After a recent catastrophic failure of my home PC (more of that in a future post) I ordered an eBuyer “value” hard drive docking station so that I could copy the files from my old hard drive to my new PC.

At just £14.99 it really is reasonably priced.

The box (which is very neatly made with a large black box inside the main one containing the cables) contains the dock itself, a USB cable, power connector and driver disk (for older versions of Windows).

Simple connect to the power and a USB port on your computer and drop your SATA hard drive (2.5″ or 3.5″) into the top and you have instant access. There’s two blue lights on the front – one for power and one to show drive access (it would be better if they were different colours to each other, though!), a large power button and, on the top, a lever to eject any disks.

I wouldn’t suggest this is the best way to set up an external hard drive for constant use as the drive is exposed – this is more for quick and occasional access of a drive.

I had problems accessing one of the folders on the drive with my new PC, but this turned out to be because of User Account Control in Windows 7 – this was switched off and I had immediate access again.

Anyway, it works and it’s well priced.

For a few pounds more they do an eSata version (although not the same brand and it’s unrated, so it’s a bit more of an “unknown quantity”) which would give you extra speed.

Up until now I’ve always bought the “official” Nintendo accessories for my Wii, expecting the quality of anything else to not be worth the reduction in price.

However, I’ve been after a third controller and Nunchuk for a while and an offer at Zavvi last week had a Venom branded set for just £18¹. Compare this to the £30+ for an official version. So I bought them.

And, I have to say, they’re not too bad. As you can see from the image to the right (click for a larger version), they look a little different with the black trim (other colours are available!) and have a different design of lights and speaker grill. They come with a strap for the remote, but nothing else.

Pros I’ve noted…

• There is a rubber grip on the bottom of the Nunchuk.
• The sound from the speaker on the remote is a LOT louder than on the standard controller (you might consider this a “con”!).
• The sync button, residing in the battery compartment as per the official controllers, also has an extension built onto the battery cover, so that it can be used without having to actually open the cover.
• From comments I’ve read from other owners, it appears that they’re compatible with existing accessories, including recharging docks and their replacement battery/compartments.

Cons…

• The minus, plus and home buttons are a lot stiffer than on the official controller – not too bad, and as they’re not used for “main” game buttons it’s not too much of an issue.
• The analogue stick on the Nunchuk is a little stiffer than “normal” and has a slightly rough feel to it as it’s moved about. Again, not too much of an issue.
• The “B” button (the trigger on the underside of the controller) is not very responsive – this COULD be an issue and I’m hoping that after some use it will loosen up.

So, some nice improvements over the official stick but the stiffer controls highlight the quality differences. However, this is going to be a little-used third controller so it’s well worth the money. For your main controllers, I’d still stick to the official versions.

1. this offer has now ended, but you can get them for £21.49 from Amazon [↩]

Steve Jobs doesn’t like Flash. That’s patently clear.

He blames most Mac crashes on Flash and, I have to say, since Firefox starting sandboxing plugins I’ve seen regular reported Flash crashes.

However, a lot – a lot – of high profile websites use Flash, mainly to render video. Steve’s answer to this is HTML 5 – a new version of HTML that is being supported more and more by the browsers. And HTML includes video capability. Great – no more Flash.

Except his argument is flawed.

1. HTML 5 is still a draft standard and is liable, probably for a good few years yet, to change.
2. Flash does more than just play video and HTML 5 doesn’t support a lot of what it can do.
3. Although HTML 5 allows video, it doesn’t force you to use a particular format. And, as usually happens, a “war” is going on between competing formats – with 3 formats being particularly strong. Where most browsers are plumping for the 2 royalty free options (after all browsers are given away free), Apple has only added the commercial version to Safari and, so far, that appears to be the less popular. Each site will have to re-encode their videos for a different format other than Flash – are they really going to do it for 3 other formats?
4. HTML 5 video can’t do everything that Flash video can – it is unable to display video fullscreen and there are content protection issues.

Many have speculated that Job’s dislike of Flash mainly comes down to the fact that, unlike pretty much every other aspect of the iPhone, Apple can’t control it. Even apps, written by others, have to be checked and authorised by Apple, after being written on Apple development tools.

Which makes their choice of video format look odd, as it’s a third party commercial product. But then, they would have even less control over the two open formats.  iTunes and Quicktime already use this format and besides, one of the other formats is being championed by Google.

By insisting that Apple products do not use Flash but instead force their particular video format on the masses that buy them they are, in effect, almost guaranteeing themselves success longer term. Or are they? Can the other browsers support a commercial video format which they will have to pay for.

And, at the same time, sites are going to be reluctant to recode all their video until a format is clearly successful.

But, it’s good to see Steve is taking it on the chin as he always does. After a blogger contacted him about supporting the alternative, open formats, Steves reply was “a patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other open source codecs now”.

Nice.

Today, T-Mobile finally announced that Android 2.1 (Eclair) was available for G2 Touch (AKA HTC Hero) owners.

If you’ve not received your “pre-upgrade” update already, you’ll need to do this – it makes various small changes in readiness for the Eclair update.

To get this, wind your clock on by a month and switch off wi-fi (it needs the data connection for the upgrade to be detected). It only takes a couple of minutes and doesn’t cause any data loss.

Once you have that, you can either wait for Eclair to be pushed out to your phone or go and get it manually. To do the latter, go into Menu -> Settings -> About Phone and you should now have an option to check for software updates. Go into this and follow all prompts.

Now, the Android update can cause data lose, although I found it to be minimal. I’d recommend backing up all your data – I used MyBackup Pro to backup all data and applications to my SD card, which I then copied into my Netbook.

The update takes a few minutes and, even when it appears to have rebooted, you might find that behind your lock screen is an HTC update running. Once this is done I found my date and time was incorrect and that my home screens had been reset – if you saved your layout as a “Theme” (which I hadn’t done) then I’m guessing you can easily restore it.

And that’s it.

From what I can tell the visible changes are minimal (even more so – animations are turned off by default, so you’ll need to switch them on for the full impact) – the main change is the improvement in speed. And, boy, is it noticeable.

Other than that, the biggest change to users will be the apps in the Marketplace that will now be available – Google Earth, IMDB, Google Goggles, Talk To Me, amongst many others.

Smaller changes include an improved Gmail App, a new pinch feature for viewing all the home screens and a Desk Clock app.

Having just installed some new Bluetooth software, I was left with a “My Bluetooth Places” icon on my desktop. And you can’t delete it as you would with other icons.

But there are two methods of getting rid of it (these apply to Windows XP)…

1. Use Tweak UI – under the “Desktop” you can untick the “My Bluetooth Places” icon.
2. Use the “Clean Desktop” option…

• Right click on your desktop and select “Properties”.
• Select the “Desktop” tab and click on the “Customise Desktop” button.
• Click the “Clean Desktop” button at the bottom, click “Next” and select “My Bluetooth Places” in the list that appears.
• Click “Next” again and then “Finish”.
• The icon will be moved to it’s own “unused icons” folder on the desktop which can now be deleted.