So it is about Xbox 360 and winning the next generation console race. EXCUSE ME but Xbox 360 is NOT next-gen and don’t get me wrong neither is PS3 or Nintendo Wii. They are CURRENT generation of consoles. Let us have a look:

Previous generation

• Nintendo: Game Cube
• Sony: PlayStation 2
• Microsoft: Xbox

Current generation

• Nintendo: Wii
• Sony: PLAYSTATION 3
• Microsoft: Xbox 360

Next generation

• Let us wait and see what they will announce in the future.

Sure there are also ‘older generations’ with Nintendo 64, PSone, SNES, Dreamcast and many more.

When PS3 and Xbox 360 was announced they became Next-Gen then they got released and therefore must be current generation of consoles.

Oh, and who is going to win the current generation race; who knows. My guess is that they will all 3 be winners, one way or another.

Anyway this is just my opinion on this. I’m sure not all will agree.

Share This

Let’s have a look at previous/current monitors and why I think that wide screen monitors often are no good.

There does exist monitors with other resolutions than the below mentioned once, specially if you look at the notebooks, but the once below are the most common desktop monitor.

Past monitors

In the good old days we had monitors with low resolution, such as 1024×768 which is still very used. Actually, one of my flat screens is 1024×768 pixels and still in use today.

Then 1280×1024 got more normal, especially for 17″ and for some strange reason also 19″ screens. I only used 19″ monitor once and to be honest, it annoyed me. I was used to 17″ and then suddenly I had the SAME RESOLUTION but on a bigger area (19″) so this just meant bigger pixels; no good to me really.

Same resolution but bigger pixels does happen a good bit with the new big monitors also.

So finally things started to make sense, 20″ with 1600×1200, pretty high resolution even compared to our standards.

Wide screen madness

It seems the world went Wide Screen Crazy. Sure wide screen can be great for watching movies or playing games. But I never really saw the point for ‘normal’ use.

Let us have a look at the 20″, the standard resolution is 1600×1200 pixels, but the wide screen is 1680×1050 pixels. This is going from 1.920.000 pixels down to 1.747.200 pixels. For ‘normal’ use it must be great with the taller resolution, so you can view more of your Word or Excel data. The 80 pixels more in the width does not give you much really. Often the 22″ wide screen got the same resolution as the 20″

The 19″ wide is a joke if you ask me, 1440×900 pixels; sure the reduction of number of pixels is not as bad as with 20″ but still, 900 pixels in the height!!

The only reason for me to get a 20″ wide screen would be if it could be rotated 90 degrees.

Let us step up in resolution.

Currently I feel the best monitor is 24″, with 1920×1200 (Notice, same height as normal 20″). When I got my Dell 24″ I was SO shocked to start with, why I didn’t do that earlier (money issue of course). Since then we have seen 27″ (from Dell), also same resolution as the 24″.

Here I can actually see a reason to go from the 24″ to the 27″, IF you use it as extra screen in bed room or such; for movies. Just too bad that they are a lot more expensive, for Dell the 27″ cost around 140% MORE than the 24″. The prices for all monitors have dropped a lot during the last year and the 24″ one seems pretty alright now.

The current top monitor is the 30″ with 2560×1600 pixels. Main problem with the 30″ is of course the very high price and the requirement of special dual DVI linked graphics card. The graphics card issue is probably the smallest; the graphics card I got in my Mac Pro should be able to drive two times 30″ but I’m not sure if my VISA card could.

Multi monitor setup

Often people start out with a single monitor and later invest in a bigger one. Depending on desk space they often find them self using both monitors. For us programmers there is no going back; have you once used two monitors then going back to a single one is out of the questions.

As mentioned in an earlier post (Second graphics card for Apple Mac Pro with Boot Camp) I’m now using a setup with 3 monitors.

From left to right: 17″ Sony SDM-S71 (1280×1024), 24″ Dell 2407WFP (Rotated 90 degrees, 1200×1920) and finally the old 15″ Philips 151AX (1024×768).

The 17″ screen works as main display; so all gaming happens on this monitor in normal screen mode. This is also great for programming as I have source code on the middle screen and can easy debug any game running on the left screen. The right screen is mainly used for MSN, ICQ, Skype and such.

This is a GREAT setup, it gives a great view when you work with source code, Word Documents, PDF files, blogs (surfing the web is a lot nicer). Excel documents are sometimes best viewed in 1920×1200, specially the old ones I have where I would place any chart to the right of the numbers.

