MyRepublic's Uno plan speed testing

Towards the end of May, I switched my mobile plan from a sim only plan from M1 @ $25 per month to MyRepublic's Uno plan @ $8 per month. This plan suits me to a T, because I don't like having a lot of excess data since I only use only 1 Gb per month working at home. I love the free caller id and best of all, there's this thing called boundless data. The plan gives me 1 Gb but if I exceeded 1 Gb of data in that month, I won't be charged for it. Instead, they will throttle the data speed so that you can do the bare minimum of things. If you want a speed that you don't have to rage, then you just need to top up the data and pay more.

The full details of the plan are as follows:

MyRepublic Uno plan 
 - 1Gb data
 - 1000 min talktime and 1000 sms
 - boundless data (throttled speed after 1 Gb)
 - free caller id
 - free incoming calls and sms
 - No contract

The main aim of this article is to highlight the throttled data speed after exceeding the allocated 1 Gb. Does the throttled speed allow you to do the basic stuff like checking email, surf, call (using data) and youtube?

These are the test parameters:

1) I stay in the east, specifically Bedok/Tanah merah area. I work at home and occasionally I'll travel also around the east side. It matters because MyRepublic is under Starhub, so the coverage for different areas will be different.

2) I'm using Android phone, Xiaomi Mi5 and my app for the speed test is Speedcheck Pro.

3) I tested the speed at various timing throughout the day during working hours. No early morning or midnight tests. Also the places where I tested is not crowded with people.

4) I did not do any speed test at any mrt lines while travelling

I'm going to comment on the data speed and quality, email checking, surfing, data calls and also some common apps before and after the throttle.


Here's my data speed before and after the data throttle:

* DL - download speed
* UL - upload speed

I did 6 sets of speedtest before my 1Gb limit is up, and another 6 sets after my 1Gb limit is up. Test parameters of the test had been described above already. You can see that before the throttle, the average download speed is 33.6 Mbps and the upload speed is 9.45 Mbps. After my data limit is hit, the download and upload speed of my data is throttled to 0.23 Mbps and 0 Mbps respectively. In fact, the speed test is interrupted by intermittent connection, especially during the upload part. Can't blame it...each test sends takes 100 Mb of data.


According to the speedcheck pro app that I'm using, they mentioned a rough guide on what is considered laggy and good speed (DL/UL) for different uses. These are screenshot as follows:

Email:

Browsing:

Streaming:

Video chat:

Gaming:

Based on the above guidelines, my usage experience before throttle gives me this:

Email: green
Browsing: yellow
Streaming: green
Video chat: yellow
Gaming: yellow

And after throttling:

Email: red
Browsing: red
Streaming: red
Video chat: red
Gaming: red

Wow..is it so bad after my 1Gb limit is reached? I tried emailing myself using a small attachment of about 200kb and felt no difference. Maybe it's a bit laggier, but I wouldn't know much because I don't have a lot of experiences sending email with attachment using my mobile phones. But normal email experience is perfectly fine. While the rating for email is red, I will say it's still usable. Just don't attempt to attach big files to your email and it should be fine.

Browsing feels appreciably laggier. I have to wait for the entire site to load and you can see parts of the site being loaded while others are still waiting. Pictures takes forever to load. I mean I can finish the entire text and still the pictures are still loading. I think browsing experience really deserves a red rating. Don't do serious browsing here, or you'll go crazy and start pulling your hair.

Streaming is a mixed bag. Netflix recommended at least 0.5 Mbps download speed, and we don't have that kind of speed after throttling. I tried to watch Netflix and the "loading...." screen seems to be there all the time. I gave up after a while. As for youtube, you can still continue watching. I find that the best experience for me is to watch it at 240p. Anything higher will have to be continuously interrupted by the loading every 10 s or so. I think 360p is also okay, but you might have to wait a while longer for the loading to be done in ahead before you actually view it. I'm actually surprised I can watch a you tube video after throttling.

