I have had over the past year in hands a lot of netbooks, these small computers with generally 8 to 11 inches screens, running on Windows XP in best case) but even though these are getting lighter and more powerful, I had never been fully convinced by the resolution of their screen (a very poor 1024×600 usually) which limited myself quickly into my productivity.

Yes, I actually need a lot of space on my desktop as I work with dozen of windows opened at same time: Word, Excel, Email, Browsers, Photoshop.

So, even though I have seen an evolution over these laptops in such a short lapse of time, none fitted prefectly my needs both in terms of comfort, efficiency and mobility.

Then, last saturday, I stumbled upon a new computer I was not expecting, the brand new Sony Vaio X11 (referenced as Sony Vaio VPC-X11S1BAI 11,1″ TFT on Internet) and my first reaction beyond surprise!

Take a look at the pictures yourself, from the first glimpse you can see it is a masterpiece product: thinnest laptop (the MacBook Air appears to be so big in comparison), lightest also (700gr only!) and still packed with interesting features:
- 11 inches 1376×1040 LED screen
- CPU: Atom Z440 at 1.86Ghz
- 128 GB SSD that is really fast!
- 2 GB of RAM
- up to 8 hours autonomy (proved to be 4 hours minimum after a few days of testing)
- 700 gr
- very thin: less than 1cm height and the screen is maybe 0,3 cm of height!
- builtin 3G/HSDPA (3G+) slot to put the SIM card and just be connected ANYWHERE!
- OS: Windows 7 Professional

So, where’s the catch? The catch is in the price of course: 1499 euros for this computer, that puts it out of the usual netbook range (300-400 euros) by far.

However, considering the product is by itself a technical miracle (yes, it is so thin that you wonder how they could put all these components inside it), I believe that this could be a real good investmen as it is a computer that you will use everyday, everywhere (thanks to the 3G+ connector) and can have all the time under the hand without feeling any extra weight onto your shoulders. In fact, once you have get used to a computer below 1kg in weight, it is very hard to switch back to something heavier, and believe me, with this one, you will never want any other laptop unless engineers come with another technical miracle of this kind! I am repeating myself hear, both MacBook Air and Dell Adamo are beaten by this little Sony Vaio X11!

Also, despite it’s so light and thin, it looks quite solid because it’s built with carbon-fiber. Of course I would not sit onto it and throw it to the ground (who would do that to his laptop anyway ^^), but in a bag, protected with a small soft case it will be safe from any damages!

The main reproach I would address to this Sony laptop is the CPU: Intel Atom are OK and the Atom Z440 at 1.86 Ghz is performing quite well on most of the tasks, however it is not as powerful as a Core 2 Duo or a Low Voltage Centrino 2. But don’t worry, the computer isn’t lagging and you can have at least Word + several browser tabs + email client + antivirus running before filling a little delay when you switch in-between applications. So, the CPU could have been better, but I guess that is was chosen to increase the battery length.

So to summarize my review of the Sony Vaio X11:

Advantages:
+ ultra light, you won’t feel it in hand or on your shoulder once in the bag
+ 8 hours autonomy
+ 3G+ slot
+ good overall performance thanks to the fast SSD drive
+ Windows 7 Pro

Drawbacks:
- the price of course: 1499 euros!
- Atom Z440 cpu instead of a Core 2 Duo low voltage model

If you’re the happy (or not so happy) owner of a Sony Vaio X11 or had the chance to try one, feel free to share your thoughts on the product in the comments to my post!

The purpose of this post is to explain why I have recently updated the homepage of my website: www.borget.fr.

Currently, whatever the domain name you typed: www.borget.fr, www.borget.info, www.borget.net, www.borget.org or www.phpsoft.org, you always reached this blog. Although some of my readers (family and friends) may find this blog interesting as it was their initial intention to visit it, most of the people who don’t know me yet and google my name “sebastien borget” are quite disappointed when they arrive here.

Indeed, the blog is not so well organized to access the contents such as my Curriculum Vitae, Software download or Contact Me simply. Further, it only relates some personal stories which I blog about, but which are of limited interested to these people.

Hence, I have decided to create a new homepage, which will serve as entry point to all the places where I am on Internet, including this blog: Wixi, Facebook, Twitter …

Besides answering this simple question: “Who is Sebastien BORGET?”, the new homepage serves as a professional profile with my Curriculum Vitae and an overview of my previous/current job experiences.

On a technical point of view, I have been using jQuery and xHTML / CSS to build this page, which introduces myself through a brief biography and the links to my social profiles. It uses simple animation effects above a photo of myself in the background.

The last (but not least) purpose of this new homepage is of course SEO! I am talking about Search Engine Optimization, this is how when you type a keyword related to “borget” you found this website on Google!
Since I have put the new homepage online, Google indexed it very well, and you can see that the description that appears on Google is perfectly matching the second purpose!

Give me your feedback about this new homepage!

Last week-end I was in Wiesbaden to visit one of my best friends which I met while in Hong-Kong, and unfortunately never had the chance/time to see again after.

Even though it was 2 years since we’ve see each other, the fun was still there and we had all a wonderful week-end visiting very nice places in Germany: Wiesbaden, Frankfurt, Heidesberg and Rüdesheim.

We also drove on the German Weinstrass and drank a lot of Wein, Riesling und Beer of course!!!

Will post a few pics onto my Wixi account soon :p

Cheers again from France to Frank, his family & friends who made this trip unforgettable!

Hello everybody!

