Tachyon Technologies has introduced a software that allows people to write Indian languages using English alphabet keyboards. The software is done by Tachyon Technologies and support Malayalam, Tamil, Hindi, Kanada, Telugu.
News item : http://www.physorg.com/news77697303.html
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Honda Jazz Chennai Review
Well I evaluated most of the cars in the mid segment. 5-8 Lakhs segment. My old car was a Santro and hence I had some conditions before I buy my next one.
I needed a kind of small car, I was not for the C Segment though, as its harder to drive in the city, tough to park and unnecessarily expensive! I wanted a car with a decent boot. My driving needs were below 25KM per day. Hence a Petrol car was good enough for me. Additionally I at the back of my mind, i prefer to go for a Honda or Toyota - bigger brands than Maruti.
I test drove the following :
All these cars Swift, Hyudai i20, Honda Jazz, Punto, Ford FIgo have decent driving comfort. So I was not really worried too much about the basics of the cars too much. They are from popular car companies and each has its value. All cars compromise on something and are a value for money. This is one thing I learned.
I really do not believe in buying an expensive car upfront and then crying about fuel efficiency. So my policy is buy a car that is easy for you to maintain too, enjoy its usage as much as possible to the max. BTW for me car is not a status symbol either. I know that itself could change the car you would like to buy. Hence I decided on a Honda Jazz even thought maybe i could have stretched myself for a 10L car - Honda City.
I am not going in to the detailed comparison of the various cars. But I am going to say why i rejected some.
Skoda Fabia- very poor service in Chennai. Spares takes weeks or months to get imported.
Swift - Too common. Surprisingly the sales representative at the Maruti showroom itself told me to go for another car like Wagon R instead as the swift is too common now. However that said, there is no car company that I feel understands Indian roads and car driving needs like Maruthi. I state this after driving the my Jazz for 4 months.
Ford Figo - If Figo had come out with its 2012 model, I may have bought a Figo 3 months back. However I am happy i did not :-) The Figo is a bit dated in its looks. But that is ofcourse the best value for money.
Fiat Punto was a good close second for me because of its build. If you are looking for a car that looks majestic in its appearance, the Punto is a good one. Add its powerful Disel engine and leadership in the diesel engine market and you have an excellent car. Its actually like a Mark III Ambassador car in its build and studieness. Very strong body. Heavier too. Hence could be a safer car. But ofcourse you are not going to war though. It has some sensible options like 60:40 rear seats too. There was also a very helpful pre sales person at the showroom too. However the stories of poor after sales on the web were lingering around. So was a worried person. The problem for Fiat is its selling along with the Tata show room. The concord show room could sell over 1000 cars in a month. I heard in March, it sold 10,000 Tata cars. That is quie a busy day for them. No wonder these showrooms give second rate sales and support for Fiat cars. Hope Fiat wakes up after 20 years in India that excellent support can be made only if done directly.
Honda Brio - Poor boot space. Almost nill. But it is a sporty car. This car will rock in the cities too. However the one bad thing about it is its boot. If they fix that, they could see more sales soon. The drive is excellent, interior space too good.
Toyota Etios Liva : Well I felt that the Toyota show room only sell Toyota Innova and have left the cars in the lurch with some poor overall design. The car is good, but can't match the Honda jazz for its ride and comfort.
Hyundai i20 : Excellent on board electronics. For the same price, you get a lot of toys on board your car. Engine was good, but felt it a bit slower than the others I evaluated. This could have been a good second or third option for me.
Now to why I finally chose the Honda Jazz even though I did not test drive it !
I needed a kind of small car, I was not for the C Segment though, as its harder to drive in the city, tough to park and unnecessarily expensive! I wanted a car with a decent boot. My driving needs were below 25KM per day. Hence a Petrol car was good enough for me. Additionally I at the back of my mind, i prefer to go for a Honda or Toyota - bigger brands than Maruti.
I test drove the following :
- Fiat Punto
- Swift
- Swift Dzire
- Hyundai i20
- Toyota Etios Liva
- Saw the Volswagon Polo
- Skoda Fabia
- Honda Brio
All these cars Swift, Hyudai i20, Honda Jazz, Punto, Ford FIgo have decent driving comfort. So I was not really worried too much about the basics of the cars too much. They are from popular car companies and each has its value. All cars compromise on something and are a value for money. This is one thing I learned.
I really do not believe in buying an expensive car upfront and then crying about fuel efficiency. So my policy is buy a car that is easy for you to maintain too, enjoy its usage as much as possible to the max. BTW for me car is not a status symbol either. I know that itself could change the car you would like to buy. Hence I decided on a Honda Jazz even thought maybe i could have stretched myself for a 10L car - Honda City.
I am not going in to the detailed comparison of the various cars. But I am going to say why i rejected some.
Skoda Fabia- very poor service in Chennai. Spares takes weeks or months to get imported.
