Dropbox

Dropbox is a neat online service for saving your files. It is basically an online hard drive where you can store any kind of files to be accessed from anywhere. Using Dropbox has been made very easy: you register to the site and download and install a client application, which then displays as a regular folder in your file system. The magic happens when you move or copy files into that folder: they are automatically copied into the Dropbox servers and you can access them from any other computer, either by using the online user interface or by the dedicated client! 

The client is available for Windows, Linux, Mac and even some mobile platforms, so there's really no reason not to use Dropbox even if you use multiple computers with different operating systems. I figure Dropbox is a great way of storing data when using a netbook: even if the system breaks, your data will be safe, plus it will be available for your desktop computer as well. It is also unlikely that you will be handling very large files with a netbook that doesn't have too much power so the default amount of 2 GB that you get should be plenty. Register using this link and you'll even get an extra 250 MB of storage space. :)

I registered to Dropbox in the spring when someone wanted to share some photos with me (yes, Dropbox can easily be used for sharing files too, and no, those who then just want to view your files don't need to register). After that I forgot about it until I tried the Jolicloud Linux distribution which has got some sort of a Dropbox integration. I figured Dropbox would be an excellent place to store, for example, my KeePassX password database file so I could access it from both Windows and Linux, and from both my desktop computer and my netbook. I have now also saved the installation packages of some key software to Dropbox so that the next time I'm installing a fresh system I won't have to browse through a dozen web sites to get all the programs I need.

Samsung BD-C6500 and its apps

I received some extra money so I decided to invest in a Blu-Ray player. After reading reviews and reviewing technical details of several players I ended up buying a Samsung BD-C6500. This decision was influenced by the fact that I've already got a Samsung TV and that the BD-C6500 has a wireless network connection built in.

I have only watched one Blu-Ray movie and one DVD so far and the player has been working fine. It's also nice to be able to control the basic features of the TV with the BD player's remote control and vice versa. I also managed to get file sharing to work from my netbook with little effort, allowing me to view my photos from the TV screen. The player does not ship with an HDMI cable so one had to be bought separately, but as I understand it this is the case with all Blu-Ray players.

The BD-C6500 has a feature called Internet@TV. There's no web browser but some dedicated applications for certain web services and some simple games. The total number of games and applications combined is 17. You should be able to download more but I cannot see any applications in the store that haven't been installed already. Could be a regional issue, maybe there are more applications available in the US than here in Finland -- I don't know. Anyway, here's a photo of the main application menu:

So, from top-left to bottom-right: YouTube, Picasa, Twitter, AccuWeather, History Channel, Dracula's Coffin, Getty Images, Google Maps, Kurakku, Mahjongg Fruits, Memory, Quizz Master, Rock Swap Adventures, Sudoku, Texas Hold'em, USA Today and Facebook.

And here are photos of the applications in that order (except for Twitter, to which I do not have an account, and Getty Images, which refused to work when I was taking these photos. Sorry about the layout, Blogger just won't let me format the images nicely. And there's some Finnish language in at least the YouTube photo/screenshot, don't be alarmed. Anyway, click to zoom in:

As you can see, the Facebook app will be available in Apr.. wait, what? It's June already! Maybe it means April 2011? Anyway... The apps are not too pretty and look like they could be used on, say, a mobile phone as-is. My main problem with the games, though, is that they are completely stateless. You can't save your progress and there are no high score lists. Most of them don't seem to have any sounds and none has any music, so they may get old pretty quickly.

Google Maps works fine. However, there's no zoom-in or zoom-out animation, just a spinning "please wait" symbol, so the experience is not quite as smooth as it could be. You can look at a map or satellite imagery just as you could on a regular computer.

The YouTube application looks strange because it seems that all videos have the ranking of just one star. This is probably because YouTube recently changed its rating scale from 1 to 5 stars to just "like" or "dislike". Also, I could not find a free search interface so you are pretty much stuck with whatever videos the different categories offer you. Of course, there's the My Favorites category which should contain the videos you have favorited in the past, but I did not test it yet.

