What a great way to start the month of November with a fresh week of training. I can’t really remember when was the last time I went for a week long training. The closest I went to was attending the Oracle Demand Generation Training at Sunway Hotel last September. As you’ve guessed it, lately I’ve been exposing myself a lot to Oracle. The way I see Oracle is that if MySQL open source database is a normal compact car where everybody can buy, Oracle database is a luxury car where only people with a lot of resources can afford to buy. The function is generally the same, it gets you to point A to point B but the features, performance and the experience are entirely different.

It doesn’t really matter which product is the best or not, it is a matter of preferences. If I can afford to buy a BMW, I would definitely owned one. Unfortunately, I can only afford a basic car at the moment but I can still dream of a BMW nevertheless. Back to my Oracle training of course. The training was held at Oracle’s HQ up in Level 38, Menara Citibank Kuala Lumpur. Check out their front desk:

I can only wish I am working with a huge corporation such as Oracle. It must be really tough trying to score a job there, don’t you think?

Anyway, my trainer is a guy name Sachin, I am guessing he’s from India from his thick Indian accent. Prior to this training, I have no idea what SOA or the longer version Service Oriented Architecture means. Even after reading Wikipedia, I still couldn’t picture what SOA is all about. My trainer tried to give some clue on what SOA is all about but all I see is a bunch application pool represented by jargon linking with each other. I must give credit to Sachin although his presentation was a bit bored, he’s quite a tech nerd when it comes to hands-on training which came in late in the afternoon since the Oracle JDeveloper installation file was almost 1GB and had to be copied manually from person to person. The requirement was 3GB of RAM for the training laptop just for the VMWare containing the SOA suite to run while I only have 1GB of RAM. Lucky there was an alternative.

The training class became more livelier when the hands-on approach began. With Nescafe coffee served, it was very enjoyable to crunch the tutorials given. Right up until my developed SOA scripts got corrupted and could not be deployed apart from the wireless networking changed setting. The journey continues tomorrow morning.

It has been over a month after I got my hand on my latest new gadget, my HTC Touch. I’ve always been keen to have a Windows Mobile device. There is one lying around my house which belongs to my dad and he’s not using it. However, the device is bigger than my handphone and the features and the battery is not up to my use so my brother is toying around with it. Recently, my dad bought himself a cheap chinese made TV-PDA phone which he found somewhere in Dubai, he wanted to sell off his HTC Touch. I immediately said I wanted it but of course I’ll pay for it later.. ;-)

The best thing I found out about HTC Touch is its lightweight, running on Windows Mobile 6 Professional, the battery’s life is not bad and the touch screen is just something cool. Of course if you compare that to an iPhone, the iPhone is way much cooler. However, the iPhone is more expensive plus there is a lot of softwares that I need doesn’t work in iPhone. The only downside in terms of network connectivity is my HTC Touch is running on EDGE and doesn’t have 3G connection. Because of that, I choose to subscribe to DiGi HighSpeed Mobile Access with Data Unlimited Plan. I’ll cover my experience using DiGi Internet service in my next blog post.

At first I wanted to replace my Sony Ericsson W810i to this HTC Touch. Unfortunately, I found out that typing SMSes using the HTC Touch is so difficult and required precise touching of the screen for the right alphabet to appear. It then became clear that the HTC Touch can only be my second gadget in my pocket.

Thanks to my brother who is using Windows Mobile much earlier than any person I know tip me on a great mobile browser call Opera Mini. I once used my boss’s iPhone and recalled how the browser on his iPhone could just slide, zoom in and out. It was so cool, little that I know this browser installed on my HTC Touch could do the same.

Another application that I like to use is Google Maps for Mobile. Since my HTC Touch doesn’t have GPS, the My location function which tells me the nearest node of my DiGi coverage as you can see on the dot on the screenshot below:

The star is my favourite places where I used to hang out. It can also be used to estimate the distance of location where I intend to go and show me the route to go there. This is the best application I always run whenever I am hitting the road. If you noticed on the screenshot, I am using a Pocket Controller software. This way, whenever my HTC Touch is connected to my laptop, I don’t have to tap the device using my hands anymore. It can work with my mouse and keyboard. Simply genius..

I guess I am becoming more of into gadget junkies with so many electronics I have on my hands. Got to keep on getting more and more resources to fuel my hunger of information technology.

This would be my first blog post for the month of May. I’ve been pretty much occupied the past several weeks with various types of work. At the same time I’ve been eyeing on a new laptop for the past several weeks to replace my loaned Acer Aspire 3683 laptop (technically it’s my brother’s laptop). After looking at this brochure, I’ve already decided which laptop that I’m going to buy since the spec and the price is within my budget:

Compaq Presario V3751AU on Brochure

At RM2199, it’s quite an affordable price to pay for a decent laptop with the technical spec listed. However, I needed more financial leverage since I wanted a monthly installment over the full amount which I needed to pay. I don’t want to pay in full cash because it will affect my monthly budget and savings.

