LIVEdigitally

I recently had a phone interview with Lou Lenzi, Sr. Vice President, Product Management with Audiovox Accessories and he gave me the statistic that 13 million homes in the US currently use an antenna to receive television signal to their main TV. Then there is another 6 million that use and antenna to receive signal to one or more of their extra TVs. Lenzi explained that people have TVs in the spare bedroom, basement, or out in the garage, all fall into this category. That means that come February 17, 2009, there will be about 13-16 million TVs that will stop working unless some actions are taken. Some of you are saying 13 million plus 6 million is 19 million, but there are some small markets that are not required to kill their analog signal.

For those of you that want answers to every digital TV questions, here are some resources. DTVanswers.com, DTVtransition.org, and here is a video created by CEA that explains everything. For everyone else, here are the basics.

There are 2 different OTA (over the air) TV broadcasts. NTSC (National Television System Committe) and ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee). There is no such thing as a HD antenna, all antennas can pick up the ATSC signal, or the NTSC for that matter, it is just that the rabbit ear antennas aren’t able to pick up a strong enough digital signal. Each of the signals need a tuner to correctly interpret the signal for the television.

Everyone that has an older TV with a rabbit ears antenna, will have a couple options. The first is to pony up the money and pay for cable or satellite service on the TV. If you want to keep on receiving free television, your next option is to purchase a newer TV that comes equip with a digital (ATSC) tuner. If you want to keep your old TV, you will need to purchase a converter box that has a digital tuner. With both of these free TV options you will also need to purchase an antenna that is built for the ATSC signal, and is strong enough to receive the signal in your location.

For all of the options above there are some pros and cons. First of all, anytime an antenna is used there is the possibility of what is called “drop off”. Meaning, if the signal drops too low for the tuner to display the TV picture, the picture freezes or skips. There is no fuzzy picture that happens, which is the case when the analog (NTSC) signal is not strong enough. If you don’t have the correct antenna for your location, this problem may occur many times during a show or game, and become very annoying. The big bonus of using an antenna for HDTV is that the OTA signal is uncompressed. So if you receive a clean signal with no drop offs, you will have the potential for the absolute best picture possible, pending your TV display. If you decide to go with cable or satelitte, you will receive a 100% uninterupted signal (unless you have Comcast, but thats another issue all together), but the picture could be highly compressed. You will also be paying a monthly fee, where as with the antenna, HDTV and/or converter box, you will just be paying a one time fee. Finally, most of the indoor antennas are bulky and pretty much the eye sore of you entertainment center. Enter the RCA ANT1500.

Front view of the RCA ANT1500	Front view of the RCA ANT1500 with DVD case for size reference
Top view of the RCA ANT1500 with DVD case for size reference	Back view of the RCA ANT1500 with DVD case for size reference

This new antenna from RCA is a compact, multi-directional, HD optimized antenna. With its small, form factor, you can lay it flat on top of entertainment center, hang it flat on the wall behind your TV, or in theory, stand it upright on a shelf.

Before anyone goes out and purchases an antenna to use with their digital tuner, they should check out AntennaWeb.org. Here you can type in your address to see what channels should be broadcasted in your area, and what type of antenna you should be able to use to receive them. After you find out what antenna you should be able to use, I would purchase one at a retailer with a good return policy, in case the antenna doesn’t work quite as well as you’d like.

I live in an apartment near O’Hare airport creating 2 factors that are big downsides for digital reception. AntennaWeb.org says that I should use a powered multi-directional antenna. I tested this ANT1500 with my ATI HD Wonder card in my PC, and a 24 in widescreen monitor. I loved how small and compact the antenna was, I was able to shove it in the corner, out of the way of all of my A/V gear. I just wish I could have kept the antenna in the corner out of the way, all of the time. In fact, I had to move the antenna between 2 different locations depending on the channel that I wanted to watch. I think if the antenna wasn’t hard wired with a 6 ft. coax cable, I would have been able to attach a longer cable, and find a single location farther than 6 ft away from my tuner, that would be able to receive all of the channels successfully. With the antenna in the correct location in order to get a good signal, I would still have “drop off” about 3-4 times in a 30 min program.

RCA ANT1500 Back Stand

Besides having a hardwired coax cable, the only other design flaw is the “stand” that comes with the antenna. As you can see, there is a C shaped metal attachment that goes into 2 holes at the bottom of back of the antenna. The only thing is that, the cable comes out of the bottom as well. There is no notch or anything for the antenna to safely avoid bending at an awkward angle, making the antenna look like it is ready to fall over. I think the stand should have been thought about better, or just removed from the package altogether.

After reporting my not so awesome reception to AudioVox, they went ahead and sent me a Zenith converter box, saying it should work better than my HD Wonder card. Using the converter box was super easy, I connected the antenna to the box, and RCA cables from the box to my video and audio. The box automatically scanned for channels and was able to display programming details. Again, I had the exact same problems, needing to move the antenna between the 2 different locations, and 3-4 “drop offs” per 30 min program. My apartment might be one of the worst scenarios when it comes to digital reception.

If you live in a location where a non-powered multi-directional antenna will receive most of your channels, I highly recommend this antenna. Its small form factor is a huge plus in the world of antennas, because most of them are so darn ugly, and HUGE. Example A, B, C, D and E. Again, I would recommend trying the antenna out in your setup before you throw away your receipt.

I know some of you might be saying, with all this hassle of signal, and “drop off” why would I even want to bother with this whole HD antenna deal? As mentioned before, the two positives are no monthly payments, and uncompressed HD quality. But the real question is, whether or not either of those two are worth it, if your signal drops out every so often, especially during the big game. If you can receive a 100% free, crystal clear signal, with limited “drop offs”, I would say it is, for sure worth it. This digital transition, can be as costly or as not so costly as you want it to be. Hopefully this information can help you make the best decisions.

Despite me writing a rather scathing commentary on the Kindle when it debuted, Amazon recently sent me a loaner to try out for a couple of weeks. Without a doubt, I will say I enjoyed using the Kindle in a variety of locales, and it’s a rather well-thought-out product (more eye-catching action photos are all at the bottom of this post). I’ll also state up front I feel it’s overpriced, the content (books and blogs) are also overpriced, and I still don’t believe books are in any danger of vanishing in the short term.

Let’s start with the good. The packaging is great, it has a very “book-y” feel to it, it’s very inviting, and also looks professional enough to go along with the price of the unit. The OOBE (out of box experience) was also well done, as the first “boot” of the Kindle had a nice “Welcome Jeremy” letter from Jeff Bezos (thought I’m pretty sure it wasn’t unique). While there are a few quirks to the user interface, the learning curve was fairly close to zero, I’d be surprised to see someone needing a lot of help to get started.

