1. Take one bubble packed 2.5-inch hard disk
2. Put it into a roughly 10 x 8 x 2.5-inch box
3. Do not add any other cushioning or packing material and seal
4. Allow the hard disk to bounce around all the way from ‘the norf’ to ‘the sarf’ under postie’s delicate attentions

Update (Weds 2nd September): Disk may be DOA. Now with Paul Silver, who is  trying to determine its health.

Update (Thursday 3rd September): Dabs.com have asked me to fill in a customer satisfaction survey. I have. I’m not happy, so we’ll see if they contact me in response to my comments.

Later, Thursday, Paul reports that the disk isn’t DOA. It’s amazing how much punishment a modern HD can be put through.

Posted via email from The People’s Republic of Worthing Telegraph

You’ve got to admire Apple for their marketing nous.

But I can’t take part – even if I wanted to cut short my current contract. Why? Apple’s chosen network – O2 – doesn’t work where I live. I’d have liked to have seen the iPhone available from Apple stores, with a choice of network SIM.

But it isn’t. So until Apple is less restrictive with its distribution, I can’t even consider buying one.

Good luck with your queuing!

Tags: iPhone, Apple, 3G iPhone

Anyhow, I couldn’t survive another week with a spluttering Dell, so I scraped together the funds remaining in the bottom of my bank accounts and got Sam to drive me to Southampton to the Apple Store there.

I bought the cheapest MacBook, with a view to upgrading it to 4Gb of RAM pretty soon. In the final analysis, the others didn’t seem to warrant the extra wonga. The extra few processor cycles didn’t sway, I haven’t burned a DVD for 18 months and somehow a black MacBook didn’t look enough like a Mac for this Apple virgin.

So far, installing software has been a breeze – if more than a little foreign to a dyed-in-the-wool Windows user like me. I’ve been using MS software since way back in the DOS days. Even VMware Fusion wasn’t a challenge – I’m going to be using my Windows version of MS Office to ensure I have 100% compatibility with my clients’ documents.

However, as soon as I step outside the apps – Firefox is more-or-less the same no matter which platform you care to run it on, for example – I’m completely disorientated, like I’ve just found myself in Tokyo rather than London. It’s still an OS, but the rules are different and the ways of getting around are still confusing me.

I’m sure everything will become natural to me, but I’m not sure how quickly.

Windows Media Player sounds best, to my ears, so I use that as a default, but it doesn’t allow me to play FLAC, Ogg, Monkey’s Audio and some other formats. I have to have iTunes installed, as much as I hate it. I used to have WinAmp and one or two others installed, too.

But this time, I wanted to rationalise things. Quite a lot of Googling later, I found this page which showed me how to install some software to enable WMP to play all of the formats I want to play. And it’s not as difficult to set up as the page seems to be warning.

I am a happy bunny!

My £230-ish Asus eeePC is light and small, although not as outwardly sexy as Mr Jobs’ new child, costing around five times more.

There’s something really appealing to me about the eeePC’s mixture of yesterday’s innards, Open Source software and surprisingly high build quality. But, there’s something else that does it for me. You see, I am the proud owner of a Psion 7, bought in around 1999/2000.

I loved the P7, even with its very basic applications. But Windows 2000 Service Packs gradually killed its ability to sync with my desktop, so I reluctantly let it accumulate dust, I used to bemoan the fact that no-one had updated the P7 concept with better connectivity and software.

About a nanosecond after seeing the Asus, the penny dropped. Here it was! A real replacement for my beloved P7.

In the flesh, it’s even better than on paper. It’s a real sub-notebook at a fraction of the price of the small Sony VAIO and suchlike. The keyboard is really nice; the overall build is above average for a laptop. The screen, while small, is sharp and easy on the eye.

Earlier this week, I showed the eeePC to Paul Silver, my business partner, who feels much as I do. That the eeePC is a really exceptional piece of kit. ‘The ideal blogger’s machine’, was his thought. It’s something you can sling in your bag and always have something to write on.

It’s a real PC, with real software. Yes, Firefox, Thunderbird and Open Office. What else do I need when I’m on the move – or sitting in front of the TV, as I am now?