Finally, after the entire world seems to have moved on from buying external hard disk enclosures and slotting in your own hard disks, along comes Lian Li, the venerable aluminum PC case maker, with what are two of the most “chio” enclosures out there.

Spotted on US online shop Performance PCs, the EX-20 is a two-bay enclosure that supports eSATA as well as USB 2.0, while the EX-30 is a three-bay device. Both use a Silicon Image chip to handle the transfer between the hard disk’s SATA interface and the external eSATA and USB interfaces.

The hard drives can be hot-swapped by simply sliding them out after unlocking the well-ventilated front panel. The hard disk connectors, as seen in pictures online, appear to be the same used in Lian Li’s new cases, which means a smooth fit.

Last week, the open source community was abuzz with conversations on Microsoft’s contribution of 20,000 lines of code to the Linux kernel. While some are skeptical over the software giant’s move to get its code into the Linux kernel, others, including Linus Torvalds, welcomed Microsoft’s contribution just like the code from anyone else in the community.

The code, which includes three Linux device drivers, will enhance the performance of the Linux operating system when virtualized on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V or Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V. On July 20, the code was been submitted by Microsoft to the Linux kernel community for inclusion in the Linux tree.

Heard of StarHub’s recent radio ads about their “blazing fast” mobile broadband offering?

Well, for the past month, Techgoondu has been testing the MaxMobile Elite service that promises as much as 21Mbps downloads on the go. And we have to say it rocks!

The proof of the pudding is in actual downloads, and I’ve to say I have not seen faster downloads on the go than with the black Huawei USB stick that I used to access this HSPA or 3.5G service.

I’m talking about bursts of as much as 1MB per sec (megabyte per second), or 8Mbps (megabits per sec), when I recently opened my laptop and plugged in the Huawei USB stick at the food court at Tiong Bahru Plaza.

In one of the surprises of the rather boring telecom scene here in Singapore, StarHub has just announced that it is going to be led by the former CEO of rival telco MobileOne, Neil Montefiore.

Current StarHub CEO Terry Clontz, who is retiring in January 2010, will be succeeded by Neil, who left M1 earlier this year in a move that also surprised many market watchers.

When a friend from M1 said that he would “re-surface” soon, I, like many watching the scene, had not expected him to turn up as the CEO of the “other” challenger to SingTel here in Singapore.

Still, when you think about it, this seems like a smart move for both StarHub and Neil. After all, M1 was the original challenger to SingTel in the partial liberalisation of the telecoms market here in the mid-1990s. When M1 burst onto the scene then, it quickly signed up mobile users who wanted an alternative to SingTel.

What’s one of the best ways to go one up on the competition? Hire their former CEO.

That’s just what StarHub announced today, when it said that its current CEO Terry Clontz will be retiring in January 2010, and former M1 CEO Neil Montefiore has surfaced to fill his shoes – pending regulatory approval.

Earlier this year on Feb 1, Neil stepped down from M1 and its then CFO Karen Kooi stood in as acting CEO, only to be confirmed as CEO a little more than two months later.

Now Neil, whom Terry has known “on a professional and personal level for ten years”, will take the reins of the number two telco in Singapore – a position which he probably wanted M1 to reach during his tenure.

Will this fuel further speculation of consolidation in the local telco scene? You bet. StarHub and M1 were already partners in the Infinity consortium, which put in a failed Netco bid in the Next Gen NBN project. And M1′s fixed broadband service essentially rides off StarHub’s cable modem infrastructure.

And if being pals doesn’t work out, StarHub can have the dirt on M1 – where they are good, and where they can hit it hard.

StarHub, 1 – M1, 0.

With the telco regulator in Hong Kong giving its stamp of approval for fixed mobile number portability last Friday, fixed line phone numbers here can finally be set free. Right off, I can think of a couple of scenarios where its useful to port fixed to mobile.

