Free Mobile Bill Analyser

I read about YourBillBuddy.com service in the newspaper today. It is an interesting solution for finding the best (as in value for money) mobile plan in market. Here is how it works:

1. It lets you upload 5 mobile bills of yours in standard PDF or HTML format in which mobile providers give you the e-bills.
2. It analyses these bills and shows you a couple of charts (like the one shown here)
3. Then it also recommends plans (from the current ones) that will help you reduce your monthly bill. It also gives an estimate of the average monthly bill with the new plan.
4. It currently supports following service providers : Airtel, Hutch, Reliance, TataIndicom, BSNL and Spice
   

How to benefit from this service:

1. In current scenario where number portability is not available, you may want to use this service as a way of finding the most economical plan offered by your existing service providers. Typically, it is difficult to keep up with the news plans launched by Telcos. This may be an easy way out.

2. Once Number portability is offered to Indian consumers, then this service will be a hit. Then you can even look at changing service providers to get the most economical solution and retain the same phone number.

its very easy to use....easy registration process.......and good interface..... do try.

WOW...... Firefox's interesting extension "Tab Catalog"

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I found one feature in FC6 very impressive where taking the pointer to right side top of the screen shows a tiled view of all open applications.

Since I also use Windows, I was hoping to get the same functionality in windows.

And today, I learnt about this new cool extension for Firefox "Tab Catalog" which offer something similar. Here is how it works:
If you have a number of tabs open in firefox,
with press of a button or by taking your mouse over a toolbar button,
it shows thumbnail-style catalogs of all open tabs.

You can see a sample pic below.

Great Desktop effects.....but browser is slow

After enabling the Desktop effects in FC6, I find that scrolling in a web browser become slow and jerky. I tried a quick search and found similar questions posted by others as well. One such example is here .

I am still looking for a fix for this.

Accessing my windows partition from FC6

I use Thunderbird as the default mail client. I do this because it allows me to access the same data i.e. emails, from both windows as well as linux. To get this to work, Linux should allow me to read and write onto the windows partition where the email data files are kept. This partition is a fat32 partition.

In order to get access to the windows fat32 partition, I did the following as root :
1. Create a directory where you would like to mount the fat32 partition
2. Open the file /var/fstab
3. Add the following at the end of the file
/dev/hda2 /wind vfat umask=000 0 0
Inmy case, hda2 is my fat32 partition and /wind is the directory that I created for mounting the fat32 partition.
4. Reboot (I am sure there may be other ways as well, but this is the easiest that I know.....will learn those soon ;) )

Now I was able to access the fat32 partition and had both read as well write access to it.

FC6 is impressive

#OS#
I installed FC6 on my notebook yesterday. It took around an hour but the setup was absolutely smooth. And I must confess that FC6 impressed me much much much more than Windows Vista. If you think that Aero Glass feature in Windows Vista is ground breaking......then you better check out what FC6 offers e.g.
1. The aero glass functionality runs out-of-box without any special configuration required. All you need to do is: Go to SYSTEM >> PREFERENCES>> DESKTOP EFFECTS >> ENABLE DEKTOP EFFECTS
And you have to see the effects to believe them.

2. Most impressive feature is the following : Imagine you have a number of application windows open, as soon as you take your mouse to the right hand side top of the screen, all open app windows are tiled on the screen so that you can choose the one that you want to go to. This, in my opinion, will serve as a productivity enhancer as well.

I am impressed to see how smoothly all these functions are running on my 1GB, Centrino powered notebook

#Wireless router#
Today I faced an interesting problem. A friend bought a new linksys 802.11g wireless router. He connected that to his airtel (indian telecom & isp) broadband connection. After making the necessary connections, he found that wireless network was working fine but he was unable to access internet. The router did not give any error message. So it was not clear as to what the problem was. The router was set on automatic IP assignment. It was also getting the IP from the airtel broadband modem (beetel make). However, I found that it was unable to get the gateway address. this was surprising. I tried to renew the IP but again it picked up all settings ie. IP, DNS but not the gateway.
Earlier I hadworked with DLink wireless routers. The factory gateway IP setting for them is 192.168.0.1. However, for Linksys the gateway is 192.168.1.1. I then decided to check the gateway for the airtel modem. I did this by connecting my laptop to the airtel modem directly. The laptop was set on DHCP and so it picked up th settings quickly. I ran ipconfig on windows command prompt found that airtel modem's gateway is also 192.168.1.1. So this was the problem.
the linksys router did not pick up airtel modem ip as gateway because its ip was also 192.168.1.1.
I therefore changed the wireless router's ip to 192.168.0.1, rebooted it and within seconds I was able to access the internet wirelessly on my laptop.
learning : when connecting two routers make sure that their factory set ip's are different. I know that this is very basic but at times one tends to forget to check the same.
The linksys router cost my friend Rs. 2650 with three years warranty. Bought from Nehru Place, new delhi, india.

