Bad Documentation on Compaq Products

I had been wondering why my old video camera's I.LINK (or Firewire or IEEE 1394, either one as they are identical) cable could not fit to my Compaq Presario R3000z port. I thought, "aah...o course it does not fit, the other end that goes to the camera is Female 4-pin, while another end that goes to PC has 6-pin. I getta buy a 4-pin to 4-pin cable then".

I rushed to BestBuy (which is the closest electronic superstore from my home) and found one made by Sony. Suprised with its higher-than-expected price, I asked a salesperson overthere whether there is another option. He told me to go to Cable & Networking aisle. Gotcha! I found one with 10 bucks less than the Sony one (it's $32 or something, forgot). The cable is 4-pin M to 4-pin M.

Getting back home, I opened the box and then tried to connect it to the laptop. Suprisingly I could not make it!. After checking the pins and the shape I then realize the cable's connector is slightly in difference shape than the the laptop'. Damn! I had wasted 35 bucks for useless cable.

I went to compaq.com, but could not find anything related to this issue. I then went to google. After skipping some pages, I spot a page from hp.com documenting the laptop (forgot what's the title of the PDF file). But still could not figure out what kind of connector it requires.

I really am dissapointed to see a big company as HP misses this small-but-important thing. Their product documentation is bloody bad too. Hope they change that. I like their products (I have HP printer and later this R3000z). But the recent problem affects my rating of their quality to about below-average in term of documentation.

Next Generation DVD battle

There are two groups of next generation DVD which are battling to win as standard for next generation DVD. One group with Sony and Philips as ones of its members is proposing Blu-Rays, another one while Toshiba and others is proposing HD-DVD. To summarize the differences between them, I put a table here:

HD-DVD
Standardization Body www.dvdforum.org
Key Hardware Supporters Toshiba, NEC, Sanyo
Key Hollywood Studio Backers Paramount, New Line, Universal, Time Warner
ROM Capacity 15 GB (SL), 30 GB (DL)
Laser Pickup Blue Laser
Numerical Aparture of Lens 0.65
Design Emphasis Download compatibility with existing DVD standard
CODEC MPEG-2, ITU H.264 (AVC), VC-1
Copy Protection Advanced Access Content System (AACS)
Interative Software Based on derivative of Microsoft's MSTV

Blu-Ray
--------
Standardization Body www.blu-raydisc.com
Key Hardware Supporters Sony, Hitachi, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer,
Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Thomson, Apple, Dell, HP
Key Hollywood Studio Backers Sony Pictures, Tri-Star, Disney, MGM
ROM Capacity 25 GB (SL), 50 GB (DL)
Numerical Aparture of Lens 0.85
Design Emphasis Larger Storage Capacity
CODEC MPEG-2, ITU H.264 (AVC), VC-1
Copy Protection Advanced Access Content System (AACS)
Interative Software Based on Java-based MHP/GEM

AMD Clock and Voltage

After almost a month having the laptop, I have not been able to make my R3000Z laptop utilize the maximum clock frequency and voltage allowed on the CPU. So far, I have downloaded AMD PowerNow Deskboard to monitor CPU utilization, clock and its voltage. It keeps using 36% of the maximum CPU speed. The voltage has been hanging at 1.1 volts. Although, this really saves the batteries alot (90%).

I tried Rightmark CPU Clock Utility. I could pump up the clock and voltage automatically, or by manual. By so far, why the pre-installed AMD driver could not adjust frequency and clock to what I want. I tried to overload the CPU with a lot of processes, but still no change.