Facebook work fine, until you start clicking on the video or the comments. It'll take a little longer than usual to load but it'll work. It's not as irritating as browsing though, so I feel it's still acceptable. Whatsapp messaging feels as normal and I tried the data call from whatsapp too. To me it's okay, and not especially lagging (data call are already laggy). But why would anyone want to data call when there are 1000 mins from voice call? I didn't switch on the face mode though, so perhaps there might be a suitable lag with the data throttle.

I don't game online with my handphone, so I've no comments on that.

Someone did a speed test before and after throttle too and got about the same result as me. The post is linked here. He practically got the same numbers as me, with the download/upload speed as 0.25 Mbps / 0.08 Mbps, so altogether we have 2 sets of independent study on the data throttling by MyRepublic after hitting the data limit of 1 Gb on the Uno plan.

As a side note, I really love their app. At a glance, I can see how much data I have, the number of sms and min of voice call left. If needed, you can top up and get instant data boost. This is one of the most friendly app I've used. I've used starhub and M1, but not circle line. But I suspect these days the telcos are really ramping up on their app to boost user experience.

I especially like it that the app have a date and time to tell me when the next reset is. There are many times when I have to check my contract and guess when the reset is when I'm with starhub and M1. Their app is just not that intuitive. This app even give me the exact time of the reset.

Verdict:

What's not to like about this? As I said, this plan fits me to a T. I understand that there are people who uses more than 1 Gb and this will not be a good fit. As for me, I'm smiling broadly because I save about $200 per year off my handphone bill.


Update 1: 21st Jun 2018 2pm

I just got wind of the fact that 3-4 hrs after I posted this article, MyRepublic no longer have this plan. Now they have 3 plans with the cheapest at $35/mth. Thankfully I didn't wait longer, otherwise I will regret for the rest of my life! Haha, I exaggerate, but yeah...

Update 2: 21st Jun 2018 5pm

A bigscribe member told me that the Uno plan is still available.
1) Go to : https://mobile.myrepublic.com.sg/plans/promotions
2) Go check out forum to see the promo code to get the Friends Of MyRepublic
3) Sign up Uno plan for $8/mth

But better hurry, not sure when they will really stop the plan once and for all.

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Migration of email

I read from Investingmoat's article here that Yahoo finance is not functioning anymore, hence it affected the spreadsheet to track one's portfolio. I knew this would happen one day. Yahoo finance used to be my number 1 get to site to get things on finance, but after Yahoo had been bought over, things just started to break apart at the seams. After yet another series of email hacks, I finally threw in the towel and said my goodbye to the very first email that I had for 20 over years.

I knew it's going to be somewhat of a major operation to switch email, especially one that I had used for so long. So I listed out a couple of steps to migrate over:


1) Change and inform all the email address in websites that I follow

I have last pass, which is a password management website, so this step is a breeze. I just go to each and every website that has my yahoo email registered under them, and change the email address there and then. There are some websites with accounts tied to email address, so unless I'm prepared to open a new account, I've no way to change it. I guess those are a rarity. No choice. Despite yahoo being my main work email, I didn't email all my contacts with regards to the changes. Unlike changing a handphone number, I think this step is not necessary.

2) Update and change every email that you received for the next 2 weeks or so

There are bound to be some website that I've missed out, so for the next 2 weeks or so, every email I received is updated to my new email address. There are some sites that send less frequently, so I guess those are by default not urgent enough to affect me. It's okay to miss those.

3) Keep track of the old yahoo email, but don't use it for future correspondence

Use the new email to respond to any email you received from the old yahoo account. After a while, you should get lesser and lesser email from yahoo, which is the whole point of this exercise. But I will still track this account. If you're a signaller in army, it's just like putting this yahoo 'channel' in 'scanning' mode. You use one email but you scan several. And oh, I'm nostalgic. Once every blue moon, I like to go to my sent folders in yahoo and see what are the things that had happened in the past. I see it like the facebook's memory function, or just simply a time capsule where all my memories are stored digitally somewhat in my yahoo email. I'm sentimental like that.

That's it. Those steps should allow you to change the most urgent ones first, followed by the next tier of urgency and so on.

