I’ve been thinking out loud about what to do about a new computer for some time - last September I was looking at a Mac Mini, and in Spring I started to look at the Eee PC. Almost a year on and this Dell Inspiron notebook is still fantastic. Whilst it has an external mouse, keyboard, webcam and two hard drives connected all the time, it’s still amazingly quick, stable and reliable for a two year old notebook, which is powered up for at least 14 hours a day, every day. The only thing that’s given way is the battery.

And that’s started to be an issue - it’s always tethered to a power point. The last few times I’ve travelled by train I’ve also found the sockets to be broken or simply not working - which makes three hours each way a lot less productive. I’m also fed up with piles of paper and folders around the desk - especially when everything is so easy to find and manage with GMail and the Google Apps suite.

There’s quite a few versions of the Eee PC - indeed, soon there could be 23. It’s worth looking around, but needless to say (I suppose) the more recent ones include the 901 and 1000H. Prices also vary, depending on the screen size and colour you’re after. In the end I went with eBuyer who I’ve always found to be fairly quick and safe. You’ll often find the option of less storage (12GB) and Windows XP, or more storage (20GB) and Linux.

Powering up walks you through a Windows XP installation, and it’s fairly straight forward from there. I then downloaded Firefox and some essentials from PortableApps.com including Notepad++, FileZilla, Audacity, Sudoku and Gimp. StarOffice comes pre-installed, and seems to do the job. (Although I’m using Google Apps a whole lot more now).

Overall I’m really pleased with the Eee PC. Plus points include the battery life which is phenomenal, screen resolution, portability and the video playback performance, even on an external monitor, is a pleasant surprise. The keyboard was very easy to get used to, however, I do miss not being able to scroll on the right edge of a trackpad. Wifi sensitivity and Bluetooth are also impressive. The built in webcam and microphone work nicely.

Cons include a noticeable lag at times and the speakers sometimes disappoint, but that’s about it. The only improvement I’d really like to see is a built in 3G modem.

Each time I see my phone bill, the cost of the calls is getting less and less. In the last month, I used the land line to make five calls - everything else was done via mobile or Skype.

Will there be a day when everyone (not just cable subscribers) can have just an internet service, and no phone line? Of the bill total, around 96% of the cost is “rental charges” and VAT.

Since setting up the indoor satellite dish, I’d been using a SkyStar 2 card to view and record satellite TV from Astra 1, 2 and Hotbird. This is alright, but quite uncomfortable and cumbersome - especially if you have a spare 10 minutes to flick through.

I’ve been thinking of a Technomate 1000D, or 6800HD, but without an exterior dish at the moment didn’t want to spend too much on something which might not be used. The Smart range of satellite receivers are all over eBay.de, or through eBay UK with “Available to UK” enabled on a search. It’s a basic, cheap satellite receiver with two USPs for me… a front display with the channel name and Component output for a HD TV. Total price new and delivered from Germany was £45.52.

An old analogue satellite receiver with front display. They don’t make them like they used to!

Unboxing was similar to most cheap DVB-S boxes; a small box made from thin cardboard, some packaging, cheap batteries and a black and white manual. Being from Germany, the plug is a two pin one, but whack it straight in a 3 pin converter (60p odd at Asda) and it’s ready to go. The manual is entirely in German, but it’s fairly straight forward to use, so this isn’t a problem.

Switching on for the first time was an acceptable experience. I’d wired up using Component and at first the TV (a Samsung 19″ TV / Monitor which does HD, but has no HDMI port, but was sold as HD Ready - another post for another day) didn’t find anything on the input. I pulled out the Scart lead from a Freeview box and got into the menu. This was fine, and allowed for the change through the menu to output “YUV” and change the menu language to English. I then plugged in the Component leads again and all was well.

Flicking through the channels proved a little strange, as the remote control appears to send commands to the Freeview box as well. The channel up button turns on the Freeview box (a £20 model from Asda), which the TV picks up and switches to the Scart input. To continue on I just unplugged the Freeview box from the wall.

There’s a few hundred channels already programmed in for satellites including Astra 1, Hotbird and Turksat. Das Erste is on channel 1, RTL on channel 4 and so on. They’re sort of grouped, with the MDR, ZDF, news and music channels together.

