Should I convert from Post-paid to Pre-paid mobile plan?

Planning for your ideal mobile plan

Many retirees "inherited" the obsolete mobile phones from their children when they upgrade the phones. Since a mobile plan (with a SIM card) is needed to make the old phone come alive, they leave the decision of their mobile plans to their children. Most of their children chose post-paid plan with limited incoming voice calls with no data plan. However, most old folks are wary of making outgoing voice calls because they are not used to the phone and it is chargeable. For some old plans, they are paying more than S$60+ for 300 min outgoing minutes per month. Due to fierce competition over the years, new plans are more competitive at S$25+ for 100 min outgoing. However, many are ignorance of this option when their contract is due. The same applies for students in schools, polytechnics and universities, except their phones are normally smart phones with data plan.
The demand of pre-paid mobile plan is attractive to short-term tourists and our foreign "talents" (aka workers) who rarely use their phone and cannot get credit. The beauty of pre-paid plan lies in the absence of 2-year contract with the telco. This target segment is not demanding of voice mail, text or data plan since their phones are either low-end or obsolete models. So they are compromised to pay a higher price to use pre-paid services.
Stop, read paragraph 2 again. If you believe every word I wrote, then perhaps you need a paradigm shift. Ten years ago, paragraph 2 is politically correct but it is no longer true now. If 50% of Europe is using pre-paid plans, you are a true believer on the myths of using pre-paid plan. Let me tell you why.

Post-paid vs Pre-paid

If a picture paints a thousand words, I hope this table shed lights on the differences.

	Post-Paid	Pre-Paid
Payment mode	After use	Before use
Monthly Bills	Yes	No
Subscription	Yes	No
Contract binding	2 years	None
Free phone bundle	Yes	None
Registration Charge	S$10.70	None
Free incoming voice calls	Yes	Depending on the plans
Free SMS	Yes	Depending on the plans
Free Caller ID	No	Yes
Free Voice Mail	No	Yes
Fee incoming calls	Yes	Depends

 
Yes. That's all for the differences. How about data plan, IDD calls, international roaming? Don't worry. Pre-paid plans cover them and sometimes offer more.
If you are using post-paid, there is no such thing as free outgoing voice call. It has been factored into your month free minutes. That's why you are paying more for 300 or 700 minutes. It is charged at SS$0.16/min if you exceed your allocated free minutes. Many customer service representatives will tell you to choose the highest minutes plan from your maximum usage. So you are choosing 100min/mth plan (S$16 value) if you are using 80min/mth and 300min/mth plan (S$54 value) when you are in fact using 101 min/mth.
Basically, prepaid plan is not restricted by the number of outgoing voice call minutes and number of SMSs. The catch is pay-as-you-use and in fact, more flexible than standard post-paid services. Therefore, get ready for the surprise if you are the frog still hiding in the well.

Pre-paid plans in the market

Being the largest mobile player in Singapore, SingTel has 4 different pre-paid offerings:

• Hi!card (standard prepaid at 8 cents/min during Happy Hour) with top-up options of (15% bonus, S$28, S$30 and S$55)

• Kababayan Card (calling Philippines at 7 cents/min )
• simPATI kangen Card (calling Indonesia at 16-26 cents/min)
• Sawadee Card (calling Thailand at 6 cents/min)

Since we are targeting at Singaporeans who are interested to convert from Post-paid to Pre-paid, cards and top-up options which are targeting for foreigners who wish to make IDD calls will be omitted in our discussion. Hence, we only consider the Hi!card and its top-up options.
Starhub has 2 basic plans – Green (Happy S$128 and Happy Star S$17) and MaxMobile for voice and data plan respectively. Top-up options are Happy (voice) and Happy Stars (data) prepaid. On and off, they introduce some perks to make their pre-paid cards more attractive. Since we are focusing only on voice plan, we shall take MaxMobile out of the equation.
M1 also has 2 pre-paid plans – M Super S$130 and SuperPac. The former targets standard users while SuperPac targets foreigners who live in a different time zone. We shall consider both plans with its top-up options.

Benchmark using a Post-paid plan

For low usage users, we need a benchmark for comparison so we take a standard 100min/mth plan with no data plan at a comparable value of S$25.68 (100 outgoing minutes and 500 SMSs). Over a period of 24 mths, a post-paid plan will cost a subscriber a total of S$616.32. Note that Post-paid plan can receive unlimited incoming call.

