technology and audio matters

I’ve had this for a year or so but have never managed to achieve reliable reception. (Product details here: http://www.freecom.com/ecproduct_detail.asp?ID=2234 ). I sort of fell into to the trap of assuming that it might work with a tiny indoor aerial , as does my DAB tuner. But of course the transmission levels for digital TV i.e. Freeview are limited in power output until the switch over in 2012. Until that time you need a decent aerial. Any way these last few days I’ve had another go and bought myself a small DIY loft Aerial from Wilkinson’s. Although only small (about 2 foot in length) when fully assembled. It’s given me the edge over my small loop aerial. ( I found the small device supplied by Freecom to be totally ineffective here in my loft/office). I’ve placed the new aerial in the loft cupboard out of site and swung it round in the orientation of the roof Antenna, pointing to Crystal Palace. (Check out http://www.ukfree.tv/txdetail.php?a=TQ339712 ) . Success, although on the margin I’ve just enough signal now to successfully receive the ITV multiplex , the weaker of the DVB mux’s. All I’ve got to do now is wait for something decent to come on air

(Take care, I’ve played with some of the small TV signal boosters such as those supplied by Argos. But unfortunately they would appear to introduce too much noise. You can’t beat a good signal from the antenna itself.)

The Freecom itself seems to behave itself admirably on my small Shuttle PC with 17 inch display running XP. The antenna adapter for the Coax connection appears a tiny bit flimsy but it all seems to work. Comes with a handy remote as well. Just take care with the signal quality.

Just got myself a new phone, a SE K810i. I’ve been using a Sony Ericsson W810i and thought I’d keep it all simple by sticking with the same brand and family. Plugging in my shiny new K810i I assuming that the phone would just sync to my PC without any effort. No such luck! Well in truth ‘Contacts’ synced perfectly with Outlook but for some reason all I got with the Calender were PC Suite error messages. By my own efforts I got rid of the error messages by removing redundant drivers for the old phone. But still no Calender sync. Sony Ericsson’s support email came to the rescue. I had to remove the PC suite and then run the repair utility within Outlook. This seemed to reset all my data, which I duly re imported. Re installed the PC Suite and all is well, Contacts and Calender now sync without apparent problem.

A small black mark to T-Mobile for shipping an older version (than that available on the web) of PC Suite. I know this is common, but I wasted a good half hour removing and reinstalling having realised I was using an older version than previously installed.

Update – Jan’ 2008

I’ve now spoken with a representative at Sony Ericsson. He kindly picked up that I’m using the Win2000/XP version of PC Suite and not the XP/Vista version which he advised me to move to. I’ve now installed and at first glance appears more robust. Not spotted though in 3 previous emails to Sony Ericsson!

Also if your running Active Sync as well (as I am) disabling when syncing with the phone seems to be the final cure. Lets hope that’s the only other issue!

Set up my first email account with Sky broadband this week. Turns out Sky is using what appears to be the standard gmail system , I suppose a ‘white label’ solution. Nothing special you might say. But the client needed pop access via Outlook Express. Cutting a long story short it transpires that such a solution doesn’t allow one to send emails via the email client (via smtp) to yourself! Any other emails will come in just fine. Documented on Gmail’s help pages but not Sky’s at first glance. That unfortunately is my standard test for checking satisfactory operation. I thought it was broken but it wasn’t! So now you know.

The other thing to know about is that Gmail have a POP Troubleshooter program to check your email client’s settings. Download it from here:

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=44769

My trusty Epson 600 finally gave up a few weeks ago. Repeated attempts to renovate the black ink failed. I tried multiple ‘head cleans’ in the maintenance section. Even tried squirting isopropyl alcohol where the cartridge mates. It’s worked for me in the past but failed this time. Two generous printer donations (both Espon as it happens) failed to turn into a working printer despite many hours of cleaning cycles, syringing etc. So after a number of frustrating hours I’ve gone out and got another small Canon printer , an IP3300 to be precise. Chosen on the basis of:

a) good review in the recent Pc Pro magazine comparison: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/labs/116166/canon-pixma-ip3300.html

b) The price of replacement inks seems relatively sane compared to other printers at this price point. In fact some of the cheapest printers use the most expensive inks. So beware and check first.

c) I’ve had a Canon i560 for around 2/3 years now and have been more than impressed with it’s low running costs and absence of issues.

The printer is available from ebuyer here in the UK.

Happy printing…