HP DV3-2350ed

Posted on 2010/04/12 by Guy Chen

On saturday 20th of March I decided to check out the buzz at the MediaMarkt since they were having an offer “Buy 4 products, pay for 3″. Where the cheapest of the 4 products would be free. The interesting part abouth this offer was that you could team up with other people to get maximum discount, which would be 25% if everyone had something with the same price.

Anyway, I went and looked around at the laptops when this little baby caught my eyes. I was kind of looking for a new laptop which I can use for lightroom and would be much more portable for vacations and stuff. My good old trused Asus M6Ne is roughly 6 year old and had trouble with lightroom where cpu usage shot up to 100% and stayed there when I was post processing raw images.

Like I said, I was looking around at the 13 inch laptops and I already had this model in mind and the Asus U30 (new ones with the new i3, i5 or i7 cores from intel). But since they only had the older versions I started checkin out the HP DV3-2350ed. I liked the specs: i5 Core, integrated graphics AND dedicated graphics ATI 4550, 13 inch, 500GB harddisk etc etc etc … but the price wasn’t that nice :( € 999,- but since MediaMarkt was having that  offer I decided to see if I could get it with a nice discount. It had to be cheaper than € 780,- since that was the cheapest I could get it for online. I was lucky and together with 3 other people we managed to get a discount of 22,3% making it cheaper then the cheapest online price I could find at that time. So I ended up with a new laptop and I’ve been using it ever since. Battery life is great and I can work on it roughly 3 to 4 hours on one charge. :)

I do need to still get used to some of the things that are different in Windows 7 compared to Windows XP and since the HP DV3-2350ed comes with Windows 7 Home Premium. Ever since I tried the Windows 7 Beta on my Asus laptop (read here) I’ve been very impressed with it and have been waiting untill laptops started shipping with Windows 7 and meeting the demands I had for them. Because HELL NO I was NOT going to get a laptop with Windows Vista. Granted Vista seems to be good after SP2 came out but I didn’t want the hassle. I know since my gf Ana has a laptop with Vista and she has had a lot of issues with Vista. In short, I am happy with my new portable laptop and hopefully it will keep me company as long as my good old truted Asus M6Ne did because 6 years is a LOOOOONG time in the world of computers. The only thing I need to do is find a nice ghost image program for Windows 7 so I can make a nice image which I can restore shoud I ever want a fresh install. Or I need to check what kind of features Windows 7 Home Premium has concerning back ups. Yep, there’s still a lot to explore in Windows 7 for me. Time to start Windows nerding again …

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Barcelona vacation

Posted on 2010/04/12 by Guy Chen

It’s been a month ago but in March I went to Barcelona for a week to spend some time with my sweet gf Ana. :) It was the first time flying again after the my vacation to New York and it was an interesting experience to say the least. It was roughly 3 months after the dramatic and weird flight NW253 and though I was kind of nervous flying again it wasn’t too bad. But I think the following factors had to do with it. First of all it was a flight within Europe and last the other passengers were mostly Dutch. It was an early flight and I had to get up early again, hmm I have this habit of taking early flights appearantly.

Anyway, I had to be at the airport at 6am since my flight was leaving at 7am. The baggage drop off went smoothly and after passing through customs I was off to the gate. My flight left on schedule and I arrived at Barcelona airport around 9am. Ana landed at Barcelona at 8am and was waiting for me to exit at arrivals. As I said, flying wasn’t too bad. The only thing that was unpleasant was the moment of landing. The experiences of flight NW253 still came back and I was pretty anxious when we touched down at Barcelona airport. But other than that part I had no problems with flying, I guess the landings will be a bit uncomfortable for me the next few flights but that should be fine in a few more flights.

After meeting my sweetheart we were off to the bus which would take us to the city where we would have to tranfer to the subway. We got at the hotel after an hour of travelling and checked in. Since our room wasn’t ready yet we dropped our luggage and went for a stroll and some lunch at Glories. Our hotel was a 10 minute walk from here and a 15 minute walk from Sagrada Familia. After a bite to eat and a chillaxing sit at Starbucks we went back to the hotel to drop our stuff at the room and were off to downtown for dinner and a quick stroll in Passeig de Gracia.

Saturday and sunday we walked around in the Catalunya, La Rambla, Mercat de la Boqueria, Barrio Gothic and El Born area. The weather wasn’t that warm those days but it was dry and sunny. On monday we were in for a big surprise, in the morning it was raining lightly and cloudy so we decided to take it nice and easy and do indoor stuff. So we were off to La Rambla for lunch and then off to the aquarium where we walked around for a bit. After getting out of the aquarium we was it was snowing lightly so we decided to stroll around in the shopping mall next to the aquarium hoping it would stop snowing by the time we were done. Alas it didn’t and it started snowing harder. Yep we thought to have escaped the cold and snowy weather to end up in … yep snowy weather in Barcelona of all places O_o.

