Category Archives: Travel

The first day of mobility with the 6430u

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Ina a recent post I shared my impressions after a week with the 6430u.
Today I share the diary of my first day-long use tentatively on battery during a trip in the UK.

The summary is:
the 6-cell battery is unlikely to provide a full day of work, the total use time on battery in the 24h I had was: 44+78+97+9+39+38=305 minutes with a total of 91% battery (55 before recharge + 36 afterward)
Caveats:
1) the intermediate recharge makes the test not directly comparable with a run to depletion, but I need to work with the notebook, so I could not take the risk of running out of battery in the middle of an activity.
2) the use of the 3G key increases significantly the consumption compared to the most common tests, but is representative of a real mobile use. Phone tethering would have saved some notebook power at the expense of the battery charge of the phone.
3) the McAfee activity may not be representative of the standard usage pattern once the notebook break-in is over.

Here is the detail:
7.50 put to sleep, 100%, disconnected power
9.08 powered up, 97%, 3G USB key, no wi-fi
9.15 went to power saver mode (max 30% CPU frequency, minimum screen backlight) from balanced, no change in estimated life: 4h41′.
9.52 85%, 41 minutes of 3G connection for a total of about 30MB, estimated life 4h39′, sent to sleep.
11.36 powered up, 83%, disabled the keyboard backlight that was on at minimum level before, started a VMware image. Most of the chrome tabs were dead citing memory issues: according to performance monitor 1.5GB are available and a spool file does exist.
11.54 78%, sent to sleep, estimate 4h23′
14.02 powered on, powered on wi-fi, 75%
14.40 McAfee security endpoint running on the disk like crazy for a while, fan spinning
15.05 McAfee still going crazy, customer noticed the noise, 56%
15.32 McAfee still going crazy, 47%, 2h43′ left according to windows
15.39 plugged in power, 45%, set to high performance in an attempt to help the MacAffee processing.
17.04 McAfee craziness is over, I don’t know exactly when it stopped 99% charged
17.36 100% charged, disconnected power
17.45 put to sleep
18.56 powererd on, turned off wi-fi, 95%
19.35 put to sleep, 85%
23.57 powered on, 81%, turned on wi-fi
00.12 fan spinning like mad even with a simple browsing use (20 tabs in chrome), Skype and outlook in background
00.16 end of fan craziness, 76%
00.22 fan back in action for no apparent reason, I’ve reduced the number of tabs in chrome since the previous event, 74%
00.27: fan stopped
00.35, putting to sleep, 71%, estimated runtime 5h16′
8.45, turned pc on. It went to hibernate during the night (I should check the setting) and I was greeted by a message telling me that it was not able to save all the memory content. So the restore from hibernate did not work and I had to restart losing unsaved work (nothing in my case). Turned wi-fi off, 64%

Auditorium Hotel near Madrid

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Last week I’ve spent 5 days in this hotel.
While the bed linen were showing some indication of excessive use the experience overall was positive:
1) fairly comfortable bed
2) fairly large room with no carpet (uncommon, but great to keep under control dust mites and related allergy)
3) fairly good food in the restaurant buffet
In several occasions the wi-fi bandwidth was insufficient for a voice-only Skype call, but a huge conference was ongoing hence is understandable even if it was unpleasant nonetheless.

The hotel is far from the city center (about 45 minutes by public transportation, 7€ round trip to plaza del Sol) and has a free shuttle bus to the airport every 30 minutes. Cab is about 20€ to the airport.

Given the price paid (90€/day with breakfast) it was a good deal.

Some banks deserve to lose their customers and mine is one of them

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As it’s often the case I’m traveling at the moment and so I went to an ATM to get some local currency.
I do this on a regular basis when not in a euro-country and I did used my ATM card several times in the past also here in the USA.

But this time it did not work.
I’ve tried over half a dozen different places without success this morning: BofA, Merril Lynch, Chase, Wells Fargo, Union Bank, California bank and trust and two privately operated ATM (in the office and in the hotel) without success and a lot of discomfort: I have 4 1$ notes in my pocket.

The I arrived in the office and found a nice message from the bank (sent during the local night) telling me that now they have a new policy in place such that my world-wide enabled ATM card by default is no longer worldwide.
They suggested that I could go to my branch asking to change it before the trip (quite inconvenient ad I’m about 10.000km from home already) or do it over the phone 8-22 during the workdays (but my wife called at 21.50 and the lady said it’s not operating after 21.30 and, even if we share the signature on the account, I have to call personally with great joy of the roaming mobile operator) or by internet banking (but it takes 48 hours to happen).

I’ve moved 65% of my savings to another bank in November (without anyone even asking why or whether they can do anything to keep it with them) but now I’m going to close the account completely.

It will be a nice Christmas gift for me and maybe for them too as they have one less customer to worry about.

New Nokia Lumia 800 at home: low satisfaction with WP

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Recently my Nokia E7 died and I was left without a smartphone.

Given the nice feeling that I’ve had with the Nokia N9 I’ve picked up the Lumia 800 handset as the phone construction is very similar and the N9 was not longer available at a good price.

After one week of usage I’ve to say that I’m very unhappy with the phone because of the Windows Phone 7.5 operating system.