Browsing the Amazon store on “Whispernet” works great, I was able to easily find numerous lists of books that were interesting to me from a variety of criteria (most popular, newest, etc). There’s a well-done integration with my Amazon.com account, so I didn’t need to register anything new to pay for titles. Also, the download speed for content (books, web pages, etc) was much better than I anticipated, definitely fast enough to provide a decent experience.

Reading books was also quite pleasant. If you’ve never seen an e-ink interface, it’s much slower than LCD (think about a second per page – it’s definitely noticeable). That’s the con, the pro is that is looks very close to paper-like and uses almost no power. I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t change the font density or size, as it used a spacing that ended up making me feel like I was reading one of my 1-year-old’s jumbo books with 3 sentences per page. There’s also no backlighting (not even Indiglo), which I think is an essential feature for a 2nd Edition.

The Kindle is fairly light, and feels nice to hold in your hands. That said, it can be awkward to hold one-handed (ex: on the bus) and I think it should have a strap on the back so you can slide your palm into it without worrying about dropping it. The buttons click well, though I feel the keyboard is in the way a lot of the time, and think it could be better suited as a slide-out or other ‘hidden’ key setup. The primary navigation wheel is nicely responsive, though definitely has oddities in the on-screen menus.

Now for my short list of problems, and they have little to do with the gadget itself. First up it’s a half-closed system. I don’t like Amazon charging for blogs I want to read, especially when they are free on every other platform possible. Secondly is the price for books themselves. While $9.99 is a bargain compared to a $19.99 (or higher) new hardcover, it’s not great relative to $6.99 and less for softcover, and laughable next to used book prices. That plus the sticker price for the device itself and we’re well beyond yuppie territory. At current pricing I’d say the product is really only for those with ready supplies of disposable income.

While I believe the Kindle is probably one of the better e-book readers on the market, I am still (very) squeamish about the category. While it’s nice to have the ability to have hundreds of books with you on a long trip, it’s not nice to worry about dropping a Kindle in the bathtub (or the beach, pool, forest, or basically anywhere else). As the “all the books I want” argument tends to be the big point for those in favor of e-readers, I’ve truly never known that as a real issue. I’m an avid and fairly fast book reader, and even on my three-week honeymoon I didn’t run out of books on the trip, and I wasn’t exactly overburdened in my luggage.

Some specific product recommendations for a “2nd edition“:

• Allow me to customize the font size/weight (will really help users with poor eyesight)
• One word: backlight
• Redesign the front to have the keyboard hidden when not in use (slide-out?)
• Put a strap on the back of the reader that I can slide my hand into for comfort
• Automatically synchronize my wishlist from Amazon.com
• Ship the Kindle with samples of books that are currently popular
• Have the ability to auto-subscribe to certain book ‘feeds’ for sample delivery
• Offer a subscription model for all-you-can-read pricing
• Set a precedent with a peer-to-peer licensed and monetized “used eBook” system (use an open market for it, give a %age of the resale price back to the publisher. it’ll work, trust me)

In summary, I think the Kindle is a good product but trapped inside the wrong price points and business model around e-books. If you are like me, and buy most of your books used, it’s definitely going to seem like a ludicrously priced gadget. If, on the other hand, you buy two or more new hardcover books a month, it’s worth checking out (probably pays itself off in about a year or so). Overall the good user experience combined with the auto-download features with a huge library behind it absolutely make the Kindle a great e-reader. That said, I’m still opting for used books for my personal needs, and I’m still pretty bearish on the whole concept of e-readers.

And now… zany Kindle photos!

The HTC Mogul is a smartphone available on the Sprint network, which runs Windows Mobile 6 Professional. It is equipped will a full QWERTY slide-out keyboard, and a QVGA (240×320) touchscreen. The Mogul I’m using for review has the newest ROM upgrade which unlocked the GPS chip, and the EV-DO Rev-A data connection.
To get the new ROM update for your Mogul go here.

Listed are the rest of the phone’s important specs (taken from phonescoop.com)

Like all other WM devices this phone works best with the Microsoft Exchange server. It flawlessly integrates all your information over the air, without needing to connect to any computer, ever. It can receive emails the instant they are in your inbox, add dates and times of accepted calendar invites directly into your calendar app, and sync your contact and task listings. Users who are looking to get these tasks done quickly and effectively are the ones looking into the HTC Mogul. This device is very powerful but it isn’t for everyone, below are my opinions which should help you decide whether this smartphone is right for you.

Hardware-
The Mogul is a very tactile phone. It has 5 programmable hardware buttons, a 5-way directional pad, 2 hardware softkeys, a call and end button, a start button, 2 “OK” buttons, a navigational dial, a full QWERTY slide out keyboard, and a hardware WiFi on/off switch. The device feels like a rather good size for my hand. It couldn’t hurt if it was a little bit thinner, but it doesn’t feel overwhelmingly thick. The phone feels very sturdy, but it is a little on the heavy side. This might be a problem for someone with children that like to use their phone every once in a while. My other concern about the physical hardware is the super flimsily battery cover.

One of the best features of the hardware is its slide out keyboard. It has a spring loaded action, which causes it to snap open and closed, making a solid clicking sound. The keys themselves are spaced out very well and give good feedback when typing. There are also 2 indicator lights, located at the top, that illuminate when the caps or the function locks are activated. This is a cool feature that makes typing on this device, that much easier.

The one down side about having a slide out keyboard and no keypad on the face of the device is that it is extremely difficult to type with one hand. There is an onscreen keyboard that lets a user do so, but the keyboard that comes standard is so small you end up hitting the wrong letter half the time. There are 3rd party onscreen keyboards, but each of them has its own flaws and they don’t seamlessly integrate with every application. For those of you that text and drive, this phone isn’t for you. (disclaimer: don’t text and drive, it is very dangerous to take your eyes of the road for extended periods of time.)

OS-
Windows Mobile 6 Professional is overwhelmingly decent right out of the box. It is a multi-tasking OS, meaning more than one application can run at a time. Due to only 64MB of RAM, the OS tends to lag a little between clicks and app changes. When a user is done with an application, they need to be sure they hit the “X”, to close the app, or else it will stay open and drain memory resources. This is a change that was added with the newest ROM update. On some occasions the phone requires a reboot, in order to function at normal speeds again. These lag and speed issues are ones that a user must learn to live with, or else they will find themselves looking to get a different phone, fast.