#Buying a new laptop#
A friend of mine (Kunal), is going to Insead business school. He asked me to suggest which laptop he should buy.
My Take
Don't blow your money on the fastest processor in the market...there are other parts as well which deserve equal attention. One needs to choose an overall config rather than just the processor speed. I say this because I find that most buyers, especially first time buyers focus more on the processor speeds. As my friend asked me 'should I buy 1.8 ghz or 2 ghz based laptop'.
A computer is nothing more than different parts working together as a team. And as they say 'a team is only as strong/ fast as the weakest/slowest member in the team'. thus you mean find that 1.5ghz base laptop with faster hard disk and better graphics card may be better than 2ghz laptop with a slower hard disk and standard graphics card.

Here is how I go about making a choice:
1. Processor : anything above 1.7 ghz is fine as long as I will only be using it as a normal business user (basic word processing, email, browsing and occasional video playing). If you have lots of money, go for the dual core processors.

2. RAM : another very important part. Minimum 512mb and 1gb if you really want windows on your machine to fly.

3. Hard disk : Yes, capacity is important. But if you want a really fast machine, speed of the hard disk is very impotant. Its measure is revolutions per minute. 5400 rpm is standard and slow. So look for 7200 rpm hard disk.

4. Graphics card : for a business user any standard graphic card is good. But if you want to play some 3d games, then you must have a good video card with dedicated memory. Also check what resolutions are supported.

5. Battery: most buyers do not review this carefully and then complain on getting only 1.5 hours of backup. You should have a minimum of 6 cell battery for around 3 hrs backup on most machines. But you can also pickup a 9 cell battery if you can shell out some extra $$.

6. Size : please check out the size and weight of the laptop very carefully. I have seen people end up buying desktop replacement pcs instead of a laptop. When it comes to screen size big certainly is beautiful but remember that it will be your shoulders that will have to carry it arpund. 14.1'' is a decent size and under 2.2 kgs is good weght for business users. For me 'small is more beautiful' when it comes to laptops.

7. Business vs home : all major brands have two categories of laptops. One for home users and the other for business users. The difference lies in the architecture and the design. You can expect a home user targetted laptop to turn sluggish if it is used for long hours. It will however look very nice, cosmetically, compared to the laptop targetted for business users. Then how to choose? if you want to keep your machine switched on for more than 10 hours at a stretch buy a business notebook.

I guess above should take care of most of the performance related issues. Now all you need to do is see which brand/ model excites you the most. This is very personal, and you will be the best judge.

Happy purchasing!

#OS#

I got hold of the latest Fedora distro FC5 from an expert friend.

I was skeptical whether FC5 will smoothly install on a laptop without messing my Windows XP partition.

I popped the DVD and started the installation. It took a little over an hour for me but I was able to setup FC5 smoothly.

Most interesting aspect of this whole process was the ease with which FC5 detected all my laptop hardware very well. Considering the fact that my machine did not have the standard graphics card, this was really commendable.

Infact, I had lot of problems in installing Windows XP professional from the original Retail version on my earlier IBM R50E laptop. It messed up with the drivers for LAN, sound, graphics. I then had to visit the IBM (Lenovo) website to pick up the drivers.

#e-mail#
Which email client is best for me?

After all this..... my windows XP Professional was live and kicking....

Before I did any more testing.... I wanted to get my e-mail up and running....so next I had to decide - Which e-mail client do I use? '

Popular choices available were :
1. Microsoft Outlook
2. Microsoft Otlook Express
3. Thunderbird
4. Eudora

I had used both outlook and Eduora in the past.

This would have been a no-brainer under normal circumstances, specially when my Microsoft office Profesional license already covered the license for Microsoft Outlook. So I have already paid for one of the most popular e-mail clients .

But my situation was different. I was very keen to start using Linux on my laptop as well. And I knew that unless my business email is not available on Linux, I will not be able to even try it. Which meant that e-mails that I pop fom my server, onto the laptop, should be available on windows as well as Linux.

A tough requirement......... may be not....

Interestingly, I learnt from a friend that Thunderbird installation from Windows side as well as Linux side can access the same email data if the data is kept on a FAT partition. And so I selected Thunderbird over Microsoft Outlook.

#PALM#
Blogging from my Treo
My first test post from my treo. This is so cool. I am using plogit.

Testing a re-edit. :)

#OS#
Restoring to factory status

The IBM PREDESKTOP area is fine.... but can I really use it??? I wanted to experiment further....

I was worried because I read in certain posts that if you use the PREDESKTOP area to restore the system to factry defaults, it will delete all partitions on the HDD and bring it to the same state as it started from the factory..... yes this made sense.... but I wanted to test it....

I called up another techy friend (Shekhar)... though he did not have the answer....but agreed that this was the only time that I could test this.... a test like this can not be done at a later date.... so it was choice between Now or Never!!!

