As I continue to ride the wave of euphoria of completing the 1200 mile east to west Gadget Road Trip with my lifelong friend Andy. Today I joined BBC Radio Suffolk’s Sarah Lilley on the Sofa in Ipswich and explained how the challenge came about and how it felt to drive 1200 miles in an Electric Car and why I love Gadgets!
I also talked about how I met Vanessa, how I listen to music and an ill fated trip to Tunisia in 1996.
Listen in to the stream, bookmark the site, we have a LOAD of reviews coming up over the next few weeks, so stay tuned!
Edifier M1380 2.1 Speakers are a smart choice for students
For the past few weeks I have been testing the Edifier M1380 2.1 Speakers with Subwoofer and Satellites. As a music fan, I’ve always been a fan of external speakers both PC’s and MP3 players, so when a set of Edifier M1380 speakers arrived at my office, I was eager to give them a try.
The M1380 speakers come with a high quality 5 inch subwoofer bass unit, two satellite tweeters and a wired controller for both muting and controlling the volume. Bass is adjusted by a control knob on the side of the subwoofer with a 3.5mm audio line-in cable and speaker out connectors for the tweeters.
The subwoofer feels weighty, which gives you confidence that the bass reproduction is going to be good in addition, the build materials feel sturdy. The subwoofer outputs 12W, it’s not up to ‘block party’ standards, but it’s perfectly loud enough to please someone as a second set and is complimented by the the tweeter speakers outputting at 8W each.
The satellite speakers are elevated to a height of 6 inches. This gives the sound the freedom to travel rather than be adsorbed by surrounding furniture and is crisp and pleasant to listen to.
The speakers have been balanced with each other, meaning they work together to produce a rich, pleasant sound and don’t interfere with each other by over-saturating different frequencies.
The speaker controlller and earphone socket is useful for computer users
The speaker volume is controlled via a small table mounted dial and mute switch. I like this kind of set up as it allows to to easily adjust the speaker volume by sitting the controller next to your keyboard if you are using them as PC speakers. It also offers a headphone socket, allowing you to plugin your favourite pair without having to reach around behind the speaks and fumble around.
Edifier are very good at producing attractive audio equipment and the M1380 continues this with a modern, matte black setup which would fit in most surroundings and not look out of place.
The price point for the speaker system is around the £49 mark, this feels like great value for such a quality product. If you are looking for a cost effective set of speakers which would suit students heading off for university, these are a great choice.
Following my previous post which can be found here, I talked this morning to Mark Murphy on BBC Radio Suffolk about WannaCry and the effect it has had on the NHS, what needs to be done to stop it happening again and what we can do to protect ourselves.
To read and in depth article on how to protect your computers from such attacks, click here
PLEASE ensure your computers have all their updates installed and make sure you have Anti-Virus software installed.
Lighter evenings are upon us at last! We can start to look forward to getting out in the fresh air again after hibernating over the winter months. As always when I start thinking of spending more time outside I begin looking for gadgets that I can take with me.
I’ve recently been sent the Edifier MP280 Portable Speaker something that is clearly marketed to outdoor enthusiasts.
Edifier MP280 Portable Speaker
I’ve always found Edifier really high quality and the MP280 checks that box, it feels solid and well made with special silicone material and metal. The speakers are wrapping around the cylindrical design and give 360 degree sound along with professional grade DSP chips to give exceptional sound quality.
Edifier MP280 Portable Speaker
The MP280 comes with Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity, microSD and Aux sockets. There is the added bonus of a USB out port which means you can use the speaker to charge your phone or other USB device when you are out and about. The speaker can be charged using a standard micro USB socket and when fully charged, the lithium ion battery should give 10 hours of constant playback.
Edifier MP280 Portable Speaker
The on/off button is placed on top of the speaker along with the Bluetooth pairing button. When switched on, the speaker plays a pleasant tune to let you know it’s working and to demonstrate it’s lovely sound quality. On the side is the volume controls and also a button used play and pause music which can also be used to display the current battery charge status which when pressed for 2 seconds displays the battery status using 3 green LED’s.
At the bottom of the speaker is the power / status light and just above this is an NFC contact point. If you have an NFC (near field connection) compatible phone you simply tap your phone on this and it sorts out the connection for you.
Edifier MP280 Portable Speaker
As a smartphone user, I am constantly faced with battery anxiety, where I might struggle to the end of the day without having to plug my phone into a charger. The MP280 can remove this anxiety by doubling as an emergency recharge station to give your phone a boost and continue to play your music whilst charging it up again.
Edifier MP280 Portable Speaker
The speaker will operate up to 10 metres away from your phone using Bluetooth 4.0 technology and the really useful and it also doubles as a hands free device with it’s in built microphone!
If you fancy going for a hike with your friends or family, you can attach the speaker to your backpack using the inbuilt carabiner clip. Again this is feels high quality too.