	100min/mth	300min/mth
Free outgoing voice minutes	100	300
Free SMS	500	500
Cost for 1 month (S$)	25.68	48.15
Costs over 24 mths (S$)	616.32	1155.60

 

Case studies

For the Pre-paid plan, let make the following presumption for both groups of consumers:

	Old folk	Night shift worker	Businessman
Duration of incoming calls a month (min)	50	75	150
Duration of outgoing calls a month (min)	50	75	100
Average call duration (min)	1	2	3
Calls made during peak period	80%	10%	60%
Calls made during non-peak period	20%	90%	40%
SMS per month	0	500	600

 
A run through the formula reveals the following:

Best plan	Old folks	Monthly bills (S$)		Night shift worker	Monthly bills (S$)		Businessman	Monthly bills (S$)
1	Singtel Hi!Card (S$55)	9.71		Singtel Hi!Card (S$28)	15.96		Singtel Hi!Card (S$28)	32.63
2	Starhub Green	12.75		Starhub Happy Star card (S$17)	18.46		M Card Super S$130	38.75
3	Singtel Hi!Card (15% bonus)	13.25		Hi!Card (S$55)	19.71		Starhub Happy (S$128)	41.58
Post-paid Plan	Standard 100 min/mth	25.68		Standard 300min/mth	48.15		Standard 300min/mth	48.15

 
The results may be surprising for many because 100min/mth plan can be cheaper than S$10/mth. Yes, it happens. By seizing advantages of the off-period period, you are able to make cheap calls thereby reducing the costs of mobile ownership. Either case, we see most pre-paid plans are cheaper than standard post-paid plans if you ignore the free incoming calls. Bear in mind that pre-paid plans are pay-as-you-use so if you have low usage for that month, you can effectively save more. It is a wonderful way of limiting your phone bill.
An excellent example is a night shift worker. Since there is no 200min/mth plan and outgoing voice at 150min/mth, one need to take up the 300min/mth plan as "adviced" by experts. If he/she takes up a pre-paid plan, savings is sizable and even better than a 100min/mth plan. The saving is nearly half of what he is paying for 300min/mth plan. Can you see the beauty?
Even for a businessman with 300min outgoing voice calls, the bill is much cheaper than a standard 300min/mth plan. Yes, it is possible and you can do your own maths.

The balance of the equation

If pre-paid plans are superior in value, why most of us still signing up post-paid plans? The answers are simple. In the beginning, many have no phone and signing a 2-year contract can get a free or discounted phone. Also, we are haunted by the old Pre-paid plans which are unattractive in value as compared to post-paid plans. It may costs twice as much to call out as compared to post-paid plans.
Now, new pre-paid plans are customized for the new market segments to suit the trend. In Europe and USA, pre-paid plans are bundled with phones and some are having free incoming calls (like M1 SuperPac). These pre-paid plans are very attractive as it offers customers good benefits without a contract to tie them down. If they are near to the end of their contract and the phone is working fine, a new pre-paid plan with free incoming call may offer more values to them.
An interesting find is the M1 SuperPac and Starhub Happy Star. They offer data plan and 24-hours free incoming calls so they are in-between pre-paid and post-paid plans. If you really compare the details, they are catered for travellers and adults who are working 9-6pm who cannot answer mobile during this period (ie. Hotel service staffs).
Last but not least, it is important to consider the validity of the card since its last top up. It will make a difference on what is the frequency of top-up. It is crucial if you seldom use the phone. So, how about getting a pre-paid card now?

How to select a Graphic Card for desktop?

The need for good graphics…

To non-gamers, Graphic Card (aka VGA card or Video Card) is just purely a link between the computer and the monitor. For serious gamers, it is a matter of life and death because 1 ms delay in refresh may pronounce you KIA. 10 years ago, we have many vendors producing graphic cards and we are spoilt for choices. Now, only 3 major vendors (Intel, AMD/ATI and Nvidia) compete in this arena. Intel, the first vendor, produces many low-end integrated graphic chips which are mainly fixed on-board offering no option to upgrade. Its arch rival AMD acquired ATI which also produces on-board graphics as well as standalone discrete graphic cards. These discrete are in directly competition with Nvidia. If we disregard Intel low-end chips, AMD/ATI and Nvidia nearly capture 100% of the entire worldwide graphic card market. They shall be the primary focuses of our discussion.
If you acquire a budget motherboard, it is likely that an on-board graphic chip is already present. It provides the basic function to operate basic applications, play simple games and watch movies. Intel's Graphic Media Accelerator (GMA) and AMD/ATI's Integrated Graphic Processor (IGP) dominate the market. There are many complaints of poor rendering and inability to play graphic intensive game until AMD/ATI launches 780G chipset (in Apr 2008) which takes the playing field to the next level. Intel is playing catch up while AMD/ATI announced the arrival of 890 chipset in Jan 2010. This is beyond our discussion but we will reference these chips in our discussion.

