My Ideas/Thoughts/Experiences

Finally, after going over all through the specs of different bikes along with their comparisons, I gifted myself a new bike on the 2nd of Jan 2009, a Bajaj Platina 125 cc with DTSi technology.

There weren’t much reviews of this one as it was hardly 2 months old with it’s first release. I thought of taking a chance. The on road price for the bike is Rs 46000/- in Bangalore along with the tax and everything.

My experience with my bike:

Pros:
1. Pickup is up to the mark and is good.
2. Look wise also it is good.
3. Mileage is also good. In the initial week, though it gave 60 kmpl, after the first service it went to 70 kmpl.
4. Light in weight and as such it adds to the mileage.

Cons:
1. Shifting of gears is somewhat problematic, maybe being a new bike. And after the first service the problem was solved. It seems that it is a common problem as the moment I mentioned to the service person, he automatically said 2nd gear
2. Tyres are less in width.
3. Somewhere in the highway I felt the need for the 5th gear.
4. Max speed of 95 kmph.

Rest are as per the Bajaj website. The base is that if you want a good 125 cc bike you can buy it. It’s worth the money.

The very first impression that comes to the mind is, the greater the mega pixel of a device the better will be the picture quality. Is that true or is that what we have been fed with this myth? This is the fact which I also came to know about it very lately. I was also under the same impression that the higher the mega pixel the better the quality. But I had to do some research before advising one of my friends to buy a digital camera. And so it all started.

So what camed out was the fact that mega pixels have nothing to do with image quality. Cramming more mega pixels into a smaller image sensor can even lead to reduced picture quality.

Before buying, one should always check out for the optical zoom (the more the better), LCD (size, quality), optical viewfinder (useful to frame photos in bright sunlight) and video recording (should be at least VGA quality @ 30 fps). Along with the above take a note of the battery type, the accessories (lens, flash, remote) and the manual modes. Ensure that the buttons are freely accessible as smaller cameras have really tiny and hard-to-use buttons.

Cameras with touchscreen LCD’s reduce the number of buttons, but attract a lot of fingerprints. Also check if the responsiveness of the screen is good enough.

There are different terms (in layman’s language, to impress the features) that are used to sell the camera’s.

CCD/CMOS (charge coupled device/complementary metal oxide semiconductor): The type of image sensor used in a digital camera.

Digital zoom: This type of zoom digitally enlarges a portion of the image to make it appear bigger/closer.

Image stabiliser: A technology/mechanism by which camera shake is automatically countered (to a certain degree). It can be electronic or optical. Electronic is cheaper, not as effective.

ISO/ASA (Industry Standards Organization or American Standards Association): Denotes sensitivity to light, assigned to a number. Higher ISO/ASA means greater sensitivity and vice versa. It can help reduce camera shake, and can also lead to increased image noise.

Optical zoom: Refers to the use of movable lens elements to bring an object closer. Look for optical zoom figure, not the digital zoom. That is the base of it.

Compaq Armada 1500C? What is this? A jeep with 1500 cc cylinders? Ha ha ha. Nope, it is a Pentium II series notebook with 366Mhz processor, 12.1 Inch Display, 4 GB HDD, 32MB RAM, 24X CD-ROM and 56K Modem. A bulky piece compared to today’s one. Technology has changed drastically and so has the gadgets.

This antique piece was their for re-installation of the OS. And guess what is was running, our dear own M$ 98, which sucks. The first impression that came in my mind was, why not scrap this laptop? It would do no good to itself, with installing M$ on it. But behind my mind I thought why not install Debian and check it once. So, all set to work.

Downloaded the Debian Net Installer ISO and burnt it in the CD. CD-ROM taking it’s own sweet time to read the files from the CD. But finally was able to install it. Took almost one hour for installation. Checked the hard disk space it occupied, aila only 356 MB with no GUI and the most important the modem is detected and you can use it out of the box. apt also works. So all set to install the X window. Thought of many options but finally decided to install Xfce. So after installing the disk space consumed was less then 800MB and you had 3 GB of space left for your work. Woh! good great. Had a beast tamed with Debian.