There are no shortage of portable bluetooth speakers on the market at the moment and the MP280 certainly sits at the top end of this with a well made, high quality product ideal for your camping trips in the coming months.
The Nokia 3310 is set to make a comeback in the second quarter of 2017
Once again this week I was delighted to chat to James Hazell. Today we discussed the relaunch of the Nokia 3310, an iconic mobile handset in it’s original form which went on to sell 126,000,000 units.
In 2017, HMD the new licence holder of the Nokia phone brand will be launching 4 new phones, three of these phones are Android handsets, namely the Nokia 3, Nokia 4 and Nokia 5. Alongside these modern smartphones will be the reborn Nokia 3310. Make no mistake this is a brand new ‘feature’ phone, but there exists the spirit of the original 3310 which is held in such high regard.
Listen in to the stream and find out what I think of the new handset and also what other tech could be making a comeback.
Aluminium construction with etched logo make the device appear luxurious and high end.
I’m a real fan of tablet computers. I love being able to comfortably read eBooks, magazines and news websites. I love watching streaming movies and catching up on TV either on the move on in the comfort of my home.
Make no mistake, modern smartphones are great for most of these things too, but the tablet gives you the extra space to comfortably read digital versions of magazine in (almost) their intended footprint. This is possibly what has driven the gradual increase in screen sizes on both phones and tablets, becoming a replacement for our televisions and with it changing the way we watch video.
Having dominated the tablet market for so long, the iPad in all it’s various sizes is a hard act to match let alone beat! I’ve tried contenders in the past from Nokia and Samsung, both promised great things, but stumbled where it mattered most, performance.
The ASUS Zenpad 3s 10 has a great screen, it’s 4/3 ratio is great for surfing the net.
The Asus ZenPad 3s 10 definitely ticks every box with it’s performance packing a Hexa-core CPU (basically 6 CPUS packed on one chip), 4Gb of RAM, 32 or 64Gb of data storage, SUPER bright 9.7 inch IPS LCD Screen with a resolution of 1536 x 2048 pixels. Around the screen is in incredibly thin bezel, so although it shares the same size screen with the iPad, it is in fact slightly smaller to hold. Inbuilt stereos speakers with DTS Surround Sound gives a really nice (and loud) audio experience too. The case is made from aluminum with front (5 MP) and rear cameras (8 MP), the rear camera features Geo-tagging, touch focus, face detection, HDR, and panorama with both cameras able to record 1080p video. Charging the ZenPad is possible with the supplied USB-C Cable and Fast Charger, able to restore the battery from zero to 83% in 30 minutes. Security is provided by the integrated fingerprint reader which is seamlessly embedded in the front central button.
Also supplied is a small stand which allows you to prop the tablet whilst watching it, I tried this twice and felt the cardboard material used to make it wasn’t really strong enough for extended us.
Asus have bundled masses of software along with the Google suite of apps such as GMail, Google Documents, Maps etc. They have modified the stock Android experience and allowed lots of customisation to suite everyone’s taste.
The Zenpad has an 8MP rear camera capable of capturing 1080p
Using the Zenpad was really impressive, they have gone with a 4×3 screen ratio which has been popular with the iPad since launch. In my experience 16×9 is better for viewing movies in widescreen, so you do get the extra bars at the top and bottom of the screen which watching video, but it’s when you use the tablet for surfing, Facebook, Twitter and especially reading that you see the benefit of the extra screen width.
ASUS have gone to a lot of trouble to make a luxury product that weighs 430g and is 5.8mm thick with diamond cut bevels and nicely etched logo on the back. It really feels and looks expensive, colours are really bright, but not over saturated and the hexacore processor makes just about any task completed in a instant. It’s a great device, possibly one of the best I’ve used so far across the board.
The UHD screen is perfect for reproducing sharp bright images.
At roughly £299, the Zenpad comes in at roughly £100 cheaper that the iPad Air and in fairness to both it performs admirably and in some cases improves on the Apple device. It is a fabulous device at a great price.
It really is a great alternative to the obvious and I would encourage people to check out these devices if they are looking for iPad alternative at a slightly more affordable price.
I sit here after reading debate after debate on the need for BST or British Summer Time and it has brought back some fond memories with my own personal battle with time keeping aged 17 – 22 years.
In 2016 there is no reason to EVER be late for anything. We have electronic gadgets to remind us by phone, text, email, popup reminders and our wrists now buzz with the wide variety of wearables. Simplicity is supposed to be the key, we can now set alarms then pause (or snooze) or even postpone them completely. Of course everything is now synchronised on all manner of electronic equipment connected by WiFi, 4g, 3g and bluetooth, it now seems we don’t have any excuse to be late anymore, we can even ask our gadgets to do things without actually physically interacting with them. With the advent of a new generation of ‘smart speakers’ such as Amazon Echo and Google home we won’t even need to remember when it’s time to go to work because these devices will already know. It truly is the dawn of artificial intelligence and machine learning. We are now standing on the precipice of self aware technology.