Reviews, Benchmark and Charts

With so many reviews written on different graphic cards complete with benchmark charts and statistics, choosing a discrete graphic card should be a piece of cake. However, the 2 camps (Nvidia and AMD/ATI) adopt different architectures and specifications in their design and it is not an apple to apple comparison. To confuse us further, they introduce different technologies into their cards and boost about the value-added on the experiences of viewing 3D etc. Nvidia has CUDA, SLI, Optimus, PhysX, PowerMizer and PureVideo. AMD/ATI offers Eyefinity, Avivo, Catalyst, HyperMemory, PowerPlay and CrossFireX. Each claims their technologies are superior and in my opinion, many review sites fail to link what customers really want. With the latest graphic card, they focus entirely on benchmarks, applications and games based on a fixed budget. They fail to provide a complete picture of what are available in the market (especially outside USA). They keep promoting the latest graphic card thinking that it is always superior in design and price against obsolete product lines. Perhaps they are sick of reviewing cards with minor improvement over the old ones or they are paid to promote and give good comments to entice customers to purchase them. None of them clearly tells you what you should look for in the graphic card. I hope to fill in this gap.

Budget and Motherboard slots

The industry defines low-end graphic cards with a price tag of below US$100 (S$145), mid end graphic cards between US$101 to US$300 (S$146 – S$435) and premium cards for more than US$301 (S$435). Since you can invest in 2 graphic cards concurrently with SLI and CrossFireX technologies, it is prudent to know if you are getting 1 card or 2 cards else you will burst your pocket. You also need to know if your motherboard can support multi-cards, check the number of PCIe slots you have and if the PCIe belongs to 1.0 or 2.0 standards.
My advice is simple. If your motherboard has no on-board graphic and you are a non-gamer, choose a low-end graphic card (HD5450 is an excellent card with TDP of only 19.1W). If you are a casual gamer, go for mid-end. If you are a serious gamer, be prepared to burn your pocket or look for a reasonable good mid-end card.

Technical Specifications

In the good old days, we only check on the processor speed to determine if it is a fast processor. For graphic cards, it is not a straight forward story because both camps have different design architecture resulting in AMD having more processors than Nvidia. This does not necessarily mean that AMD is faster than Nvidia. Therefore, I shall list down the considerations in order of priority.

1. Rendering Output Units (ROP) – MOST IMPORTANT CONSIDERATION
   ROP determines the price point. A high-end graphic card has 32 ROP while a low-end graphic card has 4 ROP. Usually, a high ROP commands better price. ROP takes pixel and texel information and processes them in the local memory. If you have a small ROP, everything will be done slowly especially in 3D.
2. Texture Mapping Units (TMU) and Graphic Processing Unit (GPU)
   As the names imply, TMU and GPU handle texture and graphic separately before passing them to ROP. The more TMU and GPU you have, the faster is the process. However, AMD generally has more GPUs than Nvidia so you can compare them only if they are from the same vendors.
3. Fabrication Process and Heat Dissipation (TDP)
   An advanced fabrication production will squeeze more transistors into the same chip resulting in smaller size and less heat dissipation. Graphic chips are producing using 40nm to 65nm technology. Smaller fabrication process produces energy efficient chip to reduce heat dissipation. As you may not be aware, for instance HD5970 chokes up maximum of 294W which require you to have an external power plug to power the chip as PCIe 2.0 can provide only 150W of power. Your power supply may also need to be 700W to ensure normal operation.
4. Active or passive Heatsink
   An active heatsink refers to a fan rotating non-stop during operation. A passive heatsink cools itself via non-mechanical means such as liquid cooler or having an excellent metal conductor mounted to the chip. The latter offers a quieter operation environment but cost more than the formal. You need to examine it before buying.
5. Memory bus width/type
   High-end graphic has 256-bit while low-end cards supports 32-bit data transfer. A higher transfer speed means faster delivery so look for a higher bit memory bus. For memory type, GDDR is preferred over DDR and GDDR5 is faster than GDDR3.
6. The rest of the specifications
   To your sweet surprise, memory size, memory clock rate, GPU core speed, bus width, GPU memory sizes are not in my priority list as touted by many websites. Yes, they are indeed secondary concerns. They are only meaningful if you know how AMD/ATI and Nvidia name their card models which we will discuss in the later paragraphs.

