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The negative publicity around Windows Vista has been relentless since its debut in November 2006. It’s been called slow, incompatible, a resource hog, and most recently featured in CNet’s “Top ten terrible tech products” of all time. So much has it been maligned, that even I, a self-professed technophile and early adopter have held off for more than 12 months before even giving it a look. Admittedly, I own a four-year-old notebook, about the worst possible computer to upgrade to Windows Vista. Every reviewer would scream danger and warn of headaches with proprietary drivers and the like. To me it smelled of a challenge. So I bade farewell to XP and booted up Vista’s install DVD on my trusty old Acer TravelMate 370. The results, I have to say, have been mixed.

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Since buying a Nokia 6300 and signing up to a mobile data plan with Optus, I have embraced mobile internet in a BIG way. Despite long dismissing it as little more than a gimmick, the combination of Opera Mini, a phone with a decent-sized screen, and affordable data rates has changed my attitude 180 degrees. I am now certain that the question ought not to be “why should I”, but “why don’t I”, access the internet on my phone. Read on to find out what you can do with the internet in your pocket in Australia.

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I’ve been very vocal for a long time about the lack of slim and sexy mobiles. It seemed that for years manufacturers were obsessed with features and devices got progressively fatter and heavier. Nokia, the original champion of sleek (beginning with the 8210), became the worst offender. Even when Samsung and Motorola brought back slim last year, Nokia continued to flood the market with unpocketable bricks. Until now.

The new Nokia 6300, successor to my 6100, is everything that has been missing in Nokia’s line up for the last four years. I’ve held onto my old 6100 for precisely the reason that no other alternative existed. In desperation I had begun flirting with the idea of Samsung or Sony-Ericsson. Finally, Nokia has come to their senses and realised that affordable style (with a compromise on features) is a viable market. I dare say, this will be my next phone. Here is why. Read the rest of this entry »

When I installed Opera Mini on my ageing (but still very stylish) Nokia 6100, I couldn’t wait to express my joy to the world. You see, I’d been reluctantly looking around for a replacement phone for some time, mainly in order to do something which was easy a few years ago - check my email. When I first bought the 6100 (my first WAP/GPRS phone), my ISP had WAP email. Since then, as sites embraced new standards, the old Nokia’s web browser could no longer handle this task. Even Google’s release of a Java mail client offered no hope - my phone was not supported. Now with this new application installed, my phone’s been given a new chance at life. Read the rest of this entry »

A combination of factors came together recently and made me come to a great revelation. Firstly, a friend of mine in full-time employment was coming home regularly bursting at the seams with fascinating bits of science trivia. At the same time, I was just beginning to come to grips with the reality of my looming 48 hours in a plane (thankfully not all at once) and the Sagittarius in me was starting to panic. Thirdly, my current clinical placement involves 2 hours of driving every day and I’d gotten somewhat sick of the scenery. When my know-it-all friend revealed the source of his recent wisdom, all the pieces elegantly fell into place.

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My feelings toward the Palm TX have been almost completely positive since I bought one earlier this year. Early this week I encountered an utterly infuriating problem - the device emits an unmistakable “hiss” through the headphone jack! Read on to learn what to do about it.

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Each one of us has a select few sites that we visit regularly - some more, some less. I’ve decided to start off a new series of articles, Top 5, with my most-frequented web sites.

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Everyone in the peer-to-peer file sharing community is talking about “BitTorrent”. It seems that this technology is the favourite among file sharers these days, but setting it up to work correctly can be a challenge. Unlike many other click-and-go P2P clients like the infamous KaZaa or the now legitimised Napster, BitTorrent takes some getting used to. Perhaps the most difficult part of BitTorrent configuration to understand, is just what you need to do with those bloody ports! Forums such as Whirlpool are flooded with threads asking “why are my torrents so slow?” and equally-many would-be-gurus giving contradictory advice. In this article, I will aim to demystify the issue of ports in BitTorrent, without getting bogged down in details.

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We finally joined the 21st century in mid-2005 when we signed up to Telstra BigPond Cable broadband. I had been trying to get ADSL for some time, but despite living ridiculously close to an exchange, all attempts had ended in vain. I opted for the wireless option, which included a Motorola SBG900 modem/router, agreed by many on Whirlpool forums to be a more than adequate device. Originally all the computers in the house connected wirelessly, with Chewbacca (my old Celeron 1000, now relegated to file server and download-monkey) using the Telstra-supplied Netgear WG111 802.11g USB dongle.

From day one, I had intermittent problems with using BitTorrent. Almost immediately upon beginning a download, the router would drop the connection and restart. Often this also occured a number of times during a download - not a good thing to happen when you’ve just reached 100+ KB/s, as the torrent would restart and would take a while to reach a decent speed again. To make matters worse, Chewbacca would occasionally restart spontaneously, killing the download for good. All of this caused me great frustration, but (for lack of time or desire) I was never able to pin down a cause. Med school holidays finally gave me enough of the former, and I managed to solve the mystery.

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