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Turns out that today Seagate acknowledged that there is a problem with their FreeAgent drives going to sleep. The suggested workaround? Attach the drive to a Windows machine, install the Windows driver, open the Seagate Tools app and adjust the drive sleep interval to “never”.

Besides being highly inconvenient to have to do this - what do you do if you don’t have a Windows computer?

I still recommend staying away from these drives, especially when planning to use them with a TiVoHD. My sub-30-dollar external enclosure works brilliantly with the “liberated” drive that I extracted from the FreeAgent.

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I hope this was helpful - if not, please leave a comment and let me know why! Were you searching for something else? Did I miss an important aspect?

Since TiVo switched to software release 9.2 and enabled external eSata drives on the Series 3 and the TiVoHD I had been playing with the idea of throwing out my horrible Motorola HDDVR that we got from Comcast and instead put in a TiVoHD with two CableCards.

I finally bought one last week when I found a sale locally so that I could pick it up in person. And I got myself an eSata drive so I could extend storage to a more reasonable level. That’s where the problems began.

First, it takes Comcast a week to come by our house and hand us the CableCards. What a joke. And they’ll charge os for a “technician” coming here instead of just sending the card and allowing me to pluck them in. Argl.

Second, it turns out that while the more expensive Series 3 allows you to connect more or less any eSata drive, the cheaper TiVoHD only allows the one TiVo co-branded DVR Expander to be used - which of course is once again quite a bit more expensive than any other eSata drive.

There is a tool that allows you to “hack” the internal drive of the TiVoHD, so this is a problem that can be worked around. Still, it’s annoying. I used the Linux version, set up the drives and tried to connect everything and that’s where the real problems started. The TiVoHD didn’t find the external drive, but since I had modified the internal drive it knew that there was supposed to be an external drive and no longer booted.

Googling first got me to several articles that pointed out that there are two different types of eSata cables and that the TiVos only worked with one of them. So I got that. Still no success.

Some more searching (and observing of the behavior of the external drive when connected to the TiVoHD) got me on the right track. It turns out that the new Seagate FreeAgent (no link, they are evil) external drives try to do smart things with power management. They don’t have a real on-off switch and rely on a special Windows driver to do the right thing to keep them running. Which of course the TiVo doesn’t do and therefore fails to talk to them.

So I cracked open the case (there’s no way to open it - you literally have to destroy it with brute force), extracted the drive, put it into a cheap external enclosure with a real on/off switch, connected that to the TiVoHD an everything worked…

Hope this helps some others in a similar situation. And if you read this before buying the eSata drive: get one with a real on/off switch - or even better, get a cheap enclosure and a SATA drive and build your own - almost certainly cheaper and much more likely to work in the end.

While waiting for that über-phone to arrive, let’s look at the key accessories to get as well… the external case that turns your phone into a 1990 style brick is a clear must have!

Too bad it won’t work with a flip phone like my Motorola Ming - I’d get one for sure!

Ok, we got some new information to work with:

• Cisco decided to sue Apple for using their iPhone trademark without permission.
• You can’t buy / download iTunes over the phone.
• You can’t sync wirelessly with your computer.
• You can’t load applications of your choice (with the exception of Java applets in the browser).
• Most likely that means you can’t use the email provider of your choice (again, with the exception of browser based email).

I’m beginning to be less excited - and back to wanting to figure out how to fix the few issues that annoy me about the Motorola Ming… it’s not looking that bad in comparison

I’m sure we’ll learn more in the coming days (and then again in a few months when this finally becomes available as a product). Let’s see if they allow real “tests” before then (and not just fan-boy-writeups).

And, puzzling as it may seem, it is called the iPhone, even though Cisco/Linksys just recently released their iPhone. Trademarks are fun. And apparently neither Cisco/Linksys nor Apple really own the trademark in the US.

Technology wise Apple certainly seems to have lived up to the hype. And then some. A combination of a cell phone, the wide screen video iPod we’ve been waiting for, plus maybe the coolest mobile web pad, yet. All this with what appears to be a really cool user interface and running a full-fledged OS (which is what I like so much about my Motorola A1200 / Ming). Only this is Mac OS X, which in my mind has the best user experience of all the OSs out there.

But let’s do a comparison with the Motorola Ming. Contrary to the Ming, the iPhone supports EDGE and not just GPRS, has an incredibly smooth user interface (at least from what you can tell from the demos on Apple’s site) and is integrated into the iTunes infrastructure. Oh, almost forgot. It also has 802.11b/g WIFI.

