Archive for the Geek Alert category
to upgrade or not to upgrade
Posted on Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 10:41 by Michelle
Nokia 5800
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Nokia N95
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My contract with o2 is up, it has been quite an expensive contract for the last few months £35 per month, which is for 600 minutes, 1000 texts and unlimted browsing. I had an 18 month contract and a better rate for the the first 12 months, but I had to pay the full price for the last 6 months. With my contract up for renewal there are negotiations to be had. I like O2 as I've always found them to offer the best prices and recently their customer service has improved 100%.
My options are,
- keep this tarrif and have a new handset Iphone or Nokia 5800 at no charge. £630 (18 month contract)
- change to another pay monthly tarrif, and have £150 credited to my account £480 (18 month contract)
- change to the simplicity tarrif, pay £20 per month for 600 mins, 1200 texts and unlimited web. £360 (month to month, but over 18 months)
I use most of the minutes I have right now, and I'm definitely using the web bolt on a fair bit, so the above compare well. For me it's ultimately all about the £££'s making it a no brainer especially as simplicity is month to month and not a long term contract, should something better come along it will be a snip to change.
As a geek though I did want to upgrade my phone, I know how the Iphone works and all the reviews I read said the Nokia 5800 was superlative to the Iphone in everyway. I had O2 send it out, (I know that you have 14 days to see if you like it, but 1 was enough) and I sent it straight back, it is nice enough, but does not compare to the interface of the Iphone. I use my N95's camera a lot, it takes fantastic high quality photos, it is 5 megapixel and has a Carl Zeiss lens, for a phone it takes lovey pictures. It's a bit clunky, but it's my phone, camera, calendar, alarm clock, nightlight, and has a nice interface for facebook, and I'll be making do with it for a while longer.
I use most of my minutes talking to the kids when they are away at school they are also on O2 and I recently learned of the O2 favourite places, I tried to put a link but the O2 site is playing up, anyhoo with a £10 top up you get 500 free minutes to any landline (say no to 0870) or other O2 number, which means the kids can now phone me instead of dodgying my phone (hanging up before I answer so I call back).
4 free O2 Pay & Go Sims are available here.
to upgrade or not to upgrade | Edited on: Fri, May 15, 2009 12:05
Posted in Geek Alert (RSS)
Nokia N95 and the Lifeblog
Posted on Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 9:57 by Michelle
I really love this bit of software. I like the way it organises my text messages and photographs into a timeline, which gives me a virtual diary to look back on. It has been updated and possibly improved on by Nokia photos and I just read, about to be done over again to be replaced with Ovi PC.
All of this was academic because after the latest update to the software on my N95, whenever I tried to sync with lifeblog I got the error that my database was corrupt and the sync was canceled. So of course I looked for answers on the net. The standard Nokia (and quite a few blog entries) response was to update the timelime in Lifeblog on the mobile, which also threw up an error.
I was now in the position of having a phone which is bursting with images, videos and text, that I don't want to delete but was unable to save. (Actually I did put the media onto picassa, but I didn't want to remove them from the phone until I had exhausted every possibility with Lifeblog/Nokia Photos.)
Yesterday i tried to call Nokia Customer Service and could not get through on their number, then my day was taken over by the virtumonde computer virus, now I've almost got that under control I'm back to the phone, going to give it one more try before deleting them. So I used PC suite to back up and tried another Google search for Lifeblog.
Woo Hoo, I found some more fixes, one of which was to delete the first couple of media (image/video) items in Lifeblog, but the one that worked for me, was to scroll back through the entries (all 900 of them) and delete anything that was blank. I found 3 blank entries in 900 which I deleted and it's only gone and worked, and is syncing while I write this.
As I got another fucking popup while I was searching for that, I better get back to the virtumonde fix, which may very well result in a full fucking format of the c: ....
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Nokia N95, O2 and mobile contracts
Posted on Thu, Oct 02, 2008 at 15:02 by Michelle
What a piece of shit phone the N95 is. I have had mine for just over a year, as an out and out geek if I can jump on the technology bandwagon cheaply then I jump.
I'm very pleased it was cheaply becasue the phone is not worth it's RRP.
Don't get me wrong, it comes loaded with great features
- 5 meg camera with Karl Zeiss lens, (and another camera on the front for some reason)
- GPS
- and loads more that I cant remember or don't use.
I'm having a look at it now, to see what I actually use.
- oh yes, WiFi
The wifi connection is pretty slick, and I've used it on the train and in McD's etc to pick up my email. I have Google Mail on as an application as well as a couple of other apps.
When I first got it, there was this cool Lifeblog app, and when the phone was connected to the PC lifeblog would update a timeline with any photos and messages. It was a pretty neat feature and I liked being able to look back through the events. However the software on the phone and on Lifeblog have been updated, in fact Lifeblog has been replaced by Nokia photos, but since the upgrade, there is a constant 'import error' so that bit of the phone is now useless.
I accepted with good grace that my phone would run out of battery within a couple of hours if it was used for anything more than calls, for eg, using the camera, listening to music, surfing the web, but just recently it started to lose signal as well. The kids would say they'd tried to call but my phone was off. This obviously wasn't true, my phone is NEVER off (well, unless I'm on a plane!). So I became a little vexed that it was getting hard to make or receive calls, and, I'd had the phone for a year, and, I fancied an Iphone. A call to O2 customer service ensued, I have a pretty sweet deal with this phone, it didn't cost me anything and I get 600 mins and 400 texts each month for £15 per month, but the contract is 18 months. I tried to wangle it every way I could but the most they would offer was a replacement N95.
I backed up my phone and sent it off, called them after 4 days to ask about my replacement, for some reason they were waiting for this call before sending it out, doh!
So a lovely shiny REFURBED phone comes back to me and I restore the backup to it. This does not go smoothly, and I get an error telling me there is corrupt data on the memory card. Never mind, most of my settings are correct, I can make and receive calls and the signal keeps it's strength now.
I know, as I've read all the reviews that the Iphone is not as good as the N95, but it's so good to look at, the touch screen so easy to use and the browser so much better than that on the N95 that I think I could be tempted to swap.
I will point out though that for a phone the N95 is a kick-ass camera.
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Google Chrome Review
Posted on Thu, Sep 04, 2008 at 11:27 by Michelle
As a bit of a geek, I downloaded Google Chrome as soon as it became available. Currently I use Firefox almost exclusively and with it's IE tab it's just about perfect.
As I use Google for pretty much everything else in my life, email, photos, documents, notebook and calendar. To be able to integrate all of this within one perfect and good looking browser seemed almost utopian.
I like Chrome, and if all I did was browse then I would probably use it. It looks good, it is light and noticeably faster than any other browsers I’ve used.
For the foreseeable future Firefox will remain my browser of choice, because I like the sidebars, and I use Roboform which stores thousands of my passwords and is not currently supported, or according to their website, likely to be in the near future.
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