Remote Start Troubles

People living in freezing climates especially in apartments that don't offer a garage or a carport would really appreciate the value of a remote starter for their cars. I belong to this group.

Many a time during the winter months I have to scrape my car in the cold, warm it up for a good 10-15 minutes so that I don't freeze myself in the car and also to keep my engine safe. I have been looking at remote starters for quite some time but avoided them as I read some horror stories about them messing up the car electronics/electricals. However I gave in when I came across the Viper SmartStart. This remote start solution from Viper comes with an iPhone app that brings a great cool factor and infinite range. The app itself is free on the iPhone App Store.

I got the SmartStart installed at my local Best Buy for around US$ 600.00 that includes the SmartStart system, additional interfaces for plugging the SmartStart system to my car's electronics and installation fee (included in the SmartStart price of US$ 499.00 before tax). Before I went to Best Buy to pickup my car, I dowloaded the SmartStart app onto my iPhone. When the Best Buy technicians installed the starter in my car, Viper sent me an email with my account information. So, I got my iPhone app ready before I made my trip to Best Buy.

Version 1 (The version that I first downloaded) of this app enabled me to start the car, lock the car and unlock the car, from anywhere in the _world_ where my iPhone has a data connection - WiFi/3G/Edge whatever. However there was no two way communication. So when I pulled up the app there is no way of knowing the current state of my car. There was integration with climate controls etc. Viper advertised that Notifications/Two way communication would be available in the next version. All in all, I found this remote starter system to be real good.

The Best Buy technician told me that this app would communicate with a car only over 3G/WiFi but I tested the app on EDGE and it worked just fine.

After exactly a week the remote system in my car became unresponsive to the app. The physical remote was still able to communicate alright. I took the car to Best Buy and the technician told me that the signal receiver was out of position. The app started working after he seemed to adjust the receiver's position in the car.

However, I ran into the same trouble after some time. The remote works real good but the remote system became unresponsive to the iPhone app. I was very unimpressed with these constant troubles and I conveyed my annoyances to the Best Buy guys. They gave me two options -

1. Get the system corrected
2. Return for a full refund
3. Get a different system

I wasn't interested in (1) at all. I have to wait for both (2) and (3) as appointments weren't available for a month. After talking to the technician I decided to go with (3). After using the system for some time now, I really appreciate it's value. So, given the choice I decided to go with (3). I don't have any specifics about this but the technician informed me that he would install a system that would have two way communication, a remote with an LCD screen that would spit out the Vehicle status - current status (on/off), inside temperature, ability to turn on defrost controls etc. So, I am looking forward to this new system. It doesn't have a cool iPhone app, but it's better to have something that _works_ for a change.

Windows 7 + MacBook - Match Made..

I just went through an excruciating cycle of ups and downs trying to replace my beloved 1 year old 13" Unibody Aluminum MacBook.

I have always been a PC user and ever since Apple moved their Portable Macs to Intel x86, I wanted to switch to the Mac world. Apple's introduction of the very powerful Leopard coupled with Microsoft's now infamous Vista finally made me open my wallet for a MacBook in January 2009.

I was a little skeptic and tentative in the beginning as I was finding my feet in the OSX land. I was very much impressed with the iLife suite and immediately upgraded to iLife '09 the day it became available. I have a Canon HG10 HiDef camcorder and started processing my movies in iMovie '09. I manage my music in iTunes and I started using iPhoto for pictures. My iPhoto usage spiked after getting the Nikon D90 DSLR. This is an amazing camera and I bought some great lenses to complement Nikon D90's excellent hardware. iPhoto handled D90 RAWs very well without any hiccups.

I bought VMWare Fusion with my Mac so that I can run windows-only applications and also as a life branch (the skeptic I was) entering into a new OS world. Since I was very much used to developing applications on the windows platform, I installed Windows XP on Fusion and started using Windows XP for my development purposes (J2EE, LAMP etc). I also got a heavily subsidized MS Office 2007 Enterprise license thanks to my work, so I installed MS Office suite on the guest OS. So I started using heavily both Snow Leopard and Windows XP to satiate my different needs.

Apple is always behind their PC counterparts with regards to Hardware specs. They can actually afford to do so because their OS officially runs only on their hardware. The PC manufacturers are in intense competition with each other so they all equip their models with the latest and greatest silicon, video cards etc.