Future (Give me a square monitor)

So what’s next? I already got a great setup but that does not make me happy (well, I’m not unhappy either).

I have been considering two ways of extending my current setup as it does allow for one more monitor to be connected.

1. Get one more Dell 24″ of 100% the same type as mine, rotate it and place it next to the current one. Problem with this is that the very latest Dell 24″ does not support rotated display. So I might have to find one on eBay.
2. Get another great 24″ monitor and place it none rotated to the left of the current 24″. This would be the new primary screen; great for gaming and for movies. The old 17″ would then be placed on top of the current 15″, just not sure how as none of them supports wall mounting.

When I sit here and look at the big monitor I just don’t understand why they don’t make square monitors; why do they have to be wide screen. Give me a square monitor with 1920×1920 (or why not 2048×2048) pixels. Make sure pixels are square also of course. Let the size be 52×52cm (20.4×20.4″), given a total of 28″. I’m pretty sure the graphics cards could handle that, it is after all the same number of pixels as a 30″ (4MP). Now I would be happy.

Having two 24″ monitors next to each other (or on top of each other) would give this resolution but with 4cm between each half.

As far as I remember I once read about one company who produced custom designed monitors; they took two ‘normal’ monitors apart and was able to place each display without any distance between them. They didn’t use 24″ but still not a bad idea. I was not able to find the company again, so if someone knows then let me know.

I searched the net and was not able to find any such screens; I wonder why, there must be a market for them.

Share This

Since I had an old unused 15″ TFT I decided to ask directly at the Apple Boot Camp forums about support for ATI X 1900 XT and a NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT. I didn’t get a 100% confirmation that it would work but I went ahead and bought the graphics card. In case it would not work then the graphics card would go on sale on eBay.

NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT

The card arrived in a box without any fancy pictures on. I’m used to seeing boxes with fancy NVIDIA or ATI/AMD logos and images but then again, this is another market and the card can not be bought in a store so not a real surprise. But I was a bit surprised to see that it came with out CD or any instructions. All I found was some papers about world wide 1 year guarantee and then a sheet: For installation see the documentation that came with the computer. It also came without any bundled games but again, that was not expected.

So I went to Apple’s support site and found some documentation, all very simple.

Installing

Open Mac Pro (No screws), lay it down and remove the holder for the PCI express cards (No screws). Plug the card it. Connect it and turn the Mac on. This is how hardware installation should be.

Screen setup

I’m now using a setup with 3 TFT screens. From left to right: 17″ Sony SDM-S71 (1280×1024), 24″ Dell 2407WFP (Rotated 90 degrees, 1200×1920) and the old 15″ Philips 151AX (1024×768). The plan was to have the 17″ as primary screen.

OS X 10.4 (Tiger)

The new graphics card was detected right away and when I booted I got a window with the settings for the PCI Express lanes, I had just added it to slot 3 but with this I was not able to get more than 1-wide lane. So I moved it to slot 4 and was able to get 8 lanes. The main ATI card is using the 16 lane PCI slot.

I was able to setup the 3 screens as I planned, took 15 minutes to align them in the system preferences so that the mouse moves correct from screen to screen.

Windows XP

I was worried about getting the graphics cards working with Windows XP but this turned out to be without reason. Windows detected the graphics card right away but found no drivers for it. These are on the Windows driver CD that Boot Camp creates, so I was able to install these.

The primary screen was set to the 15″ to start with, but I just disabled the 15″ and the task bar moved over to the 17″ and all worked fine.

Rotating the 24″ monitor went without problems with the NVIDIA control panel. Alignment was as easy as under OS X.

UltraMon

Just wanted to mention this great little tool, a must have if you use multiple monitors. It allows you to move windows between monitors with a single click, resize to cover all monitors (taking into account that monitors does not have same height). It also allows for the task bar to be shown on all monitors. I have it setup so the task bar pr monitor only shows the applications that is running on that monitor.

There is also support for wall paper and screen savers, which can be defined pr monitor. Having 3 different screen savers did fail for me and only one was shown; not a problem for me as I never have screen savers enabled anyway.

Verdict

I had no problems with adding the extra graphics and also no problems with setting the screens up as I wanted. So now I got a rather nice setup, especially for when I’m programming. Having the source code on the 24″ rotated screen is amazing. Really wonder why I never tried that.