I entered the PREDESKTOP area and clicked on restore to factory settings.....
The setup started and the next 1.5 hours, my machine was busy installing XP and select apps again......

After it finished, I booted the machine....it came up nicely..... AND...
1. The NTFS partition was still 25GB...... which is good news
2. FAT 32 was not visible...... I was initially clueless what happened to FAT32 ....but soon learnt that after the instalation process the recovery software hides all other partitions.

I booted with KNOPPIX again and tried to unhide the other partitions....... and it worked....

So this experiment was also successful.....

#HDD setup#
Everything seems fine...... XP still boots smoothly

I was scared when I turned on the machine..... but to my SURPRISE I found :

1. ACCESS IBM button was still functional..... which means that PRESDESTOP area is fine.

2. XP booted very smoothly... it did give a message suggesting some changes have happened in the HDD and asked me if this needs to be fixed.... I chose the option of not fixing anything and to carry on with normal boot up.

3. FAT 32 partition was showing in MyComputer

So, all is well so far.....

#HDD setup#
Saving the PREDESKTOP area
After doing a lot of research, it was clear that I would need to order the recovery CDs from IBM. Therefore I decided that I am gonna go ahead and try different solutions that came up in my research.

I started with Linux's KNOPPIX Live distro. It booted my machine smoothly. I tried to check my HDD using qtparted. It could not read my HDD partition information because I had set the PREDESKTOP area to secure. So I went back to BIOS and changed the secure setting. This is despite the fact that all sites/ forums I read had warned me on changing this setting.

Booted with KNOPPIX again.... and now qtparted could read the partition information. It had :
1. NTFS Partition (~53GB)
2. Free space (~4GB)
The above Free space was not really FREE. This is where the PREDESKTOP area is.

qtparted allows you to shrink the partition and this is what I intended to do. Here is what I did :
1. Noted the numbers for the start and end of the current Free space (i.e. PREDESKTOP area)
2. Shrinked the NTFS partition to 25 GB
3. Created a FAT32 partition starting at 25GB and going up to 40GB (The trick here is to ensure that you stay away from the cylinders on HDD where the initial Free space was)
4. Created another 5 GB ext3 partition (for /homr)
5. Created an extended partition - and created root, swap and boot on this partition
PLEASE NOTE: ALL THIS WHILE I ENSURED THAT NONE OF THE NEW PARTITIONS OVERWRITE ANY OF THE SECTORS WHERE THE INITIAL FREE SPACE (I.E. PREDESKTOP AREA) WAS.

I rechecked the above thrice before committing the changes to the disk.

#HDD setup#
IBM PREDESKTOP AREA - my first challenge
My T41p shipped with preinstalled WIN XP Professional. Unlike earlier times, I did not get any recovery CDs with the system. Thus, I was in a fix - how do I repartition my hard disk and make space for installing a Linux distro without losing my licensed Win XP installation?

Repartitioning would mean that I lose the predesktop area where all the installation files are stored....

I started with a google search to see if others also faced this problem.... YES they did and I also came across a number of solutions. But every solution suggested that I create a set of recovery discs before doing anything. And if creation is not possible then connect with IBM to send me a set.

I looked up IBM website and learnt that recovery discs can be created. some other websites....like the one below also suggested the same. I tried all options but could not create the discs...
http://www.mydigitallife.info/2006/01/18/ibm-lenovo-thinkpad-recovery-cd/006/01/18/ibm-lenovo-thinkpad-recovery-cd/

I called up IBM and they requested me to download the latest Rescue and Recovery program (around 475 MB) from their website. I did that.... but still the option for creating recovery discs was not available. They also could not help me create the discs.

Later I learnt that T41p does not carry the image that allows creation of recovery discs. Other T series models however offer this option.

All this had not solved my problem..... but atleast I knew the limitations by now.....

A Thinkpad? .... that ugly looking black box?
....this is how some of my freinds reacted when I told them I was buying a new Thinkpad T41p.

My response to them and to all others who think similarly......"Wait till you start using a Thinkpad... you will not think about using any other machine after that"


Yes, my Thinkpad is a black beauty.... a good friend (KB) recommended one to me a year back. I started with an R50e notebook and when I had to upgrade I could not think of anything but another Thinkpad to replace it. And T41p...... its a powerhouse....
1. Great keyboard (well.... every Thinkpad has one)
2. Pentium M 1.7 Ghz processor
3. 1 GB RAM
4. 60 GB 7200 RPM HDD
5. SXGA display (its very very crisp..... better than Truebrite)
6. Five and a half hours backup with the extended 9 cell battery
7. FireGL T2 128 MBb Video card (...needless to say that I can play Need for Speed without any jerky screens)

All this in a sleek ~1" thick body....
It does lack one thing..... 802.11g (it only has 802.11b capability with its centrino technology)

I have started to play with this powerhouse...... and am loving every bit of it.....