Took receipt of my new phone today – Sony Ericsson K750i. Since getting a T68i I can’t see past Sony phones – the T610 was next and now the K750i. I’ve only had a few hours to charge and play with it but already it’s very impressive and certainly the most feature rich phone I’ve owned. What wins it for me though is the connectivity.
Continue reading “K750i”
Category: Technology
Denon 2910
I’ve finally succumbed and bought a new dvd player. My old player (Sony 725) was getting on a bit and I was annoyed that I couldn’t play mp3’s, ripped dvd’s on it plus the fact that £30 jobs out of Asda had a better picture. Progress, eh?!? So I sniffed around and went for the Denon 2910…in black of course.
It will play practically anything you can throw at it. Firstly, the picture is lovely and that’s on my ageing Sony CRT wide-screen. However it does come with progressive scan and all the necessary support for a future plasma/lcd investment. Well I can dream, can’t I? Another reason for choosing this model is that the audio playback is superb and it would allow me to replace my Marantz (now for sale on eBay as would the old dvd player if it wasn’t for the fact it’s worthless). The player also comes with DVD Audio and SACD support assuming either format actually takes off.
The current verdict is that it was a superb buy. It has played dvd-r rips with no problem at all (Team America screener if you must know) and the audio is as good if not better than I had previously. DVD playback is also much improved. The only disk I’ve not tried is a RCE disk but as I’ve none in my collection, who cares. I’ve even managed to update the Pronto with the new device. Joy.
X-Men
At last after 8 years the Ansari X Prize has been won by SpaceShipOne. The second flight took place today and was successful in meeting the criteria to claim the prize. For a time I thought that the British entry, Starchaser, was ahead of the pack but early last year it was clear to see that the American teams had a lead in the race to win the prize. The final flight looked superb and a lot more stable than the first one….just need to start saving for the trip on Virgin Galactic.
Irony
It’s a big news day for the Virgin group. Branson has announced that they intend to run a space flight service and he’s bought 5 spaceships (stuffily called spaceliners on the BBC). You too could go into space…for £100,000 or maybe less. Nice.
Today’s also the first full day for the Pendolino (tilting) service the Virgin train group are introducing. Pity the first one was cancelled. One from Glasgow has also crawled into Carlisle at 50 Mph due to technical difficulties. Still fancy that space trip?
The Beast
It’s superb.
The PC arrived on Thursday, although not without a wee mix-up. I got a Glasgow Uni machine and they got mine. But Dell and TNT got the mix-up sorted by mid-afternoon – bravo. I unpacked it and faced another little problem – it wouldn’t start. Boo. All was not lost – the Dell has four lights on the back – the first two were amber. Checked the manual – memory problem. Probably unseated slightly during transit so I opened the case. Wow. The case swings open on a hinge which is really smart – what got me was the size of the heatsink and chimney that the Intel uses. Massive. I removed and replaced the memory – pressed the power button and all was well – I took some photo’s while the case was open which can be found here. While the case was opened I fitted the firewire card from the old machine as the Dell comes with 8 USB2 ports but no firewire which the iPod needs. Clicked the case shut (no screws here thank you very much) and I was away. Got the Windows formalities out the way. Impressions – very fast.
Got the XP security downloads started and I thought I would need to dig out the Nortons disk before I did anything else but the Dell comes with a 90 day trial of McAfee which is a really good idea. No need for a firewall as I’ve got a hardware one on the router. Next was Firefox – don’t trust IE. Loading times were superb. The last test was gaming. Battlefield Vietnam looked amazing and didn’t stutter once. Joy!
Since then I’ve been installing all the hardware I’ve got and also some software – not too much. Trying to avoid the clutter that I had on the old machine but thats really delaying the inevitable. I’m also glad that I stayed away from a Creative Audigy card. The onboard sound is pucker 5.1 and all I need. There’s also a strong chance that it’s less buggy than the Creative drivers.
Overall, I’m very impressed with the Dell. Easy to maintain, fast and a tad less noisy than my old machine – it fair churns out some heat though. Last positive note – no blue screens….yet.
The Beast…part deux
I’ve been after a new pc for the last few months. Picking up Battlefield Vietnam and watching it jerk (oo-er) while on it’s lowest settings was just too painful. I didn’t even pick up Far Cry as I knew it would be a pointless experience. I had resigned to getting a base unit only, probably from Evesham and probably costing around £1100 give or take a few pounds and features.
Then I got a tip off from King Arthur. He used the Dell Outlet Site to pick up a bargain pc. I stalked the site for the last week or so and on Friday finally bit the bullet and picked my new pc. 3.0Ghz Pentium, 160Gig Hard disk, I Gig of Ram and a 256 Meg Radeon 9800XT. £800. Class. Oh – Windows XP Professional as well. Hopefully should be here within the next fortnight. Now…what to do with the old one. I’ll probably use it as some sort of media storage/server. It’s a bit noisy so may have to try and quieten it a bit.
Sony Portables
mp3 support
Sony have announced two new media players. Key is the mp3 support – hopefully that means the PSP will support mp3’s as well.
Whats The Time?
A question I’ll be asking less of now as I’ve finally taken delivery of my new alarm clock. As befits a gadget lover, the Starck clock looks good, has remote temperature sensors, tells me the highest and lowest temperatures recorded, has remote time setting and most importantly tells the time. Lovely.
New Gadgets
Best Mobile Ever?
I’ve held off posting this for a while just to make sure I found no snags with it, but after 3 months of use and an absolute pounding when I moved house I can now say with confidence……the T610 is the best mobile…..ever…..that I’ve used.
Small, sleek and gadget packed it does the most important bit really well – a cracking phone with a really good reception. On top is a fairly good battery life (switch off Bluetooth), great screen, polyphonic tones so that you too can annoy everyone with the Airwolf theme, java games, camera and as already mentioned Bluetooth. The Bluetooth actually supports ftp as well so transferring images back and forth is no longer an issue. Even better, the phone is now free on almost all tariffs especially as the T630 is out.