Twice

Number is such a power way to express reality.

2 year ago when I came from the US from HK, I moved stuffs out of a public storage, which was where I stored my stuff 6+ years ago before I headed back to HK. Among all the stuff that I kept, I found a few video game consoles, among them a Sony Playstation (original), a Sega Dreamcast, and tons (I really mean it) of game discs.

"Great. Let me set them up the 2 consoles so that whenever I feel like being retro, I can play some old school Parappa The Rapper and Sonic Adventure!"

2 year passed. Guess how many times I played them.

Twice, for each of them.

They occupied spaces, took me time to clean them up as they gained dust from time to time, and I only spent time to each of these consoles TWICE.

So while I was cleaning up my room today, I decided to put them back to where they belongs to: their boxes.

So unwilling to buy stuff

I went to Best Buy (huge electronic store in US) again to check out the Toshiba netbook. The display model has some problem, and although the actual product I buy from Amazon may not have the problem, that really gives a bad taste on my mouth on this netbook. Plus I still think my Tablet can do most of the job a netbook supposed to do. Sure it's hot like a stove after using for 30 minutes, but in winter this is actually a good thing. Maybe I should wait for next summer to buy a new Netbook.

I also played with ZuneHD. Such a sweet device. Great screen, and very smooth UI. Features are a bit lacking compare with iPod Touch, but it's getting very close. I won't buy it, but at least I won't LAUGH at people who buy it :-D .

Sigh, no JPEG zoom for Astak 6 inch EZ Reader

And I thought that I found a perfect eBook reader. It turns out that Astak 6 inch EZ Reader does NOT support JPEG zooming. In fact, it DOES NOT support zooming any image at all. That sucks. I don't mind if the screen is huge like Kindle DX and doesn't support zoom. But with a 6 inch screen, that's just too painful.

May be I'll just grab a Toshiba Netbook as a media player and reader instead.

Shopping without buying at Fry's again

Yep, it's me NOT contributing to economy again.

This time I was trying out a Lenovo netbook and see if it's a good deal since I saw a special offering online. The model is Lenovo Ideapad S10-2. It felt OK but after trying out Toshiba's Mini NB205-N311/W, I found that one feels so much better when doing a lot of typing. So I think I may settle on that one if I don't find any better deal within this month. I compared the price between Amazon and NewEgg and found Amazon has a better deal. This review also confirm my decision. With good battery life, nice heat emission and a reasonable price, I couldn't find a deal better at this moment.

But then, in tech world, things ALWAYS change.

I also tried the Sony netbook. I hated the right SHIFT key. The keyboard is too tiny. The only good thing about it is the style and the higher resolution.

A big surprise, though, was that I found a little device called Astak 6 inch EZ Reader. It's selling at $259.00. Not big deal, I thought, and 6 inch still seems small for my manga consumption. But the more review I read about this device, the more I was amazed. The best part of this device is that it support Chinese characters. None of the other devices, like Kindle, Sony eBook Reader, and so on support that.

• Review 1
• Offical Web site
• Review 2
• Review 3
• Review 4, with the hack that gives you a better reader
• CNet Review
• Chinese Info
• NewEgg Review
• Firmware Update
• Great font support

I also saw the Aluratek LIBRE eBook Reader PRO at the store selling at US$169.99. This one, however, doesn't seem as attractive as the Astak one. Not only the screen is smaller, but it support much less file format, and the worst part is that it doesn't support multiple language.

Finally I walked to the digital frame section and was surprised that reasonable looking digital frame only cost US$38. Sound like a great gift item to me.

Just had a hair cut

I just had a hair cut during lunch time. This time it's done by a guy in the shop, which was the first since I started going to that shop since 2 years ago.

And I seemed to forget when was the last time I had my hair cut.