Even though iMovie solved my immediate video editing needs I realized that the output is not that great because iMovie translates my video files (M2TS)/AVCHD videos into an intermediate format before processing them. So when I compare the DVDs produced by iMovie with those produced by Corel video editing suite bundled with my Canon, the contrast is very apparent. Also, even though I can create Hi Def movies in iMovie, they don't play real well on my MacBook due to hardware limitations.

I read some rave reviews about Windows 7 after it was released and also found it to be a huge leap over Vista when I tried a beta version on my Sony VAIO before I got the MacBook. So, the hardware limitations of my MacBook, coupled with the much improved Windows 7 got me looking for a Windows 7 laptop.

So to recap, I got looking for a new Windows 7 Laptop -

1. That is not too heavy ( Thinking back, I should have quantified this)
2. That runs without generating excessive heat
3. That has excellent build quality (I am really spoiled by my MacBook)
4. That is expandable
5. That is powerful enough for HD Movie editing
6. That plays HD Movies with ease
7. Excellent I/O Hardware (Keyboard, TouchPad etc)

I bought a desktop from HP before so I bought a 17.3" HP dv7t Quad edition Laptop from them. The display on this Laptop is gorgeous and it's i7 processor is very much powerful to meet all my requirements. However I found that this Laptop is too big for my needs and too heavy for casual surfing. Actually I started getting averse to using this laptop for anything. I decided to try my luck with HPs top of the line and the latest and greatest - HP Envy 15. The Envy 15 looks like a 15" MacBook Pro with it's Magnesium alloy casing. Like the dv7t this Envy also runs an i7 chip and is a powerhouse. However after a day of playing with it I almost burnt my palms working on it. It runs HOT!. It came with a sleek additional battery, but this battery added a good 2 lbs to the weight making me carry around 7 pounds. The TouchPad is very very clumsy and is light years behind the Apple TouchPads. I found that the Envy 15's deficiencies don't make up for it's steep US$ 2000 price point. So I promptly returned this purchase after a day. I got to say that HP customer service is excellent.

I was really let down by the PC market which made me realize how much ahead Apple's Hardware is. I think Windows 7 is an excellent OS that is being bundled in some very very bad hardware. Apple hardware is excellent but Windows 7 is better than Snow Leopard with regards to ease of use and a ton of software is readily available for Windows. So finally, I decided to marry these two.

I bought Windows 7 Home Premium from Microsoft and fired up Boot Camp assistant on my Mac. However no matter how much partition size I specified for Windows, Boot Camp kept complaining that it cannot move some files. I deleted my huge Windows XP Virtual Machine file (I have Time Machine backups) and tried again without any success. So I downloaded the excellent defragementation tool for Mac- iDefrag and as expected I had data scattered all across my Macintosh disk. However I cannot do a clean defragmentation of my Macintosh disk while it is mounted, so I used Coriolis disc utility to create a bootable DVD from my Snow Leopard install disc. Coriolis disc utility created a OSX bootable DVD with iDefrag on it. So, I booted my Mac with this disc and defragmented my Macintosh disk. The defragmentation process ran for around 4 hours. After defragmentation, Boot Camp was able to install Windows 7 without any issues. Once Windows 7 is installed, I booted into Windows and used Snow Leopard disc to install Boot Camp drivers. Now I have Windows 7 running on my Mac with all the hardware running healthy thanks to the latest drivers installed by Boot Camp. Finally, I downloaded Boot Camp 3.1 from Apple that has the latest driver updates, installed all the Windows 7 updates and installed Norton 360 to keep my beloved Mac secure.

So finally I am very much happy after installing the best OS for my needs on the best hardware that I could find - Windows 7 running on my Mac. This looks like an excellent mix, like Steve said the other day describing the new iPad - "...Best experience ever..".

Here is the recipe -

1. Get Windows 7
2. Run Boot Camp assistant to create a Windows partition and install Windows 7
3. If Boot Camp cannot create a partition because it cannot move some files, get iDefrag and create a bootable OSX DVD with the bundled Coriolis CD/DVD maker.
4. Defrag (Compact) the Macintosh disk with the disk created in (3) above.
5. Repeat (2) above to install Windows 7
6. Boot into Windows 7 and install Boot Camp drivers with the Mac OSX DVD.
7. Install all required Windows 7 updates, install an anti-virus to secure Windows and install the latest Boot Camp drivers.
8. Enjoy Windows 7 on Mac.

As you might have figured out by now, the above still doesn't answer my need for more power - better video card and processor for HD Movie editing and playback among other things. I think the next MacBook refresh will solve this problem.

The Happy ending is in the ultimate solution - For a "Best ever experience" run Windows 7 on a Mac !