It's tech talk time! (Try saying that 10 times over as fast as you can). If you're like me who's constantly online (except when I'm socialising with other people cuz that'd be rude) you'll know about the small little voice behind your head that constantly warns you "internet quota - how much do I have left this month - can I play this video without exceeding my quota - can I visit this page without getting a bill shock at the end of the month" and of course the relief of WiFi connection. 

Maxis has recently launched a new product named MaxisONE Plan - aiming to provide customers the freedom to connect and communicate the way we want to. We all know that calls and sms are a thing of the past with the emergence of smartphones and mobile data connection. Sure, in selected cases (mostly parents) calls are still frequently used, while among peers, friends, even business communications, instant messaging are preferred so as not to incur any extra charges. While in years before postpaid users worry about bill-shocks due to excess calls and sms as the end of the month, these days we worry more about being excessively charged for mobile data. 

So Maxis spearheaded a breakthrough - paraphrasing Dusyan Vaithiayanathan, the Head of Consumer Business "we as service provides has benefited from charging calls and sms rates, and now mobile data rates to the users. It is time for us to give back". And honestly, I could not agree more. With MaxisONE, one does not need to worry about how much calls and sms they use at the end of a bill cycle - it's free! 

Wait, what? Free Calls and SMS? 

Yes, free calls and sms. MaxisONE offers a simple plan that focuses more on what our generation use - data. With a special interest of providing not only high-speed LTE coverage on top of wide 3G network but also providing reliable connection wherever there is coverage! Cheers to that! Just as much as we hate dropped calls and undelivered sms, we also hate having to reload a website or replay a video because we were abruptly disconnected from the data network. 

So yes, free calls, free sms - not just between Maxis to Maxis, but to ALL network! This is great news for those who pay for both calls and sms with a data plan every month! It really saves up on your bills! With both calls and sms free and unlimited, what you only need to choose is how much data you need! 

Facebook? Youtube? Instagram? Whatsapp? How much data do I need?

In the race to provide specific group of consumers with what they specifically need, network service providers tend to confuse their customers. Honestly, I am just as uncertain about my plan as the dude next to me! But Maxis has made it easy by giving you a choice of 1GB, 2GB and 3GB quota a month. Additionally, it's a flat rate of RM30 for every extra 1GB you need a month, or if you just need a slight boost, it's RM10 for 200MB, and RM20 for 500MB. 

So what's the difference? I'm still bound by quota! 

Hold your yappin, I'm not finished yet! MaxisONE offers something thy call an Always ON internet experience - which means that even though you've used up all your internet quota for that billing cycle, you're still connected, albeit at lower speed. 

Okay.. sounds reasonable.. What else is there?

Together with MaxisONE, new devices are also available such as HTC Desire 310, Hwawei Y530 and Samsung Galaxy Ace 3. These are FREE when you sign up for the plan. Other higher performance devices are also available. 

If you're also a frequent flier especially overseas, you'll rest assures that Maxis roams in 106 countries at a flat rate of RM38 per day. With that in mind, you won't have to worry about pay-per-use data and bill shocks ever again! 

Great! Where do I sign up?

The simplest most effective way to sign up is to visit any Maxis center near you or any Maxis Exclusive Partner store nationwide. You can also visit Maxis Online Store here and read more information on the MaxisONE plan here. 

And as usual, a gallery of shots! >.<

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HP Pavilion TX-2500

Ask my friends they'll say I've always been one on the cutting edge of consumer technology. Back when I was an undergraduate student, I got myself a HP Pavilion TX-2500, the second generation tablet laptop of it's time. This was when touch screen technology was still new to the consumer market. To today's standard, the specs are still valid - dual core AMD Turion X2 2.4GHz processor with ATI Mobile Radeon HD 3200 graphic card, I upgraded the RAM to 4GB and maintained a 250GB hard disk. Yeah, not a lot of space now but back then this was the standard. The best part of this model it that it's basically a laptop - tablet hybrid, one of the first of it's kind. Its 12-inch screen supports a single touch (no multi-touch or gestures) and came with a digitizer (that's the pen) for writing on. Great for taking quick notes and annotate on other documents.

This time around, I invested in yet another cool, sleek, durable, tiny and powerful device - the Microsoft Surface Pro (I'm typing away on the Surface Cover - we'll get to that in a minute). First. the specs:

It is marketed as a tablet, but performs like a laptop, and for a 10-incher, it packs more processing power than meets the eyes. I'll be honest - making the switch between a larger screen to this small one can be a learning curve. 

Let's talk techies. Surface Pro is powered by the 3rd Generation Intel Core i5 processor with Intel HD Graphics 4000. Clocking at 1.7GHz, it handles multitasking smoothly, and together with 4GB RAM, runs a lot of heavy loaded software quite efficiently (let it be known that my heavy loaded software are the Adobe suites, MatLab and Eclipse. Surface Pro eats them up >.<) It also has WiFi (duhhh!!) and Bluetooth 4.0, along with 2 cameras front and rear-facing that supports 720p HD video recording. 

Display-wise, 10-inches of screen asset is what you're looking at. Yeap, not much, but it does have it's perks when you're mobile all the time. Maximum resolution that you can enjoy is 1920 x 1080 px, 16:9 aspect ratio, Clear-type Full HD with 10-points multi-touch display. It supports touch and pen input - and the pen is included in the box on purchase. 