The Ming on the other hand has a Micro SD card (i.e., you can expand the memory for cheap - but admittedly that’s limited to 2GB today). It allows you to install your own applications (but see my posting on the lack of an active developer community). And is available today (well, over the internet or in stores in South East Asia) and works on all GSM networks, not just on Cingular (which is one of the biggest issues I see with the iPhone).

I guess this summarizes a lot of the differences between a Linux Desktop system and a Mac. The Linux system is much more open and flexible, easily available and comparably cheap. The Mac provides an awesome user interface in a rather closed environment; DRM encrusted, but with strong support from “premium content owners”.

It will be interesting to see the response of the market and the end users. I certainly am excited. Which doesn’t mean that I’ll buy one and switch wireless providers. But I’ll look at it.

Oh, the stock market seems to like it so far. As I write this Apple shares are up more than 8% to a new all time high.

Who would have thought of a minivan as an accessory to a cell phone? I now do - even though the word accessory seems to imply something smaller than the device you are accessorizing; and the Motorola Ming is quite a bit smaller than the minivan :-)

We just bought a Toyota Sienna which has Bluetooth connectiviy for the hands-free speaker/microphone combo that is also used for the navigation system. I know this is the way it’s supposed to be, but given that it’s a Linux device I was thrilled to see this work without a problem.

Turn on Bluetooth on the Ming first, then select Telephone and Settings on the display of the navigation system. It will tell you to search for “Handsfree” device and to type in the passcode that it display. In the Bluetooth app on the Ming, click on search. It will find “Handsfree” and ask for the passcode. Type it in, hit ok and bingo, the phone and the car are now talking.

It does all the things you’d expect (dial the phone, even with voice commands, pick up the phone when it rings). But the coolest thing is that it even plays the ringtones that I have installed on the phone over the car speakers. Nice.

I marvel about genius in almost any area. And in the interest of full disclosure I should mention that I am typing this post on a Macbook Pro and that this blog is currently hosted on a Mac Mini. Having said that, I must tip my hat to the genius behind Apple’s marketing and their ability to get grown men (and women) to speculate on the wildest ideas of what Apple might reveal at whatever the next event might be.

This time it’s MacWorld (not sure how long the link will work - they notoriously restructure their site towards the event). And since Steve Jobs has a keynote there, the fans and fan sites are in a frenzy. Once again there will be multiple live blogs from the event, people lined up out the door at 6 in the morning to get in, and more hype and show than one could possibly imagine. Even financial analysts are now joining the speculation game and have been writing for months and months about the allegedly upcoming Mac Phone (which most of them kept calling iPhone even tough Apple doesn’t own that trademark and to add insult to injury, a few weeks ago Cisco’s Linksys launched a product under that name) .

The question is really “why do I want this?” - very often “merged” devices are mediocre in either of their personalities. Cell phones are really hard to get right - and anyone who has tried different phones knows that especially the sound quality is a major obstacle for many startup vendors to get right with cell phones. The Motorola Ming (A1200) that I have used for the last few months is just outstanding in this area. Assuming reasonable signal strength (another one of the areas where it is obviously easy to get things wrong - I couldn’t even get a signal in my house with a Samsung phone I had a while ago) the Ming sounds just outstanding. Even more impressive is the quality of its noise cancellation circuits: I can call people from the car using the wired headset that was included with the phone and most people don’t even realize that I am driving. Add to that good functionality as GPRS modem and you get a pretty convincing package. That’s the baseline that Apple has to compete with on the phone side of the equation (I’m pretty sure they can get the iPod side right… duh). And if it doesn’t measure up there, why spend a lot of money on such a phone compared to the iPod we all already have (well, an amazing number of people do) and the cell phone we are happy with.

I’m curious what they’ll come up with - and any other news that might break next week… the rumored eight core Mac Pros sound like just the image processing machine for me… :-)

Here’s an interesting question that I spent way too much time on the last few weeks. There’s a ton of useless information on the Internet. Tons of content that basically reprints specs or (even worse) vendor press releases. But very very few sites that have really solid technical reviews. Must be because there’s no money to be made with that. Weird - it seems to work in other segments (as Anandtech and Tom’s Hardware seem to indicate).

