Yes, you got it right, I bought this glamour phone for just a little over four hundred ringgit.  I bought it over at Hua Qiang Bei in Shenzhen and it got one year warranty.  I was amaze by the feature this little gadget pack and how it looks and works.  The photo viewing works fine with pinching zooming capability.  The music player goes to album view when the phone is tilted.  This is something that other models could not do.  The cheapest I’ve seen starts at RM3xx and all the way to this model RM4xx.  I found out on the web that this phone’s name was CiPhone and it was a fake that gets as close to the real thing as possible.  Just search for CiPhone at youtube and you can see a wealth of video about this phone.

Out of the box, the device came with a sleve, earphones, charger, usb cable and a user manual.  All looks like the real thing.  You can check out a video I made unpacking this thing.  There are so many “iPhone” models over at Hua Qiang Bei, All the model except this one supports dual sim card and they comes with two batteries.  However they are much thicker and the dimension are much bigger.  But they have much more functions, some could even change song when shake, like the sony handphones when it first introduced. 

There are a couple of things that might turn you off, first there seams to be a lag on this phone, you will notice it on my video.  Secondly, the phone battery indicator can go up and down, especially if we let the phone hibernate, the next time the phone wakes up, you will notice the battery indicator shifts up a little.  This phone only supports single sim card, while other models support dual cards. Lastly, there seams to be a problem with the phone where after some time, the music player would reset the phone whenever I click on the music player icon.  The shop guy first says it was virus, then he said the mp3 format not compatible, which is all loads of BS.  Somehow the Chinese Songs that came with the phone seams to be fine.  So there goes, want perfect working beautiful iPhone, stay away from fakes.  if you dont mind this, then, it is a cheap glamour phone for you. 

China Iphone from Kew L. Ang on Vimeo.

My short shoot on the four hundred ringgit glamour phone I just bought. Poor shoot quality prevent me from going further, especially on dwelling into the operating system and how it looks inside. I recently found out that this phone was called ciphone and you can find tons of video about it in youtube. This was supposedly the best copy of the real thing. I have some qualms on this phone and will share them later.

I was visiting the Penang Picom PC Fair during lunch today and was delighted to see an apple booth. In the past years, they did not make their presence felt, and this year they made an effort with the Switch campaign. I took the effort to do some price comparison for the Macbook range and found some price traps. I will explain what are those in detail later. In summary, my recommendation is to purchase your machine from Singapore or US, and then purchase your Apple Care in Malaysia. I have found that the Apple Care package have been priced rather competitive where it is cheaper in Malaysia by RM218 and RM156 comparing against US and Singapore.

The machines are best to buy in the US where you can have savings from RM382 to RM502. These savings can contribute significantly to your Apple Care package. Purchasing in Singapore will bring you savings from RM167 to RM241, almost half of what you can save from buying in the US. Again, these savings are rather significant.

The price trap I mention is by purchasing the machine and the apple care package on the respective countries. For example, if you purchase the basic machine and apple care from the US, you are only saving RM164 comparing to purchasing the machine in the US and then purchase the apple care package in Malaysia. Worst is purchasing both machine and apple care package in Singapore, where it gives you a mere RM11 savings.

So, if you are looking to purchase a macbook in Malaysia, I would recommend to get it from the US, if possible, and then purchase the apple care here in Malaysia. If not, you can try to get it from Singapore, and in all cases, purchase the apple care in Malaysia, its the cheapest among the 3 countries.

Note: All prices above are converted from USD and Singapore Dollar to Ringgit Malaysia based on Google Conversion rate on Apr 18, 2008.

Got this news from Boing Boing a couple of days ago about this documentary on the collapse of the US Dollar.  According to the documentary, the collapse was a matter of ‘when’ and not a matter of ‘if’.  The documentary claim that when this happens, Asia will have a better living standard and the US’s living standard will be come like what Asia is now. Hooray, this means the Macbook will be cheaper. Currently the currency exchange for USD to Ringgit is 3.19 (today), and if the USD collapse, and lets say at par with Ringgit, then the $1099 macbook will be RM1099 (before tax). A 2/3 drop in price. This is only the Macbook, the PC will be even more affordable. This will dramatically improve the living standard of Malaysians. That was the good part, now what’s the bad part? America is the largest consumer in the world.

When the currency crash, goes into a recession and consume at a fraction of what they are today, what will happen? For one, companies with huge product inventories will be impacted. On the long term, when the consumption reduces, the need to built more also diminishes. Big Companies like Apple might not be impacted as the can continue to sustain current sales, not from US, but from the rest of the world, particularly in Asia. My friend from China used to buy Apple products in Malaysia because it was cheaper here, and now since the currency have collapse, China and the rest of Asia will see a dramatic drop in price (converted to local currency) and suddenly everyone can afford an ipod and Macbook. So, Asia will take over the consumption that the US used to have (after the currency collapse that is). Smaller companies that make entry level MP3 players that earn by selling in volume, will see a dramatic setback. Since the ipod is already affordable, who wants to buy a nobrand pod? Maybe some small companies will disappear, if they don’t re-invent themselves.

This is all good, now what is the bad? The bad news is that Asia and the rest of the world might not be able to take over all the consumption that US is doing now, and this will lead to a much smaller demand. This means, all those companies that built up manufacturing houses in developing countries, such as Asia, might close down. Asia might become too expensive as well, since the increment of standard of living and also the consumption level. This is what makes factories move out of US the first place. This means for Penang, which economy hugely dependent on American, Japanese and European factories, might see a decline, and unemployment rate in this sector will shoot up.

In summary, it may be good that the price of Macbook drops, but I may not be able to afford it also, as I might be out of job. Check out the documentary below.

Dock stacking as being used by OsX Leopard, has now come to Win XP through the stack docklet. Its a nifty little docklet that works on RK Launcher, ObjectDock, RocketDock and Yz Dock. There are two options of stack, one is the ‘Fan’ mode, that opens the stack up like a fan (above), and another is the Grid mode, that opens all the applications up in a grid format (below). To use it, you will have to first create a folder and create shortcuts to all the applications you want to stack up into the folder. Once you have download and enable the docklet, you just need to point the docklet to the folder of application shortcuts and whoala, its done. When I first enabled it, I was blown away by the nice animation and look of the stack. Its a cool edition to the RK Launcher that I am currently using. You can get more information of this docklet from OSX-E.