Kiwiberry - a gadget obsessed Kiwi's blog



	Welcome to my blog. Pretty much everyone and his dog seem to have a blog so I thought why not me. Expect random ramblings - mostly about gadgets and occasionally about the life of a kiwi commuter who is a long long way from home. janandfebblog@kiwiberry.net
	Monday 16th February 2009 Well not entirely convinced that buying a new car has anything to do with gadgets but I bought a Mazda 6 and the feeling of owning a new car is very much the buzz of owning new gadgets for me. Although the car works really well and does all the car-like things, I was a little surprised at how keyed down the internal computing was. My slightly older Nissan Primera has a large computer consol at the heart of the dashboard with a wealth of information about how you drive and how the Nissan is doing. By comparison the Mazda has information hat you can display instead of the little clock on the far corner of a central information pad a centimetre high. I know the Mazda will tell me it's MPG but I'm not entirely sure which of the figures that is. I'm left guessing "a lot" from the rate that my fuel gauge slowly sinks. While I'm thinking about travel and motoring - isn't it amazing that Sat Nav can take you step my step for hundreds of miles form door step to destination? If you're not amazed perhaps you should think back to having a car full of maps and stopping to ask random strangers where you're heading. My TomTom 520 is a constant companion when I travel, it clearly tells me how far I have to go, when I will arrive and what's coming up next on the road. Saturday 7th February 2009 I had a day at one of the biggest shopping Malls in the UK - Meadowhall at Sheffield and was at first delighted by how many mobile phone shops there were. I wandered around shop after shop looking for some new and exciting phone and was increasingly disappointed that all the offerings were old technology. Even monthly contracts only offered a very limited number of phones and those looked dated to me. Perhaps I've been checking out the "Coming Soon" aisle on websites like Expansys for too long. I see what gadgets are coming and expect to see them in the shops, rather than phones that were "Coming Soon" last year or the year before. I thought of replacing my Skypephone S2 with something with more buttons and rather liked the look of the Nokia E71 in the Three shop. I've had a number of Nokia E models - in fact I still have an E61i in my glove box in the car - and rather like how the Symbian OS works. I thought it would be nice to see the E71 set up for Three and would have bought one except - no built in Skype. Its rather a shocker for someone who's gotten used to Three and Skype being allys. Three are selling the E71 based on its Email capabilities and, although that's why I bought a BlackBerry, I'm always a little surprised that people don't realise that on modern phones you can get your emails whenever you want them. I've set up my business and personal emails on the Skypephone S2 without any trouble, although replying to emails on the number keypad is a pain. Actually thinking that through it's not much more of a pain than using the "Touch screen" on my BlackBerry Storm. The Three price for the locked E71 is virtually identical to the unlocked price from Expansys. At the end of the day I left Meadowhall without any new gadgets. Januaryblog@kiwiberry.net Thursday 29th January 2009 Part delivery... I ordered a second battery and a rather cool looking little RIM battery charger for my BlackBerry Storm a week before Christmas from Expansys. The charger was out of stock but "expected in 5 days" and I thought that would be fine since I didn't really expect serious BlackBerry usage over the two weeks Christmas holidays. A month later Expansys have just delivered the battery (using by the way an enormous "Next Day Delivery" bag that would have swamped an A4 folder). Of the charger there is still no sign of stock. I'm rather surprised that the market place has yet to catch up with the supposed popularity of the BlackBerry flagship device. I am used to being ahead of the accessories and third party software for the various smart phones and devices I love. I'm usually an "Early Adopter" and you don't expect there to be a huge amount of support for a device until it has a market share. The BlackBerry Storm is not such a new device. It was available in the US for some time before it was released in the UK, but, for example, I can't find any Themes for it at all. A second battery charger seems such a basic little gizmo that I'm surprised RIM are not getting their act together to provide stock. Monday 12th January 2009 Nokia are working hard to promote their 3.2 inch touch screen Nokia 5800. Apart from the "Comes with music" feature - free downloads from Nokia - the spec. looks decidedly middle of the road. The 5800 only has a 3.2 mega pixel camera which is nothing exceptional in the smart phone marketplace - but then the 5800 is aimed squarely at the youth market. Expansys compare it to Samsungs M8800 Pixar which has a similar screen and media capabilities but a massive 8 mega pixel camera! Hands down winner I would say. Much more exciting to these gadget addicted eyes is the Nokia N97 which has a similar (excellent) touch screen, but excels in every other way. The N97 has 32Gb memory built in and supports 16Gb micro memory cards giving users an extremely respectable 48Gb to play with. The N97's camera is a middle of the road 5 mega pixel, but that's still very usable for a smart phone. Where the N97 scores for me is the beautiful sliding keyboard which supports the screen at a very nice angle and makes typing so much easier. I'm not knocking the BlackBerry Storm overly but you need a keyboard for any serious typing. The N97 seems to have it all... an excellent operating system, support for lots of 3rd party programs, nice camera and great media support. Add in that excellent sliding keyboard and you have a gadget addicts dream. I can't wait until mid-year for the release! Friday 9th January 2009 I finally got why Vodafone sent me a new sim card when I ported my number to them from O2. They didn't understand the fundamental idea of porting a number from Network A to Network B. What they actually did was open a new contract for a second line on my business account. I am flabbergasted (isn't that a great word). I am so unimpressed with Vodafone that I have already decided to drop them before my renewal comes up. In many ways I am left wishing I had opted for the BlackBerry Bold that O2 offered me to keep me on board when I phoned to cancel my contract early.