Restaurant Review: High Society on Orchard Road

Restaurant Review: High Society on Orchard Road

290 Orchard Road
Singapore 238859

The fact that I couldn’t find a phone number for High Society on Orchard is indicative of the whole restaurant: something is missing. High Society is situated very close to Lido Cinema on Orchard Road, so I decided to drop in some day to try out their food before catching a movie. From the outside, the place looks as if it could live up to its name, with white marble floors, and red carpet flooring. We had no trouble getting a table, as the only people present when we went in on Sunday evening were sitting downstairs and outdoors. On the first floor, there are number of tables, yet we were the only dinner guests, except for one other couple, who came after us and left before we did. On a Sunday afternoon on Orchard this is quite remarkable and should raise a flag. The nice ambiance is negatively impacted by quite loud clubbing music from the bookstore right next to the restaurant, as the door was open and the bass was thumping. Not quite conducive for the otherwise posh atmosphere.

To call the waiter, you have to use a buzzer on your table. Staff was very friendly, yet lacked some knowledge to the food they serve, e.g. when being asked for recommendations. Eventually we went for the Catch of the Day and the Oxtail Stew, accompanied by white wine.

High Society - Catch of the Day

High Society - Oxtail Stew

The Catch of the Day came with Tempura Prawns that tasted literally of nothing, might as well have been cardboard. The fish itself was okay, yet the lemon butter sauce was again a disappointment. The Oxtail Soup was comparatively better, with the meat being tender and flavourful, but also not quite up to the standards you would expect to find at “High Society”. The wine was not at all to our liking, being slightly sour and leaving an unpleasant aftertaste. Pricing was average for an Orchard restaurant.

Overall, I wouldn’t recommend the place unless you’re in a pinch to grab a bite before a movie and need a place with lots of empty seating.

3/5 Stars   

Read More

Restaurant Review: Cafe Ma Maison (Millenia Walk/Parco Marina Bay)

Restaurant Review: Cafe Ma Maison (Millenia Walk/Parco Marina Bay)

9 Raffles Boulevard

#03-02 Millenia Walk

 +65 6338 9391

Ma Maison Café is situated on the 3^rd floor of Millenia Walk and probably you wouldn’t stumble onto the place unless you knew where it was or went looking for Japanese food in Suntec City. On the 3^rdlevel of Millenia Walk, there are a few Japanese restaurants, including Ma Maison Café, which this review is all about and which features Western-style Japanese food.

I had heard many a good thing about Ma Masion, albeit about their outlet at Bugis, and since I’m a big fan of Japanese food I was looking forward to dinner at this place. The first impression I got when entering Ma Maison in Millenia Walk was very good: the interior is quite cozy and there are many a knickknack hanging from the walls or displayed on shelves to give it an “authentic” look. Even though the interior designer apparently couldn’t quite make up their mind whether to go for authentic English or authentic French, so the vintage signs you see are in English, the name of the place is French (“ma maison” means “my home” in French) and the Pringles cans on the shelves add their own spin to it. Somehow it still all works and I liked the atmosphere in the lil restaurant. Sunday night was rather quiet and we could choose our table. One thing I immediately noticed was that both chefs are relatively young (you can see them through a plexiglass window into the kitchen).

I was eager to order, and the menu was short enough to make the choice easy, thus we went for the Italian Hamburger Steak with Cheese and the Beef Stroganov Omu Butter Rice; prices are pretty reasonable and around SGD 15 per main dish. Through the window into the kitchen we could see our food being prepared and after a very short wait it was served. When we started to eat, the first thing we noticed was that although the plates were steaming, the food itself was lukewarm. It appears, they prepared the omelette for the Omu rice and the hamburger steak fresh, but I’m fairly sure that the gravy was just warmed up or heated in the microwave. The omu rice was itself was pretty decent, with the omelette having just the right texture and consistency. The gravy on both dishes was ok, but nothing special really and both the beef stroganov and the hamburger steak were not seasoned very well, so that it was a rather bland affair even when lathering it with gravy.

After this rather average main course, we weren’t really in the mood for tarts for desert, which I believe Ma Maison at Bugis is famous for. Maybe we should have stuck with coffee and desert instead of dinner, which I wouldn’t recommend at this place. Maybe next time we try the deserts and go for the main outlet at Bugis instead.