User Interface-
The user interface for WM6 is out dated; it takes its design cues from Windows XP. While one can accomplish all of the same tasks on its default setting, WM6 doesn’t start to shine until you step into the realm of customizing it and making it your own. Here are some before and after shots of my home screen.

Mogul Default Home Screen	Mogul Custom Home Screen

As you can see on the left I have the default home screen with some basic information that a user needs. On the right is my customized home screen with a nice big clock along with email, text message, and missed call buttons. Below that are 3 big tabs that give me access to, this home screen, a weather screen, and a quick launch screen with shortcuts to 9 most used programs. Since the Mogul has 5 programmable hardware buttons, with this home screen plug-in, once my phone is turned on and unlocked, I am no more than 2 click away from 20 different programs. Which makes navigating much faster than the default home screen.

This home screen plug-in was actually taken from the HTC Touch and adapted to work on other HTC WM6 smartphones. A web community called XDA-Developers, made this and other HTC apps conversions possible.

The home screen is only the beginning of the modification I have made to my WM6 Mogul UI. I installed threaded text messaging, an iPhone-like contacts app, a new skin for the phone screen, a new system font, a single click app that changes my phone from ring to vibrate, and an HTC on screen keyboard. The great thing about WM6 on an HTC smartphone, is that with the xda-developers community and other sites like it, there are endless possibilities of the looks and applications you can add to your smartphone.

Must have app-
The absolute best application that every owner needs to add to this phone is Google Maps. Since it has a GPS chip you can use the app to find your current location, which takes about 10-15 sec. Once it has that, you can search your area for whatever business or address you are looking for. If you like, you can then get directions from your current GPS location to the location you just searched for. With this app it’s truly amazing how fast you can find places and get directions from your current location.

Highlights-
-The full QWERTY slide out keyboard, gives users a rather quick and easy way to type on this device. The downfall is the lack of a quality onscreen keyboard for the times that a user would want to use one hand to type.

-Over the air syncing makes this phone a much needed tool for user working at a business with the Microsoft Exchange server.

-This phone begs to be customized, therefore if a user doesn’t have the time or skill to do so, their user experience won’t be at its optimal level.

-The ability to multi-task on this phone lets user accomplish multiple things at a time. The downfall is that its RAM is limited and causes the phone to lag when too many things are running.

-Google Maps with the updated ROM that unlocks the GPS chip, makes this phone a valuable tool for traveling business users.

Final thoughts-
Overall I think that the HTC Mogul is a great smartphone with tremendous power. This device is perfect for business users that do a decent amount of traveling. The Mogul is also a good fit for users that enjoy tweaking out their phones and spending time to customize them. Casual and beginner smartphone users, might find this phone a little too overwhelming.

Hopefully I have given you enough information for you to decide whether or not this smartphone could be the right smartphone for you. If you still need more information, I recommend, like I do with every smartphone, try it out before you commit to purchasing it. Since every service provider has a 30 day return policy, anyone can sign up for a new phone, return it within the 30 days, and only pay for the service used in that time period. This will help you know for sure you like the phone before you port your phone number and/or get locked into a 2 year agreement.

I get a lot of accessories and other doodads that don’t merit formal reports at Current Analysis, but are interesting nonetheless. Here’s a quick rundown of five iPhone cases:

DLO HipCase ($34.99) – this was one of the first iPhone cases on the market, and easily one of the most attractive – provided you don’t mind the wide “eyeglass case” style. The leather case protects the phone reasonably well, though the corners are left exposed. I managed to dent – but not break – my first iPhone sample when it dropped to the floor in this case and hit precisely at the corner near the headphone jack. The big downside to this case is that the belt clip is permanently attached, so it is awkward to slip into a pocket instead of perching it on your hip.

DLO Jam Jacket ($24.99) – this one looks like a simple silicone overlay, and it is, though there’s a twist around back. Instead of a belt clip, there’s a hard silicone protrusion which is used to wrap your headphone cord around, and even indentations for inserting Apple’s stock earbuds. There are a bunch of problems with this case: it doesn’t protect the screen in any way. It doesn’t have a belt clip, so if you want to use it that way, you can’t. Worse, if you want to stick the iPhone in your pocket, that’s difficult, too, because the cord winding thing sticks out. Finally, if you don’t use Apple’s stock ear buds – I don’t – then they won’t fit in the spots cut out for them on the rear protrusion, either. If it fits your needs perfectly, great. But I can’t generally recommend this one.

Griffin Elan Holster ($29.99) – Griffin has a bunch of different cases for the iPhone, and this one is one of the simplest. It is a leather sleeve open on one of the short ends and exposed along the sides for access to the volume buttons and ringtone on/off switch. Fit is pretty snug, which is a good thing if you want to take advantage of the case’s flexibility: it can be used with a removable belt clip in either vertical or horizontal orientation (if it wasn’t a snug fit, the iPhone would fall out when you have it in horizontal mode). So, vertical belt case? Check. Horizontal belt case? Check. Pocket case without a clip? Check. Screen protection? Check. It is attractive, but not as attractive as the DLO HipCase, so if flexibility matters more to you than fashion, Griffin’s Elan Holster is an easy recommendation.

OtterBox iPhone Defender ($49.99) – the Defender series of cases from OtterBox are semi-rugged, designed to survive jostling and moisture, but not sledgehammers and swimming pools. The case is built in layers: first, there’s a hard plastic shell (which splits in half to insert/retrieve the iPhone itself) which has a “patented thin membrane” that covers the iPhone’s screen. Surprisingly, I found that the membrane does not interfere with usage of the phone at all. On top of the hard plastic shell, you then put on a silicone jacket, which includes plugs for all the ports so that moisture can’t enter them when they are closed, but headphone jacks and USB cords can be used when they are open. Then, the whole contraption fits into a belt clip made of even thicker hard plastic with a rotating hinge so that the clip can be worn vertically or horizontally. I did not deliberately drop test the iPhone in the OtterBox case because I’m fairly certain Apple wants at least one of its loaners returned from me unharmed, but I used this case for months and came away extremely impressed with its well thought out design.

There are a few drawbacks, however. First, the case does add some bulk to the iPhone, particularly when the belt clip is used; that is to be expected. All the iPhone’s controls are accessible, save one: the ringer on/off switch cannot be used when the iPhone is in the case; this is a minor, but significant loss. The biggest problem is that getting the iPhone in and out of the case is a nightmare, and when in the case, the iPhone doesn’t fit in its white stand or in any of three or four iPod speaker docks I tried. It can be synced using the USB cable itself without the stand, so if you don’t ever dock your iPhone even that won’t be an issue.

