All those that said it was vaporware have been proven wrong.  Sure it was late.  When was the last time that you saw any technology product delivered on time?  They all slip.  Most of the time they slip their schedules so early that the customers don’t even know.  Regardless, they have shipped and many people have them in their hands.  I am one of those people.  I haven’t had much time to use it, but I’ll give my first impression now, with more detail later.

I opened the box and was impressed with the construction and the size.  There was a card in the box that told me not to change the username just yet.  I’m not a fan of that security model.  I plugged it in and it came right up. The mouse did freeze up on me fairly quickly.  It turns out the wireless mouse I was using was causing problems.  As I undestand it, the CherryPal using so little power that it has some trouble with USB devices that need power.  I connected an old wired USB mouse that I had and all systems were go.  I did poke around a bit, but ran out of time.  The main thing I noticed was that the speed was very usable.  I had heard that there were some speed issues.  Personnaly, I thought it did pretty well.  I understand that this computer is not a horsepower machine.  More to come…

Note: Just to be clear I did receive a CherryPal PC for free.  Although it appears that was wasn’t vaporware, has become vaporware, or at least vapor-company….

Natures Promise makes a frozen pepperoni pizza with uncured pepperoni!  So there are no nitrates or nitrites.  Reviews are mixed about how bad those things really are, but if you can avoid them, why not?

Like many people I bought a bunch of compact flourescent light bulbs to save energy.  Like many people I took the label for what it said.  I bought 60 watt “replacement” bulbs that were 13 watts.  WooHoo!!!  That is 47 fewer watts of power!  That’s awesome!  So I get them home and remove several perfectly good incandescent bulbs, flip the switch and Viola…. Wait, these aren’t as bright.  Then I did a little reading.  Here’s the jist.  A 60 watt incandescent bulb puts out ~900 lumens, some say 870.  The 13 watt CFL that I bought says right on the package that it puts out 830 lumens.  That is less useful light.  That is not what I would consider a “replacement”.  Basically I think that marketing these bulb that produce less light as “replacements” will hurt the use of CFLs.  Go with a 15 Watt CFL it is much closer to 900 lumens.  That way you have an actual comparable bulb.  You will have almost the same amount of light that you are used to.  That sounds like a much better plan to me. 

Now it seems that Chrysler is going electric.  The company that brought use the Hemi is going to release an all electric vehicle (3 in fact) in 2010.  At least that’s the plan right now.  Have a look at this: Link This is the same company that makes Jeeps.  Granted there are vehicles that get worse fuel economy than Jeeps.  But they are not known for their great MPG ratings.

I’m very interested in this “all electric vehicle” stuff.  Chevrolet is releasing the Volt in 2010.  That one is supposed to have a 40 mile range on electric only.  Then the gas engine kicks at about 45 mpg.  Not too shappy if you ask me.  Then of course, there is the Tesla.  Those cars are sweet!  not terribly practical in passenger space or price.  Although, they have been talking about a passenger car in the under $30K range.  Very interesting.

At least the new hybrids look like normal cars.  I’m sure some of you remember the original hybrid, the Honda ugly Insight.

T. Boone Pickens isn’t the only one putting some cash into wind power.  It appears that there is a plan to build a wind farm off the coast of Delaware.  Like the title says, this isn’t really new.  It’s been in the news for a few months.  I just wanted to bring it up as another example of how people are taking this kind of thing seriously.

CNN article

How many pre-approved credit card offers do you get in a month? Don’t know. I’m not surprised. I get several every week. I learned today that these companies submit requests to the credit bureaus for, let’s just say people with a credit score higher than 600. You want to what the credit bureaus do with that request? They fulfill it! That’s right. Your information, my information, your moms information is available for the asking. Then they send you all this crap mail.

It appears that there is a way to Opt-Out of receiving these pre-screened or preapproved credit card, and insurance offers. The web site is: https://www.optoutprescreen.com/ They ask for your name, address, Social Security number and birth date. You are only required to provide your name and address. You do not have to provide your SSN or birth date. They say that they would be used to make sure they opt-out the right person.

Of course I didn’t trust it when I first saw it. So I did a little checking. The main reassuring piece of information that I found was a reference to this web site on the FTC.gov web site. I also found an article written about the service that talked about some of the same concerns that I had. Let me just say that I don’t have in-depth knowledge of this organization and therefore cannot endorse it. I find enough information to make me comfortable enough to submit our information to opt-out. Now the real measure is the see how much less crap mail we get. Maybe we can save a tree or two.

More info:
FTC
InfoWorld

Edit: I forgot to mention the fact that fewer of these preapproved applications could reduce your chance of identity theft.  What happens to that application when you throw it in the trash?  Anyone could get it and submit it.  I’m sure there a place to change the address on there. (hint: shred everything!)

Why is organic zucchini packaged on a styrofoam tray?
Why do prenatal vitamins have red40 in them?
Why is there color added to my deodorant?

Maybe not president, but how about Secretary of Energy?  I need to read up on it more.  However, from what I have read and heard the Pickens Plan sounds pretty darn good.  Take a look:PickensPlan
I understand that distribution is a problem. Transmitting electricity over long distances is not very efficient. You actually lose power in the process. Some winds farms will shut the turbines down during times of reduced demand. That’s not good! There are ways to “store” electricity. Of course you can use batteries. My favorite is underground air tanks. When the demand is low, use the extra power to run compressors that force air into underground tanks or caverns. When demand is high release the stored air and drive a turbine with it. Viola! Stored electricity.

There are plenty of sources of power available. Many of them are immature, but it we work on them, we can make them happen.

More later…. need sleep….

The CherryPal C100 Desktop is available for order.  They expect to start shipping at the end of July.  This little system is very promising.  The specs are below as listed on their website.  It looks very straight forward.  It has a monitor connectotion, 2 USB ports one 10/100 ethernet port and an audio out.  I would liked to have seen 4 total USB ports.  Once you connect your keyboard and mouse you’re out of connections.  Of course you could use a hub but that’s an extra device to take up deskspace.  Using a 400MHz Freescale chip and 256MB of RAM, I’ll be interested to see what kind of performance we can get from this.  At $249 it’s a little more expensive than I had hoped.  However, if it really runs at 2 watts as claimed, it would eventually pay for itself in energy savings.  I expect to start seeing reviews of this unit soon after Aug 1.  Good Luck!

 Specifications

Freescale’s MPC5121e mobileGT processor, 800 MIPS (400 MHz) of processing
256 MB of DDR2 DRAM
4GB NAND Flash-based solid state drive
WiFi 802.11b/g Wi-Fi
Two USB 2.0 ports
One 10/100 Ethernet with RJ-45 jack
One VGA DB-15 display out jack
Headphone level stereo audio out 3.5mm jack
9vDC 2.5mm 10 watt AC-DC adapter power supply
Weighs 10 ounces
1.3” high, 5.8” x 4.2” wide

Intel has released a motherboard that has me pretty excited. Not as much as I was when I first heard about it, but still excited. Initially I mistook the report as saying the board only used 4 watts of power. That would be amazing! I have a couple of systems that run over 100 watts. It turns out that the chip (processor) uses 4 watts. The chipset that drives the rest of the board uses another 22 watts. That still leaves the board running at under 30 watts which is still good. I’m considering this board for my next build. Unless something better comes along of course.

Link