London Rants

I need to get myself a new laptop computer. Well to be honest I actually need to get myself any laptop. Surprisingly, as an IT person, it’s been four years since I’ve owned one! In the time since I last had one I’ve been backpacking and in the three plus years I’ve been living in London I have always had a work provided one. While the work one has always been good it’s never been ideal as it’s never felt a safe place to store photos music and other such personal things.

So finally the time has come to bite the bullet and get one. The question I have been trying to answer for a while is what type? I’ve narrowed it down to two classes of machine. The first being a full spec 13 to 14 inch laptop such as the Dell XPS m1330. The second category is a new category as invented by the Asus called a NetBook. They are a smaller, lighter sub notebook in the 7 to 10 inch screen size with lower power processors, smaller solid state storage and come with a memory card slot and a webcam as standard but no CD-ROM. The first real NetBook which invented the category was the Asus eeePC Surf. Its a small white low power NetBook with a 7 inch screen and originally 2Gb solid state storage, and it took the world by storm. The reason why was that it was small, light and cheap. People didn’t seem to care that it didn’t run Windows (did I mention the vast majority of NetBooks run Linux), or even run iTunes. It allowed them to login to facebook, hotmail, gmail as well as upload photos, chat with their friends on MSN Messenger/AIM/Yahoo or what ever instant messenger they wanted as well as video chat or talk on Skype. There are now dozens of NetBooks out there. Asus has a huge amount of eeePCs including the eepc 701 (replacement to the original), eeePC 901 (9 inch screen, 20Gb SSD - the one I’m considering) and the eeePC 1001. There’s also the Acer Aspire One, the HP mininote 2133, Dell is bringing one out sometime this month amoung others (amazon link to category).

So I’ve got as far as deciding that if I go the real laptop I’ll get the Dell XPS m1330 or if I go the NetBook route I’ll get an Asus eeePC 901. I think I’ve got a couple of weeks before I have to make up my mind as the Dell XPS is due for a refresh and the eeePC 901 isn’t due in the UK until later this month. So what are the pros/cons for each type of machine. Well I’ll lay them out:

Full size laptop:
- Large 13.3 inch screen
- Lots of storage - 250Gb HDD
- Inbuilt 3G card
- Full size keyboard
- DVD Drive

Netbook:
- Small and light form factor. Take it anywhere
- No hard disk (12Gb Solid State Disk)
- No moving parts

The both have the following:
- Webcam
- Memory card reader - SD etc
- 802.11 wifi
- Bluetooth

I love the BBC, it offers a great service with reporters distributed all over the world and some of their research units are developing leading edge technologies to do with video technologies, music and all sorts of things to do with broadcast, HD TV, DVB as well as IPTV (such as BBC iPlayer and the list goes on. The TV License is one of the few taxes that I don’t actually mind paying. For those that are interested in the new technologies that the BBC is playing with I recommend reading the BBC Internet Blog.

One of the cool new features they are developing a new beta product called Sound Index. Details about exactly what it does can be found on the site here. In very basic terms it takes information from various music sites around the net such as iTunes, Amazon, MySpace, YouTube, Bebo, lastFM, and more, they then apply an algorithm which creates a ranking of the top 1000 songs and artists online. Very cool and very interesting!

Mozilla Firefox 3 has finally been released. It has massive speed and security improvements as well as hundreds of general improvements and new features. The only other thing I need to say is get it now as its much more secure and faster for all your facebook and email stuff!

I noticed Canon announced a new range of IXUS Digital Cameras. I have a Canon IXUS 800IS. I like it a lot. It’s a 6 mega pixels and has a 4x optical zoom with Canon’s extremely good image stabiliser. The current model is the Canon IXUS 860IS which is 8Mp and has a 3.8 IS zoom. The just announced new Canon IXUS will come with 10Mp and a 5x optical IS zoom, and do a sub 1 inch macro shoot. Wow! Must be almost time for another upgrade The European model has yet to be announced but it will be in the 800 model range somewhere above 860. They’ll show up on Amazon somewhere here when they finally hit the shelves which I suspect will be before too long.

What is it about Londoners and their complete and utter lack of good taste when it comes to drinking coffee? I back this up with the fact that there are more Starbucks coffee shops per square kilometre in London than anywhere else in the world. I admit now that I do on occasion have the a cup of the aforementioned coffee but the only reason for this is that it is the only coffee within reasonable walking distance of the office….. and I don’t drink the instant muck.

In the last couple of years that I’ve been living in London I’ve been on the lookout for good coffee. Well to be honest whenever I travel I try to find a good coffee. Its quite rare that I have found it. Like Starbucks the other place that I rarely find good coffee is in hotels so generally, unless I’m working, I’ll try and find somewhere near where I’m staying with something that resembles a reasonable cup of my favourite hot beverage. Over my time in London I have found places that have reasonable coffee but nothing that I class as great.

As a general rule the couple of things that I usually look for to get a half drinkable cup of coffee is simple. Firstly I look online to see if I can find some recommendations. Failing that I look for a couple of major coffee brands. Segafredo Zanetti is one, Illy is another or failing that I find most brands of Fairtrade Coffee generally offer a reasonable cup.

So are there any better than reasonable coffees that I’ve had lately? Yes! Recently I found Monmouth Coffee in central London. No idea why I hadn’t found it before and what’s more I found it while trying to find a good place for coffee in South West London (any recommendations on that one would be great). Anyway it comes highly recommended, but the flagship cafe in Monmouth St is tiny so its quite hard to get somewhere to sit. They also have a store down in Borough and are about to move their roasting from Monmouth St to a larger facility in a rail arch in Rotherhithe, I assume they’ll also have a Cafe there too.

Out of London if your after really good coffee in New York City I can recommend both Jack’s Stir Brew, some of the best coffee I’ve had in a long time, and Grey Dog Coffee at 90 University Place, not far from Union Square. Jack’s Stir Brew was another small cafe, but Grey Dog had lots of space and does good breakfast too.

Any recommendations for good coffee in London add details to the comments as I’m always on the lookout for good coffee