After understanding what to look for in a graphic card, it is nice to know how the vendors name their cards in the next section.

AMD/ATI Cards

For Radeon and Evergreen series, AMD adopts a simple way to name their models – HDxxxx where x are digits. The first digit represents the generation of the cards. The second digit represents the range of the card (3 for low-end, 6 for mid-end or 8 for high-end). The last two digits tell us the capability of that range. Usually, a higher number means better performance.
For example, let's take HD 4870 as an example. It is the 4^th generation of AMD card and it is a high-end version and it performs better than a HD 4850 in the range segment. So we can deduce that HD 5670 is a newer card as compared to HD 4870.

Nvidia Cards

Nvidia has pre-GeForce series, GeForce series to Geforce 9xxx series and GeForce 100 to 400 series. At the moment, only GeForce 9xxx and GeForce 200 and beyond are available in the market.
Unlike AMD, Nvidia employs suffix for additional information according to this order: GS < GT < GTS < GTX. Therefore, we know that GTS is more powerful than GT etc. In contrast, we seldom see suffix in AMD offerings.

A Case Study

If we are looking for a mid-end card with a budget for S$150-200, let's see what is available in Singapore.

Vendor Model	Nvidia GeForce			AMD Radeon
Part number	9800GTX	GT 240	GTS 250	HD 4770 512M	HD 5670	HD 5750 1G
ROP	16	8	16	16	8	16
GPUs	128	96	128	640	400	720
Texture Units	64	32	64	32	20	36
Fabrication (nm)	65	40	65	40	40	40
TDP (W)	140	69	145	80	61	86
Memory Bus width	256-bit/GDDR3	128-bit/GDDR3	256-bit/GDDR3	128-bit/GDDR3	128-bit/GDDR5	128-bit/GDDR5
Retail Price (S$)	185	149	179	149	149	209
Comments	Replaced by GTS250	Eliminated due to 8 ROP			Eliminated due to 8 ROP

 
We have 3 Nvidia chips and 3 AMD chips. 9800GTX and HD4770 are older chips as compared to the newer series. The first thing we see is that GT240 and HD5670 have 8 ROP which is undesirable. Given that they are priced equally to HD4770, I would rather choose HD4770 over the 2 newer chips which offer lower heat dissipation. You can also see that HD 4770 has more GPUs over HD 5670 so HD 4770 is better.
Next, we see that both 9800GTX and GTS250 have similar specifications but GTS250 is much cheaper. So we shall dismiss 9800GTX.
Comparing HD4770 and HD5750, the latter is superior in specifications with more GPUs, Texture Units with a better and double GDDR. It is priced S$60 more than the formal.
If you are price-conscious, grab HD 4770 512MB. If you are going for performance, both HD5750 and GTS250 are even in specifications so GTS250 will be my choice since it is cheaper but consumes more power. Unless you want support for 3 displays (Eyefinity) and DirectX 11, HD5750 will be your choice.

Summary

I hope the above helps you to choose wisely instead of relying on reviews of individual cards or charts. In office environment, you do not need a discrete graphic card if you buy a motherboard with decent on-board graphic (like AMD 790).
Have you notice that the power consumption of a video card in full load usually exceeds the CPU. The computer is taxed for additional ~100W which may not be necessary in running word processing, emailing and surfing the web. In the long term, you are paying more on electricity bills on top of the defrayment of the discrete card. The bad news is video cards are running at high temperature so they will fail easily after their standard warranty period of 12-24 months, especially if they are cooled down by active fans. This is another reason why I hate to buy overpriced OEM brand desktop which comes with a discrete card.
Nonetheless, the fun is the process and not on the result. J

Should I buy a 3D TV now?