Before you jump to another email, you might want to consider the longevity of the company. Back in 20 yrs, I didn't expect yahoo to go bellyup like this, but hey, it's still a better bet than some of the smaller internet companies I suppose. I migrated over to Google if you must know. I think Google stands the best chance of serving me for the next 20 years or so I hope.

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Using Investingnote's charting platform

I wanted to help those who are newer to Investingnote, my preferred charting software, hence I'm writing this post. I think the people over at Investingnote are really doing a fine job with a free charting software. It's actually quite powerful and I especially like the real time (okay, it lags by at most 2 minutes) update of the charts. Yahoo finance maybe lags by 10 to 15 mins? I've not seen a charting software that updates realtime too, perhaps except those by brokerage platform. But those are pretty laggy and buggy so I don't like to use them much.

This is not a sponsored post. I just think it's a great tool for people to use it, so I'm sharing it. This is also not a tutorial to show you how to use the charting software, but more of how I use the charting software at Investingnote.

When you logged in and click on the "Charts" option on the upper right corner of the platform, you're going to see something like this screen:

I like to add a few indicators to my chart. I mouse over the symbol with the charts, and you'll see "Indicators" appearing.

Clicking on it will bring you to the list of indicators available for you to add in. I proceeded to add in MACD, Elders Force index and Moving exponential by clicking on the names. It'll automatically be added to the charts.

Now my charts look like this:

I don't like the Elders Force index (EFI) in a line form. I prefer the histogram format, so I'm going to change it. I mouse my cursor over to the gear symbol just to the right of the word EFI. It's the middle icon. You're going to see the word "Format" appearing. Click on that. You'll see "Inputs" and "Style" menu above.

Play around with the options. I changed the colour of the plot to blue, line to histogram, and thickened the width of the histogram, as shown below:

If you're satisfied, you can click OK and it'll be shown on the chart. I did the same format adjustment to MACD too. Let's say you don't want to see the MACD appearing, you can hide it by clicking on the first icon next to the indicator:

You can also shift the order of the indicator up or down. Let's say I want to move my MACD indicator right at the bottom of the chart. I'll press the down button on the top right corner of the indicator box:

Once you've pressed it, the indicator can move up or down according to your liking. You can also draw trendlines, horizontal support, fibo etc by looking at left side of the chart:

Let's go ahead and choose the fibo retracement lines:

It's the second symbol, click on that small arrow and you'll see a whole host of options available. Let's go ahead and choose Fib retracement and draw it out. You'll see the results below:

If it's too small and too much things happening on your chart, you can click full screen and blow up the chart to see it clearer:

Okay, here's the important trick. How do you save the nice charts and drawings you've done? There are two ways:

1. Saving individual charts:

Click on the Save chart layout symbol and save everything you're working on for that particular chart. They will ask you to give a chart layout name.

Once you've entered the chart name, you can retrieve it back anytime by pressing the Load chart layout

You can save your work this way.

2. Saving template:

I prefer saving template, so that I can apply this particular set of template (with this set of indicators and format) to different charts. So here's how to do it:

Click on the study template:

You will see the option to "Save study template as". Click on it, give the template a name and you will be able to put this set of layout onto any charts you want easily.

I saved two template (as shown above by the red arrow), the first is "without RSI" and the second is "with stoch RSI".  If I clicked on the template "Without RSI" and click on the box (marked by the black arrow) and type the name of the counter (e.g. SHENG SIONG), I will apply this template onto the chart of Sheng siong.

Of course there are many more functions that I didn't illustrate but I think this is a good starting point to explore the platform yourself.

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Kindle paper white

I thought I would never get another kindle, but I was proven wrong. This time, it's the 6.7 inches kindle paperwhite.


What's so special about this compared to my 9.7 inches old graphite DX?

