Napster, DRM and subscription music

I've blogged about Napster several times before (just use the search box to find the posts) and clearly it was a bit of a love hate relationship. Love the concept, hated - or at least was frustrated with - the implementation. Well I have to say that as of the 4.1 version which came out a month or two ago it seems Napster really nailed it. Granted I don't use Napster from within Windows Media Player, but the standalone player really seems to work pretty flawlessly now and I love the new "automix" feature. Click any track you are browsing or listening - or a selection of several tracks - then select "Automix" and Napster pulls a really decent selection of other tracks as a play list. So far I've found it spot on and it has introduced me to loads of new artists based on my existing tastes. This is so much easier than manually browsing the "you might also like" selections for each artist and sampling tracks from them. I'm not sure quite what the algorithm is, but it does seem to work well for me.

Anyway, I just read an article on Wired about the author dropping all his subscription music services. Being a journalist who gets to write off such subscriptions as an expense it is mostly about making a statement - and lets him write and article on the statement at the same time. The interesting thing is reading all the comments from DRM h8ters dissing all the comments saying that subscription services are a good thing. For a short while I just didn't understand their point - they just don't understand the value of a subscription service and all they want to do is own music. But who could possibly afford to own all the tracks I listen to via Napster, it would cost a flipping fortune compared to my measly $10 a month subscription (which works for three computers and online from any web browser). And all those 30 second sampling limits the pay-per-track services have - even those DRM free services - that totally sucks. I'm supposed to by something based on listening to 1/6th or less of it, and usually a reasonably randomly chosen part at that. No way!

I mean the subscription service is a well established thing - I'm sure most of these people pay for cable at home so they really should understand the concept. And yet cable is so much more limited as a subscription service than Napster - you don't get to watch stuff when you want to unless you pay for a DVR - which is usually another subscription fee - and you don't really get to pick and choose what you see, the selection is so limited and filtered by advertising and marketing execs who decide what will be profitable for them based on what they think you want to see. I don't subscribe to cable, but if it worked like Napster I probably would, but then Comca$t would want to charge me at least $10 a day for that, probably much more.

Anyway just as I got to writing this I realized it - the DRM haters posting about subscription services sucking (I'll spare you the l33t speak this time) just do all their music sampling the old fashioned way - downloading it from file sharing services, illegally. Because you know, DRM sucks so you have to stick to the man until he gets it by downloading illegally. If you're doing that you can download all you want, listen to all you want, pay nothing and save a bundle. Given that as a modus operandi I guess, yes, DRM must suck. If you really want to feel good about your downloading habits you can "sample" all you want and then buy a track or two from one of the DRM free pay-per-track services like Amazon. If you spend $10 a month on tracks then what is the difference?

Beats me - but tell you what, why not just pay $10 a month for the rest of your life and have access to pretty much everything you want 100% legally and have all the benefits of a service equivalent to last.fm The way I see it $10 a month is $120 a year, or $1200 every ten years or maybe $6000 in my music buying lifetime. I've proably already spent $6000 on CDs in my lifetime and guess what - 90% of them I don't listen to anyway now because my tastes have changed.

To me buying music is just like buying DVDs - why bother, just when you have amazed an awesome and expensive collection of DVDs they change the frigging format for something better and you have to start all over again. I bought about 50 DVDs before I realized that - a cool $1000 at least. Now I just pay NetFlix my $15 a month or whatever it is and I can have pretty much any DVD there is available in my mailbox within 2 days, sometimes less. And you know what - when I bought DVDs I still rented movies from rental stores and that cost me a fortune and was a big hassle. The money I spent on DVDs and rentals would have paid for at least my first 5 years of NetFlix subscriptions - doh! And you know if I really, really, really like something I can still buy it - but you know in the three years I've been doing Netflix that has never happened. And with HD DVD out now I'm really glad it didn't, what a waste any purchase in that time would have been.