3/5 Stars

Read More

Review

Buying a new laptop is definitely a difficult task. With the plethora of options that are available, anybody hoping to buy a laptop other than the Macbook will have to think and rethink upon what is important and what is not. In my case, I give highest preference to the display followed by the processor, ram, graphics card, cooling solution,battery life,weight and looks in that order. Or, maybe, looks should follow just after the display. I brought the core i5 version with full HD display.

Display

Courtesy: thinkdigit forums

This system has a full hd 1920x1080 resolution. There is also an anti glare matte coating on the display. Either of them alone can be found in other laptops but the combination of the two along with the quality of the display gives the laptop a huge boost above its similarly priced counterparts. Notebookcheck.com mentions that this display is made by AU optronics. For normal usage the screen is very good. Text is crisp and sharp and reading for an extended time is strain free. Whites are truly white and blacks are rich deep blacks. The blacks are enhanced by the anti glare coating which gives the display an awesome feel when watching movies. The screen is very bright at its maximum. Full HD movies look very good too. 1366x768 resolutions are available, but at 15 inch, they will not give you the same effect that the full HD display does. There might be two possible short comings for a  full HD display. Battery life will be less and the latest games might not be playable at full HD resolution due to a less powerful graphics card in this system.

Processor

Has the option for a core i5 3210m or a core i7 3632QM processor. i7 will make it future proof for you but considering the fact that this is not the most powerful laptop around in terms of the cpu+gpu combo, i5 will be more than sufficient for all needs. The processor is the M series(35W) and not U series(17W) so that even if the battery life is less the performance does not suffer. Its also Intel 3rd generation processor, which is the worlds first commercial 22nm 3D trigate processor.

All about the new Intel procs

RAM

Many choices from 4gb to 8gb. This laptop has its RAM clocked at 1600MHz which is almost a norm among all high performance laptops. The RAM is made by Nanya technologies and benchmarks show a very high rating for the performance of this RAM.

Graphics Card

The AMD radeon HD 7730m is, according to experts, not a very great card in terms of gaming performance. But rest assured that it can game well enough for most games and almost all games would give playable frame rates albeit at a lower resolution. I tried my hand at Mafia 2 on the system and it runs smoothly in full HD resolution at maximum settings. This system contains another very capable graphics card in the form of Intel HD 4000. AMD's enduro technology helps to switch between these two when need arises. When I played Mafia 2, the GPU automatically kicked in without assigning the high performance mode in Catalyst control center. The radeon HD 7730m is AMD's first 28nm card based on their Graphics Core Next(GCN) architecture. The 28nm and zero core technology helps in major power savings. If you want to assign a particular graphic card to an appliaction, you can do it in catalyst control center, but I haven't actually tested if this works. Many users in other forums have reported that this doesn't often work. A matter of concern is AMD's buggy drivers. The de facto drivers provide good performance but if you try to run AMD's driver updater, your graphics card will be shown as unsupported. So you will have to download the latest drivers directly from AMD or a little older drivers through dell support website. When you install the latest drivers for AMD, the Intel HD 4000 gets downgraded to an older driver. AMD does this to ensure compatibility. If you allow Windows update to update the Intel HD automatically, the AMD radeon HD will be shown as disabled in the device manager. Hopefully, all this should get solved by a future update.

Cooling

Courtesy: thinkdigit forums

This is one of the coolest laptops around. The top portion of the laptop does not get hot under any situation. The vent is situated on the side and is angular and expels heat very well. The touchpad is cool even after an hour of HD gaming(Mafia 2). I got this laptop very recently, so I didn't have enough new games to test on this system. I will update this post soon with more game info. Cooling is helped by the size of this laptop. This is not your superslim ultrabook that doesn't have enough space for a vent. This laptop is big enough to expel heat very well. This, I feel, should ensure longevity of the components.

Looks

I was impressed by the honeycomb aluminium finish when I first unwrapped this laptop. The texture is smooth with the honeycomb pattern embossed lightly. The cover is switchable but this is not officially supported in all countries. The power button has much less travel than I like. The back lit keyboard seriously accentuates the night time looks of this laptop. The inside too has the same honeycomb finish and this makes it feel good to touch. The track pad is large and smooth with dedicated keys. The only drawback is that  the interior and exterior surfaces are very much finger print prone. You can see fingerprints all over the body after usage, so it requires periodic cleaning.

