Monthly Archives: June 2007

Hewlett-Packard Pavillion dv6501tu Review

Leave a reply

Hi everyone,

I just bought this model from Hewlette-Packard shop in Bangkok, Thailand. So, I write review for everyone as a test result for people who is interesting on Santa Rosa platform.

Before I bought this model, I’m using Sony VAIO PCG-Z1VAP which has following specification…

Intel Centrino Platform

CPU : Intel Pentium M 1.73GHz L2 512Kb

Memory : SDRAM 1024MB (512MBx2)

HDD : 80GB 4200RPM IDE Interface

Graphics : ATI 7500 16MB

Optical Drive : DVD/CD-RW Combo

I’m satisfied on its performance for using on my current job as software development. (Heavily loaded with many applications such as Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and etc…)

I use it until a day I found the nightmare! My VAIO gone shutdown automatically without the chance to let me saving my works. I restart it again and it work normally, then a few hours passed it gone shutdown again. (shutdown immediately, not Windows shutdown) So, it’s my time to get a new one ASAP.

I’m researching about current platform and technology on current laptop and found that the latest platform people would buy is the new one called “Centrino Duo Pro” or “Santa Rosa” which are the combination of …

1. Intel Core 2 Duo 7300 or above which have L2 Cache 4MB and FSB800.

2. Intel Chipset 965PM/GM (PM = External graphics card, GM = Integrated graphics card)

3. Wireless-N which I really don’t know much about it except it’s faster than class B/G.

So, I build a comparison chart myself which laptop based on Santa Rosa platform. When I compare the price and material grade. The one I bought is the best value laptop! (I preferred to everyone who don’t want to play games on laptop as the one I bought is integrated with Intel X3100 graphics card)

Let’s see HP dv6501tu specification in details. Even it’s not fully compatible with “Santa Rosa” as this model didn’t equipped with Wireless-N

CPU : Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 2.0GHz L2 4MB FSB800

Chipset : Intel 965GM

Memory : DDRII 667 1024MB (512MBx2) Dual Channel

HDD : 200GB S-ATA 4200RPM

Graphics : Intel X3100 integrated

Optical drive : DVD-RW with LightScribe

LCD : 15.4″ WXGA

Accessories : Fingerprint reader, Bluetooth, WiFi A/B/G, Slim Remote Control (in PC Card Express slot), 3xUSB2.0, Imprint material, Altec Lansing speaker, SD/MMC/MS-PRO/XD …

OS : Bundled with Windows Vista Home Premium in recovery partition.

After bought, I’m trying to do software development tasks on it but in bad luck. Vista is so slow when working with large applications simultaneously. I’m just open Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and a little Office suite. It takes me in bad experiences with Vista. Now, I think that I should go back to work with Windows XP SP2 instead of Vista but in bad luck again. All drivers for this laptop is very hard to find even on Hewlett-Packard website. So, I think I should wait to found all drivers before installing Windows XP. Now I’m going to get all drivers from Windows Vista instead of. It’s my good luck as I can find all Vista drivers for this laptop not much hard that Windows XP does. I can’t work for a day as it’s in slow performance. Next day I go to the shop and replace the existing memory 512MBx2 with 1024MBx2 instead of. Then replace the bundled Vista Home Premium with Vista Ultimate edition.

Now my laptop was fully equipped with the latest weapons in present. So, I decide to try again with Windows Vista.

Very impressed!!!

Now It works very well, fast and beautiful with Aero. Now I forgotten Windows XP.

I’m very happy with overall quality of this laptop and have some comments below.

Pros

- Very fast.

- High quality material.

- Keyboard layout and feeling is very good. For me it’s much better than Asus, Acer and Compaq.

- Heat ventilation is very well design. Just a few times that I heard the fan is working.

- X3100 graphics card is better than I think, I can play Pro Evolution Soccer 6 without any jerking.

- High quality speaker from Altec Lansing. Much better than my brother’s Sony VAIO SZ series.

Cons

- One bright pixel after using for 1-2 days.

- Fingerprint reader is sucks! or I’m sucks! I should swipe my finger around 3-10 times to be authenticated.

- Short battery life, on my works it last only 2 hours. When compared to my old VAIO, it sucks! as my VAIO last much longer. (4-6 hours)

- No recovery CD/DVD or any drivers CD.

- Palm rest area was not smooth.

Conclusion

It’s one of the best value laptop today with latest platform “Santa Rosa” and very impressed!

I’ll upload with some pictures, please re-check again in a few days.

VB.NET vs C# – Who will win?

Leave a reply

Hi all,

This is my first post on blog about Microsoft .NET development. So, let me say a little sorry about my bad English.
Let’s go to those day that C/C++ language dominating Visual Basic all the time. If I can remember it takes more than ten years now since Visual Basic for DOS (1.0). In this blog I’ll show the various perspective and conclude about these two languages of choices for developer to be chosen for Microsoft .NET development.