H2O audio iFR Sport Combo ($29.99) – H2O Audio is known for cases and headphones that are fully waterproof, but the iFR case/armband combination is merely water resistant, much like the OtterBox case. Unfortunately, it is not nearly as well designed as the competition. It is far bigger and bulkier, and looks more like the fully ruggedized waterproof cases H2O Audio sells for the iPod (those cases are advertised as being designed for taking an iPod surfing which justifies their size). On the iFR, there is a clear hard plastic front piece that protects the screen which must be flipped out of the way to gain access to the iPhone’s controls underneath, which then completely exposes the iPhone to your fingers and to moisture. In practice, the flip-away cover makes it very difficult to answer the phone quickly, and you cannot surf the Internet outside during a light drizzle, never mind go into real surf. The armband is almost comically large. On the other hand, inserting and extracting the iPhone is a relatively simple and quick affair compared to the OtterBox. I have been quite impressed with some of H2O Audio’s ingenious waterproof cases, but I cannot recommend this one.

About Avi: At Current Analysis I focus on testing mobile devices and advising clients how competitive they are in the market. None of the products I’m recommending here come from clients, and I do not own stock in any of the companies. I do not pay for review units, and while most devices I test get sent back (whether the companies want them back or not – I need to get them out of my house), I have kept some of the items listed below for… lets call it a long term loan.

Intuit’s Quicken Online purports to offer a simple, all-in-one control panel that lets you easily monitor and manage your monthly finances. For the basics, it succeeds, but users who need complete control may find themselves wanting more, especially for $2.99 per month.

What’s your problem? I use four different sites to manage my finances online: one for my brokerage accounts, another for my 401(k), one for my credit cards, and yet another for my checking and savings accounts. Because 90% of my online financial activities requires nothing more than a quick balance check and a look at recent transactions, I’m on the hunt for an easy, secure application that I can use to aggregate the information without having to hop from site to site to site. I’d also love integrated budgeting features, so that I can compare my spending vs. personal goals.

Enter Intuit’s Quicken Online, which I first came across through Lifehacker’s personal finance tips (full disclosure: I have nothing to do with Lifehacker). The promise was there – a simple, one-stop interface that lets you easily monitor all of your financial accounts, and a breakdown of your expenditures in a monkey-couldn’t-get-confused-by-it pie chart. I’d used Intuit’s online TurboTax for years to handle my tax returns, so Quicken Online also offered something that is an absolute must for any type of bank account aggregator: security that I can trust (I hope).

As the video on the Quicken Online site promises, setup was a snap. Sign up for the 30-day free trial ($2.99 per month after that), enter your bank names and login information, and the application automatically retrieves the last 90 days’ worth of transactions. Once all your data is available, you’re presented with the home dashboard, which features the most basic look at your finances: three boxes representing your income, your expenditures, and the differential:

Confirmation of my profligate spending, complete with pastel Web 2.0 gradients. We’re off to a good start.

The dashboard also provides a quick look at all your account balances, broken out by bank, and a customizable list of bill alerts, which sends a “pay your bills” reminder to either an email address or mobile device via SMS.

The site features two other main categories: My Accounts, which lets you add, remove, and otherwise manage your account settings (which we will totally ignore for now), and Track Spending, which is where you’ll spend most of your time.

Track Spending offers the aforementioned pie chart, which breaks your spending down into both pre-assigned and user-created categories (such as rent, travel, paycheck, etc.). You can also view all the transactions that contribute to each category.

The pie chart breaks down your expenses by type…

And the menus allow you to drill down in each category…

Which lets you see how you spent your money. By the way, if you’re ever at the Atlantis, try the Leap of Faith water slide. Just trust me on this.

Quicken tries to automatically assign your imported transactions to one of its pre-defined categories and, for the most part, it does a good job. It did initially list a number of transactions as undefined, such as my monthly rent payment, but you can easily reassign those wayward expenditures and deposits to their proper categories.

The one big gotcha I noticed with the initial setup is that Quicken Online, in Costanza-like fashion, double dips expenses – it interpreted both the purchases I put on my credit card and the payments that I made from my bank to my credit card companies as expenses, so it looked like I had spent twice what I had actually paid. The fix involved a transaction type called “Transfer Out,” which you use to classify a payment that shouldn’t count towards your total expenditures. Fixing the double dip was the most difficult part of setting up the account, and it took a total of about five minutes.

Since setup, managing the application has required very little maintenance – switch a random uncategorized transaction here and there, make sure that my bank’s web site allows Quicken to refresh account balances, and that’s it. I can say with some reliability how much I’m spending on what, and whether or not I’m hitting that magic threshold of living within my means.

For support, users have access to the Quicken Online blog and User Community forums. The blog is updated regularly, but the forums tend to be filled with unanswered questions, and aren’t much use. You can also contact Intuit support directly.

Sounds like the perfect solution! So far, so good. But Quicken Online isn’t perfect. As an anal control freak, one of the biggest problems I had with the service is that you can’t split transactions; that is, designate multiple purposes for a single expense. For people with mortgages, who need to differentiate interest from capital for tax purposes, or for people who just want to say “I split that $100 ATM withdrawal among dinner, drinks and White Castle at 3 AM,” this lack of functionality could be a deal breaker.

For $2.99/month, I also would have liked even rudimentary budgeting features, such as alerts when my monthly spending in a specific category reaches a pre-determined limit. These shortcomings are especially problematic for Intuit because competitor mint.com offers split transactions, comparable security and, most importantly for many people who are looking for a cheap budget/finance tool, the service is free (although it is ad-supported, which Quicken is not).

So what’s the bottom line? Quicken Online does what it says it does: it presents you with an easy-to-read view of your financial transactions. Setup is easy, maintenance isn’t a problem, and if all you want to do is get the bottom line, Quicken Online does it. The only reason I have a hard time recommending it is the price: even at $2.99/month, the service is overpriced for what it does.

Competitors offer everything that Quicken Online does, plus personal budgeting features (a feature that Quicken’s blog claims is coming soon), and it’s free. Quicken Online is better than manually updating a spreadsheet to track your spending, and easier than using the full offline version of Quicken, but if all you’re looking for is something to give you a quick overview of your finances, and maybe some basic planning functions, you might be just as satisfied somewhere that doesn’t ding you with a monthly fee.

