The Real Valley

Review of TypePad Hosted Blogging Service

I've been a Wordpress fanatic for a long time but I have to say that TypePad is very slick indeeed

website 'TypePad Hosted Blogging Service' 13:49 on Mar 15 2007 by The Bandonian

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

I just signed up for a TyepPad account in order to test publishing from LouderVoice. Setup was trivial even if you have to give your credit card details at the start of the 30-day trial period rather than at the end.

I like the overall admin interface and the writing tools are very nice. I do find overall navigation less obvious than Wordpress.

Setting up an XMLRPC connection was trivial and publishing works perfectly.

The editing tools also do not trash our hReview markup which is more than can be said for any version of Wordpress.

I may become a convert!

LouderVoice Review Tags: blogging, loudervoice, movable type, six apart, typepad

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Review of Dell Latitude D420 Ultra Portable Laptop

Should be awesome but totally unstable with Vista. Replaced with XP, now rock solid.

Review of product: Dell Latitude D420 Ultra Portable Laptop

Rated as 5/5 on Mar 15 2007 by The Bandonian

I purchased an "as new" laptop on eBay recently - a Dell D420 Ultra Portable. This is a lovely machine with a 12.1" 1280x800 screen, an Ultra Low Voltage Core Duo 1.2 GHz CPU, 1.5GB RAM, Intel 945GM Express Chipset and a great set of standard ports.

My initial impressions were extremely good. The laptop is small, light, strong looking and the screen is great. I was surprised to find the keyboard really good too.

Whilst the integrated graphics should be very slow, I have seen no issues with standard office tasks. In fact, I've been stunned by the overall performance of a 1.2 Ghz machine with only a lowly 4800 rpm 1.9" microdrive hard disk. I assume the second core is helping a lot here. It's easily the match of my desktop Athlon64 3200+ for normal tasks.

I was expecting XP with the machine but was thrilled to find Vista Home Premium installed. Despite all the criticism that people have been making of Vista, I really like it. I think it is a big jump forward from XP and is a more more pleasant general user experience.

BUT, and this is a huge BUT, the machine is totally unstable. It blue screens at least once per hour. I cannot figure out if it is a hardware problem or a Vista one. I've upgraded all the drivers and the BIOS. I ran with only the onboard memory in case it was a bad DIMM, I've racked my brain but I cannot make it stable. I'm probably going to have to return it as I do not have the time to install XP just to check. Vista claims it is a video driver problem but upgrading to a 4 week old Intel driver has no effect.

I'm very very disappointed that I don't have my dream machine for travelling working well and I have returned it. I hope it is just a bad one-off.

Note I also received a docking station with the laptop. This is a superb device with ports repeated, a DVD drive and a DVI output too. Highly recommended.

I will update this review when I get the repaired/replaced laptop and will probably give it 4 or 5 out of 5 if it is stable.

I returned the machine and it was not replaced but they removed Vista and put XP Home on instead. It now works perfectly. This is disastrous news for Microsoft as the laptop has a "Windows Vista Capable" sticker on it! Both Ms and Intel need to get this sorted fast or Vista could be a Ford Edsel.

LouderVoice Tags: core duo, d420, dell, docking station, intel, laptop, latitude, ultra portable, vista

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Review of The Alexander Hotel

   

Good rooms, poor service, crazy parking.

   

        Review of business                     The Alexander Hotel             Merrion Square Dublin D2 Ireland            

   

        Rating: 3 stars out of 5     

   

We stayed in the Alexander for the Irish Blog Awards. Despite its upmarket address it is actually around the corner near some dodgy looking flats.

Our first disappointment was that car parking was in the basement of a nearby building which we had to pay for and which is not signposted. So you have to double park outside the hotel, run in, get the instructions/location and then drive over to the carpark. At 1.9m, this carpark will also not take a Zafira with a roofbox (as we found out when we tried to enter!).

The hotel itself is lovely and the rooms are large and of high quality with the usual tea/coffee making facilities and trouser press.

Our stay was ruined the following morning by room service (or lack of it). We had ordered breakfast in bed for 10.00-10.30. By 11, nothing had arrived so we called down. They claimed that we had not indicated a time on the card. So they didn't bother give us anything! A simple phone call would have been appreciated. They said they would send something up. After 35 minutes we called again. It was "on the way". Another 15 minutes passed and it finally arrived. 50 minutes to fry a couple of sausages, rashers, a some black pudding. Ridiculous.

€18 for parking for less than a day. You also have to pay for wifi. Rip-off Ireland alive and well in Dublin. If you have the time, I recommend staying further out in Bewley's in Ballsbridge or Leopardstown. Far superior value and the restaurant in Ballsbridge is superb.

   

LouderVoice Review Tags: accommodation, business, hotel, ireland, tourist, travel

   

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