Category Archives: Review

01Mar 2011

LG E2360V monitor

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23/24″ 1920×1080 pixel widescreen monitors are becoming pretty much “the norm” these days. What makes the LG E2360V stand-out however is its slimness and generally attractive looks – not necessarily a bad thing in a sea of quite plain alternatives.

It maintains its slimness through a combination of factors – no extras (no USB hub or speakers), an external power supply and a back-lit LED screen. Not taking into account the stand, it’s just 31mm in depth!

The box contains the screen itself, minus the stand (well, not really, a short stubby bit is present, and this screws onto the other part of the stand), the stand, power supply, VGA cable, various paperwork and a CD (containing user guide and drivers). The monitor itself is shiny black plastic. It shows dust like you wouldn’t believe but does make the whole thing look very pleasing to the eye – the rear of the monitor almost acts like a mirror. The tiny bit of plastic holding the screen to the stand is transparent and from here a downward light (blue when on and red in standby) is reflected when the monitor is turned on – in essence, it creates the plastic part of the stand to light up. To the rear of the monitor are the connectors – you have VGA, HDMI, DVI, headphone jack and the power connector. By having the sockets stick outwards (rather than downwards with most monitors) they save even further on the depth of the monitor, but it does mean that you’re not going to be able to wall-mount this (or indeed get it right up against a wall on its stand). The stand doesn’t adjust, and that includes any swivel options, other than a small amount of tilting.

Underneath the screen are the power and menu buttons – 5 of the latter. These feel a bit plasticky to the touch and rattle. The menus themselves offer basic adjustment but nothing too complex. You can, however, store custom settings, and there  are a number to choose from (movie, internet, etc).

LG talk a lot about “Low Power Consumption” but I struggled to find any raw statistics. However, I did and it consumes 30W in normal use and just 0.99W in standby – both of these figures are excellent (LG – why aren’t you shouting more about this?)

Image wise, I don’t use professional display testing devices, but rather the combination of my eyes and various calibration tools – these can be found online, but I use the one built in Windows 7. Calibration showed Gamma to be quite high and brightness a little low. The latter is odd as the screen appears very bright (some say too bright). Brightness is already at full, so the only way to adjust this is downwards. However, with the Gamma adjusted the result was a lot improved. There was no visible back-light bleeding and Inception on Blu-Ray looked fantastic.

Visit the official LG site

Driver and manual updates are not available to download

Summary of LG E2360V

At the RRP of £229, this would put it in the price bracket of high end monitors of this size. Sadly, other than its slimness, it doesn’t have the features to compete. The display is excellent, but the lack of stand adjustment will be a real issue for some. However, you can pick this model up from Amazon for around £1731 and at that price it becomes competitive again. Certainly, if you don’t need all those missing features and don’t generally fiddle with the stands on monitors and want a monitor that looks very nice then the LG comes highly recommended.
Star Star Star Star Star


Reviewed by David Artiss on 1st March 2011.

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  1. at the time of writing this review [↩]
20Feb 2011

Creative WP-300 Bluetooth Headphones Review

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A while ago I reviewed a pair of Sennheiser Bluetooth Headphones. The review conclusion was that they were, shall we say, average. I found them uncomfortable and, at £119 (best price), expensive.

Today, I have Creative’s equivalent – the Creative WP-300. Again, these are “on ear” headphones boasting apt-X enhanced Bluetooth technology. This time, however, they have an RRP of £79.99 but can be found from as little as £66.34 (inc P&P) from Amazon – not far off half the price of the Sennheisers.

Once more Creative have boxed these nicely – the front cover opens up to reveal the headphones shown through a transparent panel. Under the headphones are a velvety draw-string storage bag, USB charging cable and a few leaflets, including a small manual.

The headphones are nicely padded – both on the headband and the actual earcups too. The remainder is rubber coated. Unless their Sennheiser equivalents, these don’t fold down to a small size, but you can rotate the earcups arounds to make them flatter for when packing away. On the left cup is a charging light and a micro USB charging port. On the right cup is a status light along with 4 flush control buttons – track next and prev, play/pause and power.  On the underside of the cup is two protruding rubber volume buttons.

There are rings of chrome on both the headband and on the earcups themselves – overall the headphones are nice to the touch and look very stylish.