Day-to-day use is fairly good. There’s a rocker switch on the rear of the unit, as well as the standby mode. Changing channels is fairly easy through channel up/down, the EPG or favourite lists. The onscreen menu’s and EPG are about right for a receiver in this price range.

Connections are good - IF loopthrough, RF modulator, Scart, audio l-r, digital audio out, Component and Composite.

The EPG and channel browsing is very nice - and best demonstrated in this video on YouTube.

Picture quality is surprisingly good for a cheap receiver like this. Comparing the input via Scart and Component didn’t reveal any huge differences (the TV is pretty good - it never looks pixellated or grainy), but the Component input really shines on news and sport programmes. I’m yet to try it with a film, but expect it to be good too. Another observation to make is that the blacks are far, far cleaner than they are via Scart.

The pros definitely include the Composite output which looks phenomenal, and the quick response when changing channels. There’s a lot of neat features, and overall it’s a good satellite receiver. Another pro is the price - I’ve never seen a DVB-S box with HD output for under £50 in the UK.

The cons unfortunately include the front display and overall feel of the box. The picture on eBay, the literature on the Smart website and even the cardboard box indicate a front display like the one on the Pace box above. Unfortunately it’s more of a segment display, and this is unclear most of the time. The two large red and green LED’s let the front display down, which otherwise looks smart with the hidden buttons. The flap behind which those buttons sit is very difficult to open.

The front display in use at night

Overall this is a great little box for under £50. I’m a little underwhelmed, but channels like Das Erste and NRJ Hits look excellent through Component. I’m pleased I bought it and would look at spending a few quid (literally) more on the next model up from Smart.

More Photos: Smart Rapido 3 Photoset on Flickr

Just a quick post… The battery in my Dell Inspiron is fried. It’s been my main computer for around 18 months now and the battery has given up - holding less and less charge every month. Now Vista says there’s no battery at all - quite a pain if you want to take it through to another room, or hibernate whilst you take it in to town.

In fairness, the laptop has been fantastic and has Vista, XP and Ubuntu installed. I have no urge at all to replace it or buy a desktop machine, and have been thinking about scrapping the XP partition having not booted into it for months.

Looking on Dell’s website, another battery the same is £184.90 inc postage and VAT. However, when I looked at an Eee PC over Christmas it was only £200 odd. The Inspiron is very nice, but quite heavy to carry around and not at all easy to use on the train. I can get by with eeeXubuntu just fine on the move, too. The only thing is whether to wait and see where the new 9″ screen model will be priced and how heavy it will be?

Any thoughts?

Last week Aldi had a £50 internet radio and media player on offer. I’ve been looking at a Squeezebox for a while, but that still requires an amplifier of some sort, and it’d be redundant if and when I sorted out a media centre in the main room. Plus it’d be nice to wake up to stations all over the country, even world.

I’ve bought a Tevion product before - a digital radio in July. I keep meaning to finish the review of that, but it’s been brilliant so far. This internet radio uses the same design, and the software is similar. The main difference is the lack of a battery compartment, and it only does FM radio - not DAB. That’s a shame, but it’s easy to see why. I’ll cover the hardware, the Reciva service, listening to stations (and on demand, which is brilliant), adding streams and podcasts and playing your music collection.

The Hardware

On the way out of the store I had a peek in the box - it looked like it had been opened before. Getting home confirmed that, but it was a dream to set up. It feels heavy and well built, and I assume the antenna is for FM radio rather than wifi. There’s not a lot going on in the box - just the radio, the power adaptor, the manual and packing material.

There’s some little rubber feet, and it feels sturdy when you use it. Earlier in the year I looked at a few internet radios and they shot across the surface when you tried to press a button. Not so with this Tevion model. The buttons are a little clunky and you don’t always get a response.

The speakers / overall sound is very average, but no different from my clock radio which this is replacing. Fine for kitchen/bedroom environments.

Switching on the first time

On turning it on there’s an FM radio, which is simple enough. It defaulted to 108.00FM, and going down a few steps to Durham FM confirmed it was working fine.

On pressing the IR button, it’ll switch to internet radio, search for networks and come back with a list. I confirmed the network, then put in the WEP key. After a little while it changed to ‘Network OK’. On pressing select you can go down the stations menu, at which time it connects to the Reciva service to download a list of stations.

This was suprisingly quick. You can then browse by Genre or Country. The selection is impressive, and I’ve not yet not been able to find a station I listen to missing.