Because the Surface Pro is a tablet, it would not be complete without sensors. This model comes with 4 different types of sensors - Ambient Light sensor for automatic adjustment of screen brightness, Accelerometer, Gyroscope and a Digital Compass. 

It also runs on Microsoft Windows 8.1. If you're wondering why is it such a big deal, imagine working on your Words document while referring to a PowerPoint slide and a couple of PDF files, listening to music on YouTube while downloading games from Steam. This is possible on Surface Pro, not on any other tablets that runs on Android or Apple. The only drawback is the storage space: 2 choices are available - 64GB and 128GB. To compensate, the Surface 2 comes with a MicroSD card slot and a solo USB 3.0 port on the sides. I have yet the need for the MicroSD card slot, but the USB 3.0 is not a letdown. Attach a USB 3.0 hub, you can expand the number of USB ports you'll need for your devices i.e. mouse and keyboard, thumbdrives and external hard disks. 

In terms of aesthetics, the whole design of the Surface Pro is pleasing to the eyes and firm to the touch. Heat-wise, expect some warmth in the lower area but not so much that it becomes uncomfortable for prolonged use. The battery can last a good 3 to 4 hours, depending on use. I don't find carrying it on hand as I go about my days - even went out on a shopping spree clutching it. At roughly 2 pounds, it's not too heavy to be cumbersome, nor too light to lost the firm, solid feel. 

All-in-all, a very good investment. I have yet to cover the apps from Microsoft AppStore. That will be in the next instalment. 

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Being a geek that I am, as long as I have the internet, I prefer to use my own tools and interfaces, regardless of PC or laptop or even phone that I am using. Thanks to gmail and Google Chrome, I am able to do this. Sure there may be other mail accounts and browser are able to do this, but I got used to gmail and chrome and all of it's extensions. 

For those unfamiliar with what I am talking about, in a nutshell, I have my gmail and Chrome synced together. So as long as the machine (Desktop, laptop, phone etc) that I use has Chrome installed, I can sign in and voilà! I have all my Chrome extensions (similar to you phone's apps, which includes calendars, notes, YouTube  mail, and even games) ready to be used. Pic on the left are some of my extensions. 

Tweetdeck is one of my most used extension. I got news weeks ago saying that Tweetdeck will be retired. Its connection to Facebook and FourSquare has been removed recently, adding to the validity of the news. So I went out to find myself a new Twitter aggregator, and lookie lookie, I found HootSuite!

At first I was sceptical - it's difficult to find extensions that does just what you want it to do. More is welcomed, but then again some of them just go overboard. I also would not like to have to pay for them (typical Malaysian - sue me {that was a joke, please don't sue me} ) yet if they're free, I would not like to be bombarded with adverts. So yeah, finding extensions that fits the requirement can be tough. However, I digress. 

HootSuite has a paid version and a free personal version. The paid version (naturally) offers more features like extensive traffic reports and analytics (bloggers tend to want to keep an eye on this) and what not, but I settled down comfortably with the free personal version. It offers me to connect up to 4 social accounts - I have Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Google+ (still no idea how to utilize this to the max) so far. If you use Wordpress as your blogging client, you can link that as well. As for me, since I use Blogspot, HootSuite allows me to install a Blogspot extention into it so I can have another tab for Blogspot. 

Fuuuhhh... this is probably another long post, but I am certain that you can benefit from using HootSuite like I did. First of all, it is very clean and well designed. No clutter, single place to post to all your connected social network, or just to some that you can select to your liking! You can attach pictures as well, and it will generate a short url should you want to post it to Twitter to save up some of those characters. XD 

Why HootSuite? Why would you want to have Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, and all your social network in one browser tab? Simple. Window Asset. I used to have one tab open for each of my social network, and add that with various Googling I normally do on a daily basis for both work and play, I may end up with 10s and 20s tabs open. How about new window? Well that doesn't solve much, does it? More clicking, more alt-tabbing. (yeap, a geek always find the shortest means possible to access anything and everything). 

With HootSuite, I get one tab, and within that one tab, I have another level of tabs for each of my social networks. All streams are in their own respective tabs. I used to have Facebook + FourSquare + Twitter on the same stream. I had to scroll down a lot and end up missing some interesting posts. Having them separated but still in the same place is convenient. I can even have specific columns for specific items - as you can see my Facebook tab has columns for RWMF so I get posts in it at a glace without having to go into the group's page. All the settings and profilings and preferences are placed vertically and minimally on the left side. All in all, a compact, versatile and easy to use extension. 

So if you're like me, a social junkie, lots of social accounts, always on the go, do try HootSuite as a Chrome Extension. If you need clarification, post a comment, I'll help you out - no charge, just satisfaction (please don't take that in the wrong way. seriously. just, don't. >.<) 

HootSuite also has wicked sense of humour. LOL!

PS: One of the shortcoming is that on Blogspot, I don't get all the functions like resizing my images with a single click, justified text allignment, uploading my own image etc. Well, least all the basics are there.

PSS : HootSuite is available on Chrome Extension Store. Also avaliable in Google Play for Android devices.