Sam Fox 1986 Calendar, popular in the 80’s
Now… let us take a step back 30 years to 1986 where things were oh so different.
Smartphones? What the hell are they?. Bluetooth was a long lost King of Denmark and email was something people at Berkeley University used to send to each other between classrooms. Calendars hung on walls, normally fixed on one particular month if you happened to own the 1986 Sam Fox Official Calendar.
The master of timekeeping was sitting next to your bed, a wonder of technology who’s sole purpose was to ease your from sleep to awake in an instant, an efficient mechanism which could wake your either brutally with a ear piercing beeping noise or with the assistance of DJ Mike ‘Smithy’ Smith (Rest in Peace) gently coaxing you from your golden slumber, easing you into realities of Monday mornings.
What ‘Gadget’ do you speak of? What mastery of 80’s technology could this be?
Of course this invention was the ‘Digital Clock Radio’.
Mine was your ‘bog standard’ affair, equipped with Radio or ‘Beep’ alarm with the addition of snooze. An amazing invention to be ignored, paused and sworn at for many years until 1993 when lack of sleep and long hours of work forced be to put my fist through it early one Sunday morning!
There was however a big problem with my digital clock radio, a VERY big problem.
My boss enquiring as to my expected arrival time at the office? Bosses in the 1980s provided workplace based motivational encouragement under a dark cloak of unpleasantness and aggressive threatening undertones.
The device only only allowed one alarm to be set at any one time of the day. This would work fine if every morning you had to rise at 6:50am. During the weekend you would switch the alarm button to OFF, allowing you a short lay-in on a Saturday or Sunday morning (what are they???) and making sure the switch was placed in AUTO on Sunday evening to avoid that ‘Where the HELL are you? call at 10.50am from your boss the next day!
Setting the alarm on a clock radio. A strange contortion of finger and thumb was needed to alter the alarm time.
However, my work hours weren’t regular back then. Sometimes a project needed completing early and the alarm would need to set a couple of hours earlier for the next day. The radio didn’t allow for setting the alarm back a hour, it required repeatedly clicking one button whilst holding the other in order to advance the alarm 22 hours to set it from 7am to 5am, the buttons were never that comfortable or ‘ergonomic’ thus 22 hours of clicking would mean a cricked thumb and sore fingertips. Setting the alarm forward two hours was obviously much less painful. Things got more frustrating when you ‘missed’ an hour whilst cycling past it in haste, causing yet more endless clicking until the desired hour was found (lets not even get on to minutes!).
It came to me in an instant, the solution was obvious!
it was while advancing the alarm through this 22 hour period that it suddenly hit me like a bolt of lightening!! A solution found my accident, by the slip of a thumb, an accidental advance of time rather than alarm! There was no need to go through this tedious task at all! Setting the alarm back 2 hours was easily achieved by simply advancing the main clock forward 2 hours and leaving the alarm where it was, 8pm became 10pm, then the alarm would be shifted forward an hour, the ‘real’ time remaining still, time adjustment was always achieved by setting alarm or time forward, there was not tediously clicking needed anymore.
Thus on that fateful day in 1986, MMT was born, but this wasn’t the internationally recognised Myanmar Mean Time, no this was my personal time zone named Matthew Mean Time, a constantly moving time zone designed to allow me to get into work on time without sore fingertips!
A nonsensical time to visitors who remained befuddled and annoyed at the clocks apparent state of incorrectness . Interference commonly threatened the consequence of unplanned, unexpected and unwanted early morning awakenings.
The nonsensical mess of time displayed on my Digital Clock Radio that mean’t so much to me, the protector of timekeeping, the barrier from verbal and written warnings for repeated lateness at work mean’t absolutely nothing to visitors who remained confused and befuddled by the meaningless number displayed on my bedside clock. Some would bring the ‘error’ to my attention even offering to correct it for me. On one occasion a friend adjusted the time to GMT for me whilst I was out of the room and thus cause the alarm to sound at 2.30am the next day! But still MMT continued until 1991 when it travelled with me to live in Harrow but was deemed unacceptable by my partner and it’s use immediately ceased.
Although a good idea, MMT was sometimes met with confusion and derision. Frustration led to attempts to correct the time which in turn had drastic implications.
Whilst I sit here writing this article, the day after the clocks have ‘gone back’, the end of British Summer Time 2016, with the inevitable drag of darker, colder evenings, I lament at the demise of MMT and it’s five year reign in my life, along with the repeated “What the HELL is wrong with your clock Matt?” and it’s proud reply…
“Oh that? Don’t worry, that’s just Matthew Mean Time”
Happily the need for such amateurish horology related hokum is unnecessary in todays world. Altering your alarm time is now as simple as uttering the words ‘OK Google’ and crossing your fingers.
