I do. And it’s great. I only got it a couple of days ago, but already I can’t imagine how I managed without one.
Here’s the very first photo I took with it. It isn’t very exciting though.
Some more gushing praise for my iPhone will be posted soon!
After what must be around 6 years of loyal service, the time has come to finally replace my ageing (and broken once and repaired) Canon IXUS II digital camera. Well, I say replace – it isn’t going anywhere. I just wanted a new one. Yes, even having just bought a new camcorder.
There was nothing especially wrong with the IXUS. It takes good quality pictures, is pretty quick, and has plenty of options and functions I rarely even needed. It just lacks a decent optical zoom (only 2x), and is 3.2 megapixels, which is somewhat weedy these days. Especially if I want to be taking photos of, say, my soon-to-be-born baby, and I want them printing on A4 or larger. Or something. And the battery now only lasts about 1/3 as long as it should, and doesn’t hold its charge for more than a few days if you don’t use it.
The new camera then? A Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5. Which, somehow, I got from the BT Shop online for less money than the slightly lower spec previous model (the TZ4) was selling for.
And very, very nice it is too. It’s a bit bigger than the IXUS, but that’s hardly surprising considering the huge 10x optical zoom the lens can do. The gigantic LCD screen on the back is bigger than the whole of the back of the IXUS too, but is of really high quality. Just as well, as there’s no viewfinder. Not that I ever used it on the previous camera.
It has a million more functions than the Canon too, although I doubt I’ll ever use most of them. Something it does have, which is really useful, is a set of pre-programmed settings for various types of shot. Tell it you’re taking a picture of the sky at night, or some candles, or a baby (no, really), and it’ll pick suitable shutter speeds, flash settings, and other things to help get the best shot. Clever!
So far, I’m very impressed. The only downside (and it is a bit of an odd thing) is that when the camera is connected to a computer, you can’t use the computer to delete or rename files on the camera’s card. This makes importing images into iPhoto or Picasa a bit of a pain if you have older pictures on the camera still, as you can’t import-and-delete. Photos can only be deleted by the camera, on the camera, or by taking the card out and using a card reader. This is only a minor complaint, however. Everything else is just lovely!
Here are a couple of comparison shots. First up is a photo of the new Lumix, taken by the IXUS. The second is a photo of the IXUS taken my the Lumix. Click the images for (huuuuuge) full size versions!
My new camcorder, despite Pixmania and Parcel Force’s best attempts to thwart it, arrived today!
I’ve got myself a Canon MV30. There was much reading and weighing up the pros and cons of various HD camcorders, but I finally decided that the MV30 was the best choice. It’s had some excellent reviews, isn’t horrendously expensive (although it was pushing ¬¨¬£600!) and works well with iMovie on the Mac, which I’ll be using.
The only concern I really had was that it uses MiniDV tapes, rather than a hard drive or a memory card. However, tapes are cheap, and most of the reviews seem to suggest that tape is still the best option.
So, here it is, merrily CHARGIN’ MAH BATTRY:
I’ve only had a quick play so far, both recording onto tape and playing back through my HDTV (the camcorder has a HDMI port, which is nice), but I’m very impressed at the picture quality – even under yellowy artificial lights. That is, those in my lounge.
Our batch of new Inspiron Minis arrived at work today. And very, very lovely (and shiny) they are too. Strange quirks include no F-keys (there are replacements via the Fn button and home row) and some difficulty getting sound drivers working when replacing XP Home with XP Pro, but they’re working now and run pretty fast and cool.
Some obligatory pictures:
Things of note:
The Mini is almost the same size as the 701, only very slightly longer and slightly thinner. The MSI Wind (or rather, the Advent 4211, which is the same machine) is gargantuan in comparison. The screen on the Mini is the same res as the screen on the Wind (1024×600) but smaller. The Mini’s trackpad is both larger, and better, than those on the other two. It’s track buttons are better too.
