Tech Gadgets

Nokia N95

I've had the Nokia N95 for just over a month now and I thought I'd share my main observations.

1. VoIP. Solid built in VoIP functionality. I've got it set up to automatically connect to my two SIP accounts when I'm in range of my home wi-fi and for incoming it seems to work flawlessly. Outgoing my only gripe is that i'd like to be able to select which SIP account to dial-out on at the time of calling but haven't figured out yet how to do that.


2. Wi-fi. Handy for very quick queries, e.g. checking how to translate a word using google translate or just for checking what wifi access is available. Not as good a range as my laptop, but a very handy tool to have.


3. GPS. Lots of people seem to be complaining that they can't get the GPS to work. Mine does, but can be very slow to initially "get a lock" on the satellites or whatever it is they do. I haven't yet paid for the navigation voice functionality, but probably will at some point.


4. Camera. It's 5mp and boasts a Carl Zeiss 2.8/5.6 autofocusing lens. There is a bit of a lag between hitting the shutter button and the shutter opening which renders it a little crap for capturing spontaneous moments, but the picture quality is good and for general purpose non inspired photo taking it is ideal. Lots of functionality to control ISO, white balance etc. I haven't used the video functionality yet, but it is supposed to be 30fps at 640x480 which should be good enough.


5. Music. I've only got a couple of songs on it, primarily because I don't want to be using the phone when not necessary to preserve battery life. Stereo speakers are good though, and louder than you'd think. Interface seems intuitive enough.


6. Battery. Hmmm. I guess it works hard and so deserves to get fed every night. More than 20 hours is unachievable for me, and if I've been using it heavily the life is perhaps half that. Charges quickly though, and I usually only have to charge it once daily at night.


7. S60 OS. Good range of programs I can add, e.g. Putty combined with some bash scripts generally lets me rescue any server situations as soon as they happen. Only real complaint is that the OS seems a little sluggish sometimes, and probably once every two days it just hangs completely.

In summary, I like this phone a lot. I like to travel light and to be prepared. With this many gadgets in one small package I feel that most bases are covered adequately. No qwerty keyboard is a slight drawback, but then those baby qwerty keyboards are a bit of a bastard anyway.

Build your own PVR

I haven't really followed developments with MythTV - a homebrew Personal Video Recorder project - since I wrote about it (DIY Tivo) back in June 2003. I have just noticed that there is now a bootable Knoppix Linux CD preconfigured for running Myth TV - KnoppMyth. Which is kinda cool. The aim is to make Myth TV installation as trivial as possible,

I still plan on trying this out, though I'll probably not use the bootable disk just because that sounds too easy to be truly satisfying. One of these days...

Swiss Army Knife with USB flash drive

Cool! A Swiss Army Knife with 64Mb USB flash drive! This thing is neat and I want one now. It features the USB flash drive, a LED light, Swiss Army knife, ballpoint pen and there is a version without the knife if you want to take it through airport security - tho' the USB drive is detachable so you can just throw the rest in your hold luggage and keep the USB handy for airside computing.