So I started making some analysis on ways I could do to finance my new laptop. At first I wanted to apply for the RM125 per month under AEON Easy Payment scheme. However, after getting the information and did a rough calculation, the total amount I would have to pay under the Easy Payment plan would be (RM125 X 24 months) is RM3,000! WHAT? That’s RM801 more than the selling price! I’m not going to pay the credit company (in this case AEON Easy Payment scheme) that amount. On top of that, there is another 0.84% of interest per month equivalent to 10.08% a year.

My second option is to reduce the throat-choking Easy Payment scheme interest to a personal loan. The idea was to apply for a RM3,000 personal loan and pay back on a monthly payment. There was 2 option (CIMB Cash Express Micro Finance and AEON-Cash Personal Financing) since a lot of personal loans are not meant for small amount. I had to eliminate CIMB Cash Express because it’s a financial killer. At 24% interest yearly, it is one of the highest interest personal loans ever based on my findings. As for AEON-Cash Personal Financing, I had to apply for an AEON Credit Card in order for my loan to be approved. If I went for this, I would have to wait for another week or so to get my credit card approved and so on so fourth. Not what I had in mind.

My third option is to use my Petronas CIMB Bank credit card I just received a month ago. Utilizing the 0% monthly installment, I can just buy a laptop by just dividing the price of RM2199 with 12 months. That would make RM183.25 per month and best of all, interest free. The only issue is there aren’t many shops that provided this facility. Most of the shop I found have Maybank and Citibank 0% interest free payment plan. I’m not going to get another credit card for my financial sake. From my reading in forums and some blogs, I find that in order for me to get an interest free plan with CIMB Bank, I need to find a shop that uses a CIMB merchant processing machine. So, my quest for searching for the right shop begins.

After searching high and low at Low Yatt Plaza, one shop that I’ve found charge 4.5% on top of the laptop price before dividing it with 12 months. I didn’t go for that one. I finally found a shop that provides me with the monthly installment facility using my credit card. The shop wasn’t as busy as any other shop; in fact I was the only customer inside the shop. After dealing with the sales guy for 15 minutes, my transaction went through and I was on my way back with my brand new Compaq Presario V3751AU.

At home, I joyously unpacked my new laptop:

My New Compaq V3751AU package

Unfortunately the package I bought only got me an original Targus HP laptop bag and a RM35 optical mouse. By the way, the laptop I bought only comes with FreeDos so there was no Windows or any other operating system. I had to add more money if I wanted an operating system installed. This is where the hassle begins.

My Brand New Compaq V3751AU Unpacked loaded with FreeDOS

It took me one night for me to install a fresh copy of Microsoft Windows XP and then another 2 days for me to search for all the drivers since the package doesn’t include a driver CD. Even worse, the system is configured for Windows Vista when I tried searching for the drivers on HP Compaq official website. After searching around, I’ve gathered all the necessary download and bundled all the driver’s link into this single URL link:

I downloaded most of the drivers but only a few of them really work. Here’s a list of it which I did managed to note down that really works on my Compaq Presario V3751AU:

• SP34842A – BlueTooth Driver
• SP35333 – Wireless Assistant
• SP37950 – Network Controller Driver
• SP35414 – Webcam Driver

After all the driver was done installed, it was then time to make the transition to transfer all my working files from my previous laptop to my new laptop. I’m not the kind of person who uses back-up software because I know there will be a point where complication will arise. So I did it manually using a portable hard drive and thumb drives:

The Manual Side by Side Laptop File Transfer Process

It took me my whole Sunday weekend to complete the transition. Performance wise, since the processor is a dual core processor, there is a huge improvement when I’m running heavy multiple applications. The temperature is cooler and the CPU utilization is less likely to reach 100%. My only problem is I can’t play my Simcity 4 most probably because of my display card issue.

My Compaq 3751AU on Windows XP is ready for action

Why I didn’t choose Intel Core 2 Duo over AMD Turion 64 X2? Based on my finding from benchmarking charts, using Intel Core 2 Duo is slightly ahead of AMD Turion 64 X2. Then again, I’m looking for a bargain and not performance so I think I made a good choice.

Last Monday, I went for a meeting with my boss at the outskirt of KL City. After the meeting, we had a 3 hours gap before the next meeting. After taking lunch, my boss decided to check out the IT Heaven at Bukit Bintang namely, The Low Yatt Plaza. A junior colleague who tagged along never went to Low Yatt before so this was his first time there. He got overwhelmed by looking at so many IT products inside the mall.

Anyway, my boss owned an iPhone so he checked out The Mac store at the ground floor in Low Yatt Plaza. Inside the Mac store, I saw this:

MacBook Air Display at Mac Studio Sdn Bhd Low Yatt

Taking a closer look at the MacBook Air:

The MacBook Air

Testing the Mac was like the last time I tried using Ubuntu. Although it seems exciting and more fun to use Mac compared to Windows, I don’t think I’ll ever fit in being a Mac user. Here’s a list of why I will never use a Mac:

1. Change requires time to get used to, to learn new features, to utilize it to the max thus is can waste your productive time and lowers your output productivity
2. A lot of application I’m using is not built for Mac.
3. A Mac is just too flashy for me.
4. The current price for a MacBook Air is RM6229. I can get three lower end Core 2 Duo blank laptop for RM2,000 a piece.
5. I will never convert to a Mac

Now you have it, my 5 top reason why MacBook is not for me.