Tools for web developers

A handy tool for web developers is Dynamic Drive's Gradient Image Maker. Creating gradient images is a basic thing that a web developer has to do and there's no need to fire up Photoshop for something like that. Microsoft Paint can be used to create gradients, too, but a dedicated tool beats that hands down. :)

Another nifty tool, possibly for selecting the colors for your gradient, is Iconico's ColorPic. It can be used to pick a color anywhere from your screen. It's got an adjustable magnifier, you can nudge the mouse cursor pixel by pixel using the arrow keys, and you can select the average color of a small area of pixels in case selecting the color of a single pixel is not desired!

Firefox Personas

The newest version of the Firefox browser, 3.6, offers a new, nifty little feature called Personas. A Persona is like a skin that Firefox can wear. Personas only change the background and not, for example, the buttons. On the Firefox Personas site you can try the personas by just hovering your mouse cursor over the Persona image and take it into use by clicking "Wear It". It couldn't be any simpler! There are already thousands of Personas from which to choose. I am using different Personas on different computers. So far they are these:

• Niagra Falls by Lee.Tom
• Yosemite by Lee.Tom
• Mozilla Sky by sanideos
• Sunset Over Water by MaDonna
  

Opera 10.51 RC1

A month ago I wrote about Opera 10.50 beta. Now the 10.50 has already passed the beta stage and what's more, Opera 10.51 Release Candidate 1 for Windows has just been released. This version contains performance improvements and an even better JavaScript engine, especially what comes to memory management. These features are of course very welcome to all netbook users. :)

Image processing software

When you open an image file in Windows 7 it opens in Windows Photo Viewer by default. It can be used to view and rotate images but nothing else, so you need a better piece of software if you intend to crop, resize, adjust or otherwise edit your photos.

IrfanView does all this. It is a piece of freeware that I have used for as long as I have used the Opera browser and the NoteTab text editor, ten years or so. The user interface is minimalistic and the program is controlled using the menus or the shortcut keys. IrfanView can be used to batch process an entire folder full of images or just one image at a time. It can read dozens of file formats and write an impressive number of formats too. There are also lots of plugins for it bringing in some extra functionality. They are really easy to install because they are provided as one big installer file from the IrfanView homepage. What's also very important for netbook users is that IrfanView is a lightweight and fast program.

Hint: If you work with images that have transparency, set the IrfanView background color to pink (Options | Properties/Settings... | Viewing | Main window color). Then you will know exactly where the transparency starts and where it ends, as pink is featured in really few pictures, unlike black and white.

Text editors

So far I have introduced you to alternative office software, browsers, instant messaging software and PDF readers. Today it's text editors meant for plain text.

So, Windows ships with Notepad. It's as simple as a text editor can get. A good text editor can save you time by having useful shortcuts, being able to have several files open at once, allowing you to do search and replace on several files at once, allowing you to use regular expressions when searching and replacing, etc.

All this and much more can be done using NoteTab Pro. It costs $29.95 but is well worth every penny. There is also a free version called NoteTab Light which is a very capable program too -- a comparison of features between the different versions can be found here.

I myself have been an avid NoteTab user for years already, not least because it has got its own scripting language which can be used to program the application to do almost anything you can think of. Automatic reformatting of any text you just copied to clipboard from another program? Consider it done. HTML table wizard? Piece of cake. FTP integration? No problem. The scripts are called clips and organized into clipbooks. The program comes with many ready made clipbooks and more can be downloaded.

NoteTab has also got a very active and helpful community at the Yahoo! Groups. It is divided into a general section, clips, and www-authoring.

The only thing that NoteTab lacks is syntax highlighting for other languages than HTML. If you need that, I can warmly recommend an open source program called SciTE.

Alternative PDF readers

Previously I have written about alternatives to Internet Explorer and alternatives to Windows Messenger. This time it's alternatives to the Adobe Reader.

Foxit Reader is a small and fast PDF reader. It is commercial software but the basic version is free and has all the main features and, in some aspeceven more than Adobe Reader has.

Sumatra PDF is another slim and quick reader. It is designed so that it does not require any special installation procedures and can be used from a USB stick. It is also open source, if that's what you prefer.

Both of these are good alternatives to the Adobe Reader, so it's a personal choice between them. Either one works faster than the Adobe Reader, and the software that you are using on your netbook can never be too fast.

Pidgin instant messaging software

Windows ships with the Messenger instant messaging (IM) software. I, too, use Messenger, along with ICQ that I have even been using for a much longer time.