• You can move your business fixed line to a mobile and not miss any calls without the need to subscribe to call forwarding.
• Stop paying for your monthly fixed line fees just because you feel nostalgic about the number – port it to a prepaid mobile number.
• Going from fixed to a prepaid mobile might actually lower your phone bills if you’re an extremely infrequent voice user.

I’m sure there’ll be more scenarios and benefits, but unfortunately, this is expected that it will take a while before the fixed line carriers here actually let you do it, as the regulator’s left it to the telcos to sort it out commercially.

And I can’t think of too many reasons why the fixed line folks here would be wanting to open the floodgates to the fixed line exodus, but hey, at least they can start the conversation on how they want to do this and work out fixed to mobile migration options.

Now that’s what I call true number portability.

Meanwhile in sunny Singapore, can someone tell me where we are on our quest for telco liberalisation and true number portability? Since the implementation of “full mobile number portability” in 2008, I still can’t port my post-paid mobile to pre-paid *sigh*! Worse still, a review on number portability doesn’t seem to be on the horizon!

It had to come sooner or later. After doing really well for its Android OS for mobile phones, and not too bad for the Chrome Web browser (with 30 million users), Google unveiled its Chrome OS for Netbooks late yesterday to a flurry of excitement online.

The free OS is meant to make apps on the Net run more smoothly, when you are at a cafe, say, getting documents on your Gmail and Google Docs. A rich experience – something you get on a “bloated” install of Microsoft Office or indeed Open Office – is what Google has been trying to offer over the Net with its Chrome browser and now the Chrome OS.

The idea is to use the two pieces of software to run Web-based applications that were probably not able run as well or with as much bells and whistles as before. To understand this, just look to Google Docs and you’ll see why it’s a great alternative – but not a replacement – for software you install on your PC.

That’s also why the initial excitement over the Chrome OS launch has quickly followed with questions, as the media and analysts begin to pick apart what the most-loved tech company is doing to enter a marketplace dominated by the most-unloved of them all – Microsoft.

Fancy a phone that not only lets you talk to friends, but also watch YouTube videos, find your way around with Google maps and surf with Wi-Fi on the go?

We have not one but three Sony Ericsson G705 phones to give away, as a small way to mark the second year of this techie blog.

All that we want in exchange (there’s no free lunch, after all, right?) is for you to send us your idea of the craziest, zaniest and nuttiest “geek moment”. What’s a geek moment? It could be showing off your water-cooled PC, or a 30-man raid on Warcraft or simply a funny face that captures what it means to be a geek.

This can be in the form of text (a poem, anyone?), pictures (speak a thousand words, don’t they?) or videos (please do not exceed two minutes).

The point is to get our goondu minds together for something fun – and in the case of the three winners, rewarding as well! So, get your creative juices flowing, and enter the contest here.

Like many shoppers who’ve been to an electronics store lately, I’ve had a look at Samsung’s incredibly slim B7000 LED TVs (also known as its Series 7 LED TVs) and been pleasantly surprised.

With a depth of under 3cm for the 40-inch model, these svelte beauties never fail to get a reaction when you stare at them from the side – even my parents, non-techies that they are, were shocked to see how thin a screen has become these days.

Yet, looks aside, I never expected to be wowed by the equally stunning image quality on the B7000, which I had a chance to check out closely when Samsung sent us a 40-incher.

Look into the world’s tech crystal ball and you’ll see only clouds. Even with my limited divination skills, this trend isn’t hard to spot.

For the past year or so, many tech vendors — e.g. IBM, Microsoft, Oracle — are jumping on and touting clouds as the next big thing. Now Cisco is taking up the banner charge and announcing their strategy and intent to attack this space.

At a telepresence media/analyst session held yesterday at Cisco offices in Asia and US, Cisco’s CTO Padmasree Warrior and senior VP of the software group Doug Dennerline fielded questions on Cisco’s push into clouds.

Firstly, definitions. The over-hyped, fuzzy phrase “clouds” can mean wildly different things to different people, and I have gone off on rants before on what exactly do you mean when you talk about clouds. At least Cisco defined what exactly cloud computing means to them, and here’s their verbatim definition: