My World A Blog On All The Things That Happen In My Life

Installing the Kingston v100 SSDNow 128GB SSD on a HP Envy 14
on 29/03/2011 - like it?

Quite some time back Kingston was kind enough to send me their v100 128GB SSD for review. Due to my travel back to India, I had to stall the SSD shipment since I wouldn’t in the US by the time I would have received it. Once back here, I had to further delay since I had planned to take a short week-long vacation to Mangalore.

While the SSD was in transit, I started researching on how would I be able to fit the SSD into my laptop, with the SSD as the primary drive and the existing Seagate Momentus 7200rpm hard drive as the secondary drive. Digging up the Envy 14 manual, I was under the impression that having both drives would be possible.

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Tags: Envy, Envy 14, free, gadgets, HP Envy 14, Kingston, laptop, SSD

Download Toad for Oracle for Free
on 28/05/2010 - like it?

Toad (acronym for Tool for Oracle Application Developers) is arguably one of the most popular and best known tools used by most people dabbling in Oracle databases ( or for that matter, most relational databases anyway). Toad’s reputation is so good, I’ve known few people swear by it and don’t even bother looking at other software, no matter how good.

Toad’s got more features than your average SQL/ PL/SQL developer would use,and hence got a bit of a steep learning curve. Not to mention an even steeper price tag ( the base edition starts at $957, and goes all the way upto $4709 if you include the Code Tester and DB Admin module). Given these prices, Toad is pretty heavily pirated.

However, most people are unaware that Toad also comes in a freeware edition, and until recently was severely crippled. Few days ago, there was an update to Toad freeware – and the updates are pretty good. The freeware edition is now based on 10.5 codebase, rather than previous 8.5 codebase. Now before you start jumping up and down, the restrictions on the freeware edition are still in place, but noticeably lesser than the previous update. Some of the restrictions include you being limited to only one concurrent database connection (which btw – would severely hamper me, I generally maintain 2-3 connections). Another major irritation is that the freeware edition will expire every 90 days, and you will need to uninstall, re-download and reinstall it. Ugh.

Here’s comparison chart between the commercial edition and freeware.

If you’re OK with the restrictions imposed by freeware edition or a Toad fan, then you can go ahead with getting it. If you ask me, Oracle’s SQL Developer is a perfectly acceptable alternative tool.

(In case you’re wondering my preferred tool, its Allround Automations’ PL/SQL Developer. Yes, yes, I know, the UI is butt ugly – I didn’t want to touch it at all just because of the UI – but believe me, once you get over the UI, you’ll love it – its fantastically fast, consumes very little memory and got boat load of features for the price its available at. I’ll probably do a review of the tool soon.)

Do let me know if you have a preferred /alternative tool that I could look at.

Download Links:

1. Toad Freeware edition

2. Oracle SQL Developer

3. Allround Automations PL/SQL Developer

Tags: download, free, oracle, PL/SQL, PL/SQL Developer, SQL Developer, TOADL

A guide to Airtel GPRS And Airtel GPRS Configuration Settings
on 25/10/2008 - like it?

I get quite a lot of mails asking about Airtel’s GPRS services and their settings, so I thought I’ll post this here.

First things, you should know that Airtel provides 3 types of GPRS services:

• Airtel Live
• Airtel NOP (or Net On Phone)
• Airtel Mobile Office

So what’s the differences between them ?

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Tags: Airtel, Airtel Live, free, free GPRS, GPRS, Live, MO, Mobile Office, Net on Phone, NOP

Win Free Passes For The Def Leppard Concert in Bangalore And Mumbai
on 08/10/2008 - like it?

Earlier I’d posted about Def Leppard performing LIVE in Bangalore on the 17th of October at Palace Grounds and on October 19th.

If you want to win FREE PASSES to the Concert, just head over to BuzzInTown, put a check mark against “Yes, I plan to attend” and you have a chance to win the pass.

Mumbai people, please click on this link for your chance to win the pass.

Do note that you have to register at BuzzInTown to be eligible.

Thanks, dhempe

Tags: Bangalore, concert, Def Leppard, free, free pass, free passes, Mumbai, pass, passes, Tickets

Coldplay Releases Their First Song For Download
on 02/05/2008 - like it?

Well first it was Nine Inch Nails offering their single Discipline for free download and now Coldplay
[ad]
has taken the same route, offering their single “Violet Hill” from their New album “Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends” for  free download.

Enjoy the song, it’s awesome. Cant’ wait for their album.

Tags: coldpay, download, free, mp3, NiN, nine inch nails