So all you DRM haters, open your minds. Do you listen to radio? Do you watch cable? Imagine the two combined with a library of almost everything you ever wanted to listen to. Now imagine that available all the time, on several computers, on your digital audio player, and streamed from any browser. Think about how much Comcast charges you for their piss-poor selection of stuff and divide that by 10 - there, you have Napster. If you don't think it is worth it then so be it - I don't think you'll ever get it. But I know you probably spend more on coffee or beer a month than I'll ever do for music - so ya boo sucks to you! Mohahahahaahaa!

You'll just need to put this chipset on your mobo...

I just read an interesting article that reveals the planned Q2 2008 release of the G45 chipset with its integrated GMA-X4500 graphics will relieve all the woes I've had thus far with my G33/GMA-3100 system. As I mentioned before it will deliver considerable bang for the buck performance wise, but it will also include full HDCP encryption support for HD-DVD and BluRay, plenty of MPEG2, VC-1 and H.264 codec, and support for HDMI, DVI and DisplayPort - all without additional hardware - so hopefully all mobos will have those connections and features and I wont be boxed into a corner picking a mobo with a crippled 16X PCIe slot. Naturally G45 will also deliver PCIe 2.0 so it looks to me like it will bring compatibility for a long time to come - the soon to be released G35 and then G43 based boards just wont be worth a look in.

The only question I have left is what CPUs will run with G45 - naturally it will include the new (as now) 45nm chips, but what about the next rev of the architecture Nehalem? And if it supports them what about the next die shrink beyond that? From all I've read I think I'll be happy if I get Nehalem support since it should bring a lot of benefits especially for the quad-core processor I've been hankering after, all with the proven lower power usage of 45nm.

UPDATE: according to an article in "The Register", G45 will use the ICH10 Southbridge which is required by the QuickPath interconnect of Nehalem processors. That sounds hopeful to me , althought its not clear if the QP interconnect is something else that a mobo needs or it is integrated with the processor. Anyway bring it on - something to look forward to in six months time (because I'm not expecting to see it before Q3 given what happened with G35 roll-out!)

The only thing TSA should screen for is bad attitude

Having spent a while last week hand building some loud speakers from wire, glue, paper (or plastic) and some magnets it occurred to me that there are many other things you could easily hand build from basically unrecognizable parts. While I was winding the speaker coils with wire laid out across the floor I started thinking about tasers or some other high voltage potentially lethal weapon made from little more than basic electronic components you might find in say, a laptop, and a minimum of the "sharp pointy" or "volatile explodey" type stuff TSA is usually looking for.

Not that I have any intention to take stuff on a plane but I'm constantly amazed at how easy such things could be done, and how TSA is basically like a dog chasing a gopher from hole to hole, and that homeland security is really just a myth, albeit a very expensive myth, put there to make us feel better.

No really what TSA need to be scanning for is bad attitude - they let air marshals and pilots on board with guns - what they did there is carefully screen those holders for bad attitude. Then they could let all the guns, knives, homemade weapons and tasers on board and no one would ever use them because they don't have bad attitude - heck we could even let little old ladies take knitting needles back on planes again!

Even then it is possible some person could devote his/her life to attaining a position of trust and then do something bad. There's not a lot you can do about that - supposedly trusted people go bad and do bad stuff all the time, heck sometimes it is not even a conscious act, they just go crazy.

In the mean time while they are inventing the "bad attitude" scanner (see "The Truth Machine" for a fictional study of effectively the same device) perhaps they should just arm everyone, or send everyone naked, or send everyone anesthetized - you get to choose.

Attachment Deficiency Disorder

Most people know A.D.D. as "attention deficit disorder" which plagues our additive and sugar addled teens and pre-teens leading to ad-breaks every three minutes lest we get bored, and no child left phoneless lest they forget who their friends are and presumably how to talk.

However to me A.D.D. actually stands for Attachment Deficiency Disorder which is the problem of sending an email mentioning attachments, but forgetting to attach them. Sometimes you realize right after hitting send, as I did just now and can take corrective action so you don't look quite a dumb. Other times it'll take a day or more for someone to get back to you before you realize. Then we have to suffer the excuses of clueless senders like "well your virus filter must have removed them", "they must be in your spam folder", or just plain denial followed by "I'll send them again for you..." Yeah right. I've even seen people take so much time blathering on with excuses or apologies that they send the email a second time without the attachment... The most heinous case would be the intentional "see my attached report on XYZ" sent minutes before you leave on vacation to the rain forest of Borneo with the report deliberately not attached. Maybe it is just my evil procrastinating mind that could think of such an example, but I'm sure it happens...