Let’s take a look after them!

Comparison begin, who will win?

For Visual Basic, this language had dominated the development community due to it’s ease of use, short learning curve, rich GUI(s) and many more reasons. As It’s really easy for people to learn and begin programming in no time!
Personally, I’ve used Visual Basic since version 3.0. In those time it still using 3.5″ diskettes for setup. The first time I try it, I’m wondering how they can made GUI programming very easy. But I never use it in any commercial applications as those time the application built from Visual Basic is so slow when comparing to any C++ based compiler. So, I’m sticking with Borland C++ and Visual C++. A few years quickly passed, I’ve a chance to try Visual Basic again but now for 5.0. It had been improved so much! Very impresses to me. However, Its performance still generate the reason that I should not use it cause of it’s so slow when comparing to C++ based. But that time I’m really think that its WYSIWYG is very good and will increase my productivity significantly. So, I decide to learn it in a little deep details. At last, I still consider to stick with C++ based as the speed really made me sick about it. But now I’m finding some tools that has a cool WYSIWYG but based on C++. So, now I got a really cool tools. Borland C++ Builder.
I used Borland C++ Builder instead of Microsoft Visual C++ with MFC for a couple of years until what Microsoft said it’ll be the next generation of software development platform named Microsoft .NET. So, now I got a chance to try again on Visual Basic. Now in version 7.0 aka VB.NET. When compared to C++ application with Win32API it still slow in nature. But the productivity was very high now for .NET. So, I use just a few days to decide to go on .NET platform instead of any Win32API or J2EE platform and using both C# and VB.NET until today.
In my experiences regards on both languages. VB.NET has higher productivity in means of a few line of code and less task effort when developing than C#. So, I call it higher productivity. C# also high productivity but in my opinion, VB.NET is better on this topic. But there are somethings you should know about VB.NET and C# when comparison is begin. I written below as one-by-one…

Performance
No one win! as it’ll produce the same output as based on Microsoft CLR. (Common Language Runtime) So, who think that C# will take ahead from VB.NET on performance. It does not!

Number of line
In my experiences, VB.NET may written less number of line in the same task but in most case It should be equal as they using the same class library.

3rd party components
Equality.

3rd party tools
C# is better as some refactoring/intellisense tools support only for C#.

OOP
Now both of them is fully OOP. In .NET 1.1, VB.NET can’t do operator overloading but in .NET 2.0, it fully support!

My personal conclusion
For my experiences, I preferred VB.NET on small to medium scale of project but C# for large. As on the internet community, I found many C# developers was better than VB.NET. I should not be 100% but for my idea. I think that VB.NET is easies for learning. So, VB.NET may not clearly understand much about architecture and programming logic. But in case of C#, it may not that case as It’s a long time well structured from the past.
At last, it up to you and the application will produce a good or bad result will be based on your understanding of problem domain, solution and your logic. So, don’t bother much about languages!

Clearly no winner between VB.NET and C# but Microsoft!

Great 3rd party Ajax control suite

Leave a reply

Have you ever tried Ajaxify your ASP.NET application? Have you tried and tired?

I’m one of those guys who already tried and tired on ajaxify the application to fully working in Ajax basis. Until the day I found one of a great Ajax control suite named Telerik RadControls for ASP.NET. It was combined by various ASP.NET UI controls. Most of the controls, I can say nearly 100% already ajaxified for your instant using without deep knowledge on Javascript writing.

I found that my productivity was much increased by this suite and their support are great as I never seen this support anywhere even the more famous controls suite like Infragistics NetAdvantage, ComponentArt, ComponentOne or any other else. You can get quick response back within 24 hours with many samples on your desired case. So, for me It doesn’t a hard decision to afford it for 1 year subscription. After I’ve purchased, I found the bonus are very impressive as Telerik give us many interesting things than I thought. In my case, I purchase Telerik RadControls for ASP.NET with subscription for 1 year. I got Telerik RadControls for WinForms too. After purchase date around three months, Telerik releases new version of Telerik RadControls for WinForms with WPF. (Windows Presentation Foundation) and they give me too! What’s a kindly guy! In next six months, I found that the product was continuously updated around 4 times with many new features. Again, when they release their Telerik Reporting product. I also got it from current subscription and I thinks this reporting product are compact, fast and very easy on deployment. (I kicked out Crystal Reports, Microsoft Reporting Services and even DevExpress’ one – Every products I listed here are required to install some special executables into web server but Telerik’s just use XCOPY method)

If you are finding for a great Ajax controls suite. I can say that you will got the point when working with Telerik’s suite. Very very impressive!