First of all, there's a back lit for the kindle paperwhite. This makes reading possible when there's no natural light. The brightness level is easily accessible by two touches, so you can adjust the settings on the go. I usually keep it lesser than 25% level (the actual light level I used is about 6 to 8), even when I'm reading at night with the night lamp dimmer on. It's bright enough to make my eyes hurt at 50% level, or maybe I'm just old now. I think this feature is really well implemented. The backlight brightens up the whole screen in a very nice fashion, and you can't really see where the light is coming from. With the e ink technology, I think the contrast is made even better than my graphite DX. The technology for the paperwhite is really something - you have to hold it in your hands and read something off it to be amazed by it.


Secondly, you can adjust different fonts on the go too. That's a feature that I would love to have. I hardwired my kindle dx to change its font because I find that the default font is a bit hard to read clearly. It's not easy to do that because you've to mess around with the settings. There's no menu just for that. With the paperwhite, it's just another option to choose from. There's a lot of things that are customizable in this paperwhite version of the kindle, which adds a little touch to the aesthetic value of the device when using it.


Thirdly, it's touch screen. The screen changes a lot faster now, so you won't notice much time lag when you click on any options. Even the page turning is rendered almost instantaneously, which is not the case for my older graphite dx. I even find the touch screen on the paperwhite too sensitive. The lag for the older graphite dx is not such a problem after some time, because I've trained myself to press it like 1-2 seconds before I finished reading the last words of the last line, so I don't really notice the lag. But I'm sure it's visible for someone holding the graphite dx for the first time. Paperwhite is as smooth as it gets when it comes to page turning and I think this has got to do with the faster processor. It's the most lag free and smoothest I've seen in all my kindle devices. The good thing about touchscreen is that for now, you just need to press and hold a word that you want to check on the dictionary, and out pops either Wikipedia or the built in dictionary. It makes you want to look up a word that you don't know, since it's so easy to check up a dictionary.

Yup, you can see the contrast between the paperwhite (left) and graphite dx (right)

Battery life? I switched off my wireless and I read everyday for the past 1 week, about 2-3 hours each time. It barely dipped actually. I think I've to believe that the battery for the paperwhite will last 8 weeks as stated officially. But I did read reviews where users found that the battery life drops to about 1 week after prolonged usage (about 6 months). I'll have to update on that once I'm there.


What's missing on the paperwhite is the feature where you can get the device to read out to you. I suppose with so many audiobooks that are professionally voiced, there's no real need to have a robotic voice reading out to you anymore. But I'll like to have that. Sometimes, on rare occasions, I would just like to eat my packet lunch and listen to a stiff female voice read to me in a weird google-translatish voice. I can do that with my graphite DX, but not with kindle paperwhite. At least, after using it everyday for a week, I haven't seen that function yet. If you had one and know where it's hidden, do let me know!


The smaller 6.7 inch also means that now, it's palm sized, very portable and can be carried around easily. Kindle dx is a tad heavy - you do get tired holding the reader and lugging it around. Hence for people who like to read while commuting on public transport, the smaller 6.7 inch palm size do work wonders. It's no surprise I've NEVER seen anyone in public with the bigger 9.7 inch kindle dx, but plenty with the smaller paperwhite or the older kindle 3. However, I prefer the bigger one because I do read pdf on my device and it's easier to read it on a larger device. I almost never bring my kindle dx out anyway (I think reading is best done in bed), so it's never a problem for me.


Lastly, how much did I buy it for? I bought the no advertisement (dubbed "without special offers" by Amazon), wifi only version of the paperwhite at SGD $185, everything in. If you don't mind advertisement, it's even cheaper at SGD 100. Throw in another SGD 7 dollars and you get it delivered to your doorstep. I bought it from the Qoo10 website (formally Gmart) from one of the sellers. It's from Japan (you can see it from the box) and it was delivered to me within 2 days of ordering it, to my pleasant surprise.

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Desktop productivity tools

I'm always very interested in improving my workflow. I don't own a laptop and most of my work is done on a desktop pc. For me, a non-cluttered pc desktop, a non-cluttered physical desktop, a clean and aesthetic software and stationery that boosts my productivity are paramount before I start something heavy (and possibly dreary). Take it as a planned procrastination, but that's how I gear up my momentum before I dive into something big.