Granted it is an easy mistake - I probably do it about one quarter of the time when I send emails with attachments, and I always try to be careful and do attachments first... But sometimes I just suffer from that other A.D.D. and get too engrossed in writing the email to remember the attachments.

My personal belief is there will be a lot of fans for the first email client to add a feature to check for the "attachment", "attached photos", "attached invoice" etc. in the email and warn you if you don't attach one (before sending of course). It really can't be that hard can it?

Another twisty maze of Windows error messages

UPDATE: 8/20/2008 - finally after eight months it seems the latest G33 drivers from Intel have fixed this problem for me, or at least I think that is what did it. While investigating some other issues (actually HD audio support of the new G45 boards) I discovered that there were new Realtek ALC889A audio drivers. Of course I've since learned that those have nothing to do digital output, only analog out and analog in. But while I was looking at those I noticed there were new G33 drivers on the Intel site. Although the 14.34.4.4964 release notes say nothing about HDMI issues I installed those - but I think actually installing the Realtek drivers also installed the latest Intel HD Audio drivers - my control panel says its Intel HD Audio HDMI 5.10.0.1044 (6/13/2008) - so I think I got them one way or the other. Anyway initially there appeared to be no change in Netflix behavior - same old error when I went to digital output path (HDCP capable DVI), but then I tried a trick for a similar problem suggested in a thread at AVS Forum which is to set speakers to stereo in the control panel. I did this, tweaked some other settings and restarted IE and the Netflix player - low and behold it worked, and kept playing. I then went back and set my speakers to 5.1 again, untweaked the other settings I'd messed with and rebooted and it still worked. As far as I can tell changing the speaker setting must have reset something and cause Windows Media Player to get past its remembered DRM blockage - but I'm pretty sure the new driver update from Intel was what really allowed things to work. If anyone reads this and needs to compare settings of my working system I'll be happy to post them.

So yesterday it is Christmas day and after an unusually quite day I'm looking for something to watch, having running out of NetFlix movies I decided to bust out the NetFlix "Watch Now" option. I've used this before on my old system and it was okay - had a few problems with connectivity and also my system new could keep up with full screen mode. So with great expectations I pick out "Helvetica" a quirky documentary about the Helvetica font (actually if you have any interest in design its pretty darned interesting). After checking the first couple of minutes the quality looks great - better than DVD even, and full screen works a charm. So I invite my gf over and we sit down to watch.

10 minutes into it "boom". Well not literally "boom", but up there on the screen is an error message saying "Windows Meida Player has experienced an error" and goes on to give the details "WMPError (C00D1052) Windows Media Player cannot play the protected file. The player detected that the connection to your hardware might not be secure."

This immediately smacks of trying to get protected content over a non-HDCP capable link. But I figure I'm only using DVI and I thought DVI doesn't do HDCP so why would this be a problem - I mean I used DVI before on my old system and didn't have this problem. I just figured I would automatically get lower quality video without HDCP if the link wasn't capable. Anyway I try playing the movie again and this time it fails after a few seconds of playback. Then I try looking at the NetFlix link for information and that has nothing about this error or HDCP. It also seems to have no way to electronically file a bug report, only a phone number. I call the number not expecting anything - it is Christmas after all, but it does say until 2am EST so what the heck. It answers after the first ring but I end up with hold music for several minutes and give up.

Next day (today) I start Googling the error - turns out the ONLY page mentioning C00D1052 is a blog post from someone early in 2007 saying they got the error but could find nothing on Google. Now I guess there is on more page... this one. There's a few more links with Microsoft search, none of them indicating what the bug is, but interestingly this error code doesn't even appear on their support site. There's a C00D1053 but no 1052. Nada, zip, zilch - what the heck happened and am I cursed or what?

