Read Samsung Galaxy Note 3 renamed Galaxy Mega? in Ehab Heikal’s blog

In what would be one of the biggest branding blunders in tech, the rumours have it that the upcoming Galaxy note 3 will be renamed Mega and will come in two different sizes. I think that this will not be a new note but most probably a lower budget large screen phone that will take large screens into the masses.

Anyway the next note 3 whether it will be called Note 3 or Mega will have either a 5.9 or a 6.3 inch screen.

Now people that have not tried a large screen phone might think 5.9 or 6.3 inch is crazy, but let me tell you one thing, I am dying for a larger screen. I have used the Galaxy Note and Galaxy Note 2 since they came out they are just amazing. They allow me to do real work on the phone. With 6.3 inch screen you can kiss tablets good bye.

And personally I think this is why Samsung is going for larger screens. While it has been able to compete with and even outsell Apple in the phones, the market share of Samsung in tablets has not grown as much as they would like. These phones are designed to hit Apple where it hurts, by reducing the demand for tablets and weakening the Apple tablet dominance. If you can not beat a product line, make people not want it in the first place, the reasoning goes, a 6.3 inch phone will make you not want a tablet, and realistically it will make you save money by having one device instead of two.

Read Magnets mess up the Galaxy Note 2 stylus in Ehab Heikal’s blog

A relative of mine got and returned a Galaxy Note 2 phone because of intermittent stylus problems. The stylus would not work in certain parts of the screen, namely the middle part of the right edge. The Guys at mobile shop where amazingly understanding and replaced the phone when she demoed this problem to them.

What happened is that the new phone had the same issue. The phone was presented to your’s truly and I was very amazed by this. To me samsung was super reliable and two phones in a row is just not bad luck.

So I took a look at the phone and noticed something strange, the area in question that sometimes does not work on the Samsung Galaxy note 2 with the Stylus was directly located on the other side of a magnet in the flip case that she had on her phone. I removed the case and put that same magnet in another area and low and behold that area now had problems and the other area was clear of problems. When we removed the cover totally the intermittent problems no longer came back.

Non Authorised accessories can do harm but I never saw a case do something like that.

Moral of the story, not all defects are really defects, Mobile shop in Egypt really mean business and exchange faulty devices, and they do not have the experience to know what is faulty or not.

But most of all if you have a problem with technology  solutions can sometimes amaze you.

Read IdeaPad Yoga 13 Now in Egypt: Buy a good ultrabook and use it as a terrible tablet for free. in Ehab Heikal’s blog

Jumia now lists the  Lenovo Idea Pad Yoga for 7000LE for the core I5 128Gig ssd model. And at 1.5Kg it is not too bad as an altrabook. Yes I expect a decent 13 inch ultrabook to weigh only 1.3Kg max not 1.5KG but think of it you get a bad tablet in the same device.

Why bad? Well at 1.5KG it can be a decent ultrabook where it is just 200G more than the normal for that category, but Given that an ipad is less than 700gm, this thing is a total failure as a tablet. Imagine holding it for like half an hour, your hands will hurt.

Nevertheless having a touch screen in an ultrabook is cool and being able to use it as a tablet for like 10 minutes max is not bad. Also it is the only ultrabook/notebook that I know of that than rotate the screen nearly 360 degrees and that is nice to parade around your office or university.

Overall given the specs and price it is a good deal.

Read Microsoft Surface Pro: one fatal flaw in Ehab Heikal’s blog

Honestly I love to hate Microsoft but sometimes they come up with good stuff. And when you take Windows 8 aside the Surface Pro is an amazing piece of hardware. The Surface Pro which is not available in Egypt as of the time of writing this blog post manages to put a full ultrabook class notebook ( Core I5, 4 Gigs of ram, 64 or 128Gig SSD, USB 3 and more ) into a tablet that weights just 200 grams over the latest ipad. And the magnesium alloy body is a treat especially given the 900USD starting price of the Surface Pro.