A while ago I found out that my Messenger was taking ridiculous amounts of CPU time, slowing down the entire system. It appears that it was because of (some of) the advertisements that the main view displays so I started looking for another IM software and found Pidgin. It is a lot faster than Messenger and does not display any advertisements. It also supports multiple IM protocols, i.e. you can use both ICQ and Messenger using the same piece of software. Google Talk and many other protocols are supported too, so give it a try. :)

PS. Related to alternative software: a month ago I wrote about alternative web browsers!

Synergy

If you are using more than one computer on the same desk simultaneously, such as when using your netbook next to your desktop computer, you will find Synergy a very useful program. It shares the mouse and keyboard of one computer to the rest. The mouse moves from one computer screen to another just by moving it "over the edge" and the keyboard control is switched simultaneously. Synergy uses your existing local area network so you don't need any special hardware either. Here are some screenshots: the first two are from a Windows XP computer (called Mjollnir) that acts as the server, i.e. shares its keyboard and mouse. The final screenshot is from a Windows 7 netbook (called Hummingbird) that acts as a client and can then receive commands from the Windows XP server.

HD videos

Slashdot recently featured an article called How to play HD video on a netbook by PCPro. It includes buying a codec for about $10 (although someone commented on the original story that Shark007's codecs do the same thing for free). However, I'm happy to report that the Asus EeePC 1101HA plays HD videos out of the box! I tried it with a 1920×816 (1080p), 23.967 FPS trailer of The Bourne Ultimatum, found from H264info.com. As is mentioned in the PCPro article too, some stutter in the video is inevitable, especially in the scenes where a lot is happening at once, but basically it is perfectly watchable anyway. The sound plays very smoothly and there was no stutter to be heard.

inSSIDer

If you are using WLAN, this piece of software is for you: inSSIDer. It shows you the signal strengths and channels of the wireless networks visible to your computer. With inSSIDer it is very easy to see competing networks, i.e. networks that are on the same channel and thus interfere with each other. Many people just leave their network to operate on the default channel which also contributes to the risk of using the same channel as your neighbor. inSSIDer also draws a graph about the signal strengths as functions of time so you can, for example, walk around your apartment with your laptop and determine if your WLAN reaches every corner of the place equally well or if you should move your access point to ensure better reception. I have also tested that inSSIDer works on Windows XP and on Windows 7.

Oh, and one more thing. What is this "SSID" that's highlighted in the name of the program; why not just "Insider"? Wikipedia explains: SSID stands for service set identifier, which is just a fancy name for "the name of a wireless network".

Password management

Many of us have dozens of passwords to tens of different services: emails, web forums, workplace computers, games, etc. It is often quite difficult to remember all of them and as a result people use the same password in many services. This is a bad habit because now if your password gets stolen from one service, the attacker gains access to your other systems too. Many people also use very weak passwords, something like "qwerty" or "12345", which are easy to guess just by trying out the most common alternatives.

Luckily there are solutions to these problems: password manager programs. The program saves and encrypts all your passwords behind one master password. That one still needs to be a strong one and you need to memorize it, but after you have set up the system, that's the only password you are ever going to have to remember again. I have been using KeePass and its cross platform version KeePassX. I won't bother writing a full featured review as I just found a recent KeePass review by soft2review, so if you are not yet convinced that you need KeePass, go read it!

Opera 10.50 beta

Opera Software just released a new version of Opera browser, 10.50 beta. It seems that they have borrowed some ideas from Google Chrome. The user interface is more minimalistic than ever, providing more space for the actual web pages. Individual tabs or windows can be made "private", i.e. Opera forgets everything that has happened in them after they are closed. The JavaScript engine is claimed to be significantly faster than before, and it just looks nice on Windows 7. :)

Utilities for Windows XP

While I'm running Windows 7 on my netbook, I still use Windows XP on my desktop computer. I'd now like to share links to a couple of my favorite utility programs for Windows XP. 

Firstly, Taskbar Shuffle. Picture this: you have been using your computer for a few hours and you've got a dozen of programs open: your browser, email client, instant messenger, a few Windows Explorer windows, and so on. Now, your browser crashes and you need to restart it. Suppose it was the first program you started after you booted your computer. Now, the browser's icon is moved in the taskbar from the leftmost side to all the way right, after all your other programs. I know it distracts me when suddenly a program icon is not located where I expect it to be. This is the situation where Taskbar Shuffle comes to rescue. It is a very simple program that allows you to reorder the icons of the running programs in the taskbar.