In use, on my giant head, they just about fitted. The fact that the earcups rotate helps because I was able to put the band further forward on my head to give extra length to the band, and rotate the cups to still sit flat on my ears. It would be nicer is manufacturers made headphones more suitable for large headed people such as me!

As I mentioned before, the WP-300 boast the apt-X codec for improved Bluetooth audio. To benefit from this you will need to use a matching apt-X transmitter. If you don’t have anything already then Creative sell a number of plugin options for USB and iPods

Unlike the Sennheisers there is not a wired option if you’re unable to use Bluetooth – these can only be used wirelessly – and the battery cannot be removed.

Pairing is easy and quick and they have a 10 metre range. The battery should last up to 8 hours in use and then take an hour to recharge via USB.

In use they sound excellent (even more so with the apt-X option in use) and the controls are easy to use. Whether spoken audio, film soundtracks or some pounding music, they offer a good range with no interference and hiss.

Summary of Creative WP-300

Nearly half the price of the Sennheiser equivalents with little lacking in comparison. Comfortable, good looking and with an excellent sound, these are THE Bluetooth headphones to have. Pair them with the Creative ZiiO for apt-X pairing and you get an unbeatable combination.
Star Star Star Star Star


Reviewed by David Artiss on 20th February 2011.

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18Feb 2011

Creative ZiiO 7″ Tablet

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Since the launch of the iPad the market has been saturated with tablets, the majority running on Android. Now, as much as I love Android, it was designed for phones and not tablets. As a result the user experience isn’t brilliant and the standard Market Place is out of bounds.

Android 3.0 – Honeycomb – designed specifically for tablet should remedy this. Meantime, however, the tablet releases are not reducing.

A recent release is the Creative ZiiO 7. This is a media-centric tablet with a white plastic surround and back and a resistive screen. The latter ensures the price is kept low – around £200 for the 8GB version, compared to the £360 for a Samsung Galaxy Tab (and don’t forget that was priced at around £500 when it was released last year). It sports wi-fi and Bluetooth connectivity, a micro-SD port for expansion and a standard headphone socket. PC Connectivity is via a USB port. It does not have GPS.

In the rather natty box1 you will find the tablet, a single black stylus, mains charger, USB cable and a small box containing a quick start guide and various other leaflets. The main user guide is installed on the ZiiO itself.

Android

First things first, the Ziio is running Android 2.1 – Creative have said that an upgrade to 2.2 is due mid-March.

I know many people are holding back on tablet purchases until Android 3.0 is available – any manufacturer who can state that buying their device beforehand will not mean they miss out on this is certainly going to get early adopters. At the moment, though, Creative are saying that without knowing the requirements of Honeycomb they can’t yet say if the Ziio will ever get it.

Media Capabilities

It’s a media tablet because it comes with a collection of ZiiO specific media apps – audio, video, photo, RSS reader, book reader, etc – and has the X-fi audio enhancements included. If connecting via Bluetooth it also sports the apt-X audio codec. Stereo speakers are mounted at the bottom on the rear of the device and a microphone is on the very top.

What is is lacking is Flash. Having said, if it’s YouTube video that you hanker for then the official YouTube app will still happily play. Unfortunately, other apps such as the recently release iPlayer for Android does require Flash (or rather Android 2.2, which comes with Flash).

Special Offer From Monday 21st February until mid March, Creative are giving away a free pair of EP-630 noise-isolating headphones with every purchase of the ZiiO 7″.

Screen

It’s 7″ 480×800 screen isn’t particularly clear or vibrant, but the resistive screen is quite good in use. You can use your finger or the included stylus – I prefer the latter. Only one stylus is included though, which is a shame, and there’s no place to store it unless you buy the optional leather case.

It has a front-facing VGA camera (useful for, say, Skype) and a top-mounted HDMI port for connection to a big screen.

Processor

The processor is one of their own design but is rather nippy in use. Certainly, I had no issues, and it’s been tuned for media. Internet browsing is particularly quick.

Power

Battery life is excellent – I usually have to charge it once a week2, although Creative have used their own power connector rather than a more usual USB type. An LED lights when charging is in progress – this is the only LED on this device as there is no notification light.

Creative appears to have implemented its own standby mode, overriding the standard Android standby. This means, for instance, that wifi will turn off when the screen does, even if you’ve specified otherwise in the Android settings. What this does mean though is that in standby (rather than turned fully off) the battery is hardly draining.

