mode. Each or these options can either be applied to all folders, to a single song, to a directory or to subdirectories. I have notices that for some reason the random play algorithm tends to favor newly added folders or certain other folders, but still manages to go through the entire collection.

Overall, the iAudio M5 is perfect for what I needed: I switch it on when I get in the office, and with a charge time of less than 2 hours, the battery allows it to run from 8 to 9 hour of random play. The system has very few bugs: In 15 month I only had to manually reset it three to four times. The interface is dull but self-explanatory (except for the recorders) and easy to navigate through.

* As they say: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me“. I once purchased a Vorbis-enabled TEAC player which proved bug-ridden. Within a couple of year the company, which makes outstanding audio equipment by the way, competely dropped all software support for the portable player. Needless to say: I didn’t want to repeat the same experience.

On May 30^th 2007, Palm’s Jeff Hawkins unveiled the Foleo, a “mobile companion” featuring built-in wireless connections through Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Integrated software includes an E-Mail client which Palm claims could sync with the Treo E-Mail client, the Opera browser and the Documents To Go office suite.

Roughly three months after, on September 4^th 2007, Palm’s CEO Ed Colligan wrote a letter explaining why the company decided to kill a US$ 10 million development project, presumably because of such the bad press the Foleo received..

In retrospect, it seems as though the concept only needed a minor tweaks. First, everything should be made to bring its price below that of bargain laptops. Second: its E-Mail client should be capable of handling POP and IMAP. Third: it should have decent multimedia features. Which is exaclty what Asus achieved with its Eee PC.

Palm’s sub-notebook, the Foleo, was intended to complement other Palm products thanks to its 10 inch screen and full-size keyboard. The E-Mail client would not be able to pass through the Wi-Fi connection, but would synchronize with a supported smartphone such as Palm’s Treo; although the Foleo itself could use other programs to access email through Wi-Fi. The press heavily criticized the product for lacking sense: with a full retail price of US$ 599.00, it was more expensive than some bargain laptops but not as powerful. It could apparently neither run Palm OS application nor play Flash video. However, a few reviews were positive, outlining the small, light and sturdy body of the Foleo as well as its longer battery life of 5 hours.

This is exactly the kind of product Acer had in mind 6 days after the Foleo’s press release, when it announced a collaboration with leading processor maker Intel for the development of a US$ 199.00 notebook. The first prototypes were shown to the press in early July 2007. The Eee Personal Computer mostly received positive reviews, probably because Acer got it right where Palm did not. The Eee coincidentally featured all the characteristics the Foleo lacked to become a viable product.

Comparison chart

Two days ago I took delivery of a Dell Inspiron 1520 CORE 2 DUO T7250 2.00GHz. I booted Vista, downloaded and installed Opera, through which I download the Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon ISO before burning it on a CD.
I rebooted the PC, making sure the CD was inserted. After checking that the Ubuntu live demo worked, I proceeded to partition the whole hard disk and install Ubuntu. So long Vista…

This is thus my 7^th year with GNU/Linux on a personal computer. After using Red Hat for the first years, I changed to Debian-based Ubuntu. If version 5 and 6 were good, I must say that Gutsy Gibbon (Ubuntu version 7.10) is a serious OS contender. The system worked right out of the box, with the exception of the Intel sound card, that seems to give problems with the drivers to many Dell customers. Yet this issue was quickly solved: thanks to a post on the Ubuntu forum, I followed through the straightforward procedure to reinstall the Asla drivers which worked after a reboot.

Update: Gutsy Gibbon loads much faster than Vista. The interface is polished and snappy. After installing my prefered desktop theme and icons, it really looks smooth, allowing me to forget about form to focus on function. Unlike Vista, Ubuntu gives me full control of the mouse pad, meaning that I can get rid of the double-tapping for left button simultation, which I do find really annoying on Vista since it cannot be turned off.

I have also been experiencing serious problems with Dell’s MediaDirect, a media player that boots from the hard disk without the need for an OS. If I forget a disc of music or movies in the player or accidentaly hit the “Home” button, MediaDirect loads and instantly rewrites the hard disc TOC to its discretion, resulting in boot havoc. Thanks very much Dell!

As a result, I have had to reinstalled both Vista and Ubuntu, and pray to God that I don’t accidentally launch MediaDirect any time soon.