Martin’s Weblog

Weeeeee!!!

I know this is no big deal but last week my DSL line got upgraded to 16 MBit. That is 2MB/sec. I managed to get pretty close to the maximum. See for yourself.

Western Digital My Book Pro is finally quiet as a mouse

As I mentioned in my previous post the noise of Western Digital’s My Book is almost unbearable.

Yesterday my new Fan arrived and I finally managed to install it into the Drive Case using some double sided Tape. Connecting the Fan to the power was a bit tricky due to different connectors. I cut some plastic from an old Coke bottle into the right shape and it fits perfectly. The new Fan is a Sharkoon 70×70x15 and runs @ 21 db (A). It is not only much more quiet but also more powerful and the drives are running a little bit cooler.

This isn’t rocket science and I am wondering why WD didn’t come up with a fan like this in thefirst place. Shame on you.

Take a look for yourself. If you have any questions post a note and I’ll get back to you.

EDIT:
First of all sorry it took me so long to unlock all your comments. But there was more spam than real posts and I didn’t think anyone would read my WD “modding” post. Okay now I will answer your questions:

• I also did the firmware update but this is just a joke.

• Regarding the fan: I didn’t take a 2nd look but it should be the Sharkoon S701520M-3 as it was the only fan in the sharkoon product range that came into question

• About the connector: It was really tricky to connect the new fan to the logic board inside the drive as both had different connectors and the sharkoon’ being really large compared to the Sunon’s: What I did was to remove the plastic part of the fan connector which can be done easily with a paper clip. Be sure to keep the colors of the cables in mind so you don’t mix them. The tricky part was to fix the contacts into place. I used some plastic from a coke bottle cut it into the right shape and it fills all empty space in the connector. It connects really tight like the old connector and a slipping out is impossible. Note: I didn’t use any glue.

[EDIT 2]
Any fan with max. diameter 70mm and 15mm thickness should work fine – unless it’s not too loud… Just make sure it has a sufficient air agitation to let the drives run cool enough. The sharkoon model I chose is just an example. Any major vendor should have this 70×15mm fan size in supply. There is even a quiet model from sunon. Just check the vendor’s web sites, get their pdf catalogues and compare to make your decision.

10 features the Apple iPhone is missing

First of all, I will get one of these things as they become available here in Europe. I’ve been a loyal Mac user for 15 years and owned a lot of Mac models and iPods over the years. Nevertheless I am missing a few things from the iPhone other consumers might also be interested in.

1. SIP support according to RFC 3261. That means IP telephony over WLAN, a function that could easily be implemented by Apple. Everyone is doing it right now and I think Apple is missing an important trend here. When you’re @ home or work your incoming and outgoing calls could automaticly be routed over the internet to save costly airtime. But that would be against the interests of any cell provider, particularly cingular’s. On the contrary Cell provider T-Mobile Germany together with it’s parent company T-Com actually launched a service plan that includes a phone capable of GSM AND VoIP over WLAN. It certainly has to do something with Cisco/Linksys who own the brand name iPhone and throw their own VoIP products on the market. I hope they come to an agreement.
2. Installation of your own software. Wouldn’t it be great to run 3rd Party programs on the Phone, for example ichat, Skype or Bittorrent? Again, consumers want it but that would be against Apple’s and Cingulars interests. Whey want to generate money every time a Customer uses the phone. Send expensive SMS instead of instant messages over the internet. Buy Music and Movies from the iTunes Store instead of watching them on youtube and other free services.
3. The iPhone doesn’t make extensive use of WLAN. It’d be cool to be able to mount Shared Folders from other computers or a USB Disk connected to Apple’s new AirPort Base Station to access various media. Sad.
4. Synching iTunes over WLAN would also be a nice option.
5. Instead of using visual Voicemail I’d like a built-in answering machine that records calls directly on the phone when you’re not available. There is a very innovative piece of software for the symbian platform that offers such functionality. On the other side visual voicemail is very convenient when the iPhone is switched off or there’s no service available. A combination of both makes you always reachable but saves a few $$$ for airtime.
6. The iPhone is missing open source codec support. For example XviD, x264 as well as ogg and flac are missing and probably will never work.
7. The iPhone is not yet able to display pdf and various other document formats like rtf, office, xls etc. I think these are features one can expect from a premium smart phone.
8. iPhone needs J2ME support. I know the applications are quite simple but many people rely on them and need them.
9. The iPhone is a *NIX box for god’s sake! give me the option to access a shell.
10. I am missing something like a File Vault feature. A storage area where you can confidential data and protect it with a password.

I know Apple has to incorporate the interests of cellphone providers but listening to end users is far more important. Users want an open platform that performs like they can customize the way they like it best.