The epic stories of early reviews of Grand Theft Auto IV are already legend: stalwart game reviewers, shipped to hotels in undisclosed locations, are given nearly a week of time with the most hotly anticipated title of the year. They spend dozens of sleepless hours inflicting upon themselves the sins of protagonist Niko Bellic and the depraved Liberty City.

When they emerge, tired and unwashed, and with a nagging feeling that their next ride is only a broken window and a couple of twisted wires away, they rush to compile glowing homilies to their week-long captor. The results, Legions of perfect scores, could fuel a multi-year study on Stockholm Syndrome. Were the scores on metacritic posted in the same way that the Boston Red Sox use to update their scoreboard at Fenway Park, we’d be suffering a national shortage of green placards that read “100 OUT OF 100!”*

“These scores – you make them good, OK?”
(Source materials from mlb.com and gamespot)

To their credit, and I speak as a veteran with 28 hours of play time and a 42% completion rate, the glowing reviews aren’t just hyperbole. Grand Theft Auto IV presents by far the most immersive environment ever rendered in a video game. There are few other gaming experiences that I can recall that had characters this well-written, a story this clever, and an option to just putz around that, in many cases, is a lot more fun than the actual storyline.

For those who haven’t made the purchase, it’s natural to be skeptical of the unprecedented outpouring of love for GTA IV. There’s good reason for it, because as great as Grand Theft Auto IV can be, there are plenty of things that players, sucked in by the lure of the golden reviews, should know before hopping off the boat with Niko. Disclaimer: these should not be considered reasons NOT to buy the game, but just a friendly “heads-up” to my fellow gamers who may not quite know what they’re getting into. Minor, non-story related spoilers abound:

• Do you have a fear of commitment? There’s a geek syndrome that I call “Mulderscullyphobia,” the fear of getting trapped by the latest X-Files-ripoff TV series. The new show usually features a massive conspiracy/mystery that you KNOW you’ll have to follow every episode, whether the show runs for one season or ten, because once you start, you NEED to find out what happens. GTA IV inspires similar fear. Even though most reviewers say the game will take 40 hours, plan on a lot longer, especially if you’re new to the series. At four hours a night (you don’t have a job or family, right?), you’ll be in for at least two solid weeks of playing. And trust me, you’ll be stuck – this game is the epitome of “just one more mission, and then I’ll come to bed.”


Daddy, please don’t play the hooker game again tonight!
(Source materials from www.azmortgageguru.com)

• The immersive, expansive world is not immediately all available: Like with most GTA games, the most tantalizing locations are initially out of reach – all the bridges heading west are barricaded and protected by the Liberty City PD. I tried to run the barricade, and they called out the Special Forces. I tried to sneak through (hint: get your car on the El train track), and they called in Special Forces. I even tried to swim across the equivalent of the East River, and they called the Coast Guard to take me out. You’ll be able to cross eventually, but not until you put in 13 – 14 hours.
• You’re going to spend a lot of time getting places: It’s Grand Theft Auto, and it follows the standard Grand Theft Auto scheme: get a mission, drive across the map to the mission, fail mission, retry mission. After the sixth time around, you’ll manage to succeed, and then drive all the way back to where you started. Even with a built-in GPS map, it gets very tedious very quickly.
• But what about my needs?: Your virtual criminal buddies are all like insecure high school girls: pay them enough attention, and they’ll love you. Turn down requests to play darts a couple of times, and all of a sudden you’re out of the club. And since it’s in your best interest to keep them happy, you get to spend plenty of time with awkward bowling, darts, and pool simulators. And that doesn’t even include managing your in-game love life, which requires constant calls, dates, and wardrobe changes (my real life significant other’s favorite part of the game, incidentally). Nothing gets you in the gangster mood quite like choosing between the Russian hat and the Army hat.


No darts? How about pool? Bowling? What about a strip club? Why won’t you LOVE me?
(Source materials from amazon.com)

• Didn’t I just do this mission?: Kill drug dealers/mobsters/bikers in a shootout that becomes disgustingly easy when you find somewhere to take cover. Chase someone in a car (or motorcycle), and shoot him. Perform a coup de grâce on a major mob boss. Lather, rinse, repeat.
• How am I supposed to finish the game when I can both watch TV and surf the internet in the freaking game?: I was even clicking on links in the spam, for God’s sake.

If you haven’t bought Grand Theft Auto IV, and think that you can handle the time commitment and repetition, then it offers the best action and story combo since Bioshock. Just don’t be blinded by the brilliant gleam of all those perfect 100s – you’re going to have to work to get everything the game has to offer.

*For those that notice, yes, I know that metacritic adjusts everyone’s score to a scale that tops out 100, even if the reviewing site only rates on a scale of 1 – 10 or 1 – 5.

Editor’s Note: this is written by Dan Rubin, one of LIVEdigitally’s new reviewers.  I’ll have a “welcome” post up soon enough, but in case you miss that one, welcome Dan!!

Here’s the detailed account of Ed’s journey with the Vaio.

The above video should give you a pretty solid understanding, but if not, here’s the background:

1. Had a Vaio, it was great, it got stolen.
2. Bought a new Vaio ($2500 with insurance check), it ran Vista, it was terrible.
3. Bought a MacBook 10 weeks later ($1100), it’s been great.
4. Mocked the Vaio many many times until Ed Bott approached me, interested in seeing if he could fix its problems
5. He did, it works great.

My thoughts on the matter, in no particular order:

• It’s not Vista per se, it’s the PC manufacturers who are failing to deliver consumer-ready products. If you have either an IT department or an Ed Bott, you can do fine. If you don’t, you’re in a heap of problems.
• PC manufacturers should massively separate the “home/consumer” group from the business groups. Further, there is a huge opportunity for a PC company to make a finely tuned, consumer-ready Vista laptop.
• Making a great laptop requires a minimal quantity of options. For reference, call Apple. If the MacBook had 44,000 possible combinations, it would be just as bad as any off-the-shelf PC notebook.
• This is a very classic Innovator’s Dilemma situation – “the market” is telling PC companies they want options, but the reality is they want easy to use, reliable, affordable computers.

Until a PC company follows any of this advice, Apple will continue to gain market share, and here’s why: Virtually all MacBook users today are happily recommending others to try MacBooks, with a predictable, reliable recommendation. PC users cannot as easily do the same. I had a great Vaio, then a terrible one. I’ve used Toshibas before (great – in the 90s), a Gateway (wasn’t bad), and 3 Dells now (one good, one bad, one ugly). But they are all vastly different.

