Today I assembled a brand new computer! The idea is to use it exclusively for programming. Since the new one is not intended for gaming or for any high end stuff I kept its configuration minimum. Here are the basic specs,

1. AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ processor
2. Asus M2N-MX motherboard
3. 2GB DDR2 533 RAM
4. Seagate 160GB SATA
5. Wireless mouse and keyboard

Total price for the components was below Rs.20,000 ($450) and I have decided to keep it free of Windows. So right now I am downloading the latest stable version of Ubuntu, the hot new linux distribution! The server edition has LAMP builtin and hence I can straight away jump into some PHP coding.

The fastest way to download anything is to use a torrent distribution. Fortunately ubuntu also has files on torrent network. Today I tried out a new bittorrent client - utorrent. This is free of any adware or spyware and the download is just below 200K! It is hard to believe that people still produce optimised code! Give it a try, you may decide to use it instead of your current bittorrent client!

It is interesting to see how online stuff is changing the gadgets we use. To regular blog readers, RSS feeds offer the convenience of reading everything at a single place.  So it was quite natural that someone will come up with a mobile phone which has an RSS button!

Samsung’s  ‘Mobile Wimax MITs SPH-M8100′ features a rather large RSS button along with number keys! You can check out photos of this cool mobile here.

Based on ‘IMS (IP multimedia service), it allows users to have access to data at the speed of up to 20mbps while they are aboard of a car moving at 60km/h. It means you can actually various kinds of IP-based service including VoIP, voice call, push-to-all service, VOD, RSS and etc. in real time. It also supports T-DMB and TV-out.

I have bought a brand new Canon S3 IS powershot camera from Ebay. It is yet to reach me and I can’t control my excitement. The seller has provided a tracking URL for the camera and I am refreshing it every minute

S3 IS will be my 4th digital camera. My first one was a Kodak camera bought in 2000. It was a 2MP camera with horrible photo quality, but neverthless was worth over Rs.20,000. Last one was a Canon A80 and it no longer works. I am yet to come across a digital camera which worked for more than 3 years!

I decided to buy Canon S3 IS due to following reasons. Will post a detailed review once I get hold of it!

1. Excellent feature set
S3 offers 6MP which is good enough along with 12x optical zoom. It has got image stabilization which is quite useful when you use zoom. Users of this camera also reports that the image quality is quite good. Uses AA batteries (I hate Li-Ion battery based cameras).

2. User reviews at dpreview 
I use  dpreview for quality camera reviews. The users of S3 IS camera has posted a lot of information which influenced my decision.

3. Amazon reviews 
Lot of positive feedback at Amazon as well.

4. Pbase/Flickr photo gallery of S3 IS 
I am impressed by the photos at Flickr and Pbase taken using S3 IS.

5. The price 
It is priced below Rs. 20,000 on Ebay India. I was looking for a 12x zoom camera below Rs. 20,000.

You can buy Canon PowerShot Pro Series S3 IS 6MP from Amazon.