Swift - Too common. Surprisingly the sales representative at the Maruti showroom itself told me to go for another car like Wagon R instead as the swift is too common now. However that said, there is no car company that I feel understands Indian roads and car driving needs like Maruthi. I state this after driving the my Jazz for 4 months.
Ford Figo - If Figo had come out with its 2012 model, I may have bought a Figo 3 months back. However I am happy i did not :-) The Figo is a bit dated in its looks. But that is ofcourse the best value for money.
Fiat Punto was a good close second for me because of its build. If you are looking for a car that looks majestic in its appearance, the Punto is a good one. Add its powerful Disel engine and leadership in the diesel engine market and you have an excellent car. Its actually like a Mark III Ambassador car in its build and studieness. Very strong body. Heavier too. Hence could be a safer car. But ofcourse you are not going to war though. It has some sensible options like 60:40 rear seats too. There was also a very helpful pre sales person at the showroom too. However the stories of poor after sales on the web were lingering around. So was a worried person. The problem for Fiat is its selling along with the Tata show room. The concord show room could sell over 1000 cars in a month. I heard in March, it sold 10,000 Tata cars. That is quie a busy day for them. No wonder these showrooms give second rate sales and support for Fiat cars. Hope Fiat wakes up after 20 years in India that excellent support can be made only if done directly.
Honda Brio - Poor boot space. Almost nill. But it is a sporty car. This car will rock in the cities too. However the one bad thing about it is its boot. If they fix that, they could see more sales soon. The drive is excellent, interior space too good.
Toyota Etios Liva : Well I felt that the Toyota show room only sell Toyota Innova and have left the cars in the lurch with some poor overall design. The car is good, but can't match the Honda jazz for its ride and comfort.
Hyundai i20 : Excellent on board electronics. For the same price, you get a lot of toys on board your car. Engine was good, but felt it a bit slower than the others I evaluated. This could have been a good second or third option for me.
Now to why I finally chose the Honda Jazz even though I did not test drive it !
- Excellent boot for a mid size car. The rear seats fold beautifully and becomes almost flat. Those rear seats itself could raise the price of the car by 20K vs the others. I was willing to pay that for such a smart car. The car closest with that was the Punto, but that too was not as smart of Jazz.
- Excellent drive. I guess if you drive a Honda, you may hate to drive any other car. I test drove the Honda City of a friend of mine and likewise the Honda Brio. Both were excellent. Felt like we were floating and not driving.
- Spacious interiors.
- Turning radius is small 4.8M. I could still ride this car like an autorickshaw in traffic :-) That is necessary in Chennai's roads. The small engine gives it this advantage and allows more room inside the car.
- Good overall design. This was not so important for meet. It should look average to above average and I would choose any car. Maybe except for the old Dzire, I am kind of ok with most cars on Indian roads.
- One negative that i saw was the low ground clearance. However I guess for city driving that is not too bad. Its only 160 MM. Compared to a punto that has 170 or 180 and that is clearly felt when you onboard the car.
- Fuel efficiency of 12-14KM / L - felt that it was good enough for me now. Else I need to spend extra 1.2 L on a Diesel car and feel like driving a tractor all along. I am ok with the noise if the power is equally good. For eg. if I were to buy a Diesel car, I would hope to buy one with atleast 1.6 to 1.8 engine. The extra power atleast makes up for the higher noise of the car, from a value perspective or a great feeling perspective.
Painting the house
Last month we had our flat painted. Here is a summary to benchmark the costs and help you decide what works best for you.
We standardized on using Asian paints. Well I did not do any homework on what is the best paint company but I knew the top two vendors. The main cost for painting the house could be for the labour charges.
Average painter cost in chennai is Rs 750 to Rs 1000. But the hard part is you will not get 2-3 of them yourself without going through a experienced painter who is the "Manager". BTW he only does the talking on a given day and the others do the work.
For my ~ 1000 sq ft house, it took 4 man days to double coat the house.
We went with Premium Tractor Emulsion from Asian Paints. Rs 220 Per Liter.
The amount of paint needed was 10Litres. It is also important to note the ratio of paint to water the painters mix. For me they did a 1:1 ratio. Hence it is easier for them to paint. But the recommended one by Asian is a lot thicker than that. The thicker the paint, the more time it takes for the painter to finish the job.
The good part is the prices are almost the same in all shops and the price is set by a central ERP system (computer) of Asian Paints. The price varies by the colour you choose. We initially had white, but we went in for a cream shade. If you are changing the colour then you must do a double coat of paint.
The good thing of the new paints is, it has almost no odour once painted. I could sleep in the same house on the day the house was painted with the windows and door open.
Cost Breakup for 1000 square feet flat - painting the interior walls alone :
Paint and materials : Rs 3000 includes paint, brushes, sand paper etc.
Labour Cost : Rs 6000
I ended up paying more than I should have. Actually that is the reason for this blog post.
