I didn't know what stroke me yesterday, but suddenly I came up with the curiousity to see if Nokia is still mobile market leader in Singapore. I believe everyone of us sincerely believe that the answer is a Yes. Well, me too but I wanted to know how big Nokia pie is.

So I told myself, let me do a little survey. See how many Nokia phones out of the first ten you see from now. I was in city area last night. So, while I am walking around city, I started to look around me to find ten mobile phones around me. Result was as expected. Eight Nokia, and Sony Ericsson and Samsung one each. Three Nokia 6600, Two 3100, One 3650, one 7250, and one 6510 in Nokia camp. T610 and E700A was single fighter from their respective camp.

I repeated the little survey again today and found similar result. Nokia grabbed 8 out of 10, and surprisingly, the other two slots went to Panasonic.
If you consider O2 XDA II as a phone, then the result will be 8 for Nokia, one each for O2 and Panasonic today.

You can try it for yourself and post in the comments below what kind of result you got. It's quite fun I tell you. One thing I learned from this was if there was a subject in my school to identify mobile phone model by looking at it from any angle and position, I would passed with flying colors. Hehe...

Note: It is raining and I am still stuck in this freezing bus in the middle of nowhere.

For those using MSN Messenger for instant messaging, Microsoft has silently launched a newer version of MSN in their website.

The latest version is currently 6.2. I have tried it but couldn't find any major changes despite it has taken Microsoft a couple of months since they launched version 6.1. The only difference I spotted is when your buddy is offline, but he/she has mobile number, MSN will categorized them as online contact with yellow-colored MSN icon.

I can say that I don't like this new feature. It may be very useful in US, but in Singapore where it is near to impossible to send MSN message to your friend's mobile phone, seeing your actually-offline friend status as online is simply annoying. Fortunately, you can group these people under new category called Mobile. It will show just on top of your Offline group.

You can download the latest version here. How about you? Have you install version 6.2? Post your comment below.

Note: this post was written entirely (not typed) on bus using my trusty iPAQ. Who said blogging wastes your time. On the contrary, it helps me utilize my otherwise-wasted time on bus.

4Him - For Future Generations
From the album The Message

The signs are obvious, they are everywhere
All that we hear about is the gloom and despair
Too many would be prophets sayin’
"It’s the end of it all"
‘Cause mother earth can’t take much more
The hammer’s gonna fall

So nature has its needs, that’s a lesson learned
But it appears to me there are greater concerns
‘Cause we can save the planet
Thinkin’ we will somehow survive
But father time is calling us
To save somebody’s life,
so

CHORUS
I won’t bend and I won’t break
I won’t water down my faith
I won’t compromise in a world of desperation
What has been I cannot change
But for tomorrow and today
I must be a light for future generations

If we could find a way to preserve our faith
So those who follow us
See the price that was paid
Then maybe when they question
What it’s gonna take to survive
They’ll find the strength to carry on
In what we leave behind

REPEAT CHORUS

Lookin’ in the eyes of the children
Knowing that tomorrow is at stake
When the choice is up to them
Will they have the strength to say

We won’t bend and we won’t break
we won’t water down our faith
We won’t compromise in a world of desperation
What has been we cannot change
But for tomorrow and today
We must be a light for future generations

REPEAT

Label: Benson

Another song that I like, but it has been sometime since I last heard this song, so when I heard this song played in radio this morning, the memory came back.

I tell you what so good about this song, at least for me.
The first three lines of its chorus reminds us not to trash our faith even in the most difficult circumstances.
The next three lines encourages us to be an example for our next generations. The paragraph following that elaborates more about this topic on how by setting examples, our next generations can find the strength to carry on in a more difficult world of theirs.

"Lookin' in the eyes of the children, and so on" gives us the responsibility not just to set an example, but to educate and teach our future children to have the strength to stay with their faith too.

Well, that's roughly what I can take from this wonderful song from 4Him. How about you? Any comments? Write your comments using the link below.