Having the 17″ screen as primary is perfect, as it allows games to be played on that. Also great for when working, as the game we are working on will show up on this screen and not cover the editor.

Just wondering what I should use the last output for… One more 24″ or is that over doing it…

Share This

The website from ACECAD is now working again and I did some checking there. I will not be updating the review but just add a link here.

Software:

I mentioned the lack of documentation for the software, especially for the new functions, well I was looking in the latest A501
documentation but the software is used for all the DigiMemo products. Looking at the A502 documentation did also not help but the A402/L2 documentation helped to solve the mystery of ‘Online writing’ and ‘Conversion’.

Online Writing

This feature does NOT work with A501; as far as I can tell from documentation it is only for A402 and L2. When enabled it should allow the user to use the notepad and see the result ‘live’ in the software. So if you draw a line on the paper it will appear in the software right away. I fail to see much use for that but never mind, I can’t use it anyway.

Conversion

To enable this feature the software “DigiMemo Handwriting Recognition” must be installed before. It is then possible to convert the handwriting directly from within the normal software. This function did not work with the trial version of MyScript Notes.

Tablet Device

I found another feature that is probably only available when using A402 and L2 is that the notepad can be used as a table device in windows.

Comments from Daniel Klein

My friend Daniel did a posting about the A501 after he read mine; It can be found here (It is in German). His main worry is how hard the pen has to be pressed against the paper before it works. Actually this is holding him of from buying a DigiMemo notepad. For me it is not a problem as I often just do a few quick notes but where he will be writing a lot. I just did a test, did some writing and a small drawing where I didn’t care about the symbol in the display that indicates it receives info. If I had ink on paper then I was happy. I held the pen as I would do whenever I take notes on ‘normal’ paper. The result wasn’t that bad really. I had a few letters missing a bit, one letter was all gone. So all in all I was very happy.

Shock factor

Oh man. My handwriting is really bad. I have a feeling that the DigiMemo might help with improving my handwriting because there is NO way I’m going to share my notes with anyone before I get better.

Share This

There is a follow up to this review which gives an update on documentation and the new features. I also did a new test to check how hard the pen has to be pressed before it works. Find this follow up here.

Review of: DigiMemo A501
Manufacturer: ACECAD
Manufacturer’s web site: http://www.acecad.com.tw
Description: Digital notepad that makes it possible to drawn on paper and at the same time record the drawing in digital format.

The A501 is a digital notepad that allows you to draw on normal paper and while doing so it will record all information and you can later import this into the PC software (Check ACECAD’s website for Linux and Mac software) and manipulate it using the software.

I often do notes in connection with programming, blogging & game design ideas and thought it would be handy to have them on the PC. This would make it easier to share the notes with friends to hear their opinion. Of course I could always scan the notes in but this is much smoother. I paid 129 CHF for the A501 which equals to 103 USD/80 EUR. This is the most expensive notepad that I ever bought, but then again this one is different.

I got a spare pen and a 512 MB Compact Flash card at the same time.

The notepad

Before ordering the A501 I was considering the A401 which is an A4 one (A501 is A5) difference was also 32 MB instead of 8 MB. I had a feeling the A4 one would be too big, as the pad is larger than the paper; around 8 cm at top and 2.5 at the bottom and 3cm at each side. Actually, comparing with a normal A4 paper sheet they are almost equal in size. When I did receive the A501 I was shocked, the box was SO big… I doubled checked yes, said A501 and not A401.

If you check the manufacture web side then you will find no A401 or A501 but instead the A402 and A502. They are not on sale here in Switzerland yet, so that’s why I went with the A501. As far as I can tell the only difference is 32 MB vs 8MB for the A501/A502.

The A501 supports 100% normal paper, max 12mm height for a notepad; one was included in the box. To be able to record the drawing a special pen is needed; this pen does work as a normal one also. Both pad and pen requires batteries and they where also included. It also came with manual which for me was in German and the CD with the software was in English. Getting German documentation is normal here in Switzerland so I will not complain. The A501 also came with a USB cable (I read in another review that it does not use the standard USB mini-plug, I’m not able to verify that at the moment, will do later and update this review) and also a paper clip.

The pen can be placed at the bottom of the notepad; which will be okay as long as I just use the notepad here at home but if I put it in a bag then I don’t find it secure enough, so I rather have it in a pocket. The paper clip is for when you need to draw on single sheets of paper; which I did not test.

