Camera Confusion
Perhaps it’s a bit of everything but I feel Nikon has the edge in the market at the moment, They seem a lot more “cool” and marketable than canon does at the moment and also more importantly they appear to be innovating faster not just with cameras but also with new lenses that not only produce a high quality image but are made to a high quality and don’t look cheap even if the prices are. Where as I think canon are using lenses they’ve had for years and any most new lenses they are producing at the moment are the cheaper EF-S lenses such as the 55-250mm IS and the yet unreleased 18-200mm IS lens. Both these lenses resemble the kit lens and appear cheaply built and don’t feature the faster USM motors, which is a real shame if you ask me, especially with the 18-200mm having such a high price tag (£500+).
So all this leaves me wondering if sticking with canon is the right thing to do. I don’t think I’d sell all my canon gear just yet as The quality of the optics I have at the moment is really high and the 40D is a really great camera that has a higher shooting speed over the D90. But as I think on if I wished to upgrade my kit lens to something higher end such as an L lens then it would be closing in on the price of the D90 and with the D90’s kit lens being an 18-105mm VR then it may end up being a better solution. But before all of that I need to decide if it’s worth using 2 SLR systems, my thoughts at the moment is that yes it might well be worth it.
iPhone.. How I'm Getting on.
Now you might be thinking I’m being hugely negative and I’m going ot say I hate the iPhone but strangely I have to say it’s the best phone I’ve ever had! I’ve had phones ranging from the SE K750,W800,K800 and Nokia 6300 and N82. The N82 was my last phone and although it did everything, in a way it did too much. I think i would have had to become a proper mad symbian geek for a few weeks to really work out the best way to do things on the phone and after all that it won’t change the fact that most of the apps were very ugly and horrible to use. I liked that the nokia Had GPS and built in maps but I didn’t like that most of the time it would take well over 5 minutes to lock on to a satelite even with A-GPS enabled. Now on the iphone it takes a matter of seconds to lock onto your location! I don’t like that the Maps have to be downloaded over the air and thats pretty slow if your in just a GPRS area but maybe a preloaded maps app could arrive at some point, that would be amazing
. I like that with the iphone I’m never bored I am check my facebook, go on msn, or browse the web at pretty quick speeds over edge and really quickly over 3G or WiFi. Even with an unlimited data plan I don’t think I’d enjoy doing web stuff as much on the smaller screened and less user friendly nokia. I’m even using and liking the iphone camera more than the nokia, it might be only 2 Mpx with no AF compared to the nokia’s 5 Mpx with AF and flash but it’s so much faster to use and just snap and the results are surprisingy good and totally useable. 
So in summary there’s lots apple can do to improve the iphone exerience but I’m really glad I waited for the iphone 3G and didn’t get the original. Apple fixed alot with this model and made a truely classic phone, the 3G iphone is truely the phone to beat and I don’t think anything is going to beat it for me till the next iphone is out, so I say amaze us all Apple!, lets see what yu can do next!
Launch Day!
Today was the 3G iphone launch day a day I'll never forget. The Roller-coaster ride of a day was filled with so many up and down emotions, worries, nerves, fear excitement adrenaline it was almost unbearable. I started the day early waking after 3 hours sleep getting up at 4.30 to get the half 5 train to chester. I got there at 6 finding a Que. of 9 people. I started talking to some really sound people even swapped numbers with this guy who lives close by he's into all the same kinda apple stuff as me. The o2 staff at half 7 told us they only had 8 16GB iphones witch made me the 9th person who wanted one so I had no chance in getting one. Fortunately there's another o2 store that opens at 9 in an indoor precinct and they 4 16GBs. So I waited by one of the 4 entrances to get in. hoping I'd be first there. I met this other guy while waiting he was probably 40 and came along with his pregnant wife. Once the shutters were up at 8 I desperately ran to be first in line but found a family of 4 waiting there after 3 16GBs. I knew I'd be ok aslong as they really had 4 in stock. The guys said they did so I was more relaxed but still scared. Then I woman came round who was at the over que with 4 kids she came at 6am too, she thanked me for leaving the que as someone had to drop out and she ended up getting the 16GB she was after, I was ok about it knowing Id get one too but did feel a little gutted. Then o2 had us sigh up manually I asked for 16GB but once they got us in the store they told me they infact only had 3 of the 16GB's! I was totally gutted and disappointed words to describe how i felt are hard to find. I asked to keep back an 8GB while I made up my mind and just as I was about to leave to reserve one for tomorrow from the Carphone warehouse the guy said u don't want to do that and pulled out a 16GB! I was over joyed, I couldn't believe after such a let down I was back on a high. After signing up for it again ( they lost the paper work, i really didn't mind) I had to wait for there upgrade systems to come back online so I sat watching chuck on my ipod and drinking a huge mug of hot chocolate at the costa coffee just opposite. About half an hour later I went back in to find the upgrade system working again.
It was such a mad unforgettable day with an amazing atmosphere, Im really glad I went today for the launch otherwise I'd have missed out on such a great experience of emotions. And to all those who waited in line early I hope you got the size you wanted.
