I tried to encode a 720p concert (mkv/h264/ac3), with Turbo.264 HD, and it was real fast, 3X to 4X faster than handbrake encoding for the same input file. AppleTV preset in both case. Wow!

But the resulting file is still 2.4GB long, that is real big for a 87minutes footage, and will translate to 3GB per full-length movie….

So tonight I received an email from my client aftet 7PM, friday, and I decided it is not urgent, so I answered that I will handle that tomorrow, adding “Sent from my iPad” as a signature

Thanks Apple

This terminal was in fact a full blown micro-computer, based not on a microchip but on a hundred TTL modules that executes 8bits instructions. These instructions were the same on the Intel 8008 that is binary compatible: they where contractors but couldn’t meet the deadline of Datapoint, they keep the chip and released it later.

The ISA of the Intel 8008, and the 1971 Datapoint 2200 is the same that we have on our x86 computers these days, extended in many ways, but still keeping same basic instruction set: this datapoint 2200 is the ancestor of my 64bit MacBook Pro, and if Intel have cope with deadline, first 8bit micro-computer with a microchip should have been this “terminal”.

Many companies program it to do classical computation instead using it as a terminal, and with up to 16KB and 2 x 130KB tape drive, in 1972, it was a kinda powerful computer. Remember that ‘79 IBM PC-XT shipped with 16KB RAM too, but only one tape entry!

Focus on core business, or real problem?

Yes, digital makes perfect copy over and over. That was the theory for CD, it was wrong. That was the theory for video, see for yourself what happens

Hi, I have a mini hp 110 netbook with bluetooth/wifi/built-in camera etc. It works really well, very fast and has a battery life of around 3 hours. I don’t need it anymore because I got an ipad 3g for work. The original price was around 370 but I don’t mind letting it go for 250. There are a few little scratches, but everything works great!

This is the whole story

It means that I am moving back to mobile computing as fast as possible. I setted up a desktop quad-core hackintosh on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, 8GB RAM (planned to upgrade it to 16GB), 4 hard-drives (2×1TB RAID-0 OS X+Photos+Music, 2TB Vidéos, 1TB Windows), with 24″ inch display. I thought I need that to work. My MacBook Pro (Core2 Duo 2×2.8Ghz, 8GB) was too slow even with 1TB hard-drive.

And then there was 2 events that totally changed my mind…

SSD drive

I tried 64GB SSD storage on myMacBook Pro and discovered a fast and reactive computer, far faster than my RAID-0 desktop for most of my tasks except H.264 Full HD video encoding! I could still beat it using my Turbo.264 HD for video encoding, but at the price of quality, and I am not the kind that want to trade quality for speed!

I bought a CRUCIAL C300 256GB SSD on NewEgg, installed it on my MacBook Pro, and decided to use cloud storage to share files between computers and devices, with both MobileMe (Emails, Contacts, Agenda, Safari Bookmarks…) and DropBox (files).

I added a ProBox 4xSATA storage on my TimeCapsule. 2TB Video, 1TB Photo+Music, 1.5TB Time Capsule and storage for my beloved one, and 1.5TB spare, 6TB online storage shared by my MacBook Pro and my Hackintosh/Windows 7 quad-core PC.

This PC just have 2 hard-drive to boot on, and do some internal work (1TB each!), so it began to be less and less used, except for video encoding, using BD-Rebuilder and x264 codec. And it’s my backup computer in case my MacBook Pro is stolen or needs repair!

iPad 3G

I bought an iPad Wifi (64GB model) in april, and was really happy with it, except that on many places there’s no public-available WiFi!

So this friday, at Canadian launch of iPad, I just bought an iPad 3G+WiFi 64GB, with a Rogers 250MB plan. As expected Rogers do it wrong from start, but since yesterday afternoon, they seems to deliver content again. iPhone users and iPad users have been impaired since arrival of first iPad on thursday, and it was a real mess!

But now, I begin to use my iPad really anywhere, taking it with me, as my first computing tool.

As a consultant, computing for me means 2 different things, and the most important one is not development (that I do on my MacBook Pro), but emails, server monitoring, analysis, document reading and with Pages for iPad, document writing or updating!

Combining Pages and DropBox on a 3G iPad is really impressive, you have your emails, files (starred ones), documents with you, and you are even able to write quality document (I mean better looking than with desktop Microsoft Office!), on the go, and synchronize them wirelessly using DropBox, share them with your team, and even with your Mac using iTunes.

Downsized

Now I am truly downsized, my main computing and communication platform is my iPad, able to access a great amount of my work, and produce document, exchange ideas, monitor things. And my secondary one is my MacBook Pro. a Mobile desktop replacement that is heavy but so powerful with an SSD that you might be surprised by the performace-level it reach, 235 XBench global score, 40% over an average MacPro!

This is the trend, lightweight, mobile, efficient, anyplace anytime. Cloud+iPad+SSD laptop is a winning combination over pure CPU power of a desktop computer, or it’s internal storage ability!

So if you live in Québec, enter PQ as province and everything will be okay

PS: My cellular data account failed miserably anyway. And actually I could not access the “Settings->Cellular->Cellular Data account screen”, or extremly slowly! It’s really bullshit!

PS2: It’s now activated on the third attempt, and the gateway (between 3G and Internet) is just crashing over and over! Rogers!

I am a consultant, working on many big and bigger websites, I am using my laptop (MacBook Pro) as my main development/administration/management/conception platform. It’s unvaluable to be able to transport my data and work with me, wherever I want.

But I need a backup, a true backup: a running Mac OS X computer to be able to switch at any moment on it if my laptop is broken, stolen, if any component fail, not losing 1 day or more waiting to be repaired or buying another Mac. I need it, really. I am the sole and only user of my desktop and my laptop. And won’t allow someone, even trusted, to just use them for anything, even in front of me. I am kinda paranoid (and knew some hackers! lol).

These 2 computers are for my professional and personal use, I need them, I need to have the same software at any time on both, and synchronize data between them on numerous ways: DropBox, MobileMe (and iDisk), using TimeCapsule to share 4TB data on my home network, etc…

I want to be able to buy software and install them on each computer I own, operate as user, and need for my work. Tuxera NTFS 3G is a good example of good licensing strategy, you pay once for each of your OWN computers, whatever you have 1 or 10 for your own use. As simple as that, and thus it incitated me to pay a license for my Mac OS X computers (including my third one, a PowerBook G4).

The funny thing is that when you have an iPhone and an iPad (or even an iPod Touch), you only pay once, whatever the number of iXXX devices you synchronize and on which you will put these applications. I find it normal and logical. Please stop limiting to 1 computer, it has no sense in 2010 for most of us!

PS: I also own Things (bought in AppleStore, in box), and it enable me to use it on my Macs, being simultaneously installed as long it is for MY use. It’s great. And they even give tricks to synchronize your Mac together, using USB thumbdrive, until they come with an upgrade that will synchronize multiple Macs. Thanks