I'll list down some of the programs that I use very often to improve my productivity. In no order of importance, here's my best 5:

1. You Need A Budget

I've written extensively about this software that aids in managing and tracking my personal finance here. Having used for for 2 months now, I'm still very pleased with how it cut short so much of my time keying in my expenses. It comes with an android / iOS app that syncs with the desktop version. I foresee myself using this for a very long time.

2.  TuneUp utilities 

This is those clean up program that everyone should have. It does a couple of functions like optimizing your memory usage, cleaning up temp files and clearing all those broken shortcuts and invalid registry - in other words, it boost your pc performance. You know, after a few years of using your laptop or pc, it starts to slow down as more junk are added. Without clearing them frequently, it slows down to a crawl and even opening a browser or a doc will take ages. This is what you need.

3. Fences

I started using this recently and shared it on my facebook too. This is a fantastic piece of software, especially for people who likes to save downloads onto their desktop (and who don't?). It helps to compartmentalize the shortcuts and saved files into neat little, well, fences, so that you can sort them out. I've a 'Follow up' fence and a 'To be sorted' fence that I dump my new downloads into, so that I can sort them out later when I've the time. It even have a function where you can create multiple 'home-screens', like in your handphone, so that you can scroll horizontal left and right. In this way, you'll end up with multiple desktop, so to speak. Most important find of the year for me.

4. Snagit

I've been using this software for years. It's a screen capture program that allows you to, well, capture screen shots. There are so many ways to capture screenshots, like capturing vertically scrollable web pages, windows, even video clips. After capturing, you be launched into their editor, where you can annotate and add in small pictures or highlights, changing the resolution etc. Lastly, you can also change the file type to be saved, like pdf, jpeg etc. Good for putting those stock charts and drawing trend lines.

5. PDF X-change Viewer

Adobe reader is one of the worst pdf readers because it's so slow. After changing to this, pdf files open up so much faster. They also allow you to annotate and add comments (depends on the version), something that is not possible on the free version of adobe reader. To think that I've been stuck on adobe reader for so long! If you don't like this, there are other free and better software than adobe reader. Stop using that bloaty software for your own sake!

This is not an advertorial and I don't get paid for promoting these. These are some software that works for me, and by hopefully for you too. I hope you'll find some of these helpful. If you do, please let me know. Share some of your best productivity tools with me too!

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5 reasons why you need YNAB (and 3 reasons why you don't)

This is an unpaid review of You Need A Budget, also known as YNAB. I bought it last month from steam at a discount, but had long heard of it by others who gave rave reviews about this personal finance software. Since it's at a great discount of 75%, I decided to plunge into it and try it for myself. Prior to this leap in using the software, I already had a working excel spreadsheet that works for me for the past 5 or so years. The spreadsheet is meant to keep tabs on my expenses and also keep records of all my transactions in the form of a cash flow statement, balance sheet and an income statement. I record all my expenses and the income flowing from my handphone using just a simple note taker, afterwhich I'll transfer the information to my spreadsheet in my computer after forthnightly or weekly.

As you can see, I'm not so hot about changing a system that works for me and that I'm so comfortable in using. But there's a few things about my system that I don't like. Firstly, it's hard to reconcile bank statements. Secondly, it's lacking a graphical interface. Call me shallow, but between a system that works 100% but is ugly and a system that works 90% but is pretty, I'll go for the second one. The nice interface makes me want to do this forever, not that I'm lacking in motivation.


 YNAB is basically a budgeting software. You decide, at the start of the month, how much each dollar you would give to different envelopes, like food, entertainment, handphone bills etc. They also have a free android app (I checked, they have an app for iOS as well) that ties in very nicely with the software that is installed on your main computer. The information between the app and the one in your computer can be synced using dropbox. All the backup and data are placed in the dropbox, so you can start your YNAB budget from one of these autosaved points, which can be very handy in case something horrible happened that wiped out all your hard work in keeping tabs on your personal finance.

Nice clean interface makes you want to key in something!