So I call up NetFlix and within seconds I'm talking to a very helpful support guy - there's no escalation required, he knows his stuff, isn't reading from a script and can answer any questions I ask. He gets me to bring up dxdiag and verify my display adapter and driver versions. Then he asks me to do a drmreset which involves downloading a tool from the NetFlix site. At the time I say that this makes sense because I migrated my system over to a new motherboard - writing this I realize that wasn't the case and hence I'd never used NetFlix on this computer image before.

Anyway I do the reset - it fails the first time and I have to reboot. Then I try again and it succeeds. So we try playing video and it has me install some DRM code before playing but then I get green flashing. The tech has me adjust some Windows Media player display settings to disable the video mixing render (he knows exactly where to send me) and then we try again. Boom! I get a new error message - this time is C00D11B1. So the tech has me do the reset operation again and this time it works first time (no reboot) but on trying to play content again I still get the same error.

Eventually the tech informs me that I probably do need either an HDCP capable monitor, to find a way to disable HDCP over DVI via some adapter specific configuration which understandably he couldn't help me with, or to watch the movie via an RGB connection, not DVI. Begrudgingly I agree to try RGB and hang up - although I have to say I was very impressed with the NetFlix tech support experience especially considering I wasn't transfered a single time. Maybe over the holidays they have their own tech guys answering phones directly and I just got lucky?

So I went and tried looking at my GMA-3100 settings and couldn't find anything about disabling HDCP, in fact there is no mention of it, just standard stuff for single vs dual monitor modes. Anyway I plug in the RGB cable and select Twin View mode, switch my monitor to RGB input and start watching the movie again. This time it plays although the quality is noticeably more blocky. It looks like I got the lower quality version of the video this time - after about 10 minutes I switch the monitor to DVI and the video looks the same and keeps playing. After watching the entire thing I try unpluging the RGB cable and playing again - the quality is high again but after a minute or so the C00D11B1 error appears again. So it definitely looks like having RGB monitor output forces the Windows media player to disable HDCP and give me the lower quality unprotected media even though I can switch to DVI afterwards. At least this is a workaround.

But... I'm still puzzled as to why it is trying to give me the HDCP protect stuff in the first place. My Dell 2407WFP supposedly isn't HDCP capable - well I assumed that because I thought HDCP required HDMI. I do some Googling and quickly find that several threads on Dells support forums stating that it is HDCP capable - you can do it over DVI and all the way up to 1080p. But then I look at my G33M-S2H mobo and according to its specs it only does HDCP over the HDMI output, not the DVI output. But it has a note that it can't yet do BluRay/HD-DVD over HDMI due to driver limitations. So really now I'm still wondering what the problem is... is there a driver problem, a cable problem, a resolution problem or some other setting I didn't set or maybe just a plain old bug?

To be sure I've put in an order for an HDMI to DVI cable from NewEgg - there's a nice 10' Rosewill 1080p capable one for only $12 and being 10' it will save me using an extension on my current DVI cable (hmmm, maybe that is the problem?). In the mean time I'm hoping this information may be of information to anyone else who gets the obscure and so far undocumented Windows media player error C00D1052 - I feel honored to be the first to post any information about it, including Microsoft!

UPDATE: I've started to notice hits from web searches on the ellusive C00D1052 and I wish I had some solution by now. Unfortunately my HDMI to DVI cable arrived and had no effect at all - the error C00D11B1 came up right away from the NetFlix player. So I'm back to concluding it is some Windows or driver bug. Bugger!

And will the true culprit please stand up...

I'm pretty sure I just finished debugging a really bizarre audio problem with my computer based home theater system that was starting to drive my and my gal batty. We started to get audio dropouts while watching TV - they were only a few seconds but were happening about once a minute. I have a pretty high tolerance for such things, knowing that eventually I'll figure it out, but my gal quickly gets really irritated and blaming things - tech that doesn't work is like an employee that doesn't work - she just wants to fix it or fire it.

