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Gadgets

Wed, 07/03/2007 - 14:10 — myf

This page has some information about the gadgets that keep me occupied and entertained. I'm such a sucker for gadgets and shiny technology.

MY PDAS

  • I currently own a Palm Tungsten T5. This is the fourth Palm handheld I've owned. Not because they broke, but because they keep introducing better models, so I keep upgrading! I started off with a Palm Pilot Professional. Next, I bought a Palm Pilot IIIx. I couldn't resist the Palm Tungsten T when they came out. And then they invented the Palm Tungsten T5. I love it - address book, diary, games, ebooks, all sorts of things!

MY COMPUTERS

  • I've lost track of the PCs I've owned over the last 8 years or so. The last but one was an HP Pavilion. My current desktop is a small form factor PC by Shuttle. It's only the size of a shoebox. My last one had problems with overheating, then developed a couple of other problems, and eventually died a death. I replaced it with a Shuttle G4 8500G.

  • My first Shuttle was supplied with a 15" LCD monitor, which was ok but not great. I've recently replaced it with an Acer P193W monitor, which is a great improvement - lovely and clear, and 19" widescreen taking up little extra space! And for the money, I'm chuffed.
  • My original monitor had speakers built into the stand (not great, but generally good enough). The Acer monitor doesn't have this, so I have just purchased a pair of Creative Inspire 265s. Not exactly brilliant hi-fi, but more than enough for my needs.
  • A couple of years ago, I decided to get myself a laptop. I browsed around, and bought myself an Acer Aspire 3502WLMi. Really good for what I want to use it for, with no problems with the built-in wireless networking. The hard drive is a bit small, but I've put an old drive in an enclosure, and use that as an external drive if I need to.

MY PRINTERS

  • I got hacked off with my Lexmark X74, and decided to buy a printer that would come up with decent photos. In the end, I chose a Canon Pixma 5200. Really good prints, individual colour cartridges (hooray!!), and it looks good too.

MY MOBILE PHONES

  • Like my PDA, I change my phone quite quickly. Back in 1997, I got a Motorola Memphis. Not bad for the time, but almost clockwork by today's standards! I've been through various Nokias (including the 3330, and the 3650), and had a Siemens M35 at one point too. A few years ago I had a Sony Ericsson K750i, which was a great phone, and then upgraded to a Sony Ericsson K800i, which was an even better phone (with a great camera) but with a few niggly things. The latest in my collection of mobile phones is the Nokia N95 8GB. Very very nice phone, but I do now realise that Sony Ericsson spoil people with the battery life of their phones.

MY CAMERAS

  • For years when I was a kid, I had an Agfa camera, that I think took the old 126 films. I've had a few different compact cameras since then, including a Kodak APS one. Several years ago, I was given a Pentax MZ-50 SLR camera, which was really good. But I never seemed to take enough photos to use up a film in a reasonable amount of time. I've still got it, in case I get a bit more interested in photography.
  • Several years ago, I decided that digital photography was the way to go, and so I bought myself a Pentax Optio 230. It was ok, but ate batteries really quickly, and was really quite noisy. Early last year, I thought it was time to upgrade, and eventually got myself a Canon Powershot G6. It may be a bit big, but I think it's a really good camera. Had no problems with it at all, and have been  merrily snapping photos of all sorts of things with it.

MY MP3 PLAYERS

  • When I first bought a MP3 player, I opted for a 60GB Creative Zen Xtra. This was all fine and dandy, until I tried to update it - the software released by Creative completely killed the player. I don't know what the problem was, but I'm not the only person to have been affected. Anyway, it hacked me off, and put me off having another Creative MP3 player.
  • So I ended up getting a 60GB 5th generation Apple iPod. The one that plays video. So far, so good. Although I wouldn't have upgraded my original player if it hadn't broken, the iPod isn't such a bad replacement. There's just a couple of niggly differences.
  • I eventually bought a dock for my iPod. It's black to match, and seems to do the job as well as I need it to. I looked at all sorts of docks & speaker things, and eventually bought a Logic3 MIP116K. It was a bargain, and means my iPod stays charged, synced, and connected to my hifi, all at the same time. And it has a remote control so I don't have to get up to play stuff!

MY OTHER GADGETS

  • I like going out in my car. Unfortunately, I don't always know where I'm going, or how to get there. So I got a GPS unit - a Garmin eMap. It's fairly old now, but it works fine for what I want. So now, not only do I know where I want to get to, I also know where I am to start with.
  • GPS is all very handy, but it's a bit hopeless if your driving on your own and need to know where to go. For that reason, I bought myself a Navman S50 satnav. It's been pretty handy for me so far, though there are niggles with some of the mapping (my road doesn't appear on there, and a few other places I've been haven't been mapped accurately). I've also got the traffic module for it, in the hope that it will help navigate me round jams.
  • I always tend to get bored by computer games after a short while, so for a long time I resisted the urge to buy a Nintendo DS. After the Carnival though, I gave in and bought myself a bright red one (a sort of present to myself). And so far, I'm still finding it entertaining. Every so often I raid eBay for bargain games :-) This is my profile over on GameSpot. I do have an itching for an Xbox 360 as well, but am trying not to give in to that urge as well!
  • I happened to be looking at a few sites that I have bought gadgets from in the past, and found something that made me giggle. What is it? It's a bunny! But no ordinary carrot-crunching rodent is this - it's called Nabaztag, and it's talks to the internet to do all kinds of clever things. It's a talking alarm clock, it can tell you the news, air quality, weather forecast, traffic, and gives email alerts. It has moods, and talks, plays sounds, lights up, and moves it's ears. And it looks so damned adorable! Have a look: http://www.nabaztag.com
  • Possibly the most gadgety gadget (Nabaztag aside) I own is a Nokia SU-1B Digital Pen. I got it when I was Secretary of a local group, to save writing and rewriting the minutes. With some extra software, it synchronises with my PC or laptop, and then converts my illegible scrawls into text and puts it into Microsoft Word for me to edit. Marvellous!