Well, I have played with this new toy for a day now and one thing I can tell you, I really really really like it... hahaha....
The specifications I have here are as follows:
Intel Centrino with Pentium M 1.4 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 30 GB HDD (only 25 GB usable since the other 5 GB are used for IBM Backup and such), ATI Radeon video card, separate combo drive CDRW/DVD, two USB 2.0 port, IEEE 1394 firewire, one CompactFlash card slot, PCMCIA, and all other standard ports such as VGA, parallel, LAN, modem, and audio ports. The battery should last me for more than 4.5 hours I think. I have been using it near to 3 hrs now, and I still have 40% of battery life.
Oh, it has a keyboard light also on top of the screen which you can turn on, especially useful when working in airplanes or dark places. I tried it, but I think the light is too dimmed to give a significant use, but it's better to have than nothing at all, isn't it?

IBM Thinkpad X31 with my http://hendrikch.tk website on screen.

The 12" screen has not been giving me any problem for now. Texts are not too small, nicely presented on screen. Screen quality is simply top notch, I can still see what's on my screen even from angle nearly 180^o. The keyboard I tell you is simply superb quality, as the pointing stick is too. These keyboard and pointing stick makes using this new notebook a real joy. And did I mention the centre scrolling button? I love it !!! Makes your life of scrolling website so easy. You can scroll sideways too. Cool....

The notebook physical quality is also very good, very sturdy. Oh yes, it is also very light, I can bring it around my home with my one hand without feeling any strain. Thanks to its 1.6 kg weight.
I tried to connect to my home wireless network without any problem at all, within seconds I can go online and update all my Windows and antivirus components already.

Physically it is also very cool to do all my activities here, and I barely hear the harddisk sound when it is working. I really don't feel any heat at all when working with this machine. The bottom of this machine is quite hot as you would expect, no major issue. The fan is very very quiet too.

Speaker was good in treble although a bit weak on bass. I tried a couple mix of songs using Windows Media Player and sound quality is quite standard for notebook I think. I am not too sure since my ear to used to listen to Altec Lansing's quality speaker, so all notebook sound quality sounds the same to me, not good I mean, he he...

I have also tried playing FIFA 2004 in this machine. However, with resolution set at 800x600x16 bit with the quality set to Low, this machine simply cannot present me decent framerate for playing games. The games moves slowly with jerky frame rate, you can feel that this machine is just not for playing games. Well, I think I shall forget trying Unreal Tournament 2004 in this machine then if it can't even handle FIFA 2004.

A few more things to mention, as usual, IBM does not provide Windows key, although you can certainly map one of these unused keys, such as Right-Alt key.
Ctrl and Alt key are not positioned as my current Logitech keyboard, so that need some time to adjust to. Esc and function keys, Backspace and backslash () are in places which I am not so accustomed to, but I can certainly adapt to minor keyboard layout changes.

However, as a business notebook, checking your emails, blogging :), MSN, and any other daily activities, this machine is certailnly up to par and even more than enough for all these activities I believe.
Well, if you want a more comprehensive review, you should check CNET review on this machine, complete with photos from many angle. Click here for the complete review from CNET.

Yipeeee!!!! It's here..... IBM ThinkPad X31!!!! hahaha.... at last, after three weeks of waiting.
10.05 am this morning, two guys from IBM came to deliver the IBM ThinkPad X31 I ordered.
I quickly unwrapped the so many boxes it came with, and I am faced with the X31, the X3 media slice, the combo drive, blah blah blah ...... so many to tell.
Now it's sitting nicely beside my keyboard, charging its battery while I am busy setting it up..
Will come back to you soon with reviews and pictures of it....
woo-hoooo !!!!!

EDIT: Its battery was already fully charged when it came, so I don't have to charge it up again to enjoy this new baby, hahaha... Now I am editing this blog using new notebook.... sweeett.....