Hard Disc/DVD recorder

We have recently bought a Sony RDRHXD970 – 250GB Hard Drive DVD Recorder, it includes a Freeview (DVB) tuner, but also accepts external Video inputs (Sky Satellite). Additionally it can take external hard drives and play back photos to your TV in a slide show format. As well as Scart outputs it also has HDMI with up scaling to HiDef formats.

Very pleased with the ease of use. In the first weekend I managed to transfer 21 hours of camcorder video on the hard drive, edit it to tidy up the beginnings and ends of each tape. I will be burning the video to DVD’s later

£200 Laptop

So can a £200 laptop cut the mustard…

http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/reviews/review.phtml/2731/3755/Asus-eee-701-pc-laptop.phtml
http://www.tech.co.uk/computing/mobile-computing/notebooks-and-tablet-pcs/news/dirt-cheap-sub-notebooks-soon-to-be-the-norm?articleid=876125417
http://www.tech.co.uk/computing/mobile-computing/notebooks-and-tablet-pcs/news/asus-eee-good-things-come-in-small-packages?articleid=2131952546
http://www.tech.co.uk/computing/mobile-computing/notebooks-and-tablet-pcs/review/asus-eee-pc-4g

It comes with Linux pre-installed… you can use an external USB drive for storage, or use on line storage of course… great for emails and a bit of surfing the net.. looking on the forum etc….what else do you need?

I think of it as a Psion 5mx replacement… it’s quite small… about the size of a hardback book…

Or there is the Nokia N810… although a friend was saying last night that it’s not that brilliant…

http://www.tech.co.uk/computing/internet-and-broadband/news/nokia-n810-who-needs-an-iphone?articleid=843338695
This one is a bit more portable.

Or there is the iPhone… very nice, but you would be tied to a mobile phone contract…. may be not, I think I would prefer to stick to a 2/3 box solution…

1. Mobile phone
2. Ipod
3. Laptop/small notebook pc/PDA of some kind.

Palm where about to bring out the Folieo
http://www.tech.co.uk/computing/mobile-computing/news/palm-cancels-foleo-mobile-companion?articleid=834975120
but for various reasons the product was cancelled…

Apple are rumoured to be bringing out a flash based MacBook in the new year… but that will not be in the below £500 bracket…

Everything must go……

Well not quite!

So we have been cracking on with selling things on Ebay.

I’ve managed to sell my Olympus OM30 and all the lens’s and accessories, I got quite a reasonable price for it all in the end. I have also donated my old Praktica gear to a school in Malvern via a contact at work. So I’m down to just my EOS30 and EOS20D now, but still two camera bags… my earlier LowePro Mini Treker is on loan to my next door neighbour for him to use on a long trip to Oz in November for his camera and video camera.

I’ve also got rid of some old computer stuff that has been gathering dust in cupboards and the like.

One new thing I have recently bought though is a 2.5″ Hard Disk Enclosure which has a built in card reader, I added a salvaged 40GB HD to it and it’s a useful back up for my pics when out and about and as an external USB2 drive when at home.

The case came from Storage Depot [link] and the case is this one: [link] You can’t view your pictures on the built in screen, but that’s the only disadvantage I’ve found so far. It charges via the USB lead, although it also came with a plug in charger as well.

Ubuntu Linux

I’ve long been a Linux user, firstly as a command line user for running an old Amateur Radio TCP/IP system which I closed down back in 2003. More recently I have been using Fedora Core 3 on an old Intel P4 box. I started using this in the summer of 2005 whilst off work. Mainly as something to keep my mind occupied.

I upgraded to FC5 and ran that on the box for about 6 months or so. Earlier this year I sent off for a Ubuntu CD having heard good things about it. Wow how much has this changed the overall experience.

A lot easier and quicker to install than anything I have run before. Pop in the CD, boot the machine from CD and within a couple of screens I had a live Linux system. From there it was a simple case of clicking on an install icon and within 15 minutes I had fresh Ubuntu install.

Photography Update

I’ve recently bought a new camera bag a Lowepro Orion AW beltpack/backpack which I’ve found works very well. It’s in place of my Lowepro Minitrekker, which is a great bag, but I tended to put too many things in it and overloaded my back!!

This evening I was sorting through my things and wondered… what would it be like to go back to using film again… has any one tried? I have two very good film cameras an OM30 and an EOS30.

The OM30 is both small and light for an SLR, I bought it second hand over 20 years ago now, I don’t think I’ve put a film through it in over 5 or 6 years. The EOS30 is a lot newer of course and I used it up until I got my 20D, but likewise it’s remained unused since going digital…

So I might sent myself a challenge by putting a film through one of my old cameras and see how things turn out… have I lost the touch!

The other thing that I noticed that, with a fixed lens on the OM30 how bright the viewfinder image is!! With a lot of us using zoom lens these days with their restricted apertures, we forget what it is like to use a fixed focal length lens.