My mom just bought a new refrigerator for the house. It is a Samsung RT58EAMT Refrigerator and it cost about SGD$915. The gross capacity of the fridge is 580 litres which is much bigger than my previous Sanyo SR-37ZB refrigerator. There is no one refrigerator big enough for my mom to put all her baking stuffs and hence my house always have 2 refrigerators ever since my mom picked up baking.

This new refrigerator is kinda cool, it will display the temperature of both the freezer and the refrigerator on the door. Now if only it has WIFI capability and we can monitor it directly from our browser, not just the temperature but also the groceries within the refrigerator.

Better still, since refrigerator are never turned off and it is very cool inside (Freezer: -19°C, Refrigerator: 2°C), it maybe a good thing to have a built in web server within it.

Old Sanyo SR-37ZB Refrigerator

New Samsung RT58EAMT Refrigerator

Temperature Indicator

Dad’s Off To Vietnam4
My dad’s flight is 10am on Singapore Airlines to Vietnam. He will be there for 6 months and coming back on the 17th December 2008 I think. He told me that if everything is good, he may get to come back 3 months later for a short period.

Reached the airport at 8am and saw my dad check in. After a while, his colleagues came along and we parted. My mom, brother, Huimin and I then went to Swensens for breakfast. The breakfast is good and value for money. Should have that more often.

Now whenever I am at home when it comes to 6.30pm (my dad used to come home at this time), it feels a little different, much quieter. The feeling is also weird as for 24 years, my dad is mostly with us. Even though I am a guy, I am proud to say, I miss you dad! I know he will be reading my blog at some LAN cafe in Hanoi, Vietnam.

PC Show 2008
Left the airport at 8.45am and the 3 of us excluding my mom dropped by Li Xiang office to pass her, her handphone as she left it at my house. After that we proceed on to Suntec City to wait for the PC Show 2008 to open as we are too lazy to come home and then leave the house again. We waited for about 2 hours as it opens at 12pm and we are there slightly before 10am.

Meet up with the guys at Frro, David and Michael too.

Before the door opens, you can see tons of people outside gathering. Once the door opened, everyone rushed in like they are going into a gold mine. As usual, you can see parents pushing prams which personally I HATE THE MOST. Seriously they think this is some sort of family outing but they didn’t realize that their selfish act always caused inconvenience for serious buyers and buys who bought big bulky object. Bringing kids is still quite understandable as sometimes no one is there to look after them at home, but for fuck you push prams along?

I seriously think that the organizer should do something about it, like set the minimum age limit to 12 or even charging a $2 entrance fee. A simple $2 entrance fee will not deter serious buyers. Hardware Zone Forums always suggest the organizer something about it.

I always try to boost the economy by helping others to buy when it comes to such exhibitions.

• Helped my uncle wife to get a 250GB Western Digital Portal HDD (Passport Essentials) for $129.90, a 4-ports USB hub for $9.90.
• Helped my mom to get Canon ink for her office Canon printer MX700 for $52.90.
• Helped Li Xiang to get Sepom photo A4 paper, 5 packets for $28

My brother and I wanted to get the Razer Lycosa Keyboard. But as predicted by some fellow HWZers, there is no promotion to it and on top of that there are selling it more expensive. They are selling it for $129 whereas you can get at some places for just $119.

My mom bought for me a Samsung 2043BWX Monitor for $315 and asked me to give my old Sony 17 (SDM-HS73) to her to replace my brother old Philips 17″ CRT. At first I was asking her to buy a LCD monitor but end up she ask me to buy and give her the old one. Thank you mom!

The Box

2043BWX Monitor

The Monitor On My Study Table

David to himself a Samsung Monochrome Laser printer for $98 and an internal 3.5″ 320GB HDD (not sure about the price), whereas Michael did not get anything. lol.

We have just injected more than $733.7 into the Singapore Economy!

We ended our day at about 2.30pm and headed home. The usual impatient me, the moment I went home, fixed up my new monitor, swapped my old monitor with the old CRT monitor and everything works per normal. Luckily there is no dead or stuck pixel on my new monitor. Phew

Nokia @ Molly Malone
Left home at about 5.30pm and reached Molly Malone’s Irish Pub which is located at 56 Circular Road, Singapore 049411 for an informal Nokia meetup with Nokia Staffs (Angela, Annette, Cherie, Desmond, Luanne, Loretta and Wen Dee), Text100 people (Carolyn, Liyi and Supriya) and several bloggers (Mr Brown, Coleman, Sheylara, Preetam, Ben and his wife). Do forgive me if I miss out any names or the name typed is incorrect!

Cherie who is a product manager demonstrated many of the Nokia prototype phones like the N78, N96, 6220 Classic, 6210 Navigator, XpressMusic 5320 and there is one more XpressMusic phone which I can’t remember the model name, but I think that will be the first XpressMusic phone to run S60 OS, currently all XpressMusic phones are running on S40 OS.

Desmond who is also a product manager demonstrated to me the N96 and the N78 prototypes. All Nseries devices after N78 will have the NaviWheel feature, just imagine the click wheel scrolling of the iPod. There will be light emitting from the NaviWheel every now and then to show that the phone is “alive”, they called it the breathing light. It is much better than the old school blinking LED lights at the top of the phones.

I played with the N96 and I think it is quite sluggish as it is still a prototype. With all the NDAs flying around Nokia, they can’t say anything at all with regards to unannounced phones like the XpressMusic 5800 “Tube”, N79 and the N85.

There will be an upcoming event on Monday and Tuesday which I will be attending called the Nokia Connection 2008. I can’t seem to find a link to that. Nokia Connections is held every year and is a hands-on showcase of the latest Nokia devices and services including: Nokia Maps, Nokia Music Store, N-Gage and Share on Ovi.

I got a feeling they will officially announced the Nokia E71 and E66 there as definitely there will be new phones announced.

By the way, the food at Molly Malone is good especially the Fish and Chips which cost $16 and the portion is big. The spicy chicken balls and the button mushrooms are good too.

Samsung has been very kind to send me a Samsung VP-MX10 for review as well as a 4 GiB SDHC SanDisk memory card.

As this is my very first camcorder, this review may not be as in dept as I cannot compare it with any other camcorder besides the video feature of my digital camera.

Summary
Pros

• Reasonably priced
• Long battery life
• 34X optical zoom
• Compact and light weight
• Digital effects can be added

Cons

• Average video quality
• Poor LCD display in view finder
• No still image capture

Read More (1,152 More Words, 11 More Images)

Got hold of the Samsung VP-MX10 last month but did not have a chance to review it as I was rushing for assignments and preparing for exams.

Here is the brief specifications of the MX10:
Signal Type

• Signal Type: PAL

Storage Media

• Storage Media: Memory

Image Sensor

• Sensor Type: CCD
• No. of pixels: 800K

Lens

• Lens Lens: F Value 1.6-4.3
• Optical Zoom: 34x
• Digital zoom: 1200x
• Filter Diameter: 30.0mm

Display

• Size: 2.7″ wide
• No. of pixels: 112K

Dimension & Weight

• Dimension: 60 x 62.5 x 121 (mm)
• Weight: 280 grams
• Full Specifications

Here are some pictures of beautiful camcorder to keep you all occupied while I played around with it.

Box

Contents In The Box

Front View

Side View

View Finder

Back View

Holding Strap

In the review that I will be doing, I will shoot 2 one minute videos (one in the day and one in the night) and I will upload the video (uncompressed) to let my readers have a look at the quality of the video.