Microsoft made something major with WP that makes this OS worthless for me (and for people traveling a lot):
There it is no way I could find to download automatically (or by explicit command) all the email attachments for all the emails in my inbox.
I travel in foreign countries 50% of my time and I’m not always in free wifi coverage: having all the data in the phone up to the last synchronization time is key to make it a good work companion.
The position of MS is that the behavior is selected to avoid risks of infections and to help save bandwidth: I’d agree with the choice if it was just the default configuration but it’s not changeable at all.

BTW there it is people who is complaining about Android downloading attachments they’re never going to read 🙂

I’ll either hand the phone over to my wife or send it back hoping that I’ll get the E7 back from service soon as the physical keyboard is a big deal too for me.

Millemiglia frequent flyer miles program about to restart

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Starting January 2013 the miles of the Alitalia frequent flyer program will be accumulated in a new program and will not add to the previous ones.
There it is still time to spend them until June 2013 according to the email I received.

I’ve decided to donate them to my preferred charity the Fondazione Banco Alimentare Onlus.
It’s as simple as sending an email to clubMilleMiglia.charity@alitalia.it (as long as you have at least 10.000 miles in your account) with the following data:
Your Millemiglia code
Your first name and last name
The amount of miles that you want to donate
The desired charity from the list available on the Alitalia site: Fondazione Banco Alimentare Onlus in my case.

If you live in Italy don’t forget Saturday November 24th to participate in the Colletta Alimentare Nazionale. I’ll be volunteering here most of the day if you are in the area just drop by.

Italians should learn to complain less about their country

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I’m working on a project in Germany for two weeks now and I’ll be here also next week.
I’ve found out that while Italians make a very good marketing of their products they make a fairly bad one of their own country.

A few examples from recent hands on experience.

3G coverage
I have a German 3G stick and on the train as soon as I’m 2km from the station the 3G signal is over and the 2G signal is not able to provide enough bandwidth for Skype chat.
In Italy it’s better even at my parent’s in law place and I consider that spot one of the worse.
Even with good 3G coverage at peak time it’s not better than a V.90 modem.
The colleagues told me this is normal.

Trains
Delay in the morning was the norm last week when I was getting in Hanover the high-speed train to Berlin.
On par or worse than the local train my wife takes to go to work.
A colleague confirmed that it was not a bad week. Today the same train was late too.

Highways
Traffic jams are there even in perfect weather condition and without road works: Italy has not an exclusive access to them.
Getting routed through 30 km of countryside roads to reach the highway to a major city happens here too.

Building standards
A colleague is having an experience very close to mine with a window not working well and water getting into the room on a recently built apartment.
Attorney and court fight is needed to get it right also in Germany.

Some colleagues had to commute 220 km (one way) each day this week as local hotels were not available and it was the most efficient way.
Like if for a project in Bologna a person had the hotel in Milano…

Berlin Tegel airport is connected only by a bus without a dedicated lane.
Traffic was heavy today: I was lucky taking an earlier train (that was late) that compensated the bus 🙂

Hyundai ix35 driving experience

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I was in Germany last week and  opted to get a car as the customer was 200km from the airport.

I had a compact car booked but it was not available when I landed so I got the ix35 for the same tariff.

Getting out of the parking was the first challenge as it was impossible for me to guess the external size of the car and the position of the wheels.

Consumption was quite relevant (521km with 59 liters of diesel) and the comfort at high-speed quite low due to high noise and significant vibration making cruise speeds over 120km/h very fatiguing. The car only had 24.000km.

Steering wheel with a very large dead zone and a high sensitivity to lateral wind.

Ok the bluetooth integration and the visibility in the rear mirrors.

At the end of the trip I was really happy to get back to the comfort of  my 92.000km Renault Laguna

My Nokia E7 died

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Early in the monday morning I picked up my E7 to use it for both phone calls and as a GPS for my trip in Germany and I’ve found a bad surprise.
For no apparent reason it was asking me to insert the USB cable and then to disconnect the device no matter if I had or not something connected.
Acknowledging it was not helping: in a few seconds it was back with one of the two requests.
I’ve tried all the possible combinations suggested in this thread on nokia.com, but nothing worked.
I hope to get it fixed under warranty 😦

December update: I got it back fixed under warranty. Horray!

Dinner @ Bar SU-shin in Hannover

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First of all the key message: you can safely skip this place.

I picked up the place based on the review on Tripadvisor and it turned out to be a bad decision.

The selection of sushi is fairly narrow and non everything in the menu was available.
The food tasted ok (better than oriental pseudo-sushi fast food), but nothing to write home about or to warrant another visit.

Getting the bill split correctly was a challenging task: I surrendered after the third failed attempt at getting the right amounts.

Visciolata del cardinale

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Yesterday I’ve opened a bottle that was waiting for me for a while.

Visciolata del cardinale is an alcoholic beverage of medium strength (14% vol.) made out of wine, visciole (Prunus cerasus) and sugar.
The scent recalls the german kirschwasser with a clear mark of cherry.
The taste is fruity and astringent.
The sourness of the visciole is strong yet balanced by the sugar.
It’s a great conclusion for a good dinner.

I discovered the visciolata during the summer holiday when I visited the grotte di Frasassi and the surroundings.
While the visit to the caves is great in itself I find always nice to have something good to bring home.