Gadgets
I have quite a few gadgets, are they useful, or are they toys?



























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27 February 2004
 

I have 2 pocket PC's, a Blackberry and a Tablet, all of them play music but I also have a Creative Nomad 20G.  How did I get in this mess.

Well it started with one of the original IPAQ's which a few years ago I thought was a marval.  I carried it everywhere and loaded it with loads of useless software and tried to squeeze a CD's worth of muisic onto it.  After about 3 months I hardly ever used it because the battery life was too short and the synchronisation too much of a chore.  My 11 year old daughter has it now, and after a month of enthusiasm hardly ever uses it either.

Then I got the Nomad, I copied all my CD's onto it and hardly made a dent in its 20GB, I converted all of the Tech-ED conference DVDs into WMA files so I could listen to them in the gym and out walking.  It got used a lot for a few months, and still gets used perhaps once or twice a week.  But if I lost it tomorrow it would not have much of an impact on my life, in fact I probably wouldn't even notice.

Then I got my first Blackberry, a dual band mono model with integrated phone, (headset only).  I loved it, in my view almost perfect form and function for its purpose, Wireless Email and Calendar.  I never did get tasks to synchronise with Notes properly.  In fact after about a week the only time it ever went into its crade was to charge its batteries.  I never synch it with my PC all synch was wireless.  However the gadgeter in me wanted more so I got a colour 7210, triband model, with a bit more memory and a real phone.  Its great, has fantastic battery life and the colour makes it look a bit livelier.  its true that its adictive though.  I use it every day, even though I work at home because it allows me to appear to be working when I am in a cafe or walking, or sitting on the beach.  The fact that I never need to synch it, that its always on, always up to date, incredibly slick to use means I am never without it.

But then I was given a shiny new Pocket PC, from HP.  It's tiny, has a fab display, bluetooth, 64MB, SD and CF cards.  it syncs with my Tablet just great.  But its not got a phone,  I still have to take an action to synch it and it's just not as slick as the Blackberry.  However I do still use it, but more as a complement to my Blackberry, one I can do without but is nice to have.

Finally I have my tablet, my only truely indispenable gadget.  Its a perfect complement to the Blackberry though neither depends on the other they both keep in synch via a corporate Notes server wirelessly.  One is there for real work, the other for instant on communication.

I have another phone, a Nokia 6210i in addition to my Blackberry because Blackberrys don't have a car kit and using them as a phone does eat into that fantastic battery life. 


11:13:20 PM      comment []

I realised as I was thinking about things to blog about that I have a lot of gadgets.  Some of them are useful and some are toys.  Often I find I am wildly enthusiastic about one of them for a few weeks, telling everyone they need one too and then it sits in a corner for months without being touched.  So I thought I might help others not to make the same mistake and also pick out some real gems, for me at least.

So these are some of the Gadgets I will talk about soon:

  1. My two IPAQ Pocket PC's
  2. My Blackberry
  3. My Tablet PC
  4. My KVM switch
  5. My Amstrad Emailer
  6. My HP OfficeJet d125i
  7. My Wireless network
  8. My Creative Nomad Jukebox
  9. My Minolta Dimage Z1 camera
  10. My Nokia 6310i phone

and just in cae you think I am too rich for my own good, lots of these were provided by work, or by friendly suppliers.


12:03:01 PM      comment []


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