Thanks and hats off to Mr. Ed Bott for putting in so much time with me. I’ve learned a lot from this process, and I sincerely recommend to any PC company who is listening: go spend some time talking to Ed and take his advice. If you really want to stop the slide (and trust me, the slide is happening even if the numbers you look at today seem like rounding errors), you need to get experts like him to better explain the consumer PC needs of today.

Just finished replacing my stolen hardware with the brand-spankin new Canon SD850is.  I had actually purchased the SD800is last week, but just before breaking the 15-day-return seal from Best Buy, I did a little homework to discover the 850 was showing up “mid-June”.  And with my typical “must-have-it-now” obsessive nature, I started calling CompUSA, Best Buy, Circuit City, and the local Wolf Camera every day until last night.

It’s a 8-megapixel point-and-shoot camera with 4x optical zoom, facial recognition, and image stabilization technologies.  In other words, it’s pretty much the top point-and-shoot camera on the market right now, and while I’m rarely one to get “the best”, I love the Canon SD line (ever since the SD100 I had, which was, also, stolen), and I figured I might as well pick up the latest & greatest since insurance is covering it anyway.  Not to mention the fact that it is the technical replacement for the SD700is I used to have (the SD800is is technically a separate line, as it features a wideangle lens instead).

So far, the picture quality looks great, and like my old 700, it’s a very fast, very easy to use camera.  The speed in this case matters, as the total time from pushing power until taking a picture is under 2 seconds, and in continuous mode it seems to get up to about 4-5 shots per second.  Not like my first-gen Kodak digital camera, with 3+ seconds bootup plus a good second or two just to click and shoot. 

Eight megapixels is a grand amount for me, I can do all sorts of wonderful cropping and whatnot and still have printable photos.  Like the 700is, this unit also has 4x zoom, and again, I’m very impressed with the quality.  This is probably the point in the review where die-hard digital camera aficionados are rolling their eyes, so if that’s you, head on over to DPreview.com for a much more technical, in-depth overview.

Also new to the 850 is a lot more options in the menus.  First up, the vestigial “Send-to-printer” button is now programmable – I set it to go straight into movie mode.  Next, there’s a lot of categorization, basic editing, and red-eye features built-into the unit – I haven’t tried them all out yet, but it seems like it’s fairly powerful, yet in Canon-style, not too complicated to use.

Last but not least is the continued inclusion of a viewfinder, which is really handy on very bright days.  I don’t mind sacrificing a little screen real estate for it.  I do really like the facial recognition technology.  If you haven’t seen it in action, it puts little white boxes around every face it “sees” and uses them for autofocus.  Very cool.  More of my pix are on flickr. So, to summarize:

Pros

• Lots of features AND…
• Easy to use
• 8 megapixels
• 4x optical zoom
• Fast shutter speed

Cons

• Pricey
• One of the larger point-and-shoot cameras

If you have $399 to shell out, I definitely recommend the SD850is.  If you want to save a little, pick up a 700 or 800 (although I’d avoid the 750, 900 or 1000 – terrible naming system) – you can still find them in plenty of spots (all links are to Amazon product pages).

For most of us, Jeremy’s recent post about the wires in his apartment made us think of a drawer, closet or box somewhere that looks similar (unless you’re Dave Mathews, the other one. I hear his apartment looks like Snakes on a Plane, but with wires … and I guess no plane. So basically, just a lot of wires in an apartment.  But you can see how I got there, right?).  My wife is a lot less tolerant of snakes wires than Jeremy’s, so I’ve been having fun with a couple of Bluetooth products from Jabra.

The first product I’m trying is the BT620s (with A125s adapter) which enable you to use a wireless headset with your iPod.  This means no stylish white-headphones to show off that you stand out from the crowd by having an iPod (which is so 2004 anyway).

In my opinion, the main benefit of having a wireless headset is it frees you from being tethered to the device. Instead, throw your iPod in your backpack or put it in a drawer at your desk. You can still control all the important functions with your headset (volume, skip track, pause, etc.).  If you have a bluetooth phone it even lets you pick up a phone call with the same headset (there’s a mini-microphone on one of the earpieces).  I’ve been working in a cube-farm for ages and am used to plugging headphones into my computer. In a “Darwin Awards” kind of way, once a year, I pull away from the desk and have the earbuds ripped out of my ears.  Going wireless means I can do some Office Space spins in my cube with full freedom. Ah, simple pleasures.

I’d love to say that configuring the units was simple, but I can’t.  Jabra optimized towards minimalism in terms of buttons and action-feedback on the unit so much so that you have to actually consult the manual just to get started (I really did. I had to!). For example, they define pushing a button in three ways:

1. Push and release.
2. Push for a couple seconds, then release.
3. Push and hold.

Each one of these causes the blue LED to blink at different rates although it isn’t exactly clear which speed of blinking lights applies to which state. Combine that with multiple buttons combinations and it gets even more confusing. For example, the unit has a blue-blinking LED around each earpiece when the unit is “paired” with the transmitter. When you’re wearing the headset you look like something out of “pimp my ride” and generally get stared at in public (more than normal, I mean).  Natch, I wanted to turn this off which meant “Push #3 on left and right center-ear button simultaneously”. Not exactly intuitive considering the many combinations of options of Jabra-Push-Types (see above) and the fact that there are two buttons on the headset and 1 on the A125s iPod unit.
 
I’ve used the Jabra BT620s headset on planes, trains (Bart) and automobiles buses with great success. The only challenge I’ve found, besides the “Pimp Your Head” glares on the 41 Union, is that when you turn your head the bluetooth cuts out. This is true not only when I put the ipod in my backpack, but even if I have it in my pocket on the right-hand-side (as it says in the manual. See, I told you I read it.).  You’re probably asking, “who needs to turn their head.” I know. I live a crazy life. To be clear on this point: it only happens when my iPod is in my pocket, not if it’s on my desk, and the sound does come right back about a half second later if I turn straight again.

Overall I’m very happy with the headset. It frees me from untangling my iPod earphones and I can throw my iPod in my bag and control everything I need without missing a call.  It’s not exactly the ideal setup for me personally to use long-term, but I know that my issues don’t necessarily reflect everyone elses.

The only major downside to the vision of wireless is: you don’t really get rid of wires, you just transfer them. Now I have a charger for my adaptor that plugs into my iPod and a charger for the headset.  In essence, I’ve reduced the wires I carry around with me, but haven’t solved the wire problem in my apartment. In fact, it made it worse.

Oh, and when writing this, Jeremy asked me to also summarize who is the target market for the BT620s. Here’s my bulleted list:

• Those few people that have iPods

As an aside, my prediction is that the next gen of iPods to come out (around the time of iPhone) will have Bluetooth embedded.

