Fathers Day
Someone in my family was lucky enough to receive a Sony PSP over the weekend. The Sony PSP is a fun device. The PSP can play music. The PSP can surf the Internet. The PSP can even view photos and DVD's. The PSP is also pretty good as a games console apparently.
The PSP is attractively styled in black although, bizarrely, my model came with a hideous white strap and incongruous white earphones.
I connected the PSP to my wireless network and to my amazement, it worked first time so I was able to upgrade the PSP software using 'Network Update'.
However, Web browsing is tortuous as entering text is pretty slow but the quality of the display is excellent.
Oh and the lucky person wasn't me.
could do better
Some people might have expected the clock on an expensive Sony digital car radio to automatically switch into British Summer Time. However, they would be wrong and I will now be forced to try to remember the location of the fine manual.Sony car radio/CD/DAB
I have got an old radio cassette in my car with a aerial mounted in the rear windscreen. The MW reception is pretty poor and if you go under a bridge, the interference nearly makes your ears bleed. As I listen to Radio 5 Live quite a lot, this is rather irritating.
After months of prevaricating and thinking, I impetuously went out and bought a Sony DAB6650. This is a DAB radio (with FM/MW/LW as well) and a CD player. The unit looks and sounds great and I now have access to lots of different DAB stations.
Although I haven't travelled that far yet, the digital sound quality is excellent, even in towns and under bridges.
The only slight downside is that the CD formats include MP3 or Atrac but does not include WMA. Unfortunately all my CD's are ripped in WMA format but I have a handful also copied in Atrac format for my Sony MD player.
Resurrection of a gadget
I used to have a Psion 5. This was a neat little personal organiser in a clam shell case with a mini QWERTY style keyboard. The Psion even had a port of the 'vi' editor available. However, after the novelty wore off, I didn't use it much other than a few shortlived pointless games and as a glorified address book when sending out my Christmas cards. Years later, I worked with some young, trendy individuals who wore Diesel trousers who taunted me as they all gradually acquired new, shiny Palm PDA's. Of course, I simply couldn't face them with my aged Psion so I went out and bought a Palm Vx. Inevitably, the initial novelty soon wore off, the young things upgraded to different designer trousers and yet another trendy mobile phone (with camera) and I didn't use my Palm Vx much either apart from as a glorified address book for the annual Christmas card list. Anyway, over the weekend, I decided to dust off the Palm and see whether it might be useful for capturing ideas for blogs. As the Palm had lain unused for so long, the batteries were totally dead and the device had been reset to its factory status. I performed a synchronisation with Palm Desktop using the Infrared link to check the communications were working. Then I went to re-install Beyond Contacts from DataViz which synchronises data from Microsoft Outlook with the Palm. All my details were stored in my online profile at DataViz, so I was able to quickly obtain my registration key and upgrade to the latest version for free. So now I can use the Graffiti application to enter information into the Palm, synchronise to my PC and then into the blog. I wonder if this will be quicker and more convenient than scribbling with a pen onto the back of an envelope. We will see.probably the best gadget in the world
Watches are useful. My main requirements for a watch are:- Display the precise time at all times.
- Do not need any maintenance like winding or changing the batteries.
- Automatically adjust for GMT/BST.
- Automatically adjust for current timezone anywhere in the world.
- Light. I don't want or need a micro-computer on my wrist that also tells me the weather, my resting heartbeat and the altitude.
- This watch synchronises with a radio transmitter to guarantee the time is absolutely 100% correct at all times. I know this works because the watch is always precisely in sync with my digital TV service (and British Rail at Waterloo). The two transmitters are located in the UK and Germany but I rarely travel outside Europe.
- The watch is solar powered so does not need winding or any batteries. No more replacement batteries costing a fiver every two years. No more lengthy discussions about invalidating the warranty because the jeweller has to open up the back to fit the new battery.
- Yes.
- Almost but not quite. When travelling, you have to temporarily set your location to the current city and the watch adjusts automatically.
- The titanium strap means the watch is very light.