While negotiating get them to commit on cleaning the walls first. This is critical as otherwise the paint will peel off. Hence paying per day may give better quality results than a general contract to paint the house. However the problem with painting per day is they will drag the work by double the time.
That's it from me. Good luck with your house painting job :-)
We standardized on using Asian paints. Well I did not do any homework on what is the best paint company but I knew the top two vendors. The main cost for painting the house could be for the labour charges.
Average painter cost in chennai is Rs 750 to Rs 1000. But the hard part is you will not get 2-3 of them yourself without going through a experienced painter who is the "Manager". BTW he only does the talking on a given day and the others do the work.
For my ~ 1000 sq ft house, it took 4 man days to double coat the house.
We went with Premium Tractor Emulsion from Asian Paints. Rs 220 Per Liter.
The amount of paint needed was 10Litres. It is also important to note the ratio of paint to water the painters mix. For me they did a 1:1 ratio. Hence it is easier for them to paint. But the recommended one by Asian is a lot thicker than that. The thicker the paint, the more time it takes for the painter to finish the job.
The good part is the prices are almost the same in all shops and the price is set by a central ERP system (computer) of Asian Paints. The price varies by the colour you choose. We initially had white, but we went in for a cream shade. If you are changing the colour then you must do a double coat of paint.
The good thing of the new paints is, it has almost no odour once painted. I could sleep in the same house on the day the house was painted with the windows and door open.
Cost Breakup for 1000 square feet flat - painting the interior walls alone :
Paint and materials : Rs 3000 includes paint, brushes, sand paper etc.
Labour Cost : Rs 6000
I ended up paying more than I should have. Actually that is the reason for this blog post.
While negotiating get them to commit on cleaning the walls first. This is critical as otherwise the paint will peel off. Hence paying per day may give better quality results than a general contract to paint the house. However the problem with painting per day is they will drag the work by double the time.
That's it from me. Good luck with your house painting job :-)
Saturday, May 05, 2012
Setting up Netgear N150 Wireless ADSL2+ DGN1000 with Airtel Broadband
Upadate as of July 26th 2012 : I hate this router so much that I recommend users to buy a DLink Router. That was my older one. The DGN1000 drops connection on all my devices, too often. I could not get my ipad configured on this yet. I have wasted too much time that i rather trash this router. Lots of cool stuff on this device, but only problem is, you cannot connect to the internet :-) What a shame. I am updating this blog as i can see many are visiting this blog post (447 views already) .. Netgear hope you could buy me a dlink, pls.... The amount of time i wasted on this stupid device is more than the Rs 2000 spent. I can't waste another one hour on the phone
I had to get a new wireless router for my home to work with my Airtel broadband connection in Chennai. I bought a netgear N150 Wireless, ADSL2+ DGN1000 and set it up. The new one has modem + wireless router. It works.
It actually worked in the "wired" mode in 25 minutes. Yeah the installation tries to auto configure your modem settings by trying out all combinations. Hence the 10-15 minutes extra for installation.
The newer way of configuring wireless settings using a network key and rest automatically communicated by the wireless router is cool. I was not aware of that before. It looks like Netgear has learned to reduce their tech support calls by this and even by printing the ssid, pin, all sorts of secret keys on the outside of the router itself. This again makes sense as the router is in the house and that safety is good enough for this.
BTW you will need to know the username and password given by Airtel - which normally have your phone number in it too. You need that. If you don't call, Airtel and ask.
The initial experience was good because of the auto configuration keeping in mind that i did not have to know the various parameters of the ISP (Airtel) - dns, gateway, DHCP etc.
However there is a catch. The connection is not as smooth as how my previous one worked over a dlink wireless only router + Beetel (Airtel) Modem. With the new one, the connection is breaking once in a while and first connectivity takes a bit too long - like 5 minutes after booting your PC.
One observation on the modem configuration side is the new one does not have the dns server and gateway servers set explicitly unlike the beetel modem provided by Airtel. Need to see if that could help.
Some don'ts :
- Do not change the default router IP that was set by the new modem installer i.e 192.168.0.1 to the older one 192.168.1.1. The beetel prefer the " 192.168.1.1" series, but this one prefers the"0.1" network. It just does not work if this is changed
- To accesss the N150 admin page go to www.routerlogin.com in your browser and it takes you there ! Nice way of doing it.
Well its just the second day of usage and will keep you posted on this.
Update : Well if you use the N150 for its modem capabilities, it becomes annoying. Using the old Beetle device as a modem works much better. I guess I made a mistake in getting the Netgear with modem + Wireless. So now i have shifted to using the Beetle device given by Airtel and connect that to any of the LAN ports on the Netgear wireless router. Then access the wifi from your PC as usual. This works really well. No line breaks and works in less than a minute. I am happy this way. Your mileage may wary. I did not ask help from Airtel for the previous configuration troubleshooting. May do that later.
Upadate : If a device works the range supported will be very less. In my 1000sq ft house, i cannot get wifi access if i cross around 15 feet range - next room with door closed.
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