It has been a challenging but fulfilling year 2010, and here looking forward to 2011.
With the advancements of sharing contents in Facebook, I realized my blog has died down A LOT.
However, WordPress is currently posting a challenge of one post a day or one post each week to keep up the spirit and momentum going, and I’m subscribing myself to one post each week.
Let’s see how long this will last.
As I was doing some research on Sony camcorders, I realized that for the same camcorder model, they have multiple suffix to denote different “type” of the same model. For example, Sony HDR CX350, CX350E, CX350/B, etc.
Here are what I could gather about the meaning of suffix:
So, that’s pretty much all to it. Simple when you think of it, but without proper documentation, it’s pretty hard to understand if you’re buying the right product or not.
Disclaimer: I’m not related to Sony by any means, so if I got anything wrong, let me know in the comments. ^.^
After watching Despicable Me in GV Plaza Singapura, look who came out with us? 
Despicable Us
From Steve Jobs himself: iPhone 4 in Singapore: July 30th. Free case for everyone. ^.^
The last piece of the puzzle, how much will it be?
So, when will iPhone 4 launch in Singapore?
June 24 is the date for five countries, with few more in July, and by September, 88 countries will have it. So, worst case scenario, Singapore telcos will launch iPhone 4 in September, best case in July.
Price wise, the current price may stay, that is with $38/month plan, you’re looking at S$538 for 16GB version and S$668 for 32GB version.
On Wednesday, I saw a post by my colleague that he was selling his desktop PC components for cheap. After a quick research, I decided to buy from him. My desktop PC was last upgraded in February 2005, and now for $80, I’ve gotten Asus A8N SLI-Premium motherboard with AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ that is the equivalent of current Intel Core 2 Duo (both for $50), and 2 GB of Kingston RAM (for $30).
The motherboard was, as its name suggest, a premium motherboard, with 2 slots for PCI Express graphic cards, 10 ports USB 2.0, two Gigabit LAN, three Fireweire IEEE 1394, and two eSATA ports. It has every ports known to mankind, and for $50, I couldn’t resist a cheap upgrade to give my desktop PC a whole new guts inside.
For graphic card, I got myself Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5750 512MB GDDR5 that should be powerful enough for games in the next 3-5 years.
The end result? Here are the Geekbench scores of my desktop before and after the upgrade.
Before upgrade
After upgrade
Based on these scores alone, with $80, my desktop PC is now twice as powerful as it was, and it should prolong its life for the next 3-4 years. Good stuff eh?
It’s still not as powerful as my Macbook, but for that price, I can’t complain.
Macbook score
The result according to Windows Experience Index shows the score is up there now. It was previously 3.1. before upgrade. Yay !!!
Windows Experience Index
If you’d like to buy a good value for money graphic card to upgrade your PC, a good place to start is Tom’s Hardware Best Graphic Cards for the Money articles. These articles are updated monthly, categorized depending on your budget. You may also take a look at Graphics Card Hierarchy Chart to know where your current graphic card lies in the tiers of graphic cards.
As for the prices in Simlim Singapore, a good start will be pricelists from Fuwell and Bizgram.
One thing I learned during my recent search for graphic card was to understand ATI Radeon naming convention. Generally, the graphic card has four digits model number, e.g. HD4650. The first digit says about the “generation”, so HD5xxx models are newer than HD4xxx. The second digit says about the graphic capabilities of the card, so HDx8xx models are better than HDx6xx. The third digit is simply to differentiate different products between the same family and capabilities.
As such, for example, HD4850 is actually a better card (and more expensive) than HD5670, but HD5670 has newer support for Windows 7 and DisplayPort, but it won’t be as capable as HD4850 when it comes to gaming.
Also, beware when buying HDx8xx or HDx9xx cards, as generally these cards will require power supply which is at least 450W+, so make sure your power supply can handle it before buying.
So, that’s it, happy buying 
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