Reciva

What’s been really interesting is the Reciva service. Reciva supplies the database of stations, an area for users to login and add streams, favourite stations and podcasts and the actual brains of the radio to the manufacturer. I signed up to Reciva last night and set up some stations and podcasts, and then followed the manual to get the registration code and serial number from the radio.

Add this to the members area on the Reciva site, power off the radio at the wall and back on (to force the radio to download a list of stations again) and the information is automatically pulled down. Once this was done I played a few stations and streams with no problem, and was especially impressed with the podcasts feature. I download a lot of daily news podcasts and never listen to them - this could be really good to go to bed to, especially as you don’t need to download them locally first - the radio picks them up from Reciva and just starts playing them.

Listening to Stations

Tuning into stations is really easy to do. Just press select, choose Genre or Country and keep going until you find a station. Connection is almost instantaneous on some stations, but buffering for 10-15 seconds isn’t uncommon. I listened for a few hours today and didn’t have any stations buffering once the stream started.

On the BBC stations you get an option of Real, WMA and On Demand. Selecting On Demand comes back with a list of programmes available for listen again, and even more impressive is that you can pause them with the play/pause/stop/forward/back buttons. When you select a programme you can even specify the start time, which is a nice touch. These programmes sound about the same as anything else through the speakers.

Listening to a Music Library

The documentation for setting this up is pretty decent. I had some troubles to start with owing to an old LAN configuration, but passed that and through UPnP I was listening to all sorts of music I forgot I had on various hard drives.

Conclusion

This is a brilliant bit of kit. It’s really excited me about what radio can be with the internet, partly for the convenience of listening to podcasts almost as easily as Radio 4 live. I’ve not really found a breakfast show on local DAB or FM that I like waking up to, so am thinking of tuning into a random station every night and letting the radio wake me up at 6am with the internet radio option.

What would really make it brilliant is the ability to set up alarms with a station (say, weekdays, choose Original 106 at 7am, Saturday choose BBC Radio 2 at 6am and Sunday choose Einslive at 8am). I find the internet radio slow to start at times - I understand other models with the Reciva software are much quicker. Overall, I think it’s well worth the £50.

I’ve been using the radio for about a week now, and am still impressed. For a few days it wouldn’t connect to the Wireless network on its own, but this seems to have cleared and it’s now great. Some stations buffer a fair bit, which is annoying, but some not at all. The main drawback is still the slow startup time, but I’d consider a Reciva radio again in the future.

Not much to comment on recently, but today I was shown some excellent tips for editing images, particularly those taken at night or with a washed out feeling. With all of the photos I felt disappointed with what I came away with, especially as some of them really are once in a life time chances to get a decent photo.

I need some more practice with the tools and settings, but I’m impressed with the difference.

Original Photo

After removing noise and changing contrast in Neat Image

Some final tweaks in Picasa to bring out some colour

There’s a lot of photos from the night that can’t be saved, and the improvement on this set isn’t as obvious as some others I’ve tried. The tools are Neat Image and Picasa.

Original

Final

Picasa is a really impressive tool. I have photos scattered everywhere from camera phones, my camera, photos I’ve been given and can never find them quickly. I’d recommend it to anyone who has a lot of photos stored locally, and it’s also made me think about saving all my photos to the external drive before touching them with any tool.

I’ve also never done anything with my photos after they’ve been taken. This has made me think more about what can be done to improve photos.

I hear concerns about using a card online all the time. Perhaps seven years of purchasing online has been lucky. Just got an email from a (very reputable and popular) ticket retailer in Germany.

wir möchten Sie darüber informieren, dass wir vor kurzem entdeckt haben, dass Kartenhaus Opfer eines rechtswidrigen Angriffs auf seine Internetseite [removed] wurde. Durch diesen Angriff hat ein unbekannter Täter einige Ihrer persönlichen Informationen gestohlen. Wir haben leider Grund zu der Annahme, dass Ihre Kreditkarteninformationen, einschließlich der Rechnungsanschrift für Ihre Karte mit der Endnummer **** gestohlen wurden.

Which (Google) translates as;

we would like to inform you about the fact that we discovered recently that house of cards became victim of an illegal attack on its Internet side [removed]. By this attack an unknown quantity author stole some your personal information. We have unfortunately reason to the acceptance that your credit card information was stolen, including the bill-to-address for your map with the end number ****.