Amazon links for BT620s and A125s.

I try not to just gush about products I like, because just about everything has a fault somewhere. Sometimes however, I use something that I find is leaps and bounds better designed than others in its class. Some of my absolute favorite gadgets in recent memory include Sonos, TiVo series 1 (because 1 was ahead of its time and 2 and 3 are both good, but not awe-inspiring), Slingbox (ok, not fair, I’m biased, I admit it completely), my first generation Toshiba Tecra laptop, and now, the Pacific Design Ruckus Laptop Backpack. I like it so much that I made a video showing off its capabilities (running time 2:53):

Some highlights of why I think this bag’s so great:

• It’s a comfortable backpack with enough room to fit all the stuff I carry around frequently.
• The laptop area is sectioned off from the rest of the bag, which simplifies removing my computer when I need it (really nice touch for going through airport security).
• Lots of sectioned pockets for things like: iPod, cell phone, sunglasses, business cards, pens, extra cables, etc.
• Special pouch just for the laptop’s AC adapter.
• Stylish enough (for me) that I can carry it casually, yet still walk into a business setting and not feel like a goofball (other than for obvious reasons).

As far as laptop backpacks go, the Ruckus Laptop Backpack is my #1 pick, and I don’t see anything taking it’s place anytime soon. I do have a new messenger bag to try out, but that’s a whole ‘nother category in my opinion. So for $69.95, you can pick one up here, because it’s most definitely LD Approved!

Intro
In 1999 when I cofounded Mediabolic, we had a vision of the “connected home” that we pitched all over the world. In 2000, I first started hearing (and using) the phrase “THIS is the year of the Digital Home” (yes, in all-caps). I’ve heard that phrase every year since, but have yet to see the vision come even close to reality. So when I saw the first demo of NETGEAR’s Digital Entertainer HD at CES 2007, I was fairly impressed, and began pestering them to try it day-in, day-out. With my current role as the company’s current guest blogger, I got exactly that – early access to play with the EVA8000 (which formally launched earlier this week).

Unfortunately, I got my unit with less than 10 hours before I hopped on a flight to the East Coast, but like any good geeky blogger would do, I spent about half the night playing with it. Not only that, I spent most of that time videoing my efforts, and edited it down to about 20 minutes (most of which shows the interaction with the device, it’s GUI, etc). The videos are available on YouTube (in 3 parts, because of their filesize limitation) and you can watch them here (for people in RSS readers, here are direct links to parts 1, 2, and 3):

Product Details
For those of you who don’t want to watch the video, here’s a quick summary of the main EVA8000 features:

• Connects to your TV and your home network
• Streams music, photos, and videos from connected PCs as well as from the Internet
• Support for numerous video formats, and stream quality is up to 1080p HDTV resolution
• Works with YouTube, Flickr, and BitTorrent content, and can display RSS feeds
• Networked DVR (“TiVo-like”) features to stream live TV from PCs with TV tuner cards
• Makes a mean bowl of tomato soup

Pretty simple and straightforward, eh?

The product retails for $399, which is probably high in the long-term, but for now is a decent price point. Since we’re still in such an early adopter timeframe for digital home products, I don’t think there is a real urgency to focus on the mass market. Further, if you consider the pricing on HD/BluRay DVD players, it really fits in pretty well (especially since the amount of content it can play is staggering). Obviously sub-$300 prices would be ideal, but, as someone who comes from the other side of the field, I understand exactly why it’s priced this way. Also, don’t forget that it’s always possible to have a sale, but never possible to raise a price…

Using the Digital Entertainer HD
Onto the EVA8000 itself. I liked the user interface (GUI) in that it’s simple and navigates quickly (much faster than, for example a MovieBeam or Comcast HD-DVR menu). If you’ve ever used a TiVo or Media Center PC, you shouldn’t have any problem getting it up and running. The installation is also quite simple, and the unit has all the important outputs (HDMI, SPDIF, and optical audio) as well as the less-important-but-probably-necessary-ones (component, composite, and stereo audio). For connectivity it has built in wireless 802.11g (with support for all the security formats – excellent), Ethernet and a couple of USB ports as well.

The setup went mostly smoothly (although I think I found a weird bug in the HDMI settings, but that’s a minor thing), and it was able to find my network, get online, download an update, and find my networked hard drive with me just following along with the remote. This is very important people – I didn’t have to install any software, drivers, or anything, and was able to get my music, photos, and videos all streaming in a matter of minutes.

There was one exception to the above: if you want to watch YouTube videos, you do need to have the PC software installed. Furthermore, please remember that I already have a properly configured networked drive (Maxtor Shared Storage Plus) streaming music to my Sonos, so I didn’t have to adjust any settings. If you haven’t ever streamed media on your home network before, this might take you a little longer, and you may need to use the PC software.

Regarding media playback performance for a moment. I looked at quite a few photos, and I didn’t really feel they were being displayed at the maximum resolution possible. This could be a trick of the eyes, but I was expecting the pictures to look “HD-like” since they are all resolutions of 720p (at a minimum), so I’ll have to look into this further to see if it was just user error or if the box can’t display them at full resolution. Music playback was spot-on, with only a minor delay between songs. Again, I need to dive deeper to understand the feature set around queuing music, making playlists, and performance with huge collections, but when I selected “play something” from my 15,000-song MP3 (and WMA) collection, it did exactly that. Last up is video – I didn’t have a chance to really put the HD features to a test, but will do that next week. The videos I played were in a range of formats, and the highest bitrate I used was a 2Mbps WMV clip, which looked perfect (yes, even wirelessly). I am curious to see how it stands up once I get the 6+Mbps videos going, but I don’t have any reasons to doubt its potential there.

One key set of features with the EVA8000 is its ability to act as an extension of a PC with a TV tuner card. This means you can have a PC in one room of the house and stream its live/recorded TV to the living room. As a Slingbox owner, this wasn’t something I needed personally, but if you do have a TV Tuner and use Orb or another service, you should look into the Digital Entertainer HD. Also, the hardware was designed to support multiple Entertainers on the same network, and even have them control each other (there’s actually a whole suite of “Follow Me” features that I missed out on since I only had the single unit). Naturally, I wasn’t able to try any of these features myself, so I’ll hope to come back and revisit in the future.

One ding to the product is in the PC software. While it was easy to install and seems to have a pretty low impact to performance, it did create a whole new “sound card” in my computer. This means Windows thinks there is another audio output, and it threw off a couple of programs until I realized it had happened. I didn’t see any way to disable this on installation, so once you’ve completed setup, you might want to double-check your PC’s audio settings.

