Review of HP Folio 9470m

With the launch of Windows 8, there have been a slew of new ultrabook and lightweight laptops that appeared. However for a Developer or IT Professional, these laptops are typically useless.

 

An ultrabook will typically have

• a very small form factor – thin (<2cm height) and light (< 2kg)
• Unconfigurable, and parts such as hard disks and ram are not easily replaceable
• Quite low specifications – 4GB ram, 128GB SSD
• Non standard ports, typically require external adapters to plug into LAN or VGA projection
• Long battery life

On the other hand, a laptop can be the complete opposite of an ultrabook i.e

• decent form factor, weight varies anywhere from 1.2 to 3kg or more
• Highly configurable
• Specifications can be customized, though typically the higher the specification the higher the cost as well as the weight
• Standard ports for VGA and LAN is usually present, typically a lot more ports compared to an ultrabook
• Decent battery life

I’ve been searching for quite a while for a high specifications laptop which has a small form factor and is light as well as having a backlit keyboard. Yes it sounds very much like a macbook pro and that is actually the kind of hardware that I was trying to replicate with hardware from windows OEM partners.

 

Finally in late 2012, I finally found it, the HP Folio 9470m!

 

The specifications found at HP site is inline with what I was looking for, and the best part is that it comes with an external battery to bring it up to 21 hours of usage, a built in 3G/4G modem and a fantastic warranty plan!

 

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/321957-321957-64295-5228908-5228906-5271146.html?dnr=1

 

Category	Specifications	Comments
CPU	Intel I5 to I7	Standard low voltage Ivy Bridge Intel CPU
Ram	Up to 16GB	16GB of ram, definitely able to run almost all my development and VM workloads, user replaceable too!
Hard Disk	7200RPM 320GB to 500GBSSD 128GB to 240GB MSATA 256GB Self encrypting drive options available	Decent hard disk options. However what I like is that its user replaceable, as long as it fits the SATA port and has 7mm heightThere are 2 ports actually, a SATA and a mSATA port, so you can in essence have a 256GB mSATA SSD and a 1TB SATA 7200 RPM HDD. No need to worry about replacing a DVD drive just to get another slot for storage
Screen Size	14” LCD (1366×768)14” HD (1600×900) option available	This seems to be a sweet spot, any smaller it becomes harder to do any form of decent development, any bigger makes it hard to carry around
Graphics	Built-in Intel Graphics	This is a laptop, games have long ago been delegated to my tablet
Ports/ Expansions	2xUSB 3.0 1xUSB 3.0 charging 1x Display Port 1.1a 1xVGA 1xRJ45 1xcombo headphone/mic jackWebcam	I like the fact that USB 2 has been totally phased out and its using all USB 3 ports. Update: The charging port is able to charge an IPAD too!Also the presence of full VGA and RJ45 ports are definitely a plus. No need to carry extra wires for those and increase my risk of losing them
Keyboard	Spill resistant backlit keyboard with 2 settings	Definitely a plus, especially when working in dim areas. 2 settings works well too, sometimes I just need a bit of light
Pointing device	Glass touchpad Point stick	Dual pointing options for those that can’t figure what they want to use
Communications	10/100/1000 NICMultiple WIFI options from Intel, Atheros, Broadcom 3G/4G mobile broadband	The built in 3G/4G mobile broadband option is definitely a very big plus, no need to carry a dongle anymore!Update: for Singapore, only the 3G mode is available and its in a full sized sim form factor
Battery	Replaceable battery (10 hours)External battery (21 hours)	Internal battery sounds great, but having the option of external battery and a 21 hours runtime, definitely allows me to get thru any single day without chargingDo note that as you increase the specs of the machine, battery life will drop accordingly
Security	Drive Encryption Pre Boot Security Face Recognition Smart Card Reader Fingerprint sensor TPM	Whole bunch of security features for the security conscious
Warranty	1-> 3 years standard warrantyOptions - Travel - Accident	The options are really great, take a look at the Accidental Damage Protection plan
Dimensions	13.3 x 9.09 x 0.75 in (33.8 x 23.1 x 1.89 cm)	Decent dimensions, although not as thin as ultrabook, for the available ports, it’s a good compromise
Weight	Starting at 1.61kg	Again not ultrabook spec, but light enough

 

From the specifications,  i would highly recommend this machine for anyone looking for a workhorse and yet is really mobile enough with decent battery life (kind of what everyone is aiming for)

Rating: 4.5/5

 

I bought one of these from HP in December 2012, stay tuned for my hands on review of the unit!

Eject and Close CD Tray command line utilities

Been searching around the internet for a decent command line utility to eject or close the CD tray but can’t seem to find any. So i decided to write my own command line versions using visual studio 2010 and .net 4.

