April 2010
7 posts
3 tags
Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1
What is it? 12-megapixel Micro Four Thirds digital camera.
How much does it cost? Around £700, depending on which kit lens you want with it.
Why did I buy it? My love for Panasonic’s Lumix DMC-GF1 developed after doing two things. The first was owning a Panasonic Lumix TZ3 three years ago. This was a large but high-performing compact with a beautiful LCD display. But following what I can...
4 tags
Belkin Universal Media Reader
What is it? A USB media card reader with slots for all modern formats.
How much does it cost? £12/$27, or thereabouts.
Why did I buy it? Flexibility, basically. It takes every media card I’m likely to want to use, including the high-capacity variants of the SD family, and doesn’t require the use of fiddly adapters for small-form-factor cards such as microSD. It comes with two different lengths...
3 tags
Carbonite
What is it? Secure offsite backup.
How much does it cost? From $54.95 for a year to $129.95 for three years’ subscription, all with unlimited storage.
Why did I buy it? Yes, I also have SugarSync running on my machine, but that’s tiered by the amount of online storage you want, and it’s just too expensive for the space I need. Besides, I don’t need all my data to be synced.
Carbonite, on...
8 tags
Motorola Milestone
What is it? A smartphone running Android 2.0 with a physical QWERTY keyboard
How much does it cost? £360 inc VAT SIM-free, or free on your average 18-month contract
Why did I buy it? The iPhone is a lovely device, and the HTC Desire is a really rather splendid handset if you prefer Android. Neither, however, has a proper keyboard - one with, you know, keys to press when you want to type a...
3 tags
Drobo
What is it? An enclosure for up to four bare hard disks that gives you lots of storage.
How much does it cost? $335/£279
Why did I buy it? I could have bought a big RAID system such as LaCie’s 4big for my media collection, but the problem with that is that it’s finite; once it’s full, you have to buy another, bigger drive and copy everything across. The Drobo system, though, lets you chuck in...
3 tags
Canon Pixma MP640
What is it? A multi-function device, with the ability to print, scan and copy documents and photos. (Unlike some, it doesn’t offer fax or a document feeder; meh.)
How much does it cost? Around $/£150. (Ripoff Britain! etc.)
Why did I buy it? It’s the first MFD that does everything I want. It has duplex, Wi-Fi, Canon’s neat dual paper source system, separate, reasonably-priced ink tanks – indeed,...
6 tags
SugarSync
What is it? It’s a bit like Dropbox, combining online backup and sync between different computers on different platforms.
How much does it cost? It depends on the amount of online storage you want. There’s a free 2GB account, and the plans for individuals range from $49.99 (30GB) to $249.99 (250GB).
Why did I buy it? I like the promise of Dropbox, but I dislike how it mandates that...