I checked the obvious things - like some other process kicking in every minute and ruled that out. I also noticed if I paused TV playback and waited for a few seconds and continued it was fine - so it wasn't the content, it really was some period of no audio. Since I recently built a new computer that was the first culprit my gal was blaming - but I knew it had been working for at least a month with no problems at all. Yeah it could be something gone bad, but I didn't think so. "You've got a driver problem", she proclaimed. Yes, I had done a lot of fiddling with drivers, especially related to my SATA ACHI issues, and had probably dropped in a new audio driver along the way to. But this problem hadn't started right after I did it - it chose to show up a couple of weeks later. Still I duly upgraded to the very latest 1.83 drivers from Realtek and low and behold the problem was still there. Then I downgraded to the older version that was included with the system disk and still on the Gigabyte site. Nope, that didn't fix it.

Now today I finally had another clue - I went to watch some TV and audio was dropping out almost every 10 seconds, now this was really irritating! Then I discovered it wasn't just TV audio, it was any audio. Even if I shut down everything else on the system and played some music with Windows Media Player the problem was still there. Hmmmm, sounds like a big clue to me.

After much futile fiddling with audio settings I resolved to solve the problem once and for all.
I took another try at shutting down everything else on the system, including every non-essential service and that made no difference, but there was nary a blip on the performance during the outages. It really didn't seem to be process related, could still be a driver problem though, but it just seemed odd that no one else was having this problem.

So I got some headphones out and plugged them in - it took me a while to figure out how that works with this new fangled HD-Audio stuff Windows uses, but eventually I got music over the 'phones and waited. Sure enough when the audio from my amp went out the headphones were still going strong. So then I raced upstairs and got my computer speakers from there and plugged them in the back - same experience. So it really seemed like a digital audio path only problem because my normal amp is hooked up to the computer via the optical TOSlink for SPDIF output. I checked the optical connections at each end - it seemed unlikely there was a problem, these cables are just a piece of clear plastic (not glass fiber as you might imagine). Nope, that didn't fix it either.

So then I began to think it was my Samsung HT-DM150 amp which is now about 5 years old but has been very reliable. Of course I've been longing to replace it because it doesn't have discrete inputs, only the digital input and ultimately I want something that can handle HDMI for high def audio (since TOSLink is really crippled in terms of bandwidth - fortunately those DTS and Dolby Digital streams are highly compressed to fit down it).

My theory was there was something wrong with the digital path so I should find another digital signal source to throw at the amp - if that was okay then I'd have to blame my computer instead and start begging Realtek to find a cure, which I'm sure could take ages, long enough that I'd be forced to install the accursed Creative sound card I'd just gladly left behind in my old system (although to their credit it did seem like after 5 years they finally got some decent drivers for it!).

Anyway as I was fishing around the back of my amp I noticed it had a fan - I'd seen it when I bought it and never thought much of it, I didn't recall ever hearing it running so it didn't bother me. Now when I looked with a flashlight I could see it definitely wasn't running and yes, sure enough the unit was pretty toasty. In fact when I checked the top surface it was hot, too hot. Not burning hot but very hot. So I removed the shelf about it in my rack and went looking for that other digital audio source. The music kept dropping out as I worked and I was just getting close to having the other audio source working when bingo - no more dropouts. It had taken about 10 minutes but the music was now definitely playing uninterrupted. The player didn't seem that much cooler yet but I know it only takes a small change to put a circuit back within operating range.

So, here is my theory - the amp was getting so hot that the clock circuit got out of tolerance and could no longer stay in sync with the incoming 48khz data stream - the hotter it got the quicker it went out of sync. It would then resync and then carry on. I guess that it could also be some digital processor crapping out and resetting but I think the would probably have designed the entire system to shut down before that happened. Now I have no idea how long the fan hasn't been working but I went and did some googling and quickly found that a bunch of people were complaining about fan and overheating problems in early production units. I'm not sure if that included mine but I could easily imagine a fan might fail in five years.

Why did it just start happening? Well it could have been the fan failing - or it could be that in the last few weeks we've been having our heater on and that blows hot air right by where the amp is, and also I've been home more during the day so the amp has been on vs. in standby much more which gives it plenty of time to warm up.