However, if you need to keep wi-fi alive (say for automatic podcast downloading) but don’t want to leave the screen on, then a new app has been released to the market named Advanced Wifi Lock. It does indeed work – I tested it on the ZiiO for the developer, and he’s even especially made the APK available directly for ZiiO users.

There is an additional power-saving mode, which I haven’t used, as it reduces processor speed. There’s no automatic screen dimming, however, so you’ll find yourself having to do this manually.

Unfortunately the battery is not replaceable.

The power button on the top is flush with the case – it’s neither protruding nor recessed. As a result it’s impossible to find it without actually tilting the tablet and looking for it. When using the tablet in the dark (and the book reader has a night reading mode, so I’m assuming they expect you to use it then!) it’s impossible to find! Having said that, the 4 touch buttons under the screen are not lit so they cannot be seen in the dark either.

Software

Without the standard Google Marketplace, getting hold of apps are a little more difficult. Creative provide their own equivalent but it’s not really very good (which is pretty much common with other company’s efforts). They also provide a “starter pack” of popular apps which can be downloaded from their site. The best solution is to to download APKs directly – I will be posting about this at a later time.

Games, I have to say, are perfect for this tablet – whether Angry Birds or Raging Thunder, the side and weight of the ZiiO is perfect and the screen and sound of excellent quality.

Summary of Creative ZiiO 7

I use it at work and will often use it at home for ad-hoc surfing – certainly it’s far better than my cramped HTC Hero screen, and a lot quicker than booting up my Netbook. And when it comes to media capabilities, it’s a huge amount of fun, especially when paired with Bluetooth headphones (leave the tablet on a desk and wander around listening to some excellent quality music).

PC Pro, when they reviewed the ZiiO thought it to be one of the better Android tablets – from my own experience, I have to agree. Running Android is not without its limitations and I still think Apple iOS is the leader in the tablet market. However, for pure value-for-money the ZiiO cannot currently be beaten.

Star Star Star Star Star


Reviewed by David Artiss on 18th February 2011.

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  1. Creative are rather good at their packaging! [↩]
  2. this is with relatively light, non-media use [↩]
07Feb 2011

O2: Our Home Broadband prices are changing to… something

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I’ve just received an email from O2, who provide my home broadband…

Internet use has changed dramatically over the last few years and this is likely to continue. We need to increase our prices so we can still give you the level of service you’d expect from us. From 31 March 2011 Any discount or free period you already have – like a three months free offer – will stay unchanged. You don’t need to do anything, but if you’d like to know more about your options, or want to compare our prices to the market, go to A Best regards Felix Geyr Managing Director, O2 Home and Broadband

No, that abrupt ending isn’t a mistake – they really did end it with “go to A”. Following the link on “A”, however, takes you to a “Price Changes” page on the O2 website.

There it tells you why they’re changing their prices and show a comparison of the cost of other broadband providers. However, at no point in the email or on that page do they tell you exactly what it’s changing to. I guess they want you to guess.

In the end I had to ring O2 to find my account would be the same (an unlimited account, which they don’t provide anymore) but £2 more.

Announcing price increases such as this rarely bring customer praise – indeed, more than likely people would leave as result. So you’d thought it would be handled well. Surely it can’t be that hard?

 

31Jan 2011

Oh.. blip

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The site has been down this morning. For the first time (that I’m aware), I hit my bandwidth limit with Memset – thankfully, the limit resets tomorrow.

For testing reasons I have had website compression turned off for a while which hasn’t helped, and the new site design that I’m working on will help with a smaller footprint. None-the-less, as this site gets more interest, that bandwidth is going to be an issue.

So I emailed Memset and they got back to me within 22 minutes (impressive!). The problem, as I’ve mentioned before, is that I’m on a hosting package that they no longer provide and the most basic now available is aimed firmly at businesses. Although not too expensive at first sight, extras such as cPanel and phpMyAdmin are extra and bump up the price beyond my range.

But, you know, I don’t want to go elsewhere. Memset has been excellent to me.

Thankfully Nathan at Memset had a solution – moving up to another (erm, I assuming, still on their records but not officially available) package, the same as mine but with greater disk storage and double the bandwidth. Within an hour of spotting the problem, the site was back! I didn’t even have to pay anything up front – as I’d recently paid for 2 years of hosting up-front, he simply took it off that money and brought my renewal date forward.

Hats off to Memset!

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