Note that the actual code does not utilize any of .net 4 features so you can easily take the same code and compile it against .net 1 or .net 2

The project is currently hosted in codeplex and can be found at
http://ejectclosecdtray.codeplex.com/

Backing up an iOS device (IPhone, iPAD)

For those interested to backup the ENTIRE file system for an iOS device, here’s how to do it.

Requirements

1. Jailbroken phone
2. OpenSSH installed (via cydia)
3. DD utility on your pc (linux native)
4. ssh client on your pc (linux native)

Steps

1. Make sure you can ping your iphone (Settings -> General -> About to get your phone’s IP Address)
2. Make sure you can ssh to your iphone (from your pc, type ssh root@[iphone ip])
   If you get a prompt asking you to save some key its alright, just type yes
3. from your PC, run the following command

   ssh root@[iphone ip] dd if=/dev/rdisk0s1 bs=1M | dd of=ios-root.img
   ssh root@[iphone ip] dd if=/dev/rdisk0s2s1 bs=1M | dd of=ios-user.imgssh root@[iphone ip] – ssh client on pc connects to ssh server on iphone
   dd if=/dev/rdisk0 bs=1M – execute dd command with input file =/dev/rdisk0 and block size of 1M
   | – pipe to redirect input to the next command
   dd of=ios.img – run dd on the pc with output file=ios.img

this command will take a while depending on your iphone and wifi speed

Converting a PFX file to PEM and Key via openssl

For some wierd reason, although the steps are simple, i cannot easily find a single page which gives you the exact steps (only 4) to convert a pfx file to a PEM and a KEY file

below are the steps to convert, it will generate an aa_s.key and a aa.pem which you can then use to put into your system e.g apache, hmailserver etc

REM Set the path to include the openssl directory

set path=%path%;C:\OpenSSL\bin;

REM Export the private key
openssl pkcs12 -in aa.pfx -out aa.key -nocerts -nodes

REM take out the encryption from the private key
openssl rsa -in aa.key -out aa_s.key

REM export the ssl cert (normal cases)
openssl pkcs12 -in aa.pfx -out aa.pem -nokeys -clcerts

REM export the ssl cert (Crescendo load balancers)

openssl pkcs12 -in a.apfx -out aa_tmp_cn.pem -nodes
openssl x509 -in aa_tmp_cn.pem -out aa_cn.pem -text

REM Verification: run the following 2 commands, the output should be exactly the same
openssl x509 -noout -modulus -in aa.pem | openssl md5
openssl x509 -noout -modulus -in aa_cn.pem | openssl md5
openssl rsa -noout -modulus -in aa_s.key  | openssl md5

Done!

Get a hotmail.sg email!

Click here to get a hotmail.sg email address, something new other than the usual hotmail.com, finally you can get a chance to have an email address with a better name than what you had to bear with using hotmail.com!

Removing U3 Partition from Sandisk Drives

Here’s the steps on how to remove the U3 Partition completely from Sandisk Drives

1. Launch U3
2. Click on the U3 Icon
3. Click U3 Launchpad Settings
4. Click Uninstall

Done

HttpRunTime Cache vs Enterprise Library Cache

This post aims to highlight the differences between the cache implementation of HttpRunTime and EnterpriseLibrary

	HttpRuntime.Cache	Enterprise Library Caching Block
Standard Actions
Add Item to Cache
Read Item from Cache
Update Item to Cache	(using insert)	(using add)
Delete Item from Cache
Flush all Items in Cache
Enumeration Actions
Enumerate all items in cache
Employ LINQ Expressions
Cache Dependencies
Cache Dependency – File
Cache Dependency – Other Cache Item		(write your own extension)
Expirations
Expiration – Absolute Time
Expiration  – Sliding Time
Expiration – Extended Formats * Extended time format “<Minute> <Hour> <Day of month> <Month> <Day of week>” * means run every period Examples o “* * * * *” expires every minute o “5 * * * *” expire 5th minute of every hour o “* 21 * * *” expire every minute of the 21st hour of every day o “31 15 * * *” expire 3:31 PM every day o “7 4 * * 6″ expire Saturday 4:07 AM o “15 21 4 7 *” expire 9:15 PM on 4 July
Others
Item priority
Run function when item is removed
Get number of items in cache
Limit number of items in cache
Can use persistent Storage
Run function to refresh item when expires

Nexus goes Open Source

After much ado, the source code for Nexus is finally available at
http://www.codeplex.com/nexus

Do note that this is a direct port from the current source code used in NUS but without NUS specific widgets and settings.