Luckily for us it only snowed on monday, well in Barcelona that is, because the next day it was sunny but cold and the only thing that was a reminder of the heavy snowfall on monday were the snowmen that were scattered around here and there. Tuesday was Gaudi day and we did all the touristic stuff that had to do with Gaudi. We visited Sagrada Familia, Park Güell, Casa Mila (aka La Pedrera), Casa Batllo. We had a lot of luck with the sunny weather and sunset when we were on the roof of Casa Mila. The other places we did the remainder of our vacation were Tibodabo, which was ok. The view is very nice but there’s nothing to do there. And ofcourse we did the Montjiuc area and visited Camp Nou.

It was a very nice vacation, except for that one day of snow, and I can really recommend Barcelona to all of you. I miss the fresh coconut juice at La Boqueria and nice food everywhere. Next time I visit I’ll need to do some more excursions outside of Barcelona. We didn’t manage to see the Dali village/museum and Montserrat. But there’s always a next time, and then probably also try so go to Madrid and Valencia. Anway, the flight back to Amsterdam was nice since Ana was flying to NY with a transfer in Amsterdam. So we flew back to Amsterdam together. At schiphol we had to go our seperate ways, Ana to catch her connecting flight and me to go get my luggage and go home. Can’t wait till July since Ana will be coming to Dutchland for a whole week. :) But in the meantime I’ll cherish the memories of our vacation in Barcelona.

If you’re curious, pictures can be found here: Barcelona vacation March 2010

See you at the next update.

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Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM

Posted on 2010/03/30 by Guy Chen

I’ve bought this lens quit a while ago somewhere beginning of February after reading quite a few reviews on different ultra wide angle lenses for crop camera’s. Actually, I had tried a few out last year (see this post) before ending up buying a Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 to replace my kitlens as a walk around. How things change in half a year as I quote myself:

In the end I started thinking that I really don’t shoot that much wide angle at this point in time so I started looking around at a replacement for the kitlens and after some test shooting I decided to buy the Tamron SP 17-50mm F/2.8 XR Di II.

Well since I noticed I was missing range on the wide end I decided to get a wide angle for my Canon 500D. This time the contenders were the Tokina 11-16mm f2,8 AT-X, the Sigma 10-20mm f3,5 EX DC HSM and the Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3,5-4,5 USM. Each has it’s pro’s and con’s.

The Tokina has f2,8 across the whole range which is very nice in low light, the price isn’t to bad (cheapest of the three lenses) and it comes with the lens hood. Cons for this lens (at least for me) are, the range is very limited, I don’t like the way switching AF to MF works. Both those cons would irritate me a lot though it’s a nice lens.

The Sigma has f3,5 across the whole range and a better range compared to the Tokina, it also comes with the lenshood and pricewise isn’t that much more expensive then the Tokina and cheaper then the Canon 10-22mm. To be honest I don’t really know why I didn’t check this one out. Probably because the Canon wasn’t what much more expensive compared to the Sigma and I know the Canon 10-22mm is a great lens looking at the reviews and reading user experiences.

So in the end I decided to buy the Canon 10-22mm eventhough it’s the most expensive of the three and it doesn’t some with a lenshood. Really Canon, this lens is mad expensive for a crop cam just like the Canon 17-55mm f2,8 and you don’t throw in the lenshood? Oh well, guess only L lenses get a lenshood included. Though both the 10-22mm and 17-55mm could be considered L class equivalent on crop camera’s imho. Ever since I bought this lens it’s been used quite a lot, specially on trips I’ve made since buying it. During my vacation to Barcelona and my recent daytrip to Dusseldorf I probably used it for 80 to 90% percent of the time and the rest of the time my Tamron 17-50mm f2,8 was on. I absolutely love this wide angle and am able to capture a lot more scenery and it makes shooting pictures of me and Ana (aka self portraits of us together) a lot easier. :)

All in all it’s a good lens and I am very happy with it. For now I guess I have most of the focal ranges I shoot at covered. Wide angle with my Canon 10-22m and a walk around and low light with my Tamron 17-50mm. The only range  I don’t have it tele but I don’t think I’m gonna get a tele lens soon. And if I do it will probably be eiher the Canon 24-105mm f4 IS or the Canon 70-200mm f4 IS.

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