It has been at least 6 months since my last post on my blog, the least you could say is I am not much of an active or interesting to read blogger! Yes as a matter of fact, it’s true, I don’t consider myself as a blogger!

Over the last months I have been extremely busy on various professional and personal projects which left me very little time to have extra activities on the Web!

Nonetheless, I am planning to make a come-back and become more active here, either by posting some news from day-to-day life, the projects I get my hands into or just family & friends stuff!

Sebastien

I have been following the news yesterday over the announcements of the new MacBook, MacBook Pro and Apple LED Cinema Display.

On one side, I am very excited about the new MacBook and MacBook Pro (although the 2.8 Ghz model costs about 2500 euros!), but concerning the new Apple LED Cinema Display 24 inches screen, I am just so much astonished!

Everywhere on Internet, I read comments about how a great news this is to have a new Apple Cinema Display screen with LED technology, but common, are you guys so dumb?

I am a FAN of Mac and have been using their notebooks and ibook for years now, but here, I can’t help blaming Apple for this product:

• this new screen is 24 inches only, this is nowadays the almost “standard” screen size, there’s nothing big anymore in a 24 inches! 26 gets big, 30 inches is bigger, 32 inches will soon be the reference
• 849 euros!!!! Damn, I can pay myself a Sony or Samsung FullHD HDTV at that price with a lot higher screen size! Even the previous Apple 30 Inches monitor would seem “cheap” compared to this price! You can have great 24 inches Iiyama screens for less than 400 euros on the market now!
• This screen is like 95% the same as the one on the iMac 24 inches, so you better buy yourself an iMac rather than a Mac Book (Pro) + Apple LED Cinema Display

Well, so, the announcements were great, but I feel like in those hard times for the economy, Apple is once again playing the “we are targeting the rich elite, or at least the ones who illusionally want to be part of this society” card!

On my side, I will wait a few months before getting the new Mac Book Pro, for the following reasons:
- Snow Leopard will be out soon, and it’s better to wait it gets shipped for free in the mac than buying in a few month a new license at 100 euros!
- the new Intel i7 processors were announced for the 12th of November, so in about 6 months, there will be an upgrade to the new architecture: more power, more battery lasting time, less heating and all the usual “better stronger faster” marketing / technical speech
- no blu-ray drive
- the display port: ok nice, but I have to pay 30 euros more to get an adaptor to work on DVI/HDMI screens, which are now the standard!
- pay 20 euros more for the Apple remote …

Guys, don’t get fooled by Apple and all the bells and whistles of nice design and beautiful marketing speeches, but wait and see

The 2 cents from Uncle Seb, who, should I remind you (before you blame me), I am an addicted Mac user, but I kept my sense of logic and criticism instead of turning into a mac zombie ^_^

As planned, the site launched on monday

• 01Net: AlloClips diffuse des vidéos musicales gratuites avec publicité
• Aujourd’hui se lance www.alloclips.com
• Universal offre tous ses clips en streaming avec AlloCiné
• Numerama: Universal offre tous ses clips en streaming avec AlloCine
• AlloClips ou quand Universal Music et …
• Universal Music France et AlloCine lancent alloclips.com
• Universal Music et Allocine lancent ALLOCLIPS
• Universal Music lance un YouTube pour les clips de ses artistes
• Universal Music mitonne un site de clips musicaux inspiré de Hulu.com
• Universal Music lance son YouTube des clips
• Universal lance AlloClips

Cheers,
Seb

This week-end, I feel very happy and pretty much relieved, as in 2 days (Monday 13th October), the confidential project of Universal Music France that I had been involved into as project leader (through the company I work for) will finally be launched publicly!

This project was made possible only through the collaboration of the people at Universal Music, their partners and the members of my team, who will recognize themselves when reading this post. On total, more than 13 people (including me) worked on this project over the last 6 months, and we hope that all our efforts will make you use the website and come back very often onto it. Maybe it will also change your opinion on music when you will see it live!!!

In all cases, I would like to congratulate here everybody for their efforts during this collaboration to the project, and I hope it will be a HUGE success beyond our expectations

You can check on monday the website at the following URL: www.alloclips.com

Exclusive! Take here a glimpse at the video player:

Let me know if you like it!

I was there The longest waiting queue in my life, more than 1 hour to get in for buying a ticket, and about like 1 km of walking, crazy crazy crazy!

Overall, this was a good day, although I got less goodies than I used to on previous years!

Some pics from the convention:

Today I had a day-off, and as the weather was hot and shiny, I went to one of the last place I never (or barely) visited in Paris: La Defense.

You will find in the photo slideshow pictures from:

1. The Arch of La Defense
2. photos of old computers taken at the museum of computers in the arch of la defense
3. skyscrapers, business centers and shopping malls in la Defense
4. photos from le bois de Boulogne in Neuilly sur Seine

If you visit Paris as a tourist, I might recommend you not to spend more than half a day in this place, at is it not really designed for tourists, but it is more one of the main business centers of Paris (plthis place is full of white-colars ^^), yet I think it was worth the sight!

I am glad to publish today my second tutorial for WHS
This tutorial will guide you through all the steps of setting up a FTP server on your Windows Home Server (WHS), so as to allow users to access specific folders of your WHS from anywhere in the world with only a FTP Client.

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Instead of using the pre-installed Microsoft IIS FTP server component, I have chosen to replace it with the open-source Filezilla FTP Server, which is easy to install and configure, yet very powerful (it’s in my humble opinion the best FTP server out there too )

Read the tutorial here