I really enjoyed the integration with both YouTube and Flickr. I was browsing through my own content in just a few minutes (you can use the remote control’s 10-key for text entry the same way you use your cell phone’s keypad). While I couldn’t quite navigate the collections and all the settings both services offered, the EVA8000 is remote upgradeable (I’ve already gone through one upgrade process – worked fine), so I’m sure the folks at NETGEAR can react and add new options dwn the road. The unit also is compatible with RSS feeds and has a few built-in offerings, including some weather features that were quite nice (even a snow report for the Tahoe crowds). I didn’t try the BitTorrent services, since I am not a user (believe it or not, I’ve never ‘Torrented).

Conclusion
If you skipped the videos and just read the text, you missed half the story, so here are (again) links to parts 1, 2, and 3. Now Apple TV is coming soon (possibly within days or hours), and the Xbox 360 has a lot of personal media services as well. I like the EVA8000 against Apple specifically because it can play so many different file formats and is focused on open services, while Apple’s will have a much narrower set and is a completely closed platform. It seems like everyone’s utterly ceded control of music to them, I sure hope it doesn’t happen again in the living room. With products like the Digital Entertainer HD, it’s good to see they have a pretty strong set of competitors.

Overall, the product impressed me (a lot more than I was expecting – no knock to NETGEAR, but I’ve just seen so many similar products that were just terrible in the past). Perfect? No, but I’ve yet to see a single product in the “connected home” that is. The interface was clean and simple, and the unit performed as it should. A few nice bells and whistles of Internet content services did a great job rounding out the personal media streaming features. $399 is a little high (it’s $349 on Amazon), but it’s also the only game in town with both full 1080p support and the built-in integration with YouTube content, all delivered direct to the boob tube.

I really have to dive in even deeper to understand the full spectrum of features the unit offers, and figure out which ones I like/dislike, but most importantly – the product’s basic value proposition is definitely delivered in a good way. With the feature set I’ve seen so far, it is a very strong contender (quick and simple setup as well as HD streaming is a huge factor there). So if you are looking to find a way to play your digital videos on your TV, stream your MP3s to your stereo, and bring some Web media services straight to the living room, the EVA8000 is a solid option for you.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, I am working on a consulting project with NETGEAR, but this is of no bearing to this review. Furthermore, my Guest Blogger status merely granted me access to a unit, I was given free reign to write the review as I saw fit.

Overall

Moving from a Nokia 9500 to a Nokia N80 was as a tough choice.

The Nokia 9500 packed everything I ever wanted from a mobile office, with Fax, E-mail, programmable OS, Word processing/Spreadsheet, Calendar and PC suite, through either Bluetooth, Infra Red or WiFi connection. Heck, you could probably even use it to control a guided missle.

So what else could Nokia pack into their phones, in this day and age?…… Absolutely Nothing, you think?

But then they realised, “Hey! Let’s have all the above features, and more! Into a smaller device.”

The Nokia N80 comes with pretty much every function the Nokia 9500 had, Smaller Form Factor – Full QWERTY Keyboard = N80.

What’s in the Box?

From an Australian stock box kit comes the phone, battery, CD, manuals, stereo headphones, DKU-2 sync cable, charger and 32 MB MiniSD card.

Appearance?

The N80 from the overall shell, isn’t housed by a cheap plasticky feel, however is anodized at the front in either Silver or Black (I actually wanted the Black version, but due to a mix up from a reseller I ended up with a Telstra branded Silver one.) The silver looks good, but I recommend you becareful and stay away from any “Service Provider Branded” Firmware-d phone.

From an overall form factor perspective, the slider design isn’t a bad idea as a clamshell would make it look fat and clunky. The keypad is awesomely gripped for fast smsing traction. The chrome inserts definately give a needed accent to the keypad area. The High Resolution screen is amazing, it is bright and vibrant and reasonably sized.

Top slide consists of 8 buttons in total, a center navigation key, 2 selection keys, a call and end key, quick message settings, menu, a cool fast access menu and clear.

The terminals on the bottom are exposed like the 8 series phones, and power is now changed to a very thin connection rather than the standard nokia fat power plug. However a converter is given to use backward-compatible with old nokia chargers.

Features?

There are two cameras, a 3 Megapixel with flash and auto censor on the rear, and a 3G video call camera on the front. You can access both cameras through the Camera function. This is the cool part, when you hold down the “Snap” button on the side of the camera, it turns the phone into camera mode, where you then hold the camera sideways as you would for an actual camera.

Quality of images at 3MP are O.K in bright conditions, in a dark Macro environment the flash distorts the image, nothing very friendly for a non-camera person. There is a delay writing to both Phone memory and Card memory, and is noticeable. This problem will lead to a blurred image if you don’t hold the camera in position for a few seconds after taking the shot.

Although the S60 platform is more complex and feature rich, Nokia still managed to keep navigation intuitive. The only downside I feel that Symbian needs to work on, in both their S80 and S60 platforms together with Nokia is to reduce the processing and execution times. There’s an annoyingly noticeable delay when accessing functions and scrolling around the phone.

The phone does take a MiniSD card which slides conspicuously onto the left hand side of the phone.

Battery life isn’t Nokia-Tastic, it would last just about a day with full use. I.e MSN permanantly on, Light – Medium SMSes and calls during the day. Recommend that you charge your phone whenever you can. The battery on the 9500 lasted 1 Week with constant use.

Connectivity?

Connectivity wise, Wifi, IR and Bluetooth are easy to use and stable with no real need to upgrade anything to cure any connection issues that some phones have had. This phone is also HSPDA compatible on a 3G network for fast internet surfing.

Fun Stuff?

Nokia themes for the S60 are available for free around the web,with Pay Per Theme from Nokia also available. There’s a built in music player and a radio player. “Snakes” Game has been redefined by a new 3D view and soduku is also thrown in to exercise your logic.

Pc Suite

Personally I synchronize my contacts and calendar with Lotus Notes on my N80. Everything operates automatically, correctly and trouble free even in a bluetooth connection. The only thing I couldn’t sync with the N80 is emails in both Lotus and Outlook, where previously the 9500 could handle it.

Who is it for?

As it is only my opinion, I would categorise this phone for Tech Heads and mobile warriors. It’s a bit too fragile for a young Teen, and a bit too feature rich for a user who wants a simple phone. It does look professional, and it has enough functions to keep you going whilst away from the terminal.