LaCie Drive Review
Upon receiving the drive I was shocked at the huge box dabs thought to package it in, I thought we were ment to be saving the planet now? The actual Box for the drive was very smart looking with plenty of pictures of the drive and would surely appeal to someone buying this drive from a retail store especially somewhere like an apple store. Once out of the box the stand required attaching with the provided allen key as LaCie allow the drive to be put into a custom rack they sell so the stand may not be needed. The Drive appears a darker shade of grey than pictures would have you believe and they also show the same colour all over the drive but in fact the front face plate and stand are a different metal and are a darker grey, as seen in the picture below.
The Drive is quite large in my opinion but I think thats to do with the orientation of the drive. Compared to my External usb2 toshiba 320GB drive it looks big but I think thats because the drive is taller rather than longer and the internal drive is probably mounted vertically to allow all the input circuitry to sit at the rear of the drive where as the toshiba is mounted horizontally. I wouldn’t say it was too big though so it’s not a problem.
I was happy to see all the cables included with the driving including FW800 and ESTA though I was aware they would be included. The FW800 cable is quite short though so I will be doing some moving around to get the drive sitting somewhere neater on my desk. Once up and running the drive is noticeably louder than my toshiba drive with a little bit of vibration noticeable as when I lean on the desk it changes the sound the drive makes. I wouldn’t say it was actually that loud however, infact I’ve just started the drive up now to be sure of what it sounds like and it’s very very quiet, all I can hear is a slight swirling noise, the only time when the drive is more noticeably louder is when your writing files to it. You could certainly leave the drive running while your working on a quiet mac and not hear it at all with some quiet music playing. However the drive has an auto switch off mode that if un-accessed will go to sleep after about ten minutes ( though not if you use E-SATA)
There’s two main features of this drive though that make it worth every penny. The first feature is the Quad inputs on the back including USB 2.0 , Firewire 400 and 800 and E-SATA. The second main feature is tied in to this and it’s the speed of the drive! I’ve only been using the drive with Firewire 800 but it’s fast! Very fast! Copying large files to a USB2 drive can take a long time, but over FW800 it takes literally seconds, and doing some xbench drive tests I found the drive to score better than my internal drives. Ok so I know it’s not really is as fast as the internal drive but it’s not far off.
The blue light on the front of the drive is also a button and can be assigned as a shortcut for functions on your Mac or PC but I haven’t yet found this useful, though it’s nice if you used a backup app with the drive every time you switched it on. As I’ve said I’ve only had the drive for a few weeks but Im hoping it’s a very reliable drive as the heat dissipating design should allow the drive to remain cooler when in heavy use.
Overall I’m very impressed with the drive it’s reasonably quiet, very quick and has a great range of inputs. It also looks very stylish and would look great next to a mac pro or iMac on your desktop. I’d rate the drive 9 out of 10 with the only improvements I’d suggest being a slight reduction in size, the drive being a bit quieter while being accessed and a longer FW800 cable being provided.
That'll do nicely
It's Upon Us
Product 1.1: 3G iphone annoucned and shown off running firmware 2.0 with some extra unseen features possibly MMS. Release date either imediatly or next week. 16GB and 32GB version.
Product 1.2: 3G iphone annoucned, firmware 2.0 not yet out but running new 1.5 firmware. Release date imediatly or next week. 16GB and 32GB version.
Product 2.1: New mac os 10.6 shown, intel only, possible intemediate release for winter 08 release. PPC support in 10.7. 10.6 is for extra speed and stability on intel.
Product 2.2: New mac os 10.6 annoucned, Steve goes through some features but doesn’t show it. PPC and intel support.
Product 3.1: Possible one last thing, new Cinema display shown with built in webcam, price reduced considerably.
Product 3.2: One last thing. apple mac tablet running full os x with massive touch screen.
Well there you go there’s my predictions. I’m not really sure on the idea of a mac tablet though, I know alot of people want one but I can’t see apple releasing one as it’ll probably hurt sales of the iphone and ipod touch, but maybe not greatly. I guess we’ll find out very shortly
Chester Unsnapped
Sell or Keep?
But now I have a dilemma as I still have the 400D and it remains quite unused ( as does my 40D a lot of the time lately) and I’m finding it hard deciding if I should sell it or not. I’d rather not sell it on ebay but more to someone I know and looking on ebay there really not selling for a great deal ( you can pick them up for around £300 new anyway!). However I do have the official battery grip for it that I got cheap in a sale so I might make some money on that. Currently with the low price it would fetch there’s little reason to sell the camera and I think I might benefit from keeping it as a spare for situations that I’d rather not take the 40D to. I have 2 similar range telephoto lenses too so both camera’s and my higher and lower end lenses are almost a mirror of themselves. It’s also good to have 2 camera’s to mount a wide and a telephoto to each in certain situations as that way your not likely to miss shots at events by not having the right lens attached. Also carrying 2 SLR’s will make you look like a pro
So for now I think I’ll keep the camera and the battery grip but there are times when I wonder if it’s worth selling, but by the time I possibly decide to sell I think it won’t be worth hardly anything anyway.Welcome
Next week I will have a Review posted of my new Lacie 500GB D2 Hard drive so please check back for that and I hope you continue to enjoy reading TD now that it’s fully hosted and has it’s own Domain.