Anyway, I moved the shelf up in my rack to give a clear three inches above the amp and hopefully that will let it stay cool enough until I can find a replacement fan. Since the fan is external - bolted onto the back in a box it shouldn't be hard to make one with computer components if necessary, assuming the system is still output voltage to turn it on since it could actually be a sensor that has failed.

So this all goes to show, you shouldn't always blame the computer for problems, especially when audio is concerned.

More writing on the wall for Microsoft

My friends at Microsoft probably wont agree but news like this is really bad news for them. I mean who cares about a few million Norwegians mandating use of open document formats, what about the other 99,9% of us on this planet? Well I think the important thing is that Norway is definitely an innovator in Europe and I expect it will now only be a matter of time before the EU itself (yes, I know Norway is not an EU member) follows suit. That will bring a mandate to member states with 500 million or so people and 30 percent or more of the worlds GDP (and going ever higher as the dollar declines in value!)

Considering how the Europeans successfully prevailed against Microsoft in their anti-trust lawsuits unlike the USA which largely failed I really don't think they will think twice about following such a mandate. Yes it will cost lots of money to enact and follow through, yes it will be a major headache and generate mountains of paperwork for eurocrats but that is exactly the kind of thing they love. And don't imagine for a moment that once Europe has embraced open formats that Asia will far behind.

Really I find it hard to imagine that in 10 years time, or even less, Microsofts flagship office suite will be using its proprietary formats any more. Given that they have finally started spewing out PDF files can it really be that long before they start reading and writing ODF files? At that point the battle is over really because it will be harder and harder for die hard Microsoft users to ignore the open source alternatives like OpenOffice. Long before then most home users will have realized they don't need to shell out $200 or more to edit a Word document, and once home users realize that they will take that knowledge to work with them too and question Office dependency there too.

Microsoft is clearly struggling hard to create deep layers of value-add to their proprietary formats with stuff like Office Live and SharePoint - none of which will embrace non-Microsoft formats any time soon. However such online collaboration apps are exactly the field that Google and others are chasing after. And you can only go so far in their development before you start treading on the tails of online app suites like Salesforce.com and other more generic business process apps - areas of which Microsoft holds a much smaller share, if any.

So really I see this Norway announcement as hugely significant and will be watching closely for the next country to follow suit.

Laptop spares priced not to sell

I just finished repairing an Inspiron 8500 laptop that had burned out its graphics card. As best I could tell repeated overheating of the graphics memory lead to it failing such that on boot they would see random patterns of colors all over the screen.

The owner was lucky they knew me because a round trip to Dell would have cost at least $200 -
in fact they don't even list the ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 card any more, but a suggested alternative nVidia card starts at $150. That was pretty much the standard price for a replacement graphics card, infact many places were $200 or more. By the time you add the cost to get it installed you're probably looking at $250 to $300 - at which point you might as well consider a new laptop.

As it turned out I was able to find a replacement on eBay for $45 (thank you Sunshine Express for the working part and super fast turn around shipping). With shipping and my installation fee it will only cost them $100 and the laptop was back in their hands in less than a week. With the money they saved I was at it I was able to get them some new memory for $40 doubling the capacity to 512Mb (a very worthwhile improvement for XP!). I was also able to find a neat free utility called i8kfan by someone in Germany who obviously also thought Dells BIOS settings for the Inspiron fans were very risque. If you have an Inspiron laptop you really should check out this little wonder, it does a great job of keeping your CPU and GPU cool and is very flexible - I'm hoping my client wont be coming back again to replace their graphics card.

Anyway, the point of this post is that most laptop spares online are priced ridiculously high relative to the current cost of replacement, it is a wonder that anyone ever sells any of them. So eBay is a great resource since there are many true recycled parts out there for sale that are perfectly good. Okay you are going to occasionally get a dud, or have to deal with a bad eBayer, but by and large it is probably the biggest thing between you and buying a brand new computer each time something fails. Your only other alternative is an expensive service contract with the manufacturer which by and large will cost you as much if not more than case by case repair (unless you get a real lemon!). Then again I guess not everyone is lucky enough to know me for repairing their computers - it would be very interesting to know what the Geek Squad or some other repairer would have made of their computer.