Another neat piece of utility software is Shell Enhancer. It also does what the name suggests: adds features to the Windows user interface. It has got a lot more features than Taskbar Shuffle but it also stays nice and quiet until you need it. My favorite of the long list of features is the ability to pin any window on top. Simple but effective. Another one is the ability to make any window transparent by any amount.

Browsers

I have been using the Opera browser for ten years or so and still find it to be the best there is. Opera has had all the best features, such as mouse gestures and tabbed browsing, long before Firefox or Internet Explorer. What's more, they are built in so you don't even need to download dozens of plugins to make it usable in the first place. I'm also using Opera Mini in my cellphone.

That being said, I think Firefox is a great browser too. I couldn't, for example, do any web development without the Firebug plugin anymore. Adblock Plus is an absolutely crucial plugin for any Firefox user as it blocks the ads -- netbooks usually don't have screen space to waste, nor do they like heavy, flashy web pages.

Chrome is a fast and light weight browser by Google. It, too, supports plugins. There's a post at the Google Chrome Blog that walks you through with those. Chrome has got a highly optimized JavaScript engine so those modern web applications such as Google Docs should be pretty fast with it.

So, my point? There are alternatives to Internet Explorer, and as a netbook owner you should definitely try them out and see if they perform better than IE. Lifehacker's blog post from a couple of months ago compares the browsers. In the end, IE gets the lowest score of them all. They were the first to admit that the measurements are not very scientific or too accurate but I do think their results bear at least some significance.

If I were you I would now start using Opera because a) it is, in my opinion, the best and b) because I will post some Opera tips later.

Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000 review & X-Mouse Button Control

I started writing this post and noticed that I was never getting to the actual point, so here it is in the first paragraph. Software of the day: X-Mouse Button Control. Why? Read on if you are still interested.

I believe that everyone prefers a real mouse to a touchpad. I do too, and with a portable computer I wanted the mouse to be portable as well, so I bought a cordless one. More specifically a Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000, since I had bought a Bluetooth dongle too.

The mouse is quite small but feels good and it comes with a neat protective bag. I have two main problems with the mouse, though: firstly, it only has one extra button and secondly, Microsoft drivers do not even support this mouse at all! It is a problem recognized by Microsoft too, and I doubt they will be doing much about it. The extra button, that is on the left side of the mouse, is set to do the "Back" action by default. That's all nice and well but I use mouse gestures with my browsers so I don't do anything with a back button.

With my desktop computer I use a mouse that has got two buttons on the side. I have binded those to Ctrl and Shift, because you often need to do ctrl-clicks or shift-drags or something similar. It is a Logitech mouse and I was able to do that with Logitech software.

But, as I already wrote, the Microsoft software does not support the Bluetooth Mouse 5000. I started to look for another piece of software that I could use to rebind my mouse button functions and found X-Mouse Button Control. And it turned out to be even better than I expected! Not only are you able to rebind all the buttons, you can do that on a per-program basis. In a Media Player you could have the wheel adjust the volume and in all other programs to scroll. In games you can adjust the buttons to whatever key combinations you please, etc. So don't wait anymore, go download it!

Update your drivers

The Windows Update is a good way of keeping the system up to date, but it doesn't always contain all the updates, especially for device drivers. One of the key components of a computer is the graphics chip, Intel GMA500 in the EeePC 1101HA's case. It is not a very powerful chip so any performance improvements for it are welcome. The newest version when I got my netbook was 8.14.10.2019 but the Windows update only offers the version 8.14.10.1015 or something like that. It may not sound like a big jump but it actually improved the Windows Experience Index for desktop graphics from 2.9 to 4.3! Mind you, the scale is from 1.0 to 7.9. The number for gaming graphics was also improved, although very slightly, from 2.3 to 2.4.

To check the version of your driver, open Device Manager, locate 'Display adapters' and double click the Inter(R) Graphics Media Accelerator 500 below it. The driver version reads on the Driver tab.

If your driver is not up to date, direct your browser to the Intel Download Center. Download the win7.zip, extract its contents into a temporary location and run the Setup application. This installs the driver after a few dialogs. The screen will blink during the install, so don't be alarmed. When the setup completes check back in the Device Manager that it really updated the driver. You may now run the Windows Experience Index benchmark yourself to see the improved figures. :)