Battery life

This is no ultrabook and the processors are not Intel U processors. This laptop gives me a battery life of about 3.5 hours when the display is at minimal brightness while browsing on WiFi. For HD movies playing from hard disk, it can last you the length of 1 full movie and a little time extra. So battery life is not very great but its not so bad also.

Weight, bulk and build

It weighs a heavy 2.7kg so this is may not exactly be a suitable travel partner. The laptop is thicker than most of its counterparts but you wont see the bulk while looking at it. There is a silver panel running through the side that looks slim. The rest of the bulk is hidden by black plastic that curves away underneath so that when this laptop rests on a desk, you might even say that it is a slim one. This is rigidly built and there is no flex on the top and bottom surfaces. The only flimsy thing is the DVD drive which, when opened, would look like its just about to fall off.

Speakers

Provided by Skullcandy, the speakers are loud enough to fill a room. They lack bass though. The sound is a little bit muffled due to the placement of speakers beneath the laptop. Dell could have given them on the top so that you get direct sound rather than reflected sound. Not the best, but better than many I've heard.

Keyboard and trackpad

The keyboard is chiclet and has wide spaces between keys. There is adequate key travel and backlight provides for night time typing and daytime styling. The trackpad is large and responsive with dedicated keys. It supports multi gestures and has functions for accessing windows 8 charms menu. The trackpad is smooth to touch and does not get hot even under extended usage.

Bloatware

Preinstalled bloatware are few except for McAfee 30 days trial and Office 2010 downloader. There is an ebay metro icon. Cyberlink mediasuite essentials are included but since it includes programs like powerdvd, it cant be classified as bloatware.The real bloats are the dell applications like quickset, touchpad control center, smart audio etc. which cause a lag at start up  But since this is a very powerful system you barely feel the effect of all these. Not all these are bad software functionally. The new Dell Support Center is one of the best support software available. It has minimal looks but is supremely functional. It is provided by PC doctor.

Software

Windows 8, in spite of all the negative reviews, is a great operating system. Never before in the history of Microsoft has there been an OS that is quick, secure and good looking, all at the same time. People will of course miss the start menu but instead Microsoft has given a full screen start menu with all the same functions. The system boots in less than 10 seconds even if the laptop doesn't have an SSD(Although you can always swap your HDD for an SSD). It includes windows defender which is rated as one of the best antivirus products. It has a very functional feel shaped by the long years of Microsoft OS 's.

Package

I ordered this laptop online and received it only after 20 days of waiting. There was some kind of customs clearance problem for the shipment and this was the cause of the delay. The build process was completed 4 days after receiving the order. Everything can be tracked online through dell.com/status. The system was well packed when it reached me. Dell sent 3 separate packages containing the laptop, the Targus backpack and the mouse. The backpack provided with this system is a very high quality, good looking bag unlike some of the other laptop manufacturer's bags. The only disk I got was that for driver re installation and there was no windows 8 disk. So you have to make recovery disks or risk losing your windows 8 copy. There was no other offers or freebies included except for a 3% corporate/student discount which they have discontinued now.

The Inspiron series have been Dell's best selling line of laptop. Comparing the Inspiron 15r and Inspiron 15r SE, the SE offers better build quality in terms of the honeycomb aluminium finish, the skullcandy speakers, backlit keyboard and the Full HD display option. The overall advantages can be summed up as excellent display, very efficient cooling, good keyboard, good trackpad, loud sound and value for money. The cons include the 4hr battery life, flimsy DVD drive and tendency for fingerprints on the honeycomb coating. To sum up, its one of the best value laptops to buy right now.

Read More

Benchmarks

Windows Experience Index Scores

Intel HD graphics card score changed from 5.2 to 5.3 on updating the graphics drivers. AMD radeon showed an increase from 6.5 to 6.8 on updating to the latest drivers from AMD. As you can see in both benchmarks, the RAM gets a very high score. The gaming graphics score is not bad too. The real bottleneck is the hard disk which you must swap for an SSD if you are to get the real performance benefits.

Passmark Performance Test

During actual testing, both tests showed that Intel HD 4000 was being used though I have no idea if the GPU switched automatically. Memory scores are high, consistent with Windows index. Disk scores are good when compared to other hard disk drive but poor when compared to SSD's. The CPU mark is not bad either when you consider the fact that all base system's used for comparison were relatively high end systems.