There is a display that shows what page is selected and if there have been drawn on it. It will also give warnings when 90% of the storage is used and when full.

Using the notepad

The A501 was very easy to get working, insert the batteries (got to be put correct or it all dies). Then turn it on and you are ready to draw. There is a few buttons on the pad:

• Power on/off
• Next page
• Previous page
• Next Free page
• Erase

So to get started with writing/drawing you turn it on and press “next free page” and you can use the pen as a normal pen. I read other reviews where they wrote that they had problems with getting all data recorded, the pen have to be hold straight and pressed a bit. Nice thing is that the display shows when it receives info from the pen, so if you don’t see this symbol then the pen should be pressed harder on the paper. I never had this problem while using the notepad.

So while you are drawing/writing it will record all movements and store it. It can hold up to 999 pages assuming you have enough space. The test drawing I did (see picture) used 32 KB, so the internal memory would be able to hold 255 of them. The 512 MB CF card would be able to handle more than 16.000 of them, so you might ask why I bought 512 MB since it is WAY more than enough. Well, it was the smallest I could find. One note, if you buy a CF card then it MUST be from SanDisk and max 512 MB otherwise they do not guarantee it will work.

One very nice feature when using a CF card is that no card reader/writer is needed, just leave the CF card in the A501, connect the USB cable and two removable drives will appear in Windows; one for the 8MB internal memory and one for the CF card.

The A501 is of course heavier than a normal notepad. It weights almost 700g with paper, which is pretty much if you compare to the weight of just the A5 paper which is around 160g. For quick notes you can hold it but I found that if I do a lot of drawing/writing then it was easiest to use when it was laying on a table, so perfect for taking notes at a conference or meeting.

The software

The A501 came with a CD with the software. I installed the software and felt it was working fine but I then checked their web site and found version 2.2. Shocking the version on the CD was 1.0. So I strongly suggest that you download the latest software. Just a pity that they don’t have updated manual for the software also, saw it now features “online writing” and “conversion”. I just don’t have any idea what it is and how it is used.

It is nice that the A501 does not require any drives (At least not with Windows XP), once connected by USB it will appear as a removable drive. So you can also copy other files to this “drive” if you want to bring your other files with you, not that they can be used on the A501 of course.

The software allows you to import the files generated using the A501, when you save from the software it will use another format (also their own format). When I did this first time I was surprised to see that it had the horizontal lines from the paper included. This can be enabled/disabled (not in version 1.0); it is possible to import a background also. I would here have liked to have different predefined backgrounds, such as squares.

The imported digital page can be manipulated in different ways, you can select an area and change the color, highlight text and change the thickness of the pen used. You can erase parts, move them around and even scale parts. It is also possible to define text areas where you can enter text directly using the Windows fonts. You can also export the image to GIF, PNG, BMP and JPEG. I noticed that the resolution is higher with version 2.0 of the software. BMP files are too large to be used really; my test page used 9 MB. It is also possible print and email the page. When printing the background can be included or it can use a blank background. When emailing the page it is possible to select if the page should be attached as JPG or ACECAD’s own e-book format. They automatic add a text line to the email with a URL to where there the software can be downloaded.

One thing missing is OCR, so the software can not recognize the handwritten text. So you will not be able to load the data into Word and continue editing. I did find one program for it ‘MyScript Notes‘; I will give the trial version a try and if it is any good then expect a review of it later. My feeling is that it will fail with my handwriting; just as most people do!

Result of a test page

I did a drawing especially for this review and here are the various versions/stages. Hope people will not mind my bad handwrite.

Click the images to see the high resolution image:

Digital camera.	Saved as image with background lines.	Saved as image without background lines.	Modified.

The Good

• Easy to setup, just a 10 minutes job; worth reading the manual.
• Software works fine and offers a nice set of features to manipulate the text.
• Easy to use.
• No need for a card reader/writer when using a CF card.

The Bad

• A bit heavy to hold but works fine on a table.
• Lack of documentation for updated software but the basic usage is documented.
• No OCR support in software; the software MyScript Notes does support the format used by DigiMemo but is rather expensive.
• My handwriting still looks very bad

The Conclusion
I will be using the notepad for all future notes that I do and will archiving all notes digitally. No more mess with notes laying all over without a system. Will also be very useful for meetings and conferences; where I can do all notes and then clean them up later and re-order them. I can recommend the A501 for people who do lots of notes which should be kept in an organized way.

Share This