Devicescape issues resolved?

I'm pleased to report that thanks to some unsolicited help from Devicescape I was able to successfully reinstall their software on my T-Mobile MDA and get my WiFi working again.

The problem appears to have been caused by a previous installation of the .NET Compact Framework that was on my external storage card instead of the internal memory. For whatever reason that doesn't work - or at least for some .NET users. After reinstalling .NET CF on the internal memory and reinstalling Devicescape everything seems to be working again - thanks for the help DS!

Sprint - most hated carrier status

As I blogged before, Google would be crazy to buy Sprint because Sprint sucks. True to form, along comes a report stating that Sprint really is the most hated cellular carrier. 'Nuff said.

Powering a Yaesu VX-7R from the external DC jack

This post is rather esoteric, probably of no interest to 99.9% of readers but I'm sure it's going to get some hits from Google. Anyway, I've been wondering about powering my Yaesu VX-7R handheld transciever from something other than the lithium-io battery pack, say a bunch of AA batteries. That's useful partly for emergency usage and partly as a cheap backup since an extra Li-on pack costs at least $50. There is an official AA battery pack for the radio but it only uses three AA batteries and while using it the transmit power is cut down to the L1 level - a few hundred milliwatts instead of the usual 5W max. Also I knew if you plug a battery charger power supply into the DC jack it would charge the Li-on pack but again transmit was limited to the lowest output level.

So I dug around in my box of junk and found an old wall wart with the right kind of plug on it which turned out to be 4.0mm OD and 1.6mm ID with tip positive wiring. Then I hooked it up to a bench power supply and experimented with the radio's behaviour through a wide range of voltages - from 0V to 16V - to see how it behaves.

A table of the results is given below but basically I was pleasently surprised by the results and was able to conclude that it is perfectly possible to power the VX-7R from a AA battery pack with no additional regulation so long as it's voltage is between 6.5V and 9.2V. My suggestion is you use six alkaline or NiMH batteries - the only downside of the latter is they have a lower voltage, especially under full load - so the battery level indicator will usually indicate the batteries are flat when transmitting. But really since the indicator is expecting Li-on voltage profile you should just ignore the indicator anyway.

There are a few other modes of radio behaviour with DC input voltage ranges from 3.5V to 16V - but Vin of 6.5 to 9.2V seems the most useful and is ideally supplied by six AA (or C or D) cells. The other interesting input level is a supply between 10V and 14V - this not only charges the internal battery (if present) but also allows you transmit at full power. Basically what you get from a 12V car adapter is ideal for this mode of behaviour (with a regulator to avoid any spikes when the car is cranked and low voltage disconnect to avoid killing the battery) - or you could hook up directly to a 12V lead-acid battery (again with a low voltage disconnect).

So here are my testing notes. All transmit currents are measured at 462Mhz (70cm range) with the stock rubber duck antenna.

The DC input jack is 4.00mm outside diameter, 1.6mm inside diameter with a positive (inside) tip.

Connected to the DC-input without a battery the radio will turn on when the voltage reaches about 3.8V and off again when it falls below 3.5V. At this lowest operating voltage the battery indicator is three bars flashing.

At 4.5V the battery indicator goes to three bars non-flashing. Tx power can be set to L1 or L2 and draws 0.20A when transmitting at L2.

At 4.9V the battery indicator is still a solid three bars. Tx at L2 draws 0.35A

At 5.3V the battery indicator goes to no bars (empty) and flashing. L3 Tx power is now selectable but on transmit it shows L2.

At 6.0V you can now set the maximum Tx power but again goes to L2 on transmit. 0.93A is drawn.

At 6.5V the battery indicator stops flashing showing a solid empty indicator but you can now transmit at full power drawing 1.17A.