Base system configurations used in comparison in the above chart are as follows. Note that most of them are powerful desktops. 

Crystal Disk Benchmark

    Sequential Read :   111.836 MB/s
     Sequential Write :   110.831 MB/s
     Random Read 512KB :    33.117 MB/s
     Random Write 512KB :    50.814 MB/s
     Random Read 4KB (QD=1) :     0.371 MB/s [    90.6 IOPS]
     Random Write 4KB (QD=1) :     0.994 MB/s [   242.6 IOPS]
     Random Read 4KB (QD=32) :     0.961 MB/s [   234.5 IOPS]
     Random Write 4KB (QD=32) :     0.803 MB/s [   196.1 IOPS]

Read More

Font Size in Full HD display

When you get the laptop the first time, you will find that the text and other elements are smaller than they usually are. This is due to the higher pixel density of the display. Even though the text is smaller, you will find that it is perfectly readable so that now you have more screen space left for other programs on the same 15 inch screen. However if you want an increase in font size and the rest of the element sizes, you need to make some small changes:

1. Select Custom scaling options- Control Panel > Display. Select custom sizing options and choose a preferred value. When you sign out and sign back in, the text elements will be larger. Windows will look good with all menu's in the right sizes. You could stop here if you are satisfied with how things look .
2. Certain applications(like IDM and Google chrome) don't work well with such modifications. The interface appears blurred when you scale up. There is a simple workaround for this. Find the location of your application on c drive. Easiest way to do this is, when the application is running, open task manager, right click on the application name and select open file location. Now right click on the application  choose properties > compatibility and check disable display scaling on high DPI settings.
3. The 2nd step works for 32 bit applications. For 64 bit, you need to do a small registry hack.Type in regedit in metro or start menu. Then goto     HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers.Now add a string value (REG_SZ) whose name is the full path to the application executable and whose value is HIGHDPIAWARE. Try modifying some 32-bit applications as described above, so you can see some example values in this registry key.

Now everything would look normal but the text would be sharp and crisp.

Read More

Latest Graphics drivers

Since this laptop offers switchable graphics, there have been many questions on whether you should enable them individually for each program or is it better to get the drivers from Dell or AMD and so on.

I recommend installing the latest drivers from AMD and Intel themselves rather than from Dell.

Here is the link for intel HD 4000 64 bit driver

Intel HD 4000 driver for windows 7/8 64 bit

Here is the link to AMD graphics driver for 64 bit 

Download AMD 13.1 drivers for Windows 7/8 64 bit

After installing them, you will have the latest versions of both graphics card drivers.

The graphics card will do the task of switching automatically. AMD's enduro technology is mature enough to detect graphics intensive scenarios and do accordingly. However, if you want to assign a particular graphics card to a specific program, right click on desktop, select 'configure switchable graphics' and assign suitably.

I have tested the above drivers and they are also WHQL(windows hardware quality labs) tested. If you want to be on the edge, here are the latest 13.2 beta drivers released on 29th of January. They are not tested, so I have no idea if they work on our system. 
AMD Catalyst™ 13.2 Beta Driver

Read More

Linux Install

Installed Linux Mint 14 64 bit cinnamon edition. The install went without a glitch but I had to first disable secure boot from BIOS. Then I booted into the live USB and installed Mint. Everything else works perfectly fine except for the fan. The fan wont switch off when using Linux and after a while, the sound of the fan spinning at full speed becomes irksome. There are of course methods to turn it off or do some further tweaking, but I would rather virtualise than throw away the beautiful UEFI boot screen and secure boot for a Linux distro. I hope that with the release of Ubuntu 13.04, the problems are resolved and that I can use  secure boot and have the fan speed problem under control.
Ubuntu 12.10 boots in UEFI secure boot mode but this works for 64 bit versions of 12.10 only. No other problems, except the fan problem mentioned above. Ubuntu boots and works super fast but the system runs a little hot. Once you boot Ubuntu in 64 bit, even if you restart, it will boot Ubuntu only. To get Windows 8, while booting, press F12 to go to boot options and select Windows boot manager. Now you can get Windows to boot.

Read More

External Links

One of the best sources of information on the Dell Inspiron 15R series(along with 14R and 17R).

                 
             
                Inspiron 14 vs Inspiron14R

                 






             Original buyer reviews and problems  

Read More