If this was my debit card I’d be really worried. I only use the card for places which don’t take a debit card (like train tickets); will now be checking my statement, although I guess it could be late this month.

I’m in a quandary. Since April I’ve been using just one computer - a Dell Inspiron notebook. After a month or two I hooked up an external keyboard so I could stretch out and move the screen back, and now I look at it, I’m amazed I sat in that position for so long. However, I take this thing everywhere. On the desk, hooked up to the TV, on the train for work or watching a DVD and more in-between. Sometimes it’s not even switched off for days as I download Linux distro’s or backup a site locally. It frightens me to think what I’d do if I lost it, or part of it failed. I couldn’t even get online to look for a new machine.

I’ve never been happier with a piece of equipment. One of Dell’s bargains about a year ago, it’s been flawless and still performs with Vista, XP and Ubuntu on the same 100GB drive, with lots of heavy applications and the full Office suite (with Visio, OneNote, Project etc) on each Windows installation. However, it’s a bit heavy and the 15″ widescreen is starting to feel restrictive. I have no idea what to do about finding another computer. Add in that I’d like a box for Apache, Tomcat, Ruby on Rails and Subversion that’d also be a PVR. My TV is also a monitor with VGA and DVI, so it’d be the additional PC I need. Options as I see it are;

• Cheap Dell Machine, with the same tri-boot scenario. In July, Dell released the new Vostro range aimed at small business and home users. These look pretty good and I haven’t played a computer game since Sim City 3000, nor am likely to own a video camera, negating the need for anything that powerful. I’m using Ubuntu more and more - I’d be quite happy using it full time, although would miss iTunes and would need Windows for some tasks.
  Pro: Cheap, well supported hardware. Easy to get tri-boot working, reliable computing. Easy to upgrade/add to. Lots of free software.
  Con: Paying for Windows even if you already have licence, unless you build it yourself.
  Total Cost: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33GHz, 2048MB RAM, 320GB HDD, 256MB GeForce, 16x DVD - £411 (plus monitor)
• Mac Mini. These things have a tiny footprint, are very cool and I’m being tempted to look seriously at a Mac. If you still need access to those Office programs take a look at Boot Camp or Parallels. In a computing pull-out in the Independent today there’s some good points made about getting a Mac, although I was disappointed to read about the short warranty offered (one year RTB).
  Pro: It’s a Mac. Long shelf life, stable, secure computer. Still able to run Windows/Ubuntu apps on virtual machines, whilst enjoying the Mac portion. Comes with iLife.
  Con: It’s a Mac. Expensive in the short term, no (or little) upgradability. Shortish warranty. If you have the Windows version of something like Photoshop, you either need to load Windows or buy the Mac version to use it. Constant speculation about the line being discontinued.
  Cost: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.83GHz, 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD - £399 (plus monitor) OR Intel Core 2 Duo 2.00GHz, 1GB RAM, 120GB HDD - £499 (plus monitor)
• Even cheaper Dell without the 19″ monitor, and keep the laptop as a desktop replacement with external monitor. By cutting back to the minimum and only running Ubuntu on the box, with a DVB card for Freeview, you’d have the backup whilst keeping a decent machine on the desk. I’ve seen some good Samsung widescreen LCD monitors for under £170.
  Pro: Getting a server, PVR, DVD player and spare machine for just over £200. Well supported hardware. Upgrade options.
  Con: It’ll be under the TV. Not that useful for tasks outside of being a server and a PVR.
  Cost: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.00GHz, 1GB RAM, 250GB HDD, Integrated graphics, 16x DVD - £211 (plus monitor)

Source: dmxdimension.com, Apple UK Store

Having laid out the options there the last seems the most sensible. There’s something about a Mac that I like (and everyone seems to be using them for design and development - every single Ruby book, screencast and website I’ve looked at has development being done on a Mac). I don’t suppose that’s really a good reason to go for one. Having Vista and Ubuntu under Parallels on a Mac would be great, and it does look like they have a pretty good shelf life.

Any thoughts? Anyone gone over to a Mac? Anything else to consider?

I guess I always knew about CNET, but never really thought to go there to read tech news. Recently I based two purchases (printer and camera) on their in-depth editors reviews and I’ve been really impressed.