Of course, I don’t need one at all. My two and a half year old, first generation, bought at launch, Core Duo (not even Core 2 Duo) white MacBook is still my favouritest computer I’ve ever owned. And I’ve owned a lot. It’s still just as nippy as it ever was, and bar a bigger hard drive and an upgrade to Leopard it’s still the same as it was when I bought it.¬¨‚Ć I’ve never felt the need to buy anything faster or more powerful.
But Apple have just announced their new MacBook line.
I keep telling myself, I don’t need one. They’ve dropped the firewire port (which I need for camcorders). They’ve changed the video port – again. It’s ¬¨¬£950, or more, depending on the spec. But… need.
And nobody makes videos about laptops as interesting as Apple:
I don’t even know what it actually does that my current phone doesn’t do, but I still need one.
It doesn’t look amazing, but the HTC G1 – the first Google Android phone – is, for some reason, a necessity. It’s not even vastly different in size to my Vario III, although it’s slightly narrower and thinner, and a mite taller:
My old Vario II was on it’s way out, so T-Mobile kindly furnished me
with a shiny new Vario III. It’s very lovely.
Play Asia started selling these recently. They look like a Megadrive variant of the many Famicom “famiclones” out there, but they’re not – they’re officially licenced by Sega! And they’re really cheap too, coming in at under ¬¨¬£20. You get 20 games built into the unit, but it also has a cartridge slot to play original (and forthcoming re-released) cartridges. I tested it with quite a few games of varying geographic origin, and aside from the UK version of Street Fighter II SCE crashing, I didn’t have any problems.
Anyway, if you want one, get thee over to Play Asia. They even come in green and blue!
We ordered an MSI Wind laptop (rebadged and sold in the UK as a PC World Advent 4211 Netbook) for work recently, and it arrived yesterday so I’ve had a chance to have a play with it.
My very first impressions were quite poor. It looked very nice, is small, light and seems reasonably well built. However, it wouldn’t power up. Every time it tried to boot past the POST screen, the hard drive squealed and it switched itself off. Even after fully charging the battery, it still refused to boot.¬¨‚Ć I thought it was DOA, but then, it finally started up properly and has been fine since. Very odd.
After the usual Windows setup stuff (it comes with XP Home), there was about 15 minutes of “Tech Guys” automatic customisation, no doubt adding nonsense to the machine I don’t need. Not that it matters, as Home is going to be replaced with Pro anyway.
Once properly up and running, I was able to give it a test run. It seems very quick (although has no bloat on it yet), and the keyboard is pretty good to type on. The trackpad is a little small, and the area on the right for scrolling isn’t marked – and the “scroll sensitive” area seems very narrow making it awkward to scroll. The trackpad button is very stiff and rather small too, and would benefit from protruding above the case rather than sitting flush.
Comparing it to an EeePC 701, the Wind would seem to be the better machine. It’s 1024×600 screen is both larger (10″) and higher resolution than the Eee’s, the keyboard is superior, and the unit isn’t actually much bigger. In fact, it’s slightly thinner, and appears to be a little lighter too. It has all the same ports as the Eee – VGA, three USB, audio, ethernet and an SD card slot. In addition, and unlike the Eee, it has bluetooth built in.
The 80GB hard drive is acres more space than the Eee’s 4GB, but it isn’t flash which may impact on battery life (which I haven’t tested) or resilience to knocks. The Wind has a built-in webcam, but its quality is rather poor compared to the Eee.
In terms of price, we paid just under ¬¨¬£240 for the Wind, whereas the EeePC 701 set us back about ¬¨¬£185. Is the extra ¬¨¬£55 worth it? When you consider that a copy of XP is around ¬¨¬£55, then you could argue yes – especially if you were going to put XP on your Eee anyway. Here’s where to get one.
I wasn’t going to buy this. It didn’t interest me as much as previous GTA games, or as much as Saints Row 2, but then I saw I could get it for 22 quid at Play-Asia and, well… Weakness. At least I didn’t break the ¬¨¬£25 Rule, I suppose.
It arrived today. Yay!
Gaming Diary