Avatar 3D the movie…

After Avatar 3D hits the US Box office, the spectacular wave of 3D movies sends the 3D rampage worldwide. Young and old enjoy the movie with the additional dimension despite wearing 2 glasses if you are short or far sighted (your own and another 3D glasses provided by the cinema). Many are eager to jump on the wagon of enjoying 3D movies and the first thing they wish to upgrade is their 32" LCD TV, especially for those with projector TV or CRT TV. But is this the best time to buy 3D TV now? What are the concerns in buying the 3D TV besides worrying about integration with the furniture? Well, you simply cannot wait to embrace 3D technology.
Let's talk about the equipments first. Getting a 3D TV is just the tip of the iceberg. To enjoy 3D video, you need to get a blu-ray player, a true 3D TV and a 3D goggles/glasses (we will talk about the exceptions later in this blog). The best part about 3D is there is no defining standard so far so manufacturers can claim whatever they like on their products.

BLU-RAY PLAYER

Blu-Ray player is needed because high resolution video requires much storage space. Blu-Ray disk can accommodate any 3D video with ease so a Blu-Ray player is needed if you enjoy the movie.

True 3D TV

Forget about the brands because there are many junk TVs out there which are NOT True 3D. By definition, a True 3D TV should support 1920 x 1080 pixels, HDMI 1.4 and refresh rate of 120Hz. You can select from 4 technologies for TV – Liquid Crystal Display (LCD), Plasma, DLP (Digital Light Processing) and Cathode Ray Tube (CRT).

• LCD TVs are light, good for static pictures, reasonable lifespan and have many 1080 pixel models to choose from due to the recent mass production. However, they are poorer in displaying fast moving pictures, suffers from pixel failures and generally expensive for 37" or above.
• Plasma TVs enjoys a longer lifespan than LCD TV, has good viewing angles and great contrast ratios with excellent picture response. The drawbacks are they suffer from burn-in problem (that's why unsuitable to use with computers) and not available less than 37".
• DLP TVs adopts projection technology to illuminate a large screen for viewing with good brightness and colour at a good price point. But they have a high recurrent cost in maintenance and poorer in picture quality as compared with Plasma. By the way, cinemas are using DLP for the big screen with polarized glasses.
• CRT TVs can support upto 140Hz refresh rate but 3D, maybe you are talking about the sound effect. lol

Due to excessive flow of investment into LCD TVs and the preference of big screen, the market share for LCD is growing while Plasma, DLP and CRT are diminishing dramatically. Around 90% of new TVs sold worldwide are LCD TVs. That's why there are more 3D LED TVs in the market than the rest. However, many are junks which cannot meet the specifications of the True 3D. Due to the fact that we have 2 eyes, refresh rate must be doubled to 240Hz to achieve 120Hz for 3D. If you feel dizzy halfway through the movie, the LCD TV does not meet the specifications of 240Hz refresh rate. In addition, the display 3D images in interlace format, vertical 1080 lines will be halved to 540 lines. At the moment, hardware chip which can refresh at 240Hz is exorbitant priced so many LCD TVs are in fact having 1920 x 540 pixels. They are still one step away from the True 3D definition.

3D Goggles/Glasses

After much discussion about the TVs, you must be thinking 3D goggle/glasses should be the easiest equipment to buy. If you harbour this thought, you are dead wrong. Depending on the 3D TV you buy, you will need different 3D glasses because goggles also have no standards. For LCD and Plasma TVs, you need shutter glasses with batteries. The TV tells the glasses which eye should see the image being exhibited at the moment. For DLP TVs, you need polarized glasses (no battery needed). So don't buy the wrong goggles/glasses.

Other Technologies

Generally, the costs of True 3D LCD TV is around 3 times of normal LCD TVs. For high end TVs, some manufacturers are making 3D TVs without the need of wearing goggles/glasses. They may cost 6-10 times more so only a handful can afford. Other challenges include the integration of 3D googles with spectacles (50% of Singaporeans wear spectacles so I see 50% clowns inside the cinemas), the need of massive production of 3D movies and the R&D effort for a lower cost chip to power 240Hz refresh rate. Given the popularity of the movie Avatar, we hope to ride the wave to create a sensational 3D experience for all movies to come.

Final Comments

3D stereoscope is invented in 1844 while the first 3D movie (The power of love) is made in 1922. If everyone can wait for nearly 100 years for 3D technology to mature, you can wait too.