So I went through the “LCD or plasma” cycle. Well, there are full resolution 1080p LCDs that almost are affordable. And LCD doesn’t burn in. So that one’s easy, right? Not so fast. Doing some side-by-side comparisons I am not convinced that LCD actually looks better. And for the same amount of money you clearly get “more” plasma than you get LCD… for me it came down to angle viewing (hey, my babies are looking at the screen from way low, right?) and value for money. And on that plasma wins.

Armed with that decision I started studying specs and finally narrowed it down to a few Panasonic plasmas - either the industrial TH-42PHD8UK (which means you buy then stand and connection modules for things like HDMI separately), or the consumer model TH-42PX60U (that comes with a stand and a couple of HDMI inputs). (side note - Panasonic makes it so hard to link to their products that I simply decided not to add a link here - it’s their own fault).

And then a sales guy that I end up on the phone with talks me into considering the brand new Hitachi 42-HDS69. And boy am I glad that he did. Comparing the picture at two stores that had it side by side with the Panasonic (of course after adjusting the picture setting… man these stores have contrast and brightness pulled up to 100% - that’s just terrible!) made the decision easy. The Hitachi looks much better - and it has three HDMI inputs instead of just two.

I’ve had the TV for a couple of days now and I love it. So much fun when watching soccer in HD…

So as much as I like the Internet for looking stuff up - nothing beats standing in front of the actual TVs and comparing what you see…

After a complete lack of even the slightest attempt of customer retention on DirecTV’s part (wow - they must have plenty of subscribers) we took the plunge and are back with Comcast.

The ReplayTV seemed to have died (fixed it with a new hard drive and some creative hacking since) and I figured that I finally wanted HD and an HD-DVR. DirecTV said “sure, pay us $500 up front and we’ll lease the DVR to you for an additional $15 a month. And oh-btw: no local channels / networks in HD.” Gee, what a sweet deal.

Comcast had the “Dish Win Back” offer that got us Digital Cable with HD, and HD-DVR, no up-front cost and monthly fees that even after the promo will be lower than DirecTV (and right now are about 50% of what we would have paid there - for 12 months). Pretty good deal, right?

Well, of course this is Comcast. So the installer was un-inspired and clueless (and way late, missing parts, and all in all not very helpful). The DVR (a Motorola DCT-3412) can best be described as “hard to get used to” (another way to put it would be “THE USER INTERFACE SUCKS!!!!!). We have an amazing amount of mpeg artifacts and when watching the local channels on live TV we get tons of little “stop and go” events - the sound will continue but the picture will stop for a few tens of a second. Highly annoying - but doesn’t happened with recorded or even time lapsed content, so it’s something we can work with.

So far what I hate the most is clearly the DVR. OMG. Like so many Motorola user interfaces this one was clearly designed by drunken monkeys who simply hate humans. It is terrible. The ReplayTV is a million times better. And it has the automatic “Commercial Advance” feature. Now we need to manually skip commercials. Like in the dark ages.

On the plus side, the soccer world cup is starting Friday and for people outside the US this is a big deal (actually, this is the biggest TV event in the world, bigger than the Olympics, the final will have about 50 times the number of viewers than the Superbowl). All games are available in HD and Comcast here in Portland gives me two of the three HD channels (of course I’m missing ESPN2-HD which for example carries the opening match Germany - Costa Rica on Friday… Grrrr). I still hope I’ll like it. The biggest fear right now is that this will make me buy a 42″ plasma… I’m so tempted as my 30″ 4:3 CRT is capable of displaying HDTV but is a little on the small side with wide screen content…

I’ll post more about all this as I get used to it (or throw it out the window, whichever comes first).

… assuming it is running Linux, that is. I have a hand full of Linksys WRT54G and WRT54GS routers. All of them flashed with updated firmware - using DD-WRT version 2.3 at this point. What you can do with that is actually quite impressive:

• full WDS support
• full Client Bridge support
• boosted transmit power
• split network (so the 4 port switch and the wireless run different, firewalled subnets)

I use all of the above features (and some more) in my home network and this week finally found the time to get everything working the way I want it - with a truly separate “external” network which has this web server and the systems of the neighbors on it (they surf through our DSL link, connected with a WDS access point that’s sitting in their house and connects to one of my WRTs over here). That subnet is separate from my internal network that has all of our systems (Linux and Mac boxes, plus the Windows machine I have through work - but that I’ll soon replace with another Mac - a MacBook Pro!). A real DMZ that allows controlled access from the internal network to the external server. Etc. And all that built with ultra-cheap mass market access points (around $50 each). Nice…