A few weeks ago James Cridland posted about Buzz Out Loud, a podcast from CNET. There’s a lot of tech podcasts out there and I normally take my cue from Digg Podcasts when looking for something new. It’s been one of the top ones for a long time and I still hadn’t listened to it.

Anyway - it’s great. I love the format and the presenters are very easy to listen to. On Wednesday for the iPod announcements they had a stand in presenter (Jasmine France, from MP3 Insider) who gave a really balanced view to the announcements, taking into account different media players on the market.

Another show I’ve been listening to but haven’t enjoyed perhaps as much is This Week in Tech (TWiT). It’s a very good quality show with superb audio quality, and I recommend checking it out.

Revision3 do a lot of video podcasts, but I’ve been enjoying Systm the most. They get into some fairly technical details, there’s no crazy camera work and it’s very easy to get into.

For a long time I wished there was more technology programming on TV. But now I find myself watching less of shows like The Gadget Show when this “new” type of media is more in-depth and a lot more relevant, especially when developments are rapid (such as the possible inclusion of Bluetooth in the iPod touch). CNET and TWiT are providing a lot of high quality content with good presenters, and there’s many more specialised shows in-between.

Just a few quick observations. I’ve heard a lot of tech podcasts, but don’t remember yet hearing a UK tech podcast. I’m sure there’s a magazine doing one (like Stuff or T3), but I’ve not even seen an independent UK tech podcast. Some of these podcasts have taken the idea of doing a radio show and applied it to a podcast, but they’ve brought in techniques used on talk radio and gone a bit nuts, like some very over the top processing.

And it’s only a small niggle, but I rarely hear talk about Vista or Dell machines - there’s a real emphasis on Apple products, and in the video podcasts everyone has a MacBook. I mean, GarageBand and Final Cut are the business for putting these shows together and they’re great products, but a bit of Linux or Windows love wouldn’t go unnoticed. I’ll post more about choosing an Apple or desktop PC for work over the weekend.

Like a lot of people, I kept an eye on the Apple announcement today. I was actually amazed the BBC didn’t cover it more, considering the number of other journalists and bloggers in Television Centre for the feed from San Francisco. As each development was unveiled, it looked very cool and attractive. Then I started to think about the practicalities of each product.

• iPod Touch. The new iPod is similar to the iPhone, only without the phone and camera. Coverflow (the method of browsing music) is very nice, the Safari browser and iTunes Wifi store very cool - not to mention the other applications and access to YouTube. However - I’m not going to start getting out an iPod Touch at 10pm on the bus back from Newcastle. My Sony Ericsson K800i isn’t really attractive to anyone now. Wifi is also great - however, if I’m at home I have the laptop and if I’m out it’ll cost an arm and a leg. If on the train it’s extremely unreliable.
• iPod Classic. A seriously impressive 160GB could never consume all of the songs and video I own. Even if I did have that much material, there’s a lot of shows I’ve recorded that I can easily stick on the new Creative player and not the iPod, considering the availability of DivX. The range of shows on the iTunes store is nothing to get that excited about. Nice improvements with a good price point though.
• iPhone. Interesting developments here - especially with the price. The 4GB version is no more, and the 8GB version has $200 taken off the price tag. I’m a bit sceptical that the iPhone could be close to £200 in the UK, and even then who knows what the contract will look like with a monthly cost, minimum term and data rates. At $0.99 for a ringtone (on top of buying the song), I’d stick to the defaults.

Personally, at the moment, the best option looks like a Sony Ericsson K850i and the new Creative player. Getting a 5MP camera and FM radio, plus a media player with the same space as an iPod Touch with SD card slot, with the ability to play back a lot of video I’ve encoded sounds pretty good. When wifi here improves significantly in speed, reliability and cost the iPod touch will be totally worth it, and when the mobile companies come up with a very attractive offer for the iPhone, for me anyway it’ll get a whole lot more interesting.

I also started thinking about the radio speculation. I only listen to FM radio in the shower - there’s not a lot on commercial radio that’s really gripping. Start listening to internet radio, or music services like Pandora over wifi, and you’ve got another thing altogether. My closest wifi hotspot is at a McDonalds - the day Durham City gets free (or cheap) wifi like Norwich and I can have my lunch outside whilst listening to NPR, I’ll be first in line.