I realized that I'm using this software less like a budgeting software, but more like an accounting software, where all my transactions between accounts and cashflow in and out of accounts are recorded and kept track of. I guess this would take some time to adjust because as mentioned, I've never done budgeting before and I already knew roughly what my expenses are for different categories. But I always say we can do better, that's why I did a system overhaul by adopting this new software.


One of the good things I like about YNAB is that because it's all programmed nicely, it's exceedingly easier to change things and make sure that everything is still tallied. During the past one month of using the software, I had to do some major changes to my account. In the past, using spreadsheet, I've to comb though the worksheets of the previous months carefully. But for now, I just have to key in the new changes, and everything else is taken care of. Needless to say, I'm suitably impressed. Though I'm not expecting much major changes going forward, it's still a nice feature to have knowing that any new way to partitioning your personal wealth is easily down with a click of a few buttons. Effortless.

The YNAB app on mobile phones makes it very easy to key in transactions and it auto syncs.

I keyed in all my accounts in YNAB, including all the marked to market value of my various investment portfolio, insurance cash value, and all the shitloads of debts that I owed HDB. Straightway, I can see my networth displayed with superbly clean charts and nicely tabulated figures. If I need to see my income vs expenses, there's another tab to click to see it too. I can compare data across the years, the past 3 months, this month and the year to date. This is something that I can't do easily since I divided my expenses spreadsheet physically year by year. I can, of course, combine them, but again, it's the ease of use in YNAB that blows me off.

Nice pie chart showing you the different categories of expenses according to timeline that you set

In summary, here's what I like about YNAB:


1. Extremely easy to check and reconcile accounts. 

If your actual statements and the one you had in YNAB differs even by a cent, it'll alert you and you can do the necessary checking. Saves me a hell lot of time for this little function.


2. Very clean and nice graphical user interface

Clean and nice. The reports generated are also very good, if you're into this sort of thing. Makes you want to keep checking it.


3. Ability to change things easily and keeps backup on dropbox

If you make a fatal mistake, you can return to the last autosaved place. Changing something automatically changes everything from the past to this moment. You won't appreciate this until you got something major to change, so trust me on this one.


4. It has an well integrated free app on android.

I used to key my expenses into a simple note taker in my phone, then transfer the records over to my spreadsheet over at my computer. This doesn't take much time but it still takes some time. With this app, whatever I keyed into my hp automatically gets synced to the software at my main computer. That makes my life soooo much easier. Just this alone makes this software worth adopting.


5. Very nicely integrated philosophy behind the programming

Once you start downloading the software, you'll be in a short but useful online lecture program on how to jumpstart your failing financial management knowledge. You'll be exposed to very good advice to save up, to do proper budgeting and basically good personal finance habits. Even I find it useful. I particularly like a phrase which they used very often - "Give every dollar a job!". If want to learn more, there's even free live classes that you can sign up and learn about various topics. It seems like the people behind YNAB is really interested in making you financial healthy. They are really serious in making you change your mindset to have real change in your life.

Rule number 1: Give every frakking dollar a job!

Here's what not to like about YNAB:


1. Poor integration of financial aspects

If you're looking for something that can keep track of your investments, this is not for you. It works very well in what it aims to do, and this is just not one of its function. I still using my trusty old spreadsheet for that purpose.


2. No auto download of credit card statements or bank statements

Actually maybe it does have but I don't like the idea of it at all. If you want to keep tabs on your expenses, then do so. The act of doing it will bring a lot of benefits rather than downloading the statements automatically from the bank. However, if you really want to, you can download credit or bank statements, then upload it to YNAB. It can accept .OFX , .QFX, .QIF and .CSV format. I wouldn't recommend it, neither do the people behind YNAB.


3. Tracks the amount of money right to the cent

What's not to like about this? Well, usually when I'm keeping tabs on expenses manually, I disregard anything less than $1. I also don't count the money that I've in my wallet. This program forces me to count each and every cent. There are many times that I noticed that the amount of money that I had and the amount of money that I'm supposed to have in my wallet do not tally. I need to reconcile the differences. This means I must have missed out some stuff...Not a big sum (<$15), but can be irritating when the software highlights to me that I missed something out and I'm the sort of person who then have to correct the mistakes. It's making me anal fussing over 10 cts here and 20 cts there. Granted, this is the point, afterall.