But there is one huge issue in my mind. To use windows 8 as a desktop you need a keyboard and a mouse. The keyboard they solved with the touch and type covers they sell for it. The mouse problem has two solutions, the touch screen works with both fingers and a stylus the give you with the Surface Pro. The touch does not work well with desktop apps, and so the stylus helps you with any application that needs accurate mouse control. The real problem is that the stylus does not dock inside the Surface Pro like other tablets with styluses ( like the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 ), it just attaches itself via a magnet to the Surface Pro. This makes it liable to be bumped, and fall unnoticed.

I mean seriously, I understand that things are cramped inside the device but was it impossible for the Wizards at Microsoft to make an external holder that is more reliable than a magnet? A clip on or something?

Surface Pro with Cover and Stylus attached magnetically to the side. Just bump it and it will drop.

Well it is not a serious issue for us here in Egypt since the device is not sold here at all. But honestly I do crave for a tablet that has the power of a full computer at a weight of 800gm

Read Adding Soy to your burger can save your life in Ehab Heikal’s blog

When I was young I was indoctrinated is a concept that cheap bad burgers had “soya” added to them, and grew up thinking that 100% beef was the way to go. Now having passed 40 years, things change. Cholesterol and fat in  burgers and other meats are one of the main causes of the yearly heart disease related deaths. In the USA hear related diseases cause nearly 600,000 deaths per year from a total of 2,5 million yearly deaths ( source ) , making it the number 1 killer in the USA.

Well reducing cholesterol can save many lives, and that can be done either by reducing the number of times you eat meat meat intake or by reducing the amount of meat in the meat you eat. That can be done by adding soy. Soy has a higher percentage of protein than meat and zero cholesterol.

So really those cheap burgers are not so bad after all! Well not really. See some soy products are highly processed with chemical agents that could be bad for your health. See when you are looking for cheapest which is the main reason why common supermarket sold burgers in Egypt contain soy ( sometimes labeled as plant protein among other labels to hide its reality as “soya” ), the intention is not to make it healthier but cheaper and so poor quality soy can be used.

One of the most important things that consumers have to fight for is better labeling laws. Such laws will allow you to know exactly what you are getting and make informed decisions about your health and the quality of products you buy.

One thing is for certain 100% beef does not seem to be so great now as it used to be, and soy to me is not just a way to make burgers cheaper.

Still soy is not perfect and there are reports of some bad health effects, are these reports true or just the meat industry fighting back? Soy has been used in Asia as a main food item for thousands of years and it is doubtful that in normal quantities it has any bad effect and the research that shows bad effects of soy mostly talks of over consumption of soy, not normal amounts.

Over all I feel that people in this day and age should take more time to study what they eat and push corporations and governments for much better labeling laws.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia licensed via creative commons.

Read Reflections:What do I look like? in Ehab Heikal’s blog

How would I look like if I saw myself for the first time?

How do I look like if I see myself with your eyes and what would I think of my self if I had your mind?

Am I the person I think I am?

Would I be my friend if I had the choice?

Would I marry myself if myself was of the opposite sex? Or would I not be good enough for me?

Read One liner Linux command to extract URLs from text files in Ehab Heikal’s blog

I find my self needing to extract URLs from text files quite a lot and this is the easiest one liner linux command line magic that I got to extract urls from text files.

cat filename | grep http | grep -shoP 'http.*?[" >]' > outfilename

The first grep helps reduce cpu load. The second grep uses perl grep syntax to enable non-greedy grepping and thus allow you to get multiple URLs in one line of HTML and allows you to get the closest extraction.
With the above you will still get a trailing quote in the end most of the time, this you can easily delete using your favorite text editor by simply replacing all instances of a quote with nothing.

Simple and short and works well.

Read Can the real PC ( Personal Computer ) please stand up. in Ehab Heikal’s blog

When PCs where first introduced they where expensive and rather bulky and most of all hard to use. With time prices went down, software became easier and the PCs shrank. Now the definition of what a PC is has changed so radically that we need to rethink what is the PC. A PC does computing tasks on a personal level, it can be shared with more than one person but that should be the exception not the rule after all it is a Personal Computer not a server. The picture here is of on of the First IBM PCs that started the PC revolution.

Now things are different if we look at computing devices that we use we will find a huge variety as you can see in the list below that is sorted according to size.

Smart Phone

Phablet ( A smart phone that is larger than a smartphone and smaller or equal to size to a tablet like the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 )

Tablet

Tablet Transformer ( A tablet that can dock into a keyboard or that has a keyboard case that makes it more like a notebook )

Ultrabook ( a very light weight notebook )

Notebook

Desktop PC ( The traditional PC that started it all is still alive ).

So as you see these are all personal computing devices in different sizes and forms that all compete for your computing time. So can the real PC please stand up? Many people with light computing needs have stopped using the notebook or PC and carry only a tablet. Some like me can never give up their notebooks but use a phablet extensively. Now the PC is not one device but many. If you ask me the most personal of all of these is the smart phone, something like the Samsung Galaxy s3 or the Iphone 5 is much more personal than any PC, it is yours and yours alone. You do not feel right when you allow some one to use it. It has your personal photos and reminders. It is more of a PC than the PC because you nearly always have it and shut it off only when you go to sleep. The Phone or in my case the Phablet is a constant friend that is there with me nearly everywhere. People are becoming so attached to their phones that the newest high-end phone ( and tablet ) from Sony the Sony Xperia Z phone and the Sony Xperia Z tablet are both water proof, and thus it seems that a phone that you can take into the shower is in demand.

To me it is clear that the PC has changed, that many people have more than one PC and that while a notebook is more C ( computing ) thank P, the phone and phablet are the most P in all PCs.

Read شعرم in Ehab Heikal’s blog

داري خيبتك يا شاطر
تقول مخاصم و انت مش آدر
هي المقطعه تحلي
الا و الآنتخابات دخله
فك كيسك و كلف
علي حزبك اصرف
سيبك من البخل ده
غيرك صرف اد كده
فلوس و سجن و صحه
تمنين سنه مش حبه
اوم ربنا يهديك
ورينا شطرتك في الصناديق
ايهاب هيكل

Read Office for windows RT: Is it really office. in Ehab Heikal’s blog

Windows RT is Microsoft’s stab at gaining market share from Apple’s Ipad but as with Microsoft always they miss a chance. The real power of Microsoft is with office, and once again they screw it up.
See a tablet that can run a full version of office could rule all other tablets. And Microsoft say that this office is a full version.

This is what Microsoft has on their web site on this page http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/home-and-student/office-home-student-rt-preview-FX103210361.aspx

Does Office Home & Student 2013 RT (Preview and the final edition) include the same features as Office Home & Student 2013 on my Windows 7 or Windows 8 PC?
Almost – Word 2013 RT, Excel 2013 RT, PowerPoint 2013 RT and OneNote 2013 RT in Office Home & Student 2013 RT include the vast majority of Office Home & Student 2013 features available on PCs, and nearly all the features most customers use. But because tablets have special needs for security and mobility, a few features are unavailable in Office Home & Student 2013 RT, including macros, add-ins, and other custom programs written by users or developed by third parties.

Really let us look at reality, open office has been free for ages and many small businesses use it, after all it is FREE. What has stopped open office from eating up Microsoft’s office if it is free and good. One thing, Macros! Open office has macros, it just does not have Microsoft Macros and that alone stops it from being used in large enterprises who have already done many applications based on Microsoft Macros and do not want to change! That has been the one major stumbling block that stopped Open Office ( also called Libre Office ) from getting a critical mass.
Now office for windows RT is one step behind open office, it does not have ANY form of macros!

Once again, Microsoft has lost a wonderful opportunity. If they had macros, I am sure that enterprises would hand over Windows RT tablets to a good portion of their workforce, but this is not going to happen. Some things just do not change.

On another note, if you have not already tried open office or Libre  Office, what are you waiting for, it takes a few minutes to download and it is FREE FOREVER, It has full Arabic Language support and it is great for companies in Egypt that are living the current cash crunch.