Tech Moves

This is going to be a very subjective post. No careful thought here. This weather sucks! It's as cold as bloody February and we're coming up to the Easter weekend. At least I have a Columba from Lina Stores in Soho to keep me going, plus three Rivette movies I found in Fopp to keep up the cultural quotient.

Finally I upgraded my mobile phone. And not to an iPhone either. Far too many people on the Chav Express (the Waterloo to Reading train) are playing games, looking at photos, and maybe listening to music - not mobile blogging, sending literate texts and looking at interesting web sites. iPhones are toys that cost £40-odd a month.

I settled on the Sony Ericsson C510 - free with a 300 minute £15 24-month contract from Vodafone and I may go for the £5 Internet, which along with the Orange £5 broadband brings my costs to £25 a month. The C510 plays really well with Snow Leopard - get the downloads of Media Sync here and of the iSync drivers here - and they work just great. I have an 8GB memory card and a special adapter for the phone to a 3.5mm jack plug (from Carphone Warehouse) so I can use my Bose noise-cancellers. The media player is sharp and clear with decent bass - for a portable media player. The camera isn't quite up to my Canon A590 IS, but it's way better than I need for this blog. Oh, and as a phone it's a step up from my trusty Motorola V220. I think the iPod Mini from the mid-Oughties is about to be retired.

The other side of that acquisition is the Asus 1005P netbook. Windows 7 Starter 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD, 10-inch screen, 90% laptop-sized keyboard. It makes my 15-inch MacBook Pro look positively hefty. I downloaded Open Office, Firefox and Thunderbird and have been up and running for the past week or so. I am not going to use Office 2007 and have you ever known anyone actually use Microsoft Works? It's a nice little machine to use. It's not a Macbook Air, but it does cost about £270 against the Air's £1,200 or so.

The only thing left is a colour printer. It has to do photo-quality and be networked - wireless will do. Haven't settled on one yet, but I'll get there. Maybe.