Wednesday, December 30, 2015

New Wireless Keyboard

Few days ago i bought a new wireless keyboard from an online store. It's not an expensive one and in return, i got 3 items in fact: a wireless keyboard itself, a mouse, and 4 port USB 3.0 hub. I got it for around $14 for all those items including shipping cost. Pretty cheap actually.

Yesterday the package arrived just one day after i got confirmation  that the package was shipped. That was quite fast since normally it would take 2-3 days to reach my home. Although it's still holiday season, JNE is still doing it's best to deliver them as soon as possible. Thanks to JNE for quick shipping.

I unboxed it and it has a slick design, probably mimicking Apple keyboard with it's unibody casing. It has a LED indicator for battery power and also nice keypad. The keyboard tuts have same response just like an Apple Keyboard.

To try the wireless keyboard i need to plugged the AAA batteries inside it, switch it on, and press the connect button. After that, i turned on my iPad's bluetooth and in short time it will detect a new device that's ready to pair. I click the wireless keyboard device and i need to enter a randomly generated numbers on the keyboard to continue with the pairing process. After entering the numbers, it works nicely with my iPad 3. Gonna try with my Android and laptop later on.

See the screenshot below:

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Mi4: Birthday Present to my Mom

Last year, i gave a new smartphone to my Dad which was Asus Zenfone 6 and this year, i gave another smartphone, but this time to my Mom and it's Mi 4. She wanted a slim, compact, and easy to use smartphone and i have been searching for some time before finally i decide to give this product to her.

I ordered last week and since it was public holiday (independence) and they were out of stock, i had to wait until this week and finally the phone arrived yesterday. I unboxed it and found that it was very lightweight. It's also very comfortable thanks to an anti-fingerprint soft touch matte cover. It is coated for extra resistance to fingerprints and grease.

The first thing i did was upgrading to the latest firmware. It took some time to complete downloading the new firmware, but i think it's worthed. The new version is a little bit darker, but i didn't really notice much besides the darker theme.

I haven't played much with these new phone, since my focus is to prepare it for my mom's daily usage and gave her some training about this new phone. I hope she likes it and get used to it quickly.

Thursday, May 28, 2015

Good Bye Mandriva

My first Linux distribution back in 2002 was Mandrake. It was a user-friendly, easy, and customizable Linux distribution so i had a love in the first sight at that time. I got the ISO of Linux Mandrake from InfoLinux, a monthly Linux magazine that offered a Linux ISOs in their CD bundle. Without proper knowledge and no background on Linux at that time, i challenged myself to try dual booting my desktop machine into Windows and Linux and it worked!!

I was so happy at that time and i had a resolution to use Linux as my main operating system. I tried to run Mandrake for some time and i switched back to Windows only when i need to work with tools only available in Windows platform. At the end, it all worked well and i used Mandrake for my daily work.

Few years later, Mandrake changed into Mandriva and i became more active in this project by contributing to the i18n and l10n project of Mandriva. They offered me a VIP account so that i can download Mandriva Power Pack+ edition for free due to my contribution. I followed their release time by time and enjoying each release since it worked great until i moved to Slackware in 2005.

Few days ago i heard that Mandriva, the company that support Mandriva Linux distribution is being liquidated. So sad to hear this company finally gave up after for several years struggling to maintain it's core business. So long Mandrake/Mandriva. Without you, i would never meet Linux and Open Source community. Good bye Mandriva!!!