At 6.77V get one bar

At 7.00V get two bars

At 7.25V get three bars

At 7.43V get no battery level indicator shown (as with fresh batteries) and 1.47A is drawn on Tx

At 8.00V Tx draws 1.74A

When the voltage reaches 9.2V the radio turns itself off - and at 9.4V it turns itself on again. I believe this behaviour is to avoid some unpleasent behaviour in the power regulation circuit around 9.3V.

At 9.4V the radio draws 1.97A on Tx

At 10.0V if the lithium-ion battery is inserted the radio will start to charge, display "Now charging". Charging behaviour seems a little flakey right at 10V so 10.5V or higher is suggested.

At 12.0V the radio draws 1.5A on Tx, with the Li-on battery installed it drew 0.27A while charging.

At 14.0V the radio draws 1.3A on Tx

At 14.5V Tx at max power is no longer po ssible - L3 is the max where it draws 0.90A

At 16.0V Tx at L3 draws 0.86A

I didn't test input voltage any higher than 16.0V to avoid any risk of damage, but I suspect (hope) there is some input clamp for the DC input. Don't take my word for it!

Using 6 fresh AA Duracell alkaline batteries I got 9.70V open circuilt voltage and 9.35V with the radio on in receive (no audio) mode. The radio drew 0.12A in this mode, and 2.6A on transmit at maximum power. After a few brief periods of transmit the battery voltage had fallen to 9.1V in receive mode, and between 6.9 to 7.5V during transmit (there was some observable no-Tx recovery period before it would rise to 7.5, falling to 6.9). The battery indicator would still show one bar during transmit (and even with LiOn use only it will typically show two bars).

You should also note that plugging in the external power supply will cause the radio to turn off and on again. Unplugging it will do the same - assuming the battery is installed, otherwise it will remain off of course.

One other thing - you could probably shrink wrap your own 6 AA NiMH battery pack to fit in the back of the radio where the Lion battery usually is since three AAs fit nicely in that space. It would stick out a bit but would probably be more convenient than a completely external pack. However you'd probably leave the battery susceptable to water damage since the LiOn power connectors inside the battery space are not weather proof. You'd also need to figure out a way to get the AA power to those connectors and create a 6 AA NiMH charging circuit. I think I'm just going to stick with my 6 AA battery box which lets me insert either alkalines or NiMH batteries I have charged elsewhere.

DeviceScape ate my WiFi!

I've previously used Devicescape's Windows Mobile client to reasonable effect, then one day my phone started having some connection issues, to the point where I couldn't use WiFi at all even when not using Devicescape. As an only occasional user of HotSpots it was mostly an inconvenience but I eventually persuaded myself to do a complete reset of my phone - wiping all files clean and starting from scratch. I wasn't actually expecting much to happen but it did actually completely cure all my device issues.

No today, a few months later I finally got around to reinstalling Devicescape, partly because I just addded a new Fon device at my office, and partly because my friend just got a new Nokia phone with Wifi and it got me thinking I hadn't been using my phone's WiFi much and I had a recollection it should be easier, in theory with Devicescape.

Well what do you know - within the day my phone is messed up all over again and I can no longer use WiFi. Initially it was fine but as soon as I had to reset the device I got a warning at boot time that a Devicescape module wasn't available, and after that I couldn't connect to WiFi any more - with or without Devicescape. I uninstalled Devicescape and still have the same problem - so I'm assuming the uninstall is broken too. The only thing I can think of is that installing onto an external card, vs. internal memory is somehow incompatible with the app. So I'm going to try to install one more time on internal memory and if that fails I guess I'm going to have to do the big old reset-clear memory trick. Oy, and just when I'd got the phone back to where I like it again...

i-summons

After 13 years of living in this country it seems that the legal system may finally be catching up with the Internet. Yes folks, today I was actually able to excuse myself from jury duty by submitting my alien resident number instead of mailing in a copy of my green card - something I've had to do pretty much every year for the last eight years. When I first got a US drivers license it took me almost an entire year to get the photo ID while they checked my legal status, now it seems my local county can actually check my alien registration ID number against federal databases - well I assume they can, we'll see if it actually works. And all this from the most technologically advanced nation in the world. Yeah right - fingers crossed.