I really think this software is worth putting the time and effort to learn. For newbies who are starting out to earn their first drop of cash, it'll make you learn a few good habits that can last you for life. That alone is worth the price of this software. For those who had been tracking your expenses fastidiously all along using excel spreadsheet, perhaps a little more graphics, a little more automation can make an easy job even easier. Do try it as they have a full featured demo for 34 days - more than enough time for you to try it out to see if it can fit in to your life. No harm trying right?

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How to borrow ebooks from NLB

Some of you may heard that our very own national library board (NLB) had begun lending out ipads with books preloaded inside or downloadable from the library site, in order to encourage the younger ones to take up reading. While I reserve my judgement on whether it's a good thing using ipad to encourage reading before children actually learns to read good old boring books, I think libraries going the way of lending out digitized content is actually a good thing. If you look at the many physical book stores that go bust or downsized (think borders, mph, harris, page one and times) and compare it to the proliferation of online book stores, it's not hard to see the growth of digitized content readers. This trend is certainly helped by cool gadgets like kindle and ipad, as well as smartphones.



And this post is going to share with you how to get e-content from NLB. Firstly, you'll need to sign up as a member. If you ever borrowed a physical book from the NLB before, you're already a member. If you are not one yet, join it, it's the wisest use of your tax money and it's free. Let's go:


1. Go to this link from the NLB site. Click on number 5, the overdrive site highlighted below.

2. You'll be prompted to log in using your NRIC, the first word of your name and your date of birth. If you are not a member yet, just join in. It's free and it takes only a few minutes to sign up.

3. Once you logged in, you'll be back to the screen in 1. Click on the same thing again, and another tab will open up with the opendrive website. You can search for books here. But most require you to download Adobe Digital Editions because the books that you can 'borrow' comes with DRM (digitilized rights management). You have to downloaded the Adobe software first before downloading the ebooks. After that, you can just click on the ebook and open it with the adobe digital edition. Since this is a library afterall, you need to 'return' the book after a number of days. In this case, after 21 days, the book that you downloaded will expire and you can no longer read them. Please don't send the expired downloaded books back to NLB by email, lol!

4. For example, if I liked this particular book, Zombie Economics. I can see that there are 1 library copy in total and 1 available copy for me to borrow. I think due to IP requirements, NLB cannot just let a lot of users download the ebook. It's silly, really, so let's hope this kind of thing that governs physical books be removed when it comes to ebooks. You just click on the add to cart button, highlighted below.

Then click on the proceed to checkout button to go through the transaction. After clicking that, you'll be asked to enter you NRIC and date of birth (again) before you can go on to the next step. So enter them. You'll then see a screen telling you how many books you can borrow. If you're a normal member like I am, you'll be able to borrow up to 6 books, each book being 21 days before expiry.

5. Once you confirmed the checkout, you'll proceed to the download screen. Here, it's important to download the Adobe Digital edition software (free of course), before you download the ebook. The ebook that is downloaded here has DRM and has limited reading period (it expires after 21 days), hence you need another software to prevent piracy. So click on the purple highlighted link first before you download the ebook.

You'll see two available softwares here. I selected on the Adobe Digital Edition. Not sure how the Overdrive media console is about, but you can try. Both should work. Anyway, for illustration purpose, select the highlighted one.

It'll bring you to adobe website where you can download the required software. Before you can access it, you can need to have an adobe id, which means an email and a password to have an account with them. Once that is done, you can finally click on the download button (highlighted pink) from the screenshot above this current one. Save it somewhere and click on it. It should open up Adobe digital edition and you can read the book off your desktop or laptop. If it doesn't open up, right click and choose to open with adobe digital edition.

This is how the adobe digital edition looks like. There's also 'days left to expiry' on each borrowed book.

Happy reading!


There's quite a few selection from just that overdrive site alone. If you're interested in children's books, you can select other links, though personally I've not tried it before, so no advice from me there. You can even browse singapore historical books and documents. Those are very interesting. Like this link, it'll lead you to a book that contains historical photos of Singapore in the 1900s. If you're so inclined to read the memoirs and even orbituary of Raffles, you can also find it somewhat there. It's almost like I've stumbled into an Indiana Jones' tomb of ancient historical relics!


Let me know if you encounter problems. I'm not an expert, but I'll try to help :)

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Kindle dx graphite edition review

I very recently bought a kindle graphite dx. This is the newer version of the kindle dx that I had and it comes with free 3G, a usual 9.7 inch display but with the newer e-ink (pearl) display. The 3G really works and I can access a very basic web browser with it. Don't expect to do fantastic surfing with the browser because the refresh rate and loading speed, at least here in Singapore, is rather slow. I'm sure if I'm residing in US and with the whispernet available there, the surfing speed should be appreciably faster. Still, I'm happy with the basic free 3G services for stuff like looking up the kindle store, google stuff and checking wikipedia. That's a huge improvement because my older kindle dx does not have all these functions. These are secondary improvements to me, because the main function of having a kindle dx is just to read. The rest of the features are good to have, but not essential ultimately.



The best thing that I liked about this newer 'graphite' edition is that the contrast is much much better. I've had the older one for 2 yrs already and it's okay to read it with sufficient lighting. But once the lighting drops, you find that you have to squint to make out the words because the contrast isn't good enough. The newer one has purportedly 50% improvement in contrast compared to the old one.

As you can see, even without words, the background of the new pearl e-ink technology shines through. The older (white) kindle has a more grayish background compared to the graphite one.

Reading pdf files on the new kindle is better than ever. When reading pdf files which I do very very often, the older version will experience a drop in contrast. Some pdf files are thus 'unreadable' because you really have to make out the darker gray words against the gray background. Not a very good reading experience at all.

Two of them side by side. You can see the words jumping out of the background for the graphite edition, whereas for the older version, the words and background are sort of merged together.

But the graphite edition makes the contrast so much sharper. I tried reading in a place with very poor lighting and I'm happy to say that it can still be done. Reading pdf files in the past will also experience a drop in the page turning rate, meaning that it will take a longer time to turn the pages. Amazon made tremendously improvements in this department. There is still a very short lag between pressing the 'turn' button and actually seeing the page flip, but it's tremendously shorter. It doesn't affect my reading experience, even with the older version, because you can get used to such things after a while. It's like just before reading the last few words, you start to press the button already, and when you actually finish reading the words, the page turns just in time for you to have uninterrupted reading. You know what I mean.

Reading text files. Again, the words are clear and sharp for the graphite edition. This is not to say that the older version is not readable...it's just that you need better lighting to do it. 

Nothing much is changed when reading mobi or amz format. The text size changes seems faster than the older version, but you don't usually change text size on the go, so it's not going to affect much.

Comics look great on kindle dx. The large screens size means  more can be packed in one page without sacrificing readability. Try reading comics in a small screen and you get what I mean.

Due to the improved contrast, I think I can start reading more comics on the kindle. I didn't do it in the past because the words can barely be read using the older kindle. I'm actually looking forward to this!

A real work of art. The screensaver when you're not reading literally tempts you to unlock it and start using it.

I bought this for $370 from a kind gentlemen. He found the kindle dx with the big screen too huge to carry around, so he got himself a smaller one. I'm unlikely to carry this around with me and it's meant for reading when I'm not travelling, so the size is okay with me. It comes with nearly 1 yr of warranty so I practically got a new set with a huge discount. For readers who want to see what I had blogged about for the older kindle, do check this out.


With the new 3G function, I wonder if I can subscribe to some periodicals and newspaper and have it wirelessly transmit over to my kindle for my reading pleasure. It certainly